Author: John Johnstone

Sermon: Sunday, 26th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:11-16

How can human beings experience lasting change? Think of communities in Scotland where there is high unemployment, widespread use of drugs and alcohol and high rates of crime. What will bring lasting change to these communities? Can politics alone deliver? A government could pump more money into the NHS and create more job opportunities and provide better care services and improve education, and in many cases that would be welcomed. It will bring about a certain kind of change. But people will only experience radical change if they come to know Jesus as Saviour and King. Why is that? Because only Jesus can change us from within. Only he can give us new hearts and new motivations. Only he can deal with our root problem of sin and provide a solution for that sin- his own blood shed on the cross.

I think self-help books have a place, as long as we recognise their limitations and are able to discern when they contradict Scripture or have an unhealthy worldview – and many of them sadly do. Nevertheless, we can learn a great deal from experts whether or not they are believers. For example, I keep on seeing the book by Robin Sharma called the 5 am club: own your morning and elevate your life. Sharma is described as one of the world’s premier speakers on leadership and personal mastery, and recently named one of the world’s top leadership gurus. I genuinely believe I could benefit from reading this book. Perhaps getting up earlier would help me to exercise more and become more productive. There might even be spiritual benefits, having more time with God. But this book will not change my heart or make me more loving or forgiving and it won’t give me peace with God.

I read an excellent article by Josh Maule on self-help books. He says: ‘Self-help books have one thing in common. They place you at the centre of your quest. You are the hero who must take charge of your life—thinking and acting better, starting your day smarter, finishing your day wiser — thus unlocking your full potential.’ He goes on to say something which is contrary to most self-help books, but which I believe to be true: ‘Christianity teaches universal brokenness. Worse, it teaches we are in active rebellion against our creator. Alcoholics Anonymous begins with a statement that: ‘We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.’

Regular Christianity begins with a similar confession. We admit we are sinners —morally and spiritually bankrupt. We live ignoring God and his plan for us. And deep down, we like it a lot. I can’t help myself. The second step Christians have made is to acknowledge that we can’t do anything to help ourselves. Like an insect caught in a spider’s web, a sinner caught in sin can wriggle. But it only makes things worse. We can’t stop how we live. We can’t fix up past mistakes. We can’t make it up to God or others. We’re in what the English call ‘a right pickle’.’

Let’s continue to think about lasting change. The greatest change which happens is when we become Christians. This change is a work of God’s grace. He takes away our hearts of stone and replaces them with hearts of flesh. We are unable to pay the huge debt of sin we owe God, but God provides the payment in the death of his Son Jesus. Remember those words: ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3)

Do you think God would have sent Jesus to die such a shameful and cruel and painful death if we humans were able to save ourselves from Hell? Of course not! If you are not yet a Christian, you cannot save yourself. All you can do is cry out to God for mercy, based on the death of Jesus on the cross. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, once we receive Jesus as our Saviour and King, God does something wonderful – he sends the Holy Spirit to dwell in us in a mysterious but real way. All Christians have God the Spirit living within. There is no such thing as a Christian without the Spirit as a constant presence. It is God’s Spirit who gives us new desires to live for God, rather than for ourselves. God’s Spirit alone brings lasting change.

For the rest of our time, let’s look at 3 things which the dwelling of God the Holy Spirit brings us: A new hope, a new enemy and a new relationship.

1. A new hope

The fact that all Christians are temples of the Spirit brings us enormous and certain hope as we face death – our own deaths and those of other Christians. ‘But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.’   (Romans 8:10-11)

Here’s a question – how much power do we have as Christians to change? Well, the power we have within us is the same power which raised the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. This is incalculable power. With God’s help, we can indeed change and become more like Jesus (more of that later). But notice the logic Paul gives us here: just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, so the Holy Spirit will raise the bodies of believers from the grave. As Christians, our bodies will die because of sin, but that’s not the end of the story. Our bodies will be raised one day because the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

My friend Douglas died just a few weeks ago and his funeral is here on Wednesday. I only knew him as a man in a wheelchair due to his MS. However, now I’ve seen lots of photos of him before his illness, when he was in full control of his body and could ceilidh dance and play shinty. Latterly, Douglas couldn’t use his hands so couldn’t drink a cup of tea on his own. But here’s the truth – one day, because of the Holy Spirit, he will be given a brand-new body which will be an everlasting human body. It will pulsate with energy and never grow weary or sick or stop working. It will be more glorious than any body we know of on earth. How do we know this will happen? Because the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead, the first fruits of what is to come.

Death is the separation of body and soul. What is our certain hope as God’s children? That we will be made perfect in body and soul and that body and soul will be united once again, this time for ever. Christ’s resurrection is the pledge and pattern of our resurrection.

John Stott: ‘The ultimate destiny of our body is not death but resurrection.’

Friends, we have so much to look forward to.

Robert Haldane: ‘Christ the first fruits will be followed by that great harvest, in which…the bodies of believers sown in the earth, after having died like grain cast into it, shall be revived and raised up. The life which has been communicated to our souls will, at the glorious resurrection, be also communicated to our bodies… Believers, then, may defy the grave and glory over death, being assured of this resurrection… On Jesus then, the sure foundation, is the whole of our salvation built.’

2. A new enemy

‘For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:15) What is our new enemy as Christians? It is sin! When we become Christians we are to wage an all-out war against sin in our lives. Sin is not something to be treated lightly or played down, or tolerated; rather, with the Spirit’s help it is something to be starved and smothered and slain. Is that your attitude to the sin in your heart? To help us focus on that personal question, I will ask, what particular sin have you been fighting against over the last few days? This must be a daily and constant fight. We cannot take our foot off the gas.

When we think of the work of the Holy Spirt, so often we think of Him guiding us in big decisions, like whether or not to take a new job or move to a new place. We talk about the Spirit leading us, or prompting us to speak to someone, and that happens. However, the ordinary yet vital work of the Spirit Paul speaks of here is to help us to put the sins in our lives to death. The fancy word for this is mortification. We need to rediscover this word. Mortification. It means that we must have a ruthless attitude to the sins in our lives. We must be radical in getting rid of them. After all, did not our Lord say, if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off? That does not suggest a lax attitude to sin. That does not suggest pruning sin around the edges, like we often do, if we are honest. Before slabs were put down in our garden, I had to dig out an ivy which had been there for years. I dug a really deep hole, but it wasn’t deep enough. I pulled and yanked and tugged on the ivy with all my strength and managed to get a fair bit out, but not the roots. Often, we treat our sin like that – we try to get rid of it using our own strength, and it might seem like we are making progress. But what does Paul say in Romans 8: ‘…if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.’   (Romans 8:8) So, if you have a problem with gossip, or internet porn, or pride, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit to help you. Do you do that? You must. You have to ask Him in order to kill sin.

