The People, Process and Pleasure of Dying to Sin in Order to Live for God

This morning, we're continuing our series on the church. Over the past month or so, we've looked at the topic of ecclesiology technically, which is a theology of the church. What is the church? Why is the church? How did the church form, etcetera?

A few weeks ago, four weeks ago, I think, we saw that the church is constituted as a reconciliation between humanity and God. God has formed people that were hostile towards Him, and He's brought peace, and He's brought peace between us and God and peace with one another. We saw that the ethic of the church, the thing that binds us together is this ethic of love, a deep self-sacrificing love. We saw that the mission, the purpose of the church is to make disciples of the nations, the great commission that was given to us. And fulfilling the great commission, we fulfil the two great commandments, to love God with everything we have, to show Him honour in everything we have, and to love others.

So we bring more worshippers to God, and in doing that, we love others by bringing them to the greatest thing that can ever happen to them, to know God. And then last week, we looked at the idea of the body of Christ worshiping together, what it means for us as individuals to be brought into the family that meet together, particularly on Sunday, that the Sunday is the core bit of business for the church, that we worship God together. And in doing so, we heard the great and amazing truth that Christ is the worship leader of that, that He ushers us into worship when we come together like we are today. Now, we ask the question, making disciples, worshiping God on Sunday, loving each other and serving each other well, what else do we do apart from those three things? Like, on Monday morning, we all get up, go to work, we come back to our families, we do life admin, we pay the bills, etcetera.

What happens in that? Is it, you know, only in the making of disciples? Is it only in worshiping God as a community that we are fulfilling the purpose of the church? Well, what does it mean to be a Christian in other areas of life? In eating and sleeping and doing our work.

Well, it means we live life well. To be a Christian in those areas of life means to live life well. To pursue God's will in how we live, how we eat, how we work, how we play means to live for Christ. Paul uses that word from time to time, to live for Christ. A very reasonable question is, what on earth does that mean?

What does it mean to live for Christ? What does it look like? Well, we get a really powerful overview of that from our passage this morning in Romans 8. And I'll get us to turn there right now. Romans chapter 8, and we're gonna read from verse 1 through to verse 17.

The apostle Paul has been building and building his case, explaining the gospel, and really Romans 8 is like the crescendo of it. This is the peak of Mount Everest for the Christian. It begins with this overarching statement, verse 1: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sin, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."

"For those who live according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law. Indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God."

"You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh."

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him."

So there's lots there. But what we're gonna focus on this morning particularly is verse 13. If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. This morning's message is entitled "The People, Purpose and Pleasure of Dying to Sin in Order to Live for God."

As we come to grips with what Paul has to say about the topic of how the church is meant to operate on a daily basis, we read that it gives us this command, verse 13: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." First question for us to ask is, who is Paul talking to? Who are the people addressed here? Well, he's talking to Christians.

He's talking to people who have come to trust in the work of Jesus Christ to save them from their sin and save them from God's judgment. He is the One through whom, Jesus rather is the One through whom Paul writes in verse 1, we have received no condemnation. Christians that have received a full pardon from the justified wrath of God when He will judge the sin that is inside every one of us. So in other words, the "you" that Paul addresses here is not the Christians of Rome. Paul is talking to the church of God across all times and all places, all those who have come to faith in Jesus.

The people addressed here is the church. It's us. Although it may not feel very true, Paul will tell us that through the work of Jesus, the Christian becomes an entirely different creature from the one he was born as. At various points in Scripture, the Christian is referred to as being a new creation. As we saw this morning, someone who has been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

And as Paul will say in this passage, someone who literally has the essence of God living in them. That is who the Christian is. Objectively stated, whether you feel that or not. If you believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, this is what you receive. There's an incredible exchange that has happened, objectively speaking.

Paul says that Jesus came to earth as a human. He says, in the flesh. That's what it means. Jesus coming in the flesh in order to have our sin condemned in Him so that there will be no condemnation for us. And then Paul says, not only that, but in condemning Jesus Christ and putting our faith in Him, God takes the righteous life that Christ has lived perfectly and gives that to us.

