The Book Of ROMANS.....A Systematic Teaching

[Major]

Romans 6:9..........
"Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him."

"KNOWING" = This is something else we need to know!

Christ's incarnation was a one-time event. His death was a one-time occurrence. His resurrection was a one-time occurrence!

It can never happen again.

God defeated death when Christ left behind the grave, and it can never drag Him back again. Paul wrote in the previous chapter that Adam's disobedience introduced sin and death into the world.

In truth, death reigned over all who came from Adam. It had dominion, or authority, over humanity. Every person had to submit to it eventually, some sooner than others.

Christ, too, submitted to death on the cross, but once He was resurrected, death no longer had any power over Him. The resurrection set Christ free from the authority of death.

THINK NOW..........In the same way, we who are "dead" to sin through faith in Christ are no longer forced to submit to sin.

Take it a step further..... this separation from the power of sin is permanent because death can never again reign over the life of a believer.

PAY ATTENTION NOW........This does not mean we are incapable of sin or that we do not commit sin. (1 John 1:9–10), but it does mean we are never obligated to it (1 Corinthians 10:13), and those who have been saved will not live in incessant sin (Galatians 5:19–24; 1 John 3:6–9).

Example would be that a woman who was a Prostitute will no longer practice that sin after she is saved! If she does, then she is not saved!
The man who makes his living by stealing will no longer participate in that sin after he is saved!

The born again believer can not LIVE IN or habitually commit KNOWN sin and be a born again believer.

 

[Major]

Romans 6:10...........
"For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God."
He died ONE time but He lives forever today. And He lives to make intercession for us as believers. Because of that fact, He can save YOU right through to the uttermost!

His death, burial and resurrection was a one-time payment for the sins of others, including past, present, and future sins. Christ does not need to go back to the cross every time someone sins again. He has finished the job of dying for the sins of humanity. It's over.

Now that Christ is resurrected, He lives again "to God." In other words, Christ's continued purpose is to live, to keep living, as God and for God's glory forever. He has no other agenda. Our new lives in Christ, with Christ, therefore, are headed in the same direction.

 

[Major]

Romans 6:11.................
"Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

"Recon" = Count On It/Take it to the bank.

One if not the ONLY way to know that a person is truly Born Again is a .......CHANGED LIFE!. What we were we are no more.

Once we are saved, we must no longer think of ourselves as self-reliant, self-serving, independent operators of our lives.
Instead, as people in Christ, we must think of ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. One of the keys to understanding the Christian life is this...........We as Christians allow Christ to live His life through us!

What does it mean that we are dead to sin? Paul explained it in verse 6. Our old self was crucified with Christ and the "body of sin" that held us as slaves was done away with. We have been freed from sin's power. In that sense, we are dead to sin. Sin can no longer force us or compel us to do wrong.

Again, notice that we have not lost the desire to sin (1 John 1:9–10). That is because the SIN NATURE does not go away hence we fight the spiritual battle all of our lives. That's why we must keep reminding ourselves that we are dead to sin, as Paul will show in the following verses.

 

[Major]

Romans 6:12............
"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof."
And this is the verification to verse #11. We as Christians can not allow sin to reign and control our lives!
The Holy Spirit in us gives us the power to NOT ALLOW SIN TO CONTROL OUR ACTIONS.

I realize very weel that this strikes some readers as confusing. It did me for a long time. Hasn't Paul said that we are dead to sin (Romans 6:1)? Hasn't he told us that the "body of sin" has been done away with (Romans 6:6) and that we have been set free from sin by dying with Christ when we trusted in Him (Romans 6:7)? So how could sin possibly rule in us or make us obey its passions?

The simple answer is this:
We have been freed from the authority of sin over us, but we have not lost the desire to sin because the SIN NATURE never goes away.

Because we will always have a SIN NATURE, that means that sin still appeals to us.

It's easy for us to forget, or even to disbelieve, that we never again have to do any sinful thing (1 Corinthians 10:13). That means that We are not slaves to sin, but We can only volunteer to sin.

Paul commands us to have that conversation with ourselves on an ongoing basis. He commands us to engage in that battle with our desires. Don't let sin tell you what to do, he writes. For the saved Christian believer, sinful desires are not the boss anymore. Christians should not give over control to those urges.