If we are honest, many of us probably have a peace-time mindset, as if there’s no war going on in our lives. Let’s be clear – the war only stops in Heaven. The whole of our lives is marked by a battle against sin. The wonderful news is that we are not on our own in this battle. The Holy Spirit is our Helper. If only we asked for his help more often.

Perhaps you are not taking your Christian faith seriously enough just now. Know this, whether you realise it or not, sin will be flourishing in your heart. Here’s a practical step we can all take- run through the ten commandments in our minds, and try and discern the different ways we are currently breaking these commands. Then take radical steps to pray for help and do all we can to eradicate them. For example, the first commandment is that God should have the first place in our lives. Ask yourself, what is really first just now? Then prayerfully, depending on the Spirit, and using the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, tear down that idol. We do not owe the flesh anything. We do not owe sin anything. Kill it! It promised us so much but failed to deliver time and time again. It promises life but leads to eternal death. This is serious.

3. A new relationship

‘The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.’   (Romans 8:15-16)

RC Sproul: ‘The greatest privilege of all is to be able to come before God and address him as Father. And we are not able to do that by nature, because by nature we are children of wrath.’

Do you realise that God is not everyone’s Father? It is only those who receive Jesus as Saviour and King who can call God their Father. In other words, very few people in Fife, a tiny fraction, are currently able to do this. That’s why we desperately need to share the good news of the gospel. For those of us who are Jesus’ disciples, do you realise the immense privilege you have?

What does it mean that God is our Father? I love the words of the Westminster Confession of Faith here.

XII ‘All those that are justified… receive the Spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry, Abba, Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him, as by a father: yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption; and inherit the promises, as heirs of everlasting salvation.’

Those are wonderful words – God pities, protects and provides for us. Satan wants us to cast a false image of God in our minds as a tightfisted, harsh, killjoy who makes unreasonable demands of us. This is nonsense.

Terry Johnson: ‘We pray not as we ought and live not as we ought. We stumble. We fall. We fail. How does God look at us? As a father does his children. He looks upon us with compassion. What could be more liberating that this? What could be more freeing and healing than to know that God is my Father? What could be more therapeutic than to know that He looks upon me with all my brokenness and strife with sympathy, with pity, with compassion?’

We ought also to be confident of our Father’s protection. If good earthly fathers protect their children, how much more with our heavenly Father? ‘… who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.’   (1 Peter 1:5)

When a young child falls and skins their knee, they will instinctively call out ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ We should have that same instinct in prayer when we are in trouble. Cry out to Abba Father for protection.

Because God is our Father, we can also be confident of his care in all areas of our lives. He provides. He knows what we need. He encourages us to ask him for all we need: ‘Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.’   (Philippians 4 v6).

Once I was on a bus and sat next to a nun and we got chatting. I asked her if she knew she was going to Heaven when she died. She said, ‘I hope so but cannot be sure’. The thing is, God wants us to be sure that if we trust in Jesus, we have become his children. In fact, the Holy Spirit gives us the assurance that we are adopted as sons and one sign of it is that in times of great distress, we find ourselves just crying out, ‘Father..

‘And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’   (Romans 8:15) It is the Holy Spirit who brings to us the awareness that we are sons of God. This word ‘cry’ is used around 50 times in the New Testament and almost always in the context of someone crying out in deep distress. For example, blind Bartimaeus is said to ‘cry out’ in all his distress. There’s something really significant here – when as Christians we go through times of deep despair, depression, loneliness, pain or suffering, isn’t it true that we instinctively just cry out ‘Father’. Sometimes that’s all we can manage to say. This cry is itself a sign that we are sons of the living God. In our times of great need, the Spirit ministers to us and enables us to cry out ‘Abba, Father’.

When we do, this is the hallmark of a believer. This is the cry of the child of God.

Sermon: Sunday, 12th January, 2025
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 8:1-4

1. An anchor

We all know how important anchors are to give ships stability allowing them to securely hold their position and to stop them from drifting dangerously into rocks or other vessels. Sometimes there are strong winds or currents or tides that push against a ship or a boat. You need to make sure your anchor has been dropped, to keep both you and your boat safe. When it comes to the Christian life, stability is extremely important. We need certain spiritual anchors, which are the promises of God, to give us assurance of our salvation and to provide stability in the storms of life. Sometimes these storms can be long-lasting and ferocious. Our circumstances might be so tough that we think God must be against us, or must have forgotten us, or doesn’t really love us.

The old hymn asks the question:
‘Will your anchor hold in the storms of life,
when the clouds unfold their wings of strife?
When the strong tides lift, and the cables strain,
will your anchor drift, or firm remain?’

The answer is given:
‘We have an anchor that keeps the soul,
steadfast and sure while the billows roll,
fastened to the Rock which cannot move,
grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love.’

Romans chapter 8 begins with one of the most magnificent anchors of God’s love in all the Bible. These 12 words can keep us stable when circumstances seem against us or when Satan is dredging up our weaknesses and sins of the past: ‘There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.’

No condemnation! If you knew how black my heart has been, even as a Christian, then you’d realise how much these words mean to me. I ought to be condemned by God. I agree with the Psalmist; ‘If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand?’   (Psalm 130:3) In Romans chapters 1 to 3, we explored how both pagans and the religious fall well short of God’s standards. We live in a world full of pride, greed, racism, exploitation, hatred and lust. The truth is, these vices aren’t just in the hearts of other people- they are in our hearts too. There’s something in us all that wants to dethrone God and put ourselves on the throne instead. We wrongly think freedom means pushing God out of the centre and occupying the centre ourselves. However, the reality is that this results in selfishness and slavery rather the freedom we think we will get. Only lives centred in Jesus can experience true and lasting freedom.