We receive the perfection of Jesus Christ, so that when God the Father sees us, He sees His Son. It's as though we lived the perfect life, not just forgiven, not just, okay, well, we'll forget about what he's done, what she's done. No. Holy, beautiful, perfect in God's sight. There is an amazing truth for every Christian in the church, that in God's sight, you are a new creation.

You belong to His kingdom as a citizen, having been transferred from darkness into light. You have the status of someone who has lived the perfect life that only Jesus could ever live. There's a story about a preacher by the name of Henry Ironside. This is a few years ago. He was travelling on a train that was a trip that took several days.

So he was on this train for a while. It was a sleeper train. And in his carriage, there was a group of nuns. Sounds like the beginning of a good joke. But they heard, they knew that he was a famous preacher, and so they wanted to talk about spiritual things with him.

On about the third day, he says, he wanted to ask them, because he had a theological bone to pick with them, if they had ever seen a saint because of the Catholic belief in the veneration of saints, the elevation of special people to that special rank of holiness. And they answered that they had never seen a living saint. Then they asked him, has he ever seen a saint? The preacher astonished them when he declared, I am a saint. I am Saint Henry.

He then opened the New Testament and showed them the truth that God doesn't make a saint by exalting an exceptionally good and godly individual over the rest. No. It's through the exalting work of Jesus Christ on every believer's behalf that everyone becomes holy. So much so that Paul can write to the various churches that they are saints. They are holy ones, Paul says.

And so the first point this morning of the people addressed is that Paul addresses the magnificent words of Romans 8 to the church, to Christians, people who believe in Jesus and who believe that through Him, they have been regarded as perfectly blameless in the sight of God, free from any charge against them of sin, and this has only been achieved for them through the sacrificial and blameless life and death of Jesus Christ on our behalf. Okay. But now addressing the church, now addressing Christians, Paul wants to explain to them the reality of an incredible process that takes place in the life of every Christian. There's a process within, he says. Verse 12:

Paul writes, "So then brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit, you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." Paul uses the word "debtors."

He says that Christians are debtors. We are in someone's debt, Paul says. But he makes the obvious point that we don't owe our sinful natures, our flesh as he calls it, we don't owe our flesh anything because it was the very thing that has caused us to be under God's judgment. It was the very thing that was going to kill us. We don't owe that nature anything.

We owe God everything. "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." That is the reality that blows us away. We are sons and daughters of God. So through the great exchange of Jesus taking our sin and us receiving His righteousness, God has adopted us as children into His kingdom, and He marks us, Paul says, by having His Spirit living in us so that all who have the Spirit are considered sons of God, children of God.

Okay. So that's the objective reality of every believer. You are adopted. You are brought into God's family. You are His children now.

It's a done deal. That status cannot be taken away from you. But then Paul portrays this ongoing process in verse 13. He says that if the Christian dies to sin, they will live. There is this ongoing process.

In the older English Bibles, like the King James Version, it uses the word "mortify," to mortify the sin in the body, which means to kill. It means to make dead. That's why theologians speak of the concept of the mortification of sin, the putting to death of sin. And we don't use the word "mortify" anymore except when someone says, "was mortified when this happened." And that's usually sort of in the context of being really embarrassed by something.

You know, like, was so embarrassing, I wanted to die. But Paul says here that there's a process within every Christian that if you proactively work towards killing sin in your life, the flip side is that you experience life. Proactively killing sin produces life. Now, do you notice in verse 13 that this is a conditional statement? There is this small conditional clause attached to the beginning of the sentence, "if."

We use conditional clauses all the time. We use it for, Desi and I use it for Alida. "If you eat all your dinner, you will get dessert." That's a conditional statement. The promise of dessert is conditional on whether you finish your dinner.

So what does it mean for Paul to say that if you die to sin, you receive life? Does it mean that if you want to receive eternal life, you must be able to kill all the sin in your life? But we know that this can't be the case because in so many other places, this chapter, Paul makes the argument that none of us are free from sin, including himself. We are all weak still, and we will all still fail. So what is this statement about?