 

[Major]

Now we come to PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATION!

We have seen that sanctification is POSITIONAL! That means that we are to learn and know something! We are to know God's method of making a sinner the kind of person He wants us to be.

JUSTIFICATUIN declares the sinner NOT GUILTY and removed the guilt of his sin, it did not change him in his life! It did give the sinner a NEW nature but the change is a process. God now wants us to live in the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can actually change to a new person who is IN Christ.

Now, we come to the practical way we live today and that is called PRACTICAL SANTIFICATION.
Romans 6:13...........
"Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God."
"YIELD" = PRESENT.

So what we have here is a PRESENTATION of ourselves for God's service. That my friends is the definition of a "surrendered Life".
The reason so many of us get into trouble and fall back into sin is because we yield ourselves to the Old Nature. Listen..............
It takes an act of your will to do what God wants you to do through the New Nature.

You can make all the high sounding and religiose sounding words you think will work for you, but the bottom line is that YOU MUST DO RIGHT! May I say to all of you that most of us have singed eyebrows from standing to close to the flame of old sins!

One night a little girl fell out of bed and began to cry. Of course her mother heard the fall and ran in and put her back into the bed. Mom asked her daughter...."Honey, why did you falling out of bed"?
The little girl said...."I guess I stayed to close to the edge of the bed"!!!!!!!!!

And that is the reason a great many of us fall back to where we were.

I have stated this several times now, We have not lost our desire to sin. Our sin nature is alive and well and We still want to sin, at times, even knowing how destructive our sin is. Paul has commanded us not to volunteer to sin, not to let it take control of our bodies. Now he puts an even finer point on his command. We must not present our members, any part of our bodies, for sin to use to do unrighteous things.

Notice something about that command: It insists that we have control over what we do with our own bodies.
Christ's death and the power of God's spirit gives us that control. Those who are saved can only sin by choosing to do so.

Instead, Paul writes, we must present our bodies to God to be used for righteousness. In fact, we should do it on purpose like people who have been brought from death to life. How do we do that? We start by continually reminding ourselves that we have actually and genuinely been brought from death to life. That is who we are now, and that's the life we are destined to lead.

 

[Major]

Romans 6:14...............
"For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace."

The Law was given to control the Old Nature.

As a believer in Christ you are not to live by the Old Nature!

YOU have been given a NEW Nature and YOU are to yeild yourself to the Lordship of Christ.

That is a wonderful and glorious privilege you have which is to present yourself to Him!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:15................
"What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? God forbid!".

As we have seen, Paul has convinced us that a lifestyle of habitual, KNOWN sin is not compatible with one whose life is changed by grace. But what about an occasional sin here and there? If we are under grace and not law, must we be so concerned about a little sin here and there?

"Shall we sin".......
Again, the verb tense of the Greek word sin is important . For those of you who read the Greek, the word here is in the aorist active tense. It indicates dabbling in sin, not the continual habitual sin described in the question of Romans 6:1.

So to be clear here, we are saying what Paul intended which is ---
The verb in verse one (6:1) is in the present subjunctive, speaking of habitual, continuous action. The verb in verse fifteen is in the aorist subjunctive, referring to a single act.

So then, what we have here is that Paul is actually condemning the idea that being saved is a license to sin. If you are a child of God you can not do as you please because you have to do what Pleases Christ. That is PRACTICAL Christianity my friends!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:16.............
"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?"
When Paul says........."Know ye not".........YOU DO NOT KNOW!

Now........every living person is a bond slave to someone or something.

There are TWO kinds of people alive today. The SAVED and the LOST.
If you are saved then you are a bond slave to the Lord Jesus Christ.
If you are lost then you are a bond slave to Satan.

The world today, the LIBERAL world today, the intellectuals and thinkers will say.....I don't like that and I do not accept it!
To that I say,..........I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU LIKE OR WHAT YOU THINK OR ACCEPT!
You see, folks, this right here is why the world is in the shape that it is in. Christianity has tried to adapt the Gospel message to satisfy the liberals and free thinkers who are in fact LOST and on the way to hell.
Men stopped being honest and straight forward and BOLD for Christ in the face of those who have rejected Christ.

As you can see......I am not one of those men! I speak the truth of the Word of God and let God handle the fall out.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program.