Even Christians still behave in shocking ways and were it not for God’s grace would still deserve to be condemned. Think of Peter denying he even knew Jesus. I can think of my own life and the catalogue of wrongdoing in the book of my Christian life. There’s a lot from my past which Satan can dig up and hold before my face. And he does. And I need to say to him, ‘Yes, but there’s now no condemnation for me, not because I deserve pardon, but because I am now in Christ Jesus.’ I never need to fear being rejected by God. I never need to fear being condemned by God. Why? Because Jesus has already been condemned in my place. He was condemned for me, and that’s why there’s no condemnation to be experienced. What an anchor!

Again, the hymn says: ‘grounded firm and deep in the Saviour’s love’. That’s exactly right. ‘For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering.’   (Romans 8:3) In love, God the Father sent Jesus to be our ‘sin offering’. In other words, he would die on the cross in our place, paying the price for sin. And as we need to remind ourselves again and again, God never demands payment twice. That’s unfair. If you pay a bill in a restaurant, you don’t have to pay it again. Bills are settled once. Jesus has settled our account and so nothing more can be demanded of us, and thus rather than being condemned we are in fact justified – made right in the eyes of God.

The hymn ‘Before the throne’ puts it so well:
‘When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see Him there who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Saviour died, my sinful soul is counted free,
or God the Just is satisfied to look on Him and pardon me.’

God has given the verdict ‘not guilty’.

Let me be more personal. Is this an anchor you have in your life? Can you say with confidence that you don’t need to fear God’s judgment and that you will never be condemned by God? Let’s take a closer look to remind ourselves of who is able to say this wonderful thing. Look at the end of verse 1. It is for those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’. The ESV translates verse 2 better, and we hear the same phrase: ‘For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.’

There’s only one place to be in all the world if we want to be free from condemnation, and that is ‘in Christ’. The ‘not guilty’ verdict is not found in the false religions of the world or in humanism or paganism or agnosticism. The Bible is clear. You must be ‘in Christ’. What does this mean to be ‘in Christ’? It means we trust that he is King and that he died on the cross for our sins. Christianity is not a bunch of rules or a philosophy but rather a relationship of trust, where we rest on the work Jesus has already done on the cross.

Here’s the good news – let’s allow it to sink in – we are free from the penalty of our own sin. The hymn Man of sorrows says this:
‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
in my place condemned he stood,
sealed my pardon with his blood:
Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’

2. A rudder

It is indeed wonderful news that there is no condemnation for those who rest in Christ. However, imagine a prisoner who has been imprisoned for serious crimes. He receives a pardon from the prime minister; however, he remains locked up in jail. That would not be ideal predicament: ‘Yes, you are free from the guilt of these crimes, but you will remain imprisoned.’ The stunning thing about how God treats us in Christ is that he not only frees us from the penalty of sin saying ‘No condemnation’, he also frees us from the power of sin, by filling us with the Holy Spirit. God’s Holy Spirit gives us the desire to do what is right and opposes our old sinful desires to do what is wrong.

A rudder is the part of a ship which controls its direction and allows it to change course. Before we trusted in Christ, we were unable to change course in our own strength.

John Flavel: ‘We are more able to stop the sun in its course or make rivers flow uphill, as by our own skill and power to rule and order our hearts.’

In other words, we cannot really change within, in our hearts, without God’s power. Let’s make this statement more positively – we must never think as Christians that we cannot change for the better. You can change. With the Holy Spirit within us, we can change for the better. We can have more of the love and forgiveness and peace of Jesus in our hearts. Before the Spirit of Jesus was in our hearts, the 10 Commandments were just a reminder of how far short we fall from God’s standards. But what does the Holy Spirit do with these commandments? The prophet Jeremiah speaks of the blessings of the new covenant: ‘But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.’   (Jeremiah 31:33) The Spirit gives us new desires and inclinations and empowers us to root sin out of our lives.

You cannot change for the better just by trying really hard to obey God’s rules. ‘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 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.’   (Romans 8:2-4)

Before, we were unable to keep God’s rules. The problem wasn’t with the law. The law is good. The problem was our sinful flesh was unable to obey it. We needed an external power outside of ourselves. We needed the power of God. God enables us to walk according to the Spirit.

John Owen: ‘Our minds now, have a new saving supernatural light to enable them to think and act spiritually.’

Before we were Christians, the master of the house was the evil one. We were under his dominion, and the evidence of this was that we lived for ourselves and pushed God out of the centre. But now we have a new master of the house, and that is the Holy Spirit. Yes, there’s still an unwelcome guest in our house, a squatter – that’s our sinful nature. He’s guest to get rid of. In fact, it’s only in Heaven that we’ll be totally free of him. But although the change is not total, it is nonetheless enormous.

I’ve been a Christian for well over 40 years. I’m ashamed how little progress I’ve made in some of those years. I think I spent too much of it trying to change myself, rather than coming to Jesus and asking for his help. Perhaps you can relate to that. But let’s really let this sink in, we’ve been given not only a wonderful anchor in our justification, but we’ve also been given a new rudder – the Holy Spirit. Will you open your Bibles through the week and listen to the Spirit speaking to you? And when Scripture comes to mind and you feel the Spirit prompting you to do something, or not to do something, will you be directed by the Spirit? Will you keep in step with the Spirit? If you are willing to, you can change. You can make real progress. You don’t have to give up.

In the excellent book ‘You can change’, Tim Chester asks: ‘Have you despaired of ever changing? Do you think you are a lost cause? Maybe you think it’s different for you. Other people can change but your history or temptations or problems make it different for you… Only God can bring true and lasting change. And that’s because only God can change our hearts.’

Let’s keep these two images before us. Our anchor is the fact that God will never, ever condemn us. And our guiding rudder in life is now the Holy Spirit. These are great truths which we need to rub into our lives each day. Why did we sing the hymn ‘Rock of Ages’? Because it speaks of Jesus saving us from the guilt of sin (we are not condemned) and also of the power of sin (we have the Spirit):
‘Let the water and the blood,
from thy riven side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure,
save me from its guilt and power.’

Often human beings think their main problem is their unhappiness. ‘If only I could be happy…’ God knows our deepest problem isn’t unhappiness but unrighteousness and powerlessness. So, in his kindness, he provides us with a Saviour and his Spirit. He provides us with exactly what we need. And this leads to our eternal happiness, and more importantly, the glory of God: ‘… the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us.’   (Romans 8:4) How good our God is.