Well, there is such a thing as a secondary way to use the conditional clause of "if," and that is as a way to stress the certainty of the link between cause and effect. Okay. Bear with me. Rather than linking the uncertainty of one state over another, for example, the uncertainty of you may or may not finish your dinner depending on if you want dessert, the uncertainty of that, rather than stressing the uncertainty of whether you will take up an action, the other usage of a conditional clause is to stress the certainty of a result. For example, you can say, "If you hit your thumb with a hammer, it will hurt."

That's not "sometimes it'll hurt, sometimes it won't." If you hit your hand with a hammer, it will hurt. That is a conditional clause, but the emphasis is on the connection between those two conditions. You will hurt your thumb when you smash it with a hammer. Now coming back to verse 13: "If you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Again, is that saying that you may or may not have life conditional on your ability to kill sin in you? Well, we know that's not true because just a few chapters before this, Paul makes the great statement in Romans 6:23. Many of us will know this verse: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord." The free gift of God is eternal life.

We find those two things, life and death being mentioned here, but Paul mentions that eternal life is a free gift. So if Paul was to say that life is conditional on whether you successfully put off sin, then eternal life cannot be free. Eternal life has to be conditional. But this gift is not conditional. So Paul's not changing tracks here.

Now Paul is saying to the church that there is this ongoing process happening within all of us. If you can successfully put sin to death in your life, you experience something called life. The stress is on the connection of those two states. As a Christian, in other words, if you work towards dying to sin, you will receive something called life more and more and more. Die to sin, receive life.

Die to sin, receive life. And so the last and the most logical question to ask is what is this life? What is this life that Paul is talking about? Well, it's about a pleasure received. If we follow Paul's argument through the book of Romans, you get the understanding that the life mentioned here cannot be referring to eternal life with God.

That's not possible because, like we've established, the magnificent endpoint of God's free gift, His unconditional gift through His grace is eternal life. Paul's not taking that back now. So if we assume that life here can't be referring to eternal salvation, what is it saying? Well, it's referring to the inner life of the Christian. It's referring to the experiential existence of being a Christian right here and now.

You see, Christians experience reality even in a daily way that is different to the non-Christian. There are Christians that will say, no, we're no different. The only thing that's different is that at judgment, we're in and they're not. No. The Christian life right now is different.

It is experienced differently. There are a number of Christians, and particularly new Christians in our church who will tell you of the huge contrast of their experience in life before and after coming to Christ. Even if their status in life, their financial situation, or their family relationships, or their career opportunities haven't changed, they may well tell you that their entire experience of life has been changed when they became a Christian. Last night, Desiree and I got to host a new couple in our church for dinner, and they shared, one of them shared that they had become a Christian, and when they did, it is as though they saw colour for the first time. This is what he said.

"I can't explain it, but it was like a new pigment was added to my eyesight. Everything around him seemed brighter." A Christian has a daily experience of hope, peace, and joy with them every day. That is the inner life of a Christian. And Paul is saying here that when you die to sin, you somehow experience more of that brightness, more of those colours now.

It means that the ongoing pursuit of holiness, of living a life according to God's good and holy instructions, means we enjoy what I describe as simply the good life. Conversely, this death that Paul mentions here is not an eternal death. It can't be that. It can't mean that the Christian will lose their salvation if they don't die regularly to sin because Paul says, verse 1, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." But it is again an experiential reality.

This death is that crusty, slimy, decaying consequence of sin that drains us of peace, hope, and joy. It's the stuff that makes us sad. It's the stuff that makes us feel heavy and downcast. And Paul is saying that the everyday business of the church, when we're not worshiping together on a Sunday, when we're not making disciples of the nations, when we're not striving to love each other in our interactions, the daily job of the church is to simply grow in grace, to put to death sin, to live for Christ. That's what you do when you wake up in the morning, on Monday, when you go to work, when you come home, you have to deal with a family issue.

That is the daily business of being the church. It is about a daily pursuit of getting rid of sin, so that you will experience the reality of the good life. A similar thought is shared in Hebrews 12:1, where Christians are told this: "We are to lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely and to run with endurance the race that is set before us." Get rid of the sin. Run with endurance.

