Dying to Live, Part 3 B

When you're freed from fearing temptation, and you're freed even from fearing an ultimate disaster from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from your failures and your sins. I want to have confidence in temptation that it's not more than I can bear. I want to have confidence even in my sin that it isn't going to take me out of the hand of God and damn me. And I want to have confidence in facing death that death has no hold on me. And you can have that confidence when you know this to be true and you affirm it so in your heart. And when you're freed from fearing temptation, and you're freed even from fearing an ultimate disaster from your failures and your sins, and you're freed from fearing death, you can enjoy the fullness of the blessedness of your walk with God. And that's what comes when you learn to affirm or to reckon or to count these things to be true. So reckon that you're alive to God.

It's a permanent state. And I want you to notice the Greek text says that you are alive unto God in Christ Jesus. That's the Greek text of that final phrase. In Christ Jesus. And we're right back to that same aspect of our union with Him.

Marvelous. Everything is because we're in Him. When He died, was His payment for sin sufficient?

Was it? Then when we died in Him, so was ours and sin can make no more claims on us. That's why we don't fear even when we sin that we'd be cast out.

Because the penalty was perfectly paid and the power of sin was ultimately broken. Marvelous. And so we reckon.

We affirm it to be so. Third word. And now we come to the heart of the thing. You want the third word? It's at the beginning of verse 13.

What is it? Yield. Some of your translations may say present. It can be translated either way. Now if no has to do with the mind, and if reckon has to do with the heart, then yield has to do with the will. Yield has to do with the will. John 13, 17, one of my favorite statements. The Lord says if you know these things, happy are you if you what?

If you do them. That's right. This is the coup de grace.

Now there's so much theology in these two verses. I'm just going to have a marvelous time. I just hope I can get done. Hang in there. This is so exciting.

You're going to get some questions answered right at this point, I think. Now verse 12. Therefore. And whenever we see it, therefore, we know what it's there for.

It takes us from the past statement to the present one. Because we are dead indeed to sin, really dead, truly dead, indeed dead, that's what it means. For real dead, it really happened, not wishful thinking, and we're alive to God, then therefore let not sin reign in your mortal body. Now listen very carefully. Here is an exhortation in verse 12. Let not sin, therefore, reign.

What does he mean? Listen. If sin is no longer the monarch, then don't let it act like it was.

You got that? I mean if it doesn't have any right to do that, then don't give it any right. This is a fact. Sin has no dominion. That's a fact. That's indicative. This is an exhortation. Don't let it act like it does. That's an imperative.

Its power is broken. Don't let it act like it still has any right at all. Now here comes a very important truth. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body. Would you underline that? Your mortal body.

I think this will erase an awful lot of confusion. You know where sin wants to reign? It says in that verse, where does it want to reign? In your what? Body. Your mortal. What does mortal mean?

Corrupting. Is our mortal body that which will dwell eternally with God? No, that's our glorified body. It's this earthly cursed physical organism which encompasses the physical body with all of its members and organs as well as the brain and all of its functions. It is the physical body which sin seeks to rule. And that means, people, listen, if we could just get rid of these bodies, we would have instant holiness.

You believe that? That's exactly what the Bible teaches. Romans 8 21. Look at it. The creation itself also should be delivered from the bondage of corruption.

He's talking about the physical. And we'll be set loose in the glorious liberty of the children of God. I mean, wouldn't it be great when we get rid of this part of us? And we know that the whole creation, that whole physical dimension, groans and has labor pains. And not only the whole creation, but ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting for the adoption. That is the redemption of our what? Of our body. That's what we're waiting for. We're waiting for a redeemed body.

We want to get rid of the one we've got. Would you look what Paul does not say? Listen to what he doesn't say. He doesn't say, let not sin, therefore reign in your soul. He doesn't say, let not sin, therefore reign in your spirit. He doesn't say, let not sin, therefore reign in you. He says, don't let it reign in your what? Your mortal body. That's the only place sin can operate.

Why? Because the real you, the real self is holy now. And that's why you have the struggle in Romans 7 where you say, I want the right things.

That's coming from the real me, but my body is a problem to me. Have you noticed that? I've noticed that. Let me show you. Romans 7, 17. Back up to verse 15.

We have to cover it all. That which I do, I understand not. I don't understand me, he says. For what I would that do I not?

And what I hate that do I? If then I do that which I would not, I consent to the law that is good. In other words, here I am, I'm doing things I don't want to do. In other words, something in me says I don't want to do that, but my body wants to do that. And so he says in verse 17, now then it is no more I that do it. What a statement.

Who is it? What do you mean it isn't you that do it? He says it is not I.

What I? I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me and that new incorruptible eternally prepared and holy new soul that God made. It's not that that's doing it, but it is sin that dwells in me. Oh, it's not you, it's sin that dwells in you. Where does it dwell, Paul? Verse 20. Now, if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me. I know you already said that, but where is it in you?

You want to know where it is? Well, let's look at verse 22. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.