Sermon: Sunday, 1st December, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 7

The theme of Romans chapter 7 is the law of God which is mentioned well over 20 times! For many weeks, we have been reminding ourselves that none of us can enter into a right relationship with God by trying to keep the law. Nor can we earn our way to Heaven by keeping God’s rules. The law is not a ladder which human beings are able to climb up to reach God. The letter to the Galatians makes this plain. ‘Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because ‘the righteous will live by faith.’   Galatians 3:11

This means that before people become Christians, they have a negative relationship with God’s law. They are under the curse of the law because the law condemns them as guilty. Quite clearly, none of us have loved God or our neighbours as we ought to have done. We could not do so, no matter how hard we tried. But here’s the good news. Jesus sets us free from the condemnation of the law by keeping it perfectly on our behalf and by paying the enormous moral debt we owe to God for flouting his rules time and time again, by dying on the cross for our sins.

1. A marriage ended and a marriage begun

Paul uses an illustration to help us understand that we are free from the law’s condemnation. A married woman, says Paul, is bound to her husband as long as her husband is alive, and is not free to go with anyone else. However, if the man dies, she is set free and can marry someone else. The main point is that it’s death which dissolves this marriage. In the same way, before we were saved, we were married to the law of God, which brought condemnation. The consequences of our disobedience to the law is death. This was not a good marriage! Only death can dissolve the marriage. The good news is that because we are united to Christ, when he died, we also died, and our death meant that our marriage to the law has been dissolved and we are no longer bound to the condemnation of the law. We are free. We are no longer in bondage to the law, having the obligation of perfect obedience to it, and we can no longer be crushed by it, not because the law died, but because we did. Our previous unhappy marriage is over and now we’re happily married to Christ.

Ash: The key point is that death ends the first relationship and makes possible the second.

This is a wonderful marriage in total contrast to our marriage to the law. The fruits of our first marriage were death and condemnation. Listen to verse 4 to hear what flows from our marriage to Jesus: ‘…you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.’   (Romans 7:4) What a wonderful marriage! Our purpose becomes bearing good fruit for the glory of God.

This raises a question – can Christians just ignore God’s law if we have died to it? Absolutely not. The law is good and reveals the holy character of God.

John Stott: ‘This does not mean that we have been divorced from the law altogether, in the sense that it has no more claims on us of any kind, or that we have no more obligations to it. On the contrary, the moral law remains a revelation of the Lord’s will, which he still expects his people to ‘fulfil’ by living lives of righteousness and love. This is what Calvin called the 3rd use of the law – it shows us what is pleasing to God.’

Christians now have a new relationship with the law and it is a much more positive one. By God’s grace, Christians are married to Christ and given the Holy Spirit to empower us to keep God’s law. It’s actually a wonderful thing that Christians are no longer married to the law, but instead are married to Christ! Why was being married to the law so bad? The law was a powerless to make us holy. The law could not make us more like Jesus. Quite the opposite. The law was impotent. The law could not change us.

2. The law – a poor marriage partner

Let’s examine just how rubbish a marriage partner the law was. What did the law do? The law reveals just how sinful we are. ‘I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘You shall not covet.’   (Romans 7:7) Imagine a room that’s badly lit but it looks ok. However, someone turns on the light and suddenly you see the thick dust and grease and damaged paint- things you didn’t see without the light. The law is like that strong light. It reveals what we are really like. So just hearing the command ‘do not covet’, can reveal how black our hearts really are, as so often we wish we had someone else’s job or partner or children or money. The command ‘do not covet’ reveals our sinful hearts.

What is sin? The Bible says: ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.’   (1 John 3:4) That’s why the catechism says: Q.14. What is sin? A. Sin is disobeying or not conforming to God’s law in any way. The 6th commandment says that we should not kill. That includes the unborn child and the terminally ill person. Just because the UK government might change the laws on these things does not mean they are not sinful. If our actions to the unborn or elderly break God’s law, expressed in the 6th commandment, then it is sin, no matter what direction public opinion moves in. The 6th commandment shines a light onto UK society revealing how far away we are from God today.

The law actually increases sin in the heart of the unbeliever. It stimulates sin. ‘… but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.’   (Romans 7:9) This is an amazing but sad truth. For example, you see a sign saying ‘Keep off the grass’ and what does this law do inside you? It makes you walk on the grass! It stimulates our sin. The knowledge that we cannot have something makes us want it. There is nothing so attractive to us as the forbidden, such is the rebellious spirit of man. If your friend is watching your house when you are on holiday and you say: ‘Please don’t read my private diary’, just by saying that, there’s a greater chance she will read it. Law can arouse sin in people. An excellent example of this is the prohibition era in the US, when it was forbidden to make or consume alcohol. The law became ‘Thou shalt not consume alcohol.’ What happened? The number of places which sold alcohol, despite being banned, doubled or tripled! The US saw the rise of speakeasies, illegal pubs. The law actually stimulates more disobedience. It is not God’s law which is bad (in fact, it is good) but it brings out what is sinful in fallen humanity.

This week I’ve been reminded of when in Jesus’ day, those with leprosy had to go to the priest. Could the priest help the leper? No! In fact, the priest was in a sense like God’s law, condemning the leper, showing him, yes, you have this disease and need to be sent away. The priest was impotent in that he could not change the leper. In contrast, how marvellous it was when lepers went to Jesus for healing. He touched them, changed them, and set them free from the disease. Who do you go to if you want to be changed, to the law or to Jesus? Who do you want to be married to?

3. A Christian’s tug-of-war

Let’s move on to consider verses 14-25. These are verses which many Christians disagree on. From verse 14 Paul stops using the past tense and uses the present tense. The personal pronouns are all in the first person. So, it seems likely to me, that in this section Paul is still speaking about the law, but now he is considering how the law impacts him as a Christian man. I believe that Paul is speaking as a Christian believer here. Look at verse 22: ‘For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.’ Surely, only a Christian can delight in God’s law. And this phrase ‘inner being’ found in verse 22 is found in 2 other places in the Bible, and in both it is speaking of a Christian.

‘Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.’ (2 Corinthians 4:16)

‘I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being…’ (Ephesians 3:16)

However, there are parts of this passage which might suggest that Paul is thinking back to before he was a believer. ‘We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.’   (Romans 7:14)

‘For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.’   (Romans 7:18)

‘… but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!’   (Romans 7:23-24)

Over the centuries, and in commentaries, Christians have disagreed about who this wretched man is. The early Greek Fathers thought Paul was still speaking about himself as a non-Chrisitan Pharisee under the law. Others, such as Augustine, Luther and Calvin (and this is what I believe) view this section as a description of normal Christian life. There’s another group who think it describes a backslidden Christian. Still others, say this wretched man is a personification of Israel’s existence under the Mosaic covenant, and describes the way in which they tried to establish their own righteousness by obeying the law, even though that struggle was impossible.