Paul just said here that the one who is your master is the one we obey. IF you live in sin and obey sin then SIN is your master. Don't say thet Christ is your master if you are openly practicing KNOWN SIN.

By that I mean this. A man can not look at and read Playboy Magazines on Saturday and go to church and read the Bible on Sunday!
Now this brings us to a personal question.

Is Jesus Christ really your master today. Just because you have not murdered anyone, or you do not steal from your employer or you are not having an adulterous affair, does not mean that you are living the Christian life. It may very well mean that you are living a GOOD LIFE but remember this......GOOD people do not go to heaven!

Matthew 9:12-13...........
“It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick…For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

GOOD people don’t go to heaven because their pride keeps them from admitting their need for a Savior. The only ones who go to heaven are those who see their sinfulness before a holy God and cry out to Him for mercy. What will you say when you stand before God? Are you hoping to get into heaven by your goodness? Jesus didn’t call “the righteous”! Is your hope in God’s grace toward sinners through Jesus Christ? You’re in!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:17............
" But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you."

In other words, when you were in the world, when you were lost, YOU obeyed SIN! Sin was your master. You see, it was natural for you to do that.

Another thing that we need to understand is that when we are saved, we have a NEW nature that can obey Christ. We will see in the next chapter that Paul went through this experience himself. and he discovered that there was NO GOOD in his old nature of sin.

Now we can do a lot of things to improve our old nature but not a single thing we do can make it good.

Noe there is a second startling fact that you need to grasp. There is NO power in the New Nature!!!! That right there is where most of us make our mistake. We think and listen to TV preachers who tell us that all we need to do is come to Christ and be saved and then we will be on top of the world. NO WE CAN'T!

Listen to an old preacher my friends.......we are just as weak as we have even been before! THAT is the reason that we have to walk by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Only by doing that can we produce the Christian life!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:18...........
"Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness."

We have been liberated when we accept Christ! In other words He has made it possible for us to live the Christian life. It DOES NOT MEAN THAT SIN HAS BEEN ERADICATED OR REMOVED! But it does mean that now we can live for God by allowing Christ to live through us!

 

[gpresdo]

Romans 6:17............
" But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you."

.......Noe there is a second startling fact that you need to grasp. There is NO power in the New Nature!!!! That right there is where most of us make our mistake. We think and listen to TV preachers who tell us that all we need to do is come to Christ and be saved and then we will be on top of the world. NO WE CAN'T!

Listen to an old preacher my friends.......we are just as weak as we have even been before! THAT is the reason that we have to walk by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Only by doing that can we produce the Christian life!

Amen.
About 40 years ago when I was blessed by moving to a closer relationship with Christ...I felt sure I was doing something wrong, because Satan was on my trail constantly, so much so while trying to live a righteous life, I was concerned.....the wrong way.

I consulted a senior pastor while in attendance at a Billy Graham learning center conference in Black Mountain, N C. After my tale of woe...He provided me with a large smile and said...keep up the good work my brother. To which I failed to grasp and assured Him I was serious. After His explanation I extended gratitude to Him and went into a small side chapel in the complex and gave thanks to God for the more learned.

Reminder...if Satan is not trying to derail you in your daily righteous commitment to Christ...you may need to review your conviction previously made...and pray a lot.

 

[gpresdo]

Major...Thx ...for the heads up in another thread re; this thread.

 

[Major]

Amen.
About 40 years ago when I was blessed by moving to a closer relationship with Christ...I felt sure I was doing something wrong, because Satan was on my trail constantly, so much so while trying to live a righteous life, I was concerned.....the wrong way.

I consulted a senior pastor while in attendance at a Billy Graham learning center conference in Black Mountain, N C. After my tale of woe...He provided me with a large smile and said...keep up the good work my brother. To which I failed to grasp and assured Him I was serious. After His explanation I extended gratitude to Him and went into a small side chapel in the complex and gave thanks to God for the more learned.

Reminder...if Satan is not trying to derail you in your daily righteous commitment to Christ...you may need to review your conviction previously made...and pray a lot.

Absolutely correct! Excellent post brother!

By the way, I worked with the Billy Graham Crusade in 1983 in Orlando Fl.