For the Christian, our sin doesn't hold the condemning force that it once had before we put our trust in Jesus. Sin won't condemn us because we've been completely forgiven. Yet, we are still urged to lay aside the sin which weighs us down because, like a badly designed car, it creates drag. It makes the pursuit all that more difficult. It prevents us from experiencing more and more the satisfaction of a peace-filled life.

One preacher illustrated it this way. He says, "It is perfectly legal to run a marathon in army boots. There's nothing stopping you from going to the Olympics and deciding on race day to put on big, thick, heavy, leather army boots. But he says, it's not going to be wise, but you can do it legally." Many of the same things that prevent your spiritual growth as a Christian, which doesn't have anything to do with your circumstances, but rather how well or poorly you are working towards mortifying, killing sin in your own life.

As a Christian, those sins don't condemn us, but if you're not intentionally, mindfully working on it, your sin certainly will not lead you to live in the pleasure of the good life. So in Romans 8, like I said, the crescendo of the Bible, where the great truths of the gospel is laid out for us, we see this amazing truth. That since we have died to sin, since the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus, we no longer owe a debt to our sinful nature to satisfy its desires. We owe rather a debt to God to live as His sons and daughters. And in living as His sons and daughters, we experience the pleasure of the life that He intended for us.

We see the people, the process, and the pleasure of dying to sin and living for Him. We're told that we all are busy running a race, and we have the choice whether we run that race painfully with lots of blisters in heavy army boots or whether we do that joyfully at pace. Now, the last thing I wanna add is that a non-Christian may not realise it, but they are also in this race. But a non-Christian hates this race. It is a painful experience for them.

It's a horrible race to be in. Then the Bible says that one day, they're going to come to the end of that race and realise they've lost it. Their result at the end will be condemnation. They'll realise that they've run that race dismally. If you are in that position, I wanna ask you, if you know that you have never made Jesus Christ your Saviour and your Lord, the One that can take you from the kingdom of darkness and place you into the kingdom of light, this morning is the chance for you to accept that sacrifice.

This morning, you simply need to receive it. Believe that it can be for you, that it was for you. The wonderful news is there is forgiveness available. Today, if you would be willing to believe and receive what He's done for you, if you believe and receive, you are also commanded to follow Jesus as your King. And so I wanna ask you, please don't leave this place until you've made that decision.

But for those of us who know Jesus as our Saviour, those who have been gripped by His grace, let me remind you as well that as the church, we are primarily tasked to do this: grow in grace. Grow in grace. To drink deeply from the life that grace has been given. Be intentional, mindful about identifying specific things in your life that need your attention, to kill the things that are unholy and ungodly, mortifying them, and then to bear witness because I believe in this promise, to bear witness to the life of peace, joy, and hope that comes. Church, we have the best lives of anyone on this planet.

We have the best lives of anyone on this planet. We have a great life because we have a great God and we have a great hope that all the hard work of pursuing that growth in grace, even in the suffering of pain in that pursuit is worth every last effort because it is the good life and it is ours to have. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, it can be hard for us, especially if we've been Christians for a while, to become so aware of just our shortcomings and the areas that are still rough in us, that are still belonging to the old nature. And we become complacent about the effort that needs to go into growing and being refined in the pursuit of that good life.

We can so easily, flippantly say, "Oh, I'm just sinful. I'm just weak." But the truth is, God, You don't expect us to stay the same from when we got saved. Your expectation is that we will live all the more this good life. And so, Lord, give us the vision again this morning of what You need of us, and then by Your Spirit, give us the conviction that we can conquer those things that are still difficult.

Lord, help us, some of us in our issues with anger, help some of us with our issues of lust, help some of us in our issues of gossip and slander, of unlove towards even fellow believers. Help us that we don't love You as much, that we prioritise our things over You. Help us of our pride. Help us of our blind hypocrisy and self-righteousness. And Lord, we will probably know the things that You need us to work on this morning.

Help us this morning again to not gloss over those things, but to take up the fight, to put to death the things that are sinful in us, to not experience the death that or the stench of death that comes from those things. But as we put to death those things, Lord, help us to sense and see and smell the life that is full of hope, full of joy, full of peace. We ask this in the powerful name of Jesus who promises to help us this morning. In His name we pray. Amen.