Personally, I think the plain reading of the passage is the best explanation, especially because Paul speaks in the present tense, suggesting his present struggle with sin. Although he has been delivered from the dominion of sin, until Heaven he still knows the presence of sin in his heart. This is the tension with us, we know the presence of sin in our hearts but we also know the presence of Christ in our hearts. ‘… so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.’   (Ephesians 3:17)

Scotland is famous for its Highland Games. There are many different events. Perhaps you have taken part in some of them. One of the events is the tug-of-war. Two teams pull on the same rope as hard as they can – a test of strength and sure-footedness. It’s not easy- it’s a real struggle. But you are not on your own. It’s a joint effort.

The Christian life is like an ongoing tug-of-war event. This can be exhausting.

R C Sproul: ‘Before I became a Christian, I wanted to go only one way: [my way] the way of the flesh. I acquiesced to the desires of the flesh. I had a mind of flesh. I had no inclination toward the things of God. But then God changed my heart and planted in it a love for him and an inclination to walk in his ways. Now I have a desire to please God, but I still have a desire to please myself. I would like to think that every time those desires bump into each other, my desire to please God wins, but it does not, and I still sin. When I get to Heaven, and all the remnants of that flesh are removed from me, I will have one heart and one will and one mind-set to please God and God alone. Only then will I become conformed to the image of Christ.’

What is Sproul saying? Before he was a Christian, there was no tug-of-war. He just did whatever he liked- with no thought of God! But now, his Christian walk is a struggle between the way of the Holy Spirit, and of the flesh. Paul says; ‘For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am!’   (Romans 7:18-24)

Like Paul, sometimes we can feel wretched. Like we are making no progress. Like it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Yet the Christian life is supposed to be a life of transformation. Gradual transformation usually. We call this sanctification.

I can relate all too well to Paul’s experience here. Indeed, this is the experience of every true believer. We are, as Luther said, ‘at the same time just and a sinner’. We are creatures of mixed desires. Jesus says: ‘The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ (Matthew 26:41) ‘There is within us a constant daily struggle and warfare with the old self whose desires are battling the desires of the new self

R C Sproul says, ‘It is not easy being a Christian! It is a fight.’ ‘So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.’   (Romans 7:21)

RC Sproul: ‘It seems that whenever we desire to do good, we experience the closest proximity to evil. Sometimes… in our most precious hours of devotion to Christ, the most wicked thoughts will creep into our minds’.

I think it’s important to state that Paul is not saying he feels this way some of the time or even most of the time. He has already spoken of the experience of God’s love which floods his heart by the Holy Spirit. Paul knew great peace and joy in Christ. However, there are times when we feel like wretched men and women. Jesus even says: ‘Blessed are those who mourn (over their sin) for they shall be comforted.’

Leon Morris: ‘Great saints throughout the ages don’t commonly say ‘how good I am’; ‘go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man’ is the authentic cry not of someone who does not believe but of one who does’.

We don’t want to leave Paul in his wretched state here. He asks a question: ‘What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?’ (Romans 7:24) It is not the law which will rescue him! He answers his own question. ‘Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Romans 7:25) Paul’s struggle has led him back to Jesus for strength.

Just as a law cannot justify the sinner, so the law cannot sanctify the saint. Only Jesus can empower us to be more like him. So if as a Christian, the law convicts you of sin and you feel the internal struggle of the Christian fight, don’t stay there, but rather run into the arms of Jesus, confessing your sin and asking him to empower you to know victory over sin in your life.

Sermon: Sunday, 24th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 6:15-23

God’s law sometimes gets bad press, even in Christian circles. This is partly because the purpose of God’s law is misunderstood, or should I say purposes (plural). That’s the thing about God’s law. It has several different functions. It reveals God’s character to us. For example, when we say, ‘Do not lie’ that’s because God is a God of truth. It also functions like an x-ray of our hearts, because when we read the 10 commandments, we are meant to think, ‘I actually haven’t kept any of those.’ So, the law is meant to show us our sin, and in doing that, it sends us to Jesus the Saviour we need.

But another function of the law is to give Christians freedom, in that it shows us the way God wants us to live. God’s laws are designed to give us freedom. For example, imagine there were no traffic laws and you could drive without any rules. Would that be freedom? Of course not. It would be harmful to us, not to mention other drivers. If all drivers stuck to the rules of the road, driving would be safer and more enjoyable. The same is true of God’s laws. God’s people are called to obey them, not to cramp our style, but to bless us. They show us the way of love and true freedom. Do you have a positive attitude to the law?

However, if God’s laws are so good for us, why does Paul say that Christians ‘… are not under the law, but under grace.’   (Romans 6:14) It would be easy for us to misunderstand what Paul is saying here. What does he mean when he says we are not under law? He means that we cannot get into a right relationship with God by obeying the law, summarised in the 10 commandments. The law is not a ladder we need to climb and climb in order to get to Heaven. He means that as Christians, the judging and condemning power of the law no longer has a hold on us, as in Christ we are forgiven. Because of God’s grace, we are treated as if we had never sinned. We cannot climb up to Heaven, but in Christ, God has come done and kept the law which we could never keep, and died on the cross to remove the curse of the law from us.

However, we must not go too far. Some people read verse 14, and when they hear that ‘we are not under the law’ they wrongly assume that the law has no place in the Christian life. They think that we don’t really need to try and keep the law. This is not true. Whilst we cannot earn God’s forgiveness through keeping the law, once we are saved by God’s grace, we are given the Holy Spirit in order to help us to keep the law. We keep it not to earn brownie points, but out of gratitude to the God who has saved us. RC Sproul once said: ‘The essence of the Christian ethic is gratitude.’ This is so true. All Christians ought to conscientiously keep God’s law out of a response of gratitude to how much Christ has done for us. So, we are not under the condemnation of the law as Christians, but we must still keep all his laws, motivated by gratitude. We must understand that keeping God’s law out of gratitude to God is the way of freedom and blessing.

