Sin: what's in it for me? A study in Romans chapter 6

The Book of Romans: A Bible study series in 17 parts

The general theme of Romans: How to be right with God.

  

[To watch this on YouTube when it was first given live on Zoom, click https://youtu.be/nszHveFNes4  [The whole text is at the end of this blog]

Introduction

Welcome to those of you who are new to our class in this the 7^th lesson, as we take up Paul’s comments recorded in chapter 6 of The Book of Romans. If you are watching this video on YouTube long after our class ended today, then please pause the recording and read the 6^th chapter. It will only take 3 minutes. OK, welcome back.  

The overarching question of the day: Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

Paul will answer that as is his usual, with a loud, shout and declaration: Not on your life! And then he will explain how that works, and why. He will talk about four things, and they are my outline today, with the saint’s relationship to sin, to Messiah himself, to temptation and then to righteousness. Remember we defined ‘righteousness’, that very religious sounding word, as ‘being right with God.’ By unpacking each of these categories, Paul will answer that question he raised more clearly. 

A.             What is the saint’s relationship to sin? (2-5)

The question Paul raises is an odd one, unless you have been reading the whole epistle. His summary of the ‘grace of God abounded much more where sin abounded” (5.20) then begs the next question which Paul raises. Here’s the logic: if grace is more abundant, in fact, much more abundant, then let’s do whatever it takes to increase it yet again. What caused that grace to grow? Sin is the answer. Aha, then let’s sin all the more so that grace may abound further. See, that’s reasonable, isn’t it? The logic is obvious and has a certain perverse attraction.

Do you remember the real story of Rasputin? He was a Russian mystic and self-proclaimed holy man who befriended the family of Emperor Nicholas II, the last monarch of Russia, and gained considerable influence in late imperial Russia. He died by an assassin in 1916 or so, and had an association with the wife of Nicholas, Alexandra. In fact, of note at this time is that his adventures of faith are well chronicled as are his mistresses and money-grabbing among the elite of Russia. Briscoe says, “the most notorious proponent of this theological aberration was Rasputin. He defended his profligate lifestyle and scandalous behaviour by teaching that it was necessary for salvation.” (page 131)

We learned last week that sin has a consequence and that is death. Both sin and death reigned for a time, (5.21), but by the power of God, grace and more specifically Yeshua himself, has conquered all other fake rulers. 

B.              What is the saint’s relationship to Messiah? (4-10)

Paul’s argument continues beyond our relationship to sin, and now his answer includes a believer’s relationship with Messiah himself. It also includes the picture of the Messiah’s death and resurrection. Even our death and resurrection in baptism.[1] From the Jewish Learning website: “A major function of immersion in the mikveh is for conversion to Judaism. The sages declare that a gentile who wishes to become a Jew must undergo the identical process by which Jewish ancestors converted. As Jews performed immersion at Mt. Sinai to complete the conversion process they had begun with circumcision as they left Egypt, so converts in every age must immerse in a mikveh.” Baptism / mikveh is the final stage of conversion for a non-Jew.

Look at the way newly born-again people are baptised. A minister and the candidate enter the water. The minister then lays the candidate down in the water. They appear buried. Then they are raised up out of the water. They appear resurrected. It’s symbolic and reminds the viewers of the Messiah and what he went through in Jerusalem in his passion. 

Does baptism then save you? Is it required? Or is it merely a symbol? Yeshua taught “He that believes and is baptised is saved.” (Mark 16.16) Consider what they preached in the book of Acts and the results. Acts 2, 3,000 or so Jews came to faith and were baptised that same day. In Acts 8, Philip preaches Messiah and the Ethiopian eunuch says, “Look water! What prevents me from being baptised?” In Acts 16, after the jail house rock freed Rabbi Saul and Silas in Philippi, the jailer got saved and that hour of the night he and his household were baptised. Faith alone saved any of those folks and is what made them right with God, and their outward evidence was the immediate baptism in water.  If you haven’t yet been baptised, please after this teaching finishes in a few minutes, during our Zoom conversation, please let’s talk about when you will go into the water!