 

[Major]

Major...Thx ...for the heads up in another thread re; this thread.

Now my dear brother, I have no earthly idea of what you speak of. If something I posted was a blessing to you, it was not me who did it but the Holy Spirit who worked in your heart!

I am very excited to have you follow along in this teaching of Romans and I look forward to your input!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:19........
"I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness."

We have to remember that this was written 2000 years ago and slavery was common place in that time. It is estimated that out of the 120 million people in the Roman Empire at that time.....50% were slaves. Many Christians were slaves. It is from that perspective that Paul uses the word "SLAVES".

The religious leaders of that day were insulted when Jesus said that they were slaves of sin in John 8:31-34.

What has changed???? Only 2000 years because we are still in that same position! Look around you today at our society and at the results of being a slave to sin!

People too lazy to work live on the street and in parks and along the highways.
Drug use is so rampant the police has stopped trying to stop it. The easy thing to do is make it legal!
Homosexuality is so pervasive that it is being taught in elementary schools.
Suicide is so high that it staggers the mind.
WAR is being fought everywhere.
Alcoholism is an accepted way of living.

This is probably as close as human society has come to Genesis 6 since Genesis 6. Who remembers what happened in Genesis 6:17?????

Anyway.....this Scripture says that when we sin, when we commit KNOWN sin we are the servant of sin!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:20 ............
"For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness."

In other words. you did not think of serving God when you were living in known sin, you were not interested in God because you were in rebellion to God. You were in fact FREE from God!

 

[Major]

Romans 6:21............
" What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death."
Now when you/ME were in the condition of verse #20 above, we were not only free from God, we had NO fruit in our lives. We did as we pleased. We pleased ourselves! Therefore, the ONLY fruit available to us was SHAME!
So, actually it was not really freedom but instead it was a license to sin. That is what we were which is why God said in Ephesians 1:2....
"Ye are DEAD in sins"!

All of us who once indulged in being free from righteousness before we trusted in Christ may feel shame about the consequences that came from serving our sinful desires.

Even more lasting for those who continue to live free from righteousness is death. All sin leads eventually to death and separation from God in hell. Death is the ultimate "fruit" of living free from the control of righteousness.

 

[Major]

Romans 6:22.........
"But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. "
This then is the Golden Globe prospect as heirs to SLAVES of God!

Those are the ones who are freed from sin which leads to death. Then they can have fruit which will last into eternity.

Paul has said to us that Shame and death are the consequences, or "fruit," of a life lived free of the control of righteousness.

Paul now writes that, by trusting in Christ for our salvation, we have entered into that same relationship with God. Our identity is so closely connected to Christ that we are being changed to people who are bound to do what is right. This is who we are now. This is good news. Why? Because the "fruit"—the natural consequence—of serving righteousness is sanctification and eternal life. This is opposed to the shame and death which follow from serving sin.

All of this is called PRACTICAL SANTIFICATION!

Sanctification, translated sometimes as "holiness," is the process of being changed in our inner selves to become more and more like Christ. We are not fully there (1 John 1:9–10), and we will not be till we are GLORIFIED! But because we now belong to God, we are on the way. He is changing us (1 John 3:2).

Ultimately, the result of this path we are on in Christ will be eternal life. We will participate in the glories of God forever (Romans 5:2).

 

[Major]

Romans 6:23.........
"For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Paul sums up this section of his letter, and the entire gospel, in this one famous verse.

Romans 6:23 is one of the steps in explaining the Romans road to salvation. The Romans road answers FIVE questions..........
1. Who needs salvation?
2. Why do we need salvation?
3. How does God provide salvation?
4. How do we receive salvation?
5. What are the results of salvation?

Satan is the paymaster and he will see to it that everyone gets paid. IF you work for him his wages to you is DEATH!

But, it you work for Christ, He will pay you in LIFE!

 

[crossnote]

People too lazy to work live on the street and in parks and along the highways.
Drug use is so rampant the police has stopped trying to stop it. The easy thing to do is make it legal!
Homosexuality is so pervasive that it is being taught in elementary schools.
Suicide is so high that it staggers the mind.
WAR is being fought everywhere.
Alcoholism is an accepted way of living.

Sounds like the old Barry McGuire song 'Eve of Destruction'. (He later became a Christian).