As we saw last week, some people heard the gospel and twisted its teaching saying that Christians might as well live any way they choose, ignoring God’s law – after all, God will just forgive us anyway. Some even wickedly argue that the more we sin the more God’s grace is displayed, and so we should sin as much as possible. Paul has already strongly opposed this false teaching, arguing that Christians are people who are in union with Christ and have died to sin, and received Christ’s life-giving power. Sin has no place in our lives. We are new creations. We are new people. We are ‘dead-to-sin’ people. We cannot continue in sin because of what God has done for us – joining us to Jesus Christ.

1. You have a new master

In verse 15, Paul returns to this twisted thinking: ‘What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!’ Some people, even some Christians might have a careless attitude to sin. We slip into thinking, ‘What difference will this little sin really make? God will understand.’ We might fool ourselves into thinking that we can ‘play with sin’ as if we are in control of sin, and can go so far, but will be able to stop when we want to. That is not how sin works. The Bible speaks of ‘… the sin that so easily entangles…’ (Hebrews 12:1) It’s like an octopus with its tentacles around us.

Once again, Paul gives another reason why Christians can never treat sin lightly. The reason is this: when we became Christians, we pledged our allegiance to Christ. He is our master now. ‘Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey…’   (Romans 6:16) If we are slaves to Christ, and we are, then we must obey his commands. We are no longer slaves to sin. Our allegiance has totally changed.

At first, this might sound shocking. You might even think, ‘I’m a Christian but I don’t want to be a slave to anyone, not even Christ.’The word ‘slave’ almost always carries negative connotations for us. But not here. Think of the very first words in this letter. ‘Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle…’   (Romans 1:1) Paul identifies as a ‘slave’ of Christ. This is not all Paul says – for example he also identifies as an adopted son of God and an heir with Christ, in chapter 8. God is our Father and we are his children.

Nevertheless, we need to grasp what we mean when we say that we are ‘slaves’ of Christ. It is a voluntary slavery! In Roman times, around a third of the population were slaves, and many others had been slaves and so around half of those Paul is writing to know what he means. It was commonplace for people in severe poverty to offer themselves into slavery, so that they could guarantee they’d have a roof over their heads and food on their tables. If you surrendered yourself as a slave, then of course, you had obligations to fully obey your new master. Everybody knew that. ‘Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?’   (Romans 6:16)

Christians are people who voluntarily pledge themselves to be servants or slaves to King Jesus. We present ourselves to him as his slaves. The only other alternative is to present ourselves to sin, and be slaves to sin. There is no other option. The thing is, to be a slave to Jesus, to pledge our allegiance wholeheartedly to him is true freedom. Don’t get too worked up about the language of slavery – Paul is just using it as an illustration. The point is this, the hallmark of slavery is obedience, and those who pledge allegiance to Jesus must obey him. We are not free to do a little sinning on the side.

John Stott: ‘Conversion is the act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery; and slavery demands a total, radical, exclusive obedience. For no-one can be the salve of two masters as Jesus said. So, once we have offered ourselves to him as his slaves we are permanently and unconditionally at his disposal. There is no possibility of going back on this. Having chosen our master, we have no other choice but to obey him.’

This is a helpful reminder that becoming a Christian, or conversion, is when Jesus becomes both our Saviour and also becomes our Lord or master. You can’t have Jesus as just your Saviour and then live any way you please.

You might find this teaching of Paul offensive. Do we really either have to be slaves to sin or to Christ? Can’t we be neutral? In Jesus says; ‘Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.’   (John 8:34-36) We cannot be neutral. We cannot remain slaves to no one, even if we think we can. All humans are by nature those who serve themselves. We can be slaves to our work, pouring ourselves into work and living for it. We can be slaves of our possessions, always wanting more stuff, the latest gadgets and more new clothes. We can be slaves to all kinds of negative habits, such as being bad-tempered, greedy, or lustful. We are prisoners of our appetite to sin. We cannot escape sin or its penalty, which is death.

Kent Hughes: ‘Characteristically, the most enslaved argue that they are the most free’.

Think of the prodigal son, who felt so free as he headed off to the far country. Was he really free? Of course not!

2. You have a new lifestyle

Verse 19 highlights to us that being a slave to sin is not something static, but is a downward spiral. In contrast, being a free slave of Jesus Christ leads to a virtuous upward spiral on the path of holiness: ‘For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.’ In other words, in the past you used to use your energy to serve yourself; now, use your energy to serve Christ.

What does it mean to ‘present our members as slaves to righteousness’? It is comprehensive. It means to use our hearts and minds and hands and feet and gifts and talents and all that we are and yield them to Christ.

A well-known hymns puts it like this:
1. Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee…
2. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love…
4. Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold…
5. Take my will and make it thine; it shall be no longer mine…

Paul states it memorably; ‘I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.’ &nbsp: (Romans 12:1) Living as a Christian involves a radically new lifestyle. We were pleasers of self and now we are driven, albeit imperfectly, to please God.

Think back to before you were a Christian. Perhaps you were single-minded in climbing the career ladder, or getting more money, or enjoying yourself as much as possible with good holidays, food, wine and experiences. Our pursuit of holiness should be just as dedicated as that. And this single-mindedness doesn’t make you a fanatic, nor does it mean your life will be impoverished. You will not be the loser. In fact, as the end of verse 19 says so clearly, yielding to righteousness leads us to become more like Jesus – it is for our sanctification. Just as fish are made for water and birds to fly, so we are designed by God to be most free when we live for his glory.

St Augustine said that all human beings are like a horse, and the horse has one of two riders. Either Satan or Christ is riding the horse. Before conversion, Satan held the reigns to your horse, and you were free (verse 20) in regard to righteousness, which means you were enslaved in darkness. Now, Christ has your reigns, and he leads us to beautiful places. Who would you rather have in control of your life? Who do you want holding your reigns?

3. You have a new destination

What was our destination before we trusted in Jesus? Verse 21 says the end of slavery to sin is death. We know it leads to separation from the goodness of God. Paul wants us to think back to our pre-Christian days and to realistically consider what our sinful actions produced. We might have enjoyed sexual immorality for a time, but in the end, it ruined a marriage and a family and brought intense suffering to many. The fruits were dark. You used to spend so much of your money on yourself without a thought for others. Did it satisfy you in the end? No. Sin promises much but delivers so little. It’s been that way since Satan told Adam and Eve they would have knowledge through disobeying God. Sin destroys our relationship with God, with others, and even prevents us from being our true selves, the people God intended us to be. Sin is a terrible master every single time. There is one thing which sin the slave master will always do – he always pays us fair wages. The thing is, the wages of sin is death (verse 23). And this is what we deserve by refusing to yield to Christ.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is a wonderful alternative. Those who are slaves to Christ and to righteousness are not given wages. Instead, we are given a free gift, and that gift is eternal life. ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 6:23)

What do you want from God, the wages you deserve or his free gift?

Sermon: Sunday, 17th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 6:1-14

There are times in our lives when we experience a radical change in our identities and this change must bring about a change in our thinking and in our behaviour. What do I mean? For example, when you get married, you become what you were not before, a husband or a wife. This becomes part of your identity. But it ought to also change your thinking and behaviour. Before, you might have done whatever you wanted in your free time, but now, you have a spouse to consider. You can’t carry on living as a single person. In fact, each day you need to remember this new aspect of your identity, so that your actions will be those of a loving husband or wife. You need to remember who you are. Likewise, if you have children, that too shapes your identity. You are now a parent and now have two or three or more people to consider when you are making decisions. You need to sacrifice time and energy for your children, as well as your spouse.

Last week, we were reminded of the marvellous truth that God’s grace is greater than all our sin. What a relief it is to know that although we cannot earn our way to heaven, or pay off our huge moral debt to God, God in his grace and love has provided Jesus as the Saviour and substitute who does this for us. We’re not treated as we deserve, but rather with grace. Hallelujah! This is the gospel! Christ does for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. However, some people might distort and twist this teaching and say that Christians might as well live any way they choose, ignoring God’s law – after all, God will just forgive us anyway. Some even wickedly argue that the more we sin the more God’s grace is displayed, and so we should sin as much as possible. Paul anticipates this false argumentation and responds: ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means!’   (Romans 6:1-2a) People who argue that way fail to understand that when people are ‘born again’ they die to sin, and are raised with Christ. ‘We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’   (Romans 6:2b)

The greatest and most radical change a human being can ever experience is when we become followers of Jesus, when we are converted, or ‘born again’. This is a permanent change to our identity. Before, we were ‘in Adam’ and slaves to sin. Now we are ‘in Christ’, united to Jesus through faith, and those who are dead to sin. Yes, we continue to sin. But we have been set free from the tyranny and penalty and power of sin. I am a dead to sin and alive in Christ person. And the more I understand my new identity, the more it will impact by thinking and behaviour. We are not in the kingdom of darkness any more. We are in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This must permeate our thinking and impact our actions every day. This might sound strange at first, but I think it would be transformative in our Christian lives if we could say to ourselves each morning, ‘I’m a person who is dead to sin and alive in Christ. I have a new boss – King Jesus, and I live for him.’

Paul is not saying to us that we ought to try and die to sin. He is saying, as a matter of fact, that we are those who are dead to the control of sin. In other words, sin is no longer our master – Jesus Christ is now our master. Yes, we shall still be tempted. However, each time I am tempted I now have the God-given power to resist that temptation. I am a new creation. Is that right? ‘And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’   (1 Corinthians 10:13) It’s so frustrating when I fall into the same kinds of sins again and again. Each time I sin, it’s an anomaly; a deviation from what ought to happen, because God always gives us a way of escape.

It’s not just Paul who wants you to grasp your new identity. John says: ‘No one who lives in him keeps on sinning… No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.’ (1 John 3:6 and 9) Of course, this does not mean that we become perfect before heaven. But it means that salvation is not a licence to sin more, but gives an inner resolve and power to hate the sin God hates.

Last week, we thought of being ‘in Christ’ as being like a rock climber unclipped from Adam’s rope and onto Jesus’ rope. Jesus is scaling the mountain as our leader and representative. What happens to him happens to us. We are ‘in Christ’. In verse 10 we’re told that Jesus died to sin. This does not mean he himself was sinful, but that he lived in a world surrounded by sin and was tempted by sin. When he was raised and ascended to Heaven, this was no longer the case. Let’s remember the truth that what happens to Christ our representative happens to us. ‘Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.’   (Romans 6:3-4)

Kent Hughes: ‘The specific emphasis of verses 3-5 is that we are so profoundly identified with Christ’s death and resurrection that we actually did die with him and truly were raised with him, so that now we share in his resurrection life’.

There’s a danger that verses 1-5 sound too abstract for us, with all this talk about being ‘dead-to-sin’ people. An illustration might help. One of the most famous Christians of all time is St Augustine. Before he was born again, he lived a life of ‘wine, women and song’. One day, after he became a Christian, he met one of the prostitutes who had known him in his ‘old life’. She approached him seductively and said: ‘It is I, Augustine’. His answer was simple: ‘Yes, but it is not I, Augustine.’ In other words, Augustine had become a new creation with a new identity. The old Augustine she had known, who was a slave to sin, was dead. The new Augustine was in Christ and that changed everything. The question is- what helped Augustine fight off temptation that day? It was his understanding that the old Augustine had died with Christ, coupled with the fact that the new Augustine now had the power of Christ within, new power to resist temptation. And he did. This is the way we all need to be thinking more and more. Our sins were put to death on the cross and we were released from the bondage of sin and into newness of life.

Baptism is mentioned in verse 3. Baptism does symbolise the washing away of sin. But it also symbolises our union with Christ, marking our identification with the death of Jesus.

R C Sproul: ‘My baptism signifies my identification with Jesus’ death on the cross, and that I am mystically crucified with Christ. I identify with that act; I put my personal trust in the act of Christ on the cross, and as Christ was taken down from the cross and buried in the ground, so I, in terms of my old nature, am put to death and buried.’

‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.’   (Romans 6:5) In other words, when we become Christians, there is a new power at work within us, that of the Holy Spirit, and over time He changes our inclinations and desires and He given us power to resist temptation. We now have the life of God in our souls, because of our union to Christ. We are attached to Christ the vine, and his sap flows into us, his branches. We bear fruit.

Once again, let’s grasp that becoming a Christian involves a change of master – from slavery sin to freedom in Christ. ‘For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin…’   (Romans 6:6)

But there’s also a sad truth Christians must wrestle with. Even though we are no longer under sin’s dominion and have new power to resist, sometimes we still fall into sin. There’s the story of a great eagle (see Christopher Ash commentary on Romans) tethered to a post, walking sadly round and round: ‘One day a new owner announced he would release the bird. A crowd gathered – the rope was removed – and the eagle continued walking round and round in the same old rut. He was free to fly and yet did not. The sad absurdity of that scene is like the Christian who continues to sin.’ To my shame, sometimes I can relate to that eagle. Christ has set me free, and yet still at times, I wallow in the mud of sin.

Those who twist the gospel, arguing that it means we can live as we please don’t understand the gospel. The truth is, at salvation we are justified by God, declared righteous in his sight, but we also begin a life of sanctification, where we walk the path of holiness and not the path of sin. Practically speaking, how can we ensure that we see growth in this walk of holiness? This section ends with Paul commanding us to remember who we are, to root out sin in our lives, and to consciously offer ourselves to God. Let’s unpack this now.

Remember your identity. ‘… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’   (Romans 6:11) To ‘count ourselves’ means to really grasp and keep coming back to this reality. We are dead to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. Say this to yourself each day. Pray for more of the Spirit’s power. Paul states four times in this short section that we are dead to sin (verses 3, 6, 9 and 11). He hammers the message home to us. He really wants this to shape our identities. This is something we need to keep on doing – we need to keep on counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.

Kent Hughes: ‘Have you ever taken the time to consider the fact that you participated in the events of the cross, that you died and that you were resurrected with Christ? If not, why not do so right now. This is prevention theology’.

I love the idea of ‘prevention theology’ which Hughes mentions. Instead of just focusing on confessing our sins after we commit them, why not spend more time considering how to not commit them in the first place, by remembering who you are in Christ. Just as we invest in preventative health care by eating well and exercising to avoid ill health, so we must discipline our minds each day, with God’s help, to be sensitised to how out of place sin is in our lives as new creations.

It’s said that before her children would go out to a party, The Queen Mother would say to them: ‘You are royal children, royal manners.’ That is to say, you have royal identities so behave that way. Paul is saying to us that we are royal subjects of King Jesus and so we must live as such.

Respond to your identity. How do we respond? By weeding out sin in our lives and by positive planting through offering ourselves in service to God. We always need both the negative and the positive together – taking off the old and putting on the new. ‘Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness…’   (Romans 6:12-13) Let’s be honest and realistic – all Christians continue to be tempted and struggle with wrong desires and ambitions. But we can use our new freedom in Christ to fight these desires. Desires which are wrong must be fought against. Wage war against the enemy of sin. Since now in Christ we are ‘alive to God’ the natural thing for us to do is to give the whole of ourselves to God in service. Don’t withhold anything from God. Serve him in your work and in your family and in your community. Yield your mind and your heart and your will to God.

Sermon: Sunday, 10th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 5:12-21

Why is it that we live in a world where no one is capable of living a life without selfishness or without hurting others? Why are human beings capable of goodness and kindness but also of terrible evil? Why is it that all people eventually die? Is this just part of the normal cycle of life, as Sir Chris Hoy has recently asserted? These are big questions. Why is the world the way it is? This section of Romans explains why things are the way they are. And like it or not, the explanation is that the actions of two men, Adam and Jesus Christ, have had dramatic repercussions for the human race. Today in 2024, we tend to think about things individualistically. We often recoil from thinking about how one person’s behaviour can shape reality for other people as well as their own. We might think this is unfair. However, it is true, nonetheless. We are not islands, but are part of families and countries and are also part of the human race. We are more interconnected than we like to think.

For example, think of a man who aged 45 inherits several million pounds from his parents in their will. This man did not work for the money – his parents did. I might think, ‘That’s not fair. I’ve never received that kind of a benefit.’ But it’s because he is in the family. Think of an opposite example. A family of six is living in relative comfort for many years. But then the father makes an unwise and risky investment using all the family’s money. He loses everything. Suddenly, the family become homeless and the parents split up and their children have to relocate to a new area far away from their friends. We could say, ‘That’s not fair on the children.’ But like it or not, the foolishness of one family member spills over into the lives of the whole family.

If a country has a wise leader who improves the economy and housing for his people, then many benefit from their representative. However, if a country has a foolish leader, who enters into an unjust war, it will be a disaster for the ordinary people in the country. In this way, human beings are bound together by the decisions of others. If the Scotland squad win we say ‘we won’ because they are our representatives. We weren’t playing on the pitch.

One of the best Biblical examples of this is the story of David and Goliath. David is fighting on behalf of the Israelites, and what happens to David will have a profound effect on the whole nation, because he is their representative. If he loses to the giant Goliath, then Israel will become the slaves of the Philistines; however, if David wins, the nation will be free. It all hinges on one man, David. If Goliath loses, then his people, the Philistines, will lose with him. The war is not being handled individualistically, but through two representatives.

1. The ruin of mankind (verses 12-14)

Our passage today explains why human beings are born with original sin, leading to wrong thoughts and actions and rebellion against God: ‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned…’   (Romans 5:12) It is because the representative of the whole race was Adam, and he chose to disobey God by eating from the tree he was forbidden to eat from. It’s all detailed for us in Genesis chapter 3. Adam’s disobedience was a tragedy for the human race. We could even say that through his disobedience, he squandered the family fortune, bankrupting the human race.

Think of a river being polluted at the source. Adam is that source, at the head of our family tree. Just as faulty genes of disease are often passed down through the generations, so Adam’s sin is passed down to each one of us. We call this original sin.

R C Sproul: ‘Original sin refers to the result of the first sin, not the first sin itself… it is not that we are sinful because we sin, but rather that we sin because we are sinful. The activity of sin flows out of a sinful nature, a fallen nature, a heart that is out of sync with God. Man is fallen in the depths of his being, and has a basic disposition towards sin rather than towards righteousness.’

We might find this teaching of original sin unfair and offensive. However, it is true to the way things are. If people were really born neutrally, then we would surely expect some of them not to become selfish or greedy or those who hurt others. But that is not what we find. What we find is that 100% of people fail to keep their own standards far less God’s. Only Jesus lived a flawless life. And we find that 100% of people die. We find that even very young children quickly begin to display selfish tendencies, no matter how consciously their parents bring them up. The teaching of original sin might be uncomfortable and seem unfair, but it describes the way the world is in a way in which nothing else does. There is no other reasonable explanation.

Jesus teaches exactly the same thing. ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.’ (  (Mark 7:20-23) Jesus