I mean the real me, the new me, the new creation. But I see another law. Watch this one. In my what? Memories. You know what that word means? Bodily parts.

Bodily parts. And it wars against the law of my mind. How about verse 25? So then, after the first statement, he says, so then with the mind, that's with the real me, I serve the law of God, but with the what? Flesh. The law of sin.

Oh, by the way, I just thought of something. The struggle then comes at the point of our body, doesn't it? Bodily desires and so forth. That's why Paul says in Romans 12, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your what? Your bodies. See, that's the issue. That's why 1 Corinthians 9, 27, Paul says, I, you know, beat my body. Down body, see.

I beat it into submission because it's the body that's the problem. Now those are Paul's terms for the struggle. Now let's go back to Romans 6, as I said, and look at verse 12. He says then, let not sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts. The body is lusting. The body has its desires. The body lusts cry out for fulfillment and they demand obedience. And remember, the body is where it's coming from and your brain and your thinking processes are part of that body.

Now what does this tell us? Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts. What it tells us is that sin will dominate you if you let it.

Right? I mean, if you pamper the body and if you feed the body and if you entertain the body and if you entice the body and if you expose the body to temptation, you're going to have a problem. Because it's the body and all of the sensory factors that are exposed to this world become channels through which temptation can draw you into sin and sin can reign over you. So sin will dominate you if you don't deal with it. But you know what else this tells me? It doesn't have to dominate you because the very fact that he says don't let it indicates that it doesn't have to.

Right? He says don't let sin reign in your mortal body. You know what that means to me? It would like to but I don't have to let it. Isn't that comforting? Sure it is.

You say what's the key factor? It must be my will if he tells me don't let it do it and I'm the guy who has to let it or not let it. I mean you can get real mystical about the Christian life and you can say let go and let God.

You can get really mystical about well I do nothing and God does it all. See the commands in the Bible are not to God, they're to you. And the implication here is that your will has to be activated.

That's the word yield or present. Your will is involved. Sin would like to rule you and it will dominate you if you let it.

You don't have to let it. And your will is a key factor. I think that's what Paul has in mind in Philippians 2, 12 and 13 where he says you need to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. It's God who's working in you to will and to do of his own good pleasure. But it will only come to the surface as your will is activated in accord with his. I'll tell you another thing it says. It says that holiness in behavior is not a sudden instantaneous thing.

It's a way of life and you fight it all the way along to be holy because as long as you're in this what? This body you're going to have problems. So these people will say well you know ten years ago sin was eradicated from my life. My reaction to that is to just feel and see if they're still there.

If you still got your body, you still got your problem. Sanctification is a process and that's why we don't know the fullness of sanctification until we get to be with God. So your will is implied in verse 12. Your will is really strictly the issue in verse 13. So he says, neither yield ye your members, bodily parts beloved, faculties, organs, the bents of humanness bound up in the body, even your thought, reason, imagination. All that is in your humanness, all that is in your flesh, the physical, the earthly, the corruptible, the mortal part of you.

Don't yield that. Don't present that as an instrument. That word always used in the New Testament, hapla, is translated weapon. It's always translated weapon.

And weapon is probably the best translation here. Paul consistently uses it for that. Sin is seen as a king. He's a king who demands our bodies to be weapons to promote sin. He uses our bodies as weapons to gain dominion over the world. The body becomes the weapon for him to promote unrighteousness. So he says, don't let Satan be a king who collects weapons to bring unrighteousness around the world.

Don't let him use you as one of his weapons. So don't yield your bodily parts as weapons of unrighteousness for the propagation of sin. Now, there's nothing wrong with your bodily parts. God looked on the creation he made and said it's good. And you can use your hands and feet in every part of your body for his glory, can't you? Why, of course, Romans 12, 1, present your bodies a living sacrifice. Are you ready for this?

What's the next word? Holy and what? Acceptable. Your body is acceptable unto God.

That's right. Your body is neutral in that sense. You can use it as an instrument to sin or you can use it as an instrument to righteousness. And you decide. You decide the positive in the middle of the verse. But yield or present yourselves to God. Yield to God as those that are alive from the dead and beloved.

That is always the substance or the foundation. And that phrase, as those that are alive from the dead, takes us all the way back to the chapter again, doesn't it? And it takes us back to the word no. Have you forgotten who you are? Have you not affirmed who you are?

Now yield on that basis. And yield your bodily parts as weapons of righteousness in the hand of God to produce what he wants. You have to see your body as a weapon in the hand of a holy God to produce righteousness.

Isn't that marvelous? God wants to use your body as a weapon of righteousness, cutting through the sinful world. Here's my man.

Here's my woman. Here's my young person, a weapon of righteousness. What a great thought that God, when he wants to battle sin, would pick you up and pick me up and fight his way through sin with our righteous life.

Glorious thought. Sin is a dethroned monarch. We want to know it. We want to affirm it. And we want to yield our lives as weapons in the hand of Almighty God for the purposes of righteousness. Then he wraps it up in verse 14, and so do I. For sin shall not have dominion over you.