Remember, Yeshua died once and rose once. So it is with us, and then we are to ‘walk in the newness of life.” (6.4)

Look at verses 8-10. Yeshua died, he rose and he lives. Paul uses that to answer us, and he says in verse 6:

1)              our old man (Anthropos) [maybe better to say, ‘the man of old’] was crucified with Yeshua. 

2)              Our body of sin will be done away with

3)              We should no longer serve sin

C.              What is the saint’s relationship to temptation? (11-14)

Verse 11 and following: Look at those verbs: consider, presenting, present. Other Bible versions use reckon and let. All of which are words of permission. The reality is that we can permit or disallow things from happening in our world. Obviously there are limitations to this permission. For instance, none of you can permit or deny permission to covid-19. None of you can permit or deny permission to a hit-and-run driver in your neighbourhood. But when the word ‘temptation’ rears its ugly head, we move into a territory of permission or denial. 

In the words of Jesus’ prayer, we ask God to ‘lead us not into temptation but [to] deliver us from evil.” (Luke 11.4-5) In other words, we do something to prevent temptation from winning in our lives. We ask God to lead us elsewhere. God has some things to say to us about our leading ourselves there. For instance, in Proverbs 1.10, Solomon teaches us “If sinners entice you, do not consent.” What would be your motivation to join them? Verse 13 says, “We will find all kinds of precious wealth, we will fill our houses with spoil;” In other words, money and what it buys can be yours, if you will join us. Solomon says, ‘don’t go with them.’ Read verse 15 of Proverbs 1: do not walk in the way with them. Keep your feet from their path,”  Or what about this from  Deut. 13:6, the lure of your closest relative to commit idolatry should be rejected. Family pressure is often the hardest to resist, but Moses gives us the word. What do you do to accomplish this? I’ll tell you in a moment.

Again a woman luring a man into wayward sexual activity is described in Proverbs 7 and this then in verse 22 “Suddenly he follows her As an ox goes to the slaughter” The path of our feet can be towards a good place or towards slaughter. 

Here’s a key, again from Solomon: Prov. 4:27  Do not turn to the right nor to the left; Turn your foot from evil.” It’s not your feet; it’s your foot. Like a man who has a bathtub full of water. It’s hot. Is it too hot? What does he do? Jump in? Or put his toe or his foot in first? Like a mother readying the bottle for the new baby, a test on the wrist of the heat of the liquid will prevent the problems in the baby with a bottle too hot.

I believe the key to resisting temptation is threefold. 1) Go slowly towards it and realise what it is and what it can do. Jesus said, “Count the cost.” (Luke 12) and then 2) turn away in a heartbeat. Don’t give it a second look. Put down that addictive activity or desire. James said, “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (4.7) But then there is a 3^rd key and it’s often missed by believers. Paul says here, “do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (verse 13). Some make the law into their capacity to resist and that’s exactly what Paul is saying will not happen. The law brings us to the awareness of our sin as we read three weeks ago (Romans 3.20) through the Law comes the knowledge of sin. Or as Paul wrote the Corinthians “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1Cor. 15:56)

The key to victory is faith and surrender. Yielding. Or as Paul says here ‘presenting’ and ‘not presenting’. To whom we present ourselves is the one who is responsible for us and to whom we point our faith. (6.16)

I grew up an Orthodox Jew in the middle of the US and I knew right from wrong. I used to steal money from my dad’s dresser. OK, only 10 cent pieces but later I stole a bow and arrow set from the neighbourhood discount store. What about all the stealing I”ve done from other people who worked hard to make things and I took the credit for their work. What about stealing God’s honor from him when he deserves it all. All of these highlight to me that knowing the Law didn’t save me from the consequences of breaking it. It only highlighted to me the need for repair and the key is SURRENDER to the Lord. First, I admit that I cannot fix my own life. Second, I admit my need of him who alone can repair me. Then third, I acknowledge and surrender my weaknesses and my strengths. I turn things over to God. I verbalize this. I write it in my journal. God, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory.

D.    What is the saint’s relationship to righteousness? (15-23)

We were slaves of sin; now we are free men. When someone else owned us, we had no control. When Yeshua bought us with his blood, we are not only forgiven; we are set free from our former master. Sin and death have no rights over us. We are not under their domain any longer. Oddly, Paul is going to link the Law with sin and death and we will look at that next week in detail. 

Verse 20: when we were slaves to sin, we could not practice being right with God. And what was the result? What was the fruit? (verse 21)… death! Spiritual separation from the Almighty. His love was unknown to us. 

Remember chapter 5, God demonstrated his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Messiah died for us. WHAT LOVE! It would be like you going into a morgue, filled with corpses, and breathing into them, one by one, when we were dead in trespasses and sins, God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, breathed into our lungs the breath of new and eternal life. He brought us to himself. Hallelujah! What a saviour!

Verse 23: And it is a Free gift. We had wages while we were under sin and under the domain of evil. Those wages were described as death. Now, in Messiah, because of what Yeshua did in dying on the cross and taking our sin, because of his rising from the dead, we can have eternal life.  

From Dunn: “The word “free gift” denotes that the eternal life is both an act of grace and itself an embodiment of that same grace. In other words, it is not an object which leaves the possession of the giver and becomes the possession of the believer. It is rather a relationship sustained by God’s outflowing power of goodness and embodying that same goodness in its whole character. As such it will still be in terms of Christ (life in Christ, life with Christ) and involve the believer’s obedient response to his lordship.”

Dear friends on Facebook and on this zoom call, if you are not yet a believer in Yeshua, I urge you today, call on him while he is near. Whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be rescued, will be saved will be made to be in right relationship with God. It’s worth all the social distancing people will give you when you tell them about God. It’s worth all the rejection of others who don’t want to know about God’s love in Messiah Yeshua. 

If you want, you can pray a prayer with me just now to solidify your choice. Something like this, “Father in Yeshua’s name, thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Yeshua to save me from myself, from my selfishness, from my despair and the harm I cause so many. Thank you for making me right with God by your sacrifice. I receive Yeshua (Jesus) as my saviour and the lover of my soul. He frees me to love others. I repent of my sins and ask for God’s forgiveness to be my portion. I receive the free gift of God, eternal life in Messiah Jesus my Lord. Amen.”

NEXT WEEK we will look at the question of sin and specifically Torah in the life of Paul himself and its relation to grace and being right with God. Earlier, the law appeared on the side of sin and death rather than as a means of grace to life. Having gone some way to clarify the continuing role of sin and death in relation to the believer, with only a brief mention of the law (6:14–15), Paul next week will turn to the Torah itself and bring it center stage.

I’m delighted to be able to read and help us understand this book each Friday here from my lockdown in Sydney.  Shabbat shalom!

The actual text:

Rom. 6:1   What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? ² May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. ⁵ For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for he who has died is freed from sin.

Rom. 6:8   Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, ⁹ knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. ¹⁰ For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. ¹¹ Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Rom. 6:12   Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, ¹³ and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. ¹⁴ For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Rom. 6:15   What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! ¹⁶ Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, ¹⁸ and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

Rom. 6:20   For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. ²² But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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[1] Religious Functions of the Mikveh (From My Jewish Learning website)

Several religious functions are served by this powerful symbol of submerging in water. In the days of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, the mikveh was used by all Jews who wanted to enter the precincts of the Sanctuary. The law required every person inside the Temple grounds to be in a spiritually pure state appropriate to the pristine spirituality of the Sanctuary itself.

Throughout Jewish history, unmarried women have immersed in the mikveh prior to their wedding; married women immerse at the end of seven days of stainless purity from the end of each monthly menstrual cycle, in preparation for the resumption of family relations in their most fertile days.

A major function of immersion in the mikveh is for conversion to Judaism. The sages declare that a gentile who wishes to become a Jew must undergo the identical process by which Jewish ancestors converted. As Jews performed immersion at Mt. Sinai to complete the conversion process they had begun with circumcision as they left Egypt, so converts in every age must immerse in a mikveh.