Oh, what a great thought. Its tyranny is broken. We are no longer under its constant incessant control.

Never again. For ye are not under the law, but under what? Grace. A statement of our position. We're not under law.

What does he mean by that? Well, law and sin go together. Because the law came to show us our what?

Our sin. The law commands. The law demands. The law rebukes. The law condemns.

The law restrains. The law can't conquer sin, either its penalty or its power. By the law shall no flesh be justified, so being under law is to be damned. Being under law is to be under the power of sin. Law only increases our bondage by manifesting the sinfulness of sin and the utter inability of man to do what is right. So to be under law sort of sums up the enslavement to sin. The law aggravates sin. The law condemns the sinner.

The law calls for the penalty, and the law has no ability to deliver the victim. You're not under that. You're under grace, and grace embraces and sums up all of the righteousness in Christ, all of the mercy of God and salvation. And so Paul answers the question in verse 1. Shall we sin that grace may abound?

Oh, no, no, no, no. We're new creations. We know it. We count on it, and we yield to God, and sin is no longer our master.

We're not under law. We're under grace. Beloved, that's the way to know victory. Know who you are. Believe it with all your heart, and yield to God. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. Along with teaching each day on this radio station, John also serves as chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. His current study is titled Freedom from Sin. Well, John, I know that you would agree that these days it seems like even discussing the idea of sin is considered outdated, outmoded. And that's not just in the secular world, but in the church. You hear Christians, instead of talking about how we are sinful, they say we're broken. We just don't like the concept of sin or moral accountability. So when and how did the church start to go awry on taking a clear and strong and biblical approach to this issue of dealing with sin?

Well, it's a great insight, Phil, and it's a penetrating question. There are churches, there are many, many churches, if not most churches, that don't even want to talk to nonbelievers about sin. They don't want to bring up sin to a nonbeliever because they've already bought into the pragmatic approach to the church that the role the church is to play in the world is to be the friend of the world. Just the absolute opposite of what the Bible says in the book of James, friendship with the world is enmity with God, hostility with God.

If you love the world, you hate God. Contrary to that, the pragmatism that has dominated the evangelical church around the world has taken the sin reality out of the message of the church for even nonbelievers. And again, you're talking about people who are unfulfilled, who are lonely, who don't have a purpose in life, who try to find themselves, and that all is far short of the preaching of sin and divine judgment and eternal punishment and all of that. And of course, naturally, if you're not even going to talk about sin to the sinner who is outside of Christ, well, you're certainly not going to bring up sin as an issue with the believer. That's just not there. So there is little interest, honestly, little interest in sanctification in the contemporary evangelical church.

And you and I have talked about that for years. This goes back ten years ago when we were talking about the fact that people were saying, Well, I'm reformed, I'm reformed, I believe in the sovereignty of God, and I believe in the doctrine of justification, and I believe in the doctrine of election. And they never, ever would talk about sanctification. They were happy to say God is going to save who he will save, which I think took the onus off of them, even insofar as what they needed to say when they preached the gospel.

God was going to do what he was going to do. It was a hyper-Calvinistic idea. But they had no interest in sanctification. They were so busy trying to live like the world, act like the world, talk like the world, drink like the world, carouse like the world, get caught up in worldly pleasures and worldly possessions, that sanctification had nothing to do with that, what I guess used to be called the young and restless reformed people. They weren't interested in sanctification. And that became a legacy for the contemporary evangelical church in the world today, very indifferent towards sanctification. So what you have in churches then is people who aren't even converted just coming because they like the music and they like the cool vibes. And then you have converted people who are anything but sanctified because nothing is driving them in the direction of dealing with the sin in their lives.

That makes this series so very important on the one hand and so very disruptive on the other hand. This is not going to be popular with the people going to the megachurch who just want to feel good about themselves. Because when you start studying Romans 6 and 7, the whole idea is to make you feel bad about yourself and to show you the pathway to real joy. I want to mention one more time our study guide that goes with the series Freedom From Sin. 250 pages takes you through Romans 6 and 7.

An outline explains everything in it. It's a great tool. Every believer should have this. Freedom From Sin, order today, free shipping on orders placed in the United States.

That's right. And, friend, if you want to know how to overcome sin and why that really is possible if you're a Christian, get the Freedom From Sin study guide when you contact us today. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. This book could be especially beneficial to go through with a new Christian.

The questions at the end of each chapter will reinforce what you are learning and it will encourage practical discussions. The Freedom From Sin study guide costs $8.50 and shipping is free. Ask for it when you call 800-55-GRACE or order online at gty.org. And, friend, as you benefit from the teaching you hear on Grace To You, know that you can help others benefit in your community and throughout the United States and beyond. We're listener supported, so thanks for expressing your support as the Lord leads. You can mail your gift to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412, or call us on our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE, or donate at our website, gty.org. And thanks for mentioning this station's call letters. Any time you get in touch, that is more important to us than you might realize. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson, inviting you to be here tomorrow when John looks at why God's grace and forgiveness is never an excuse to sin. Join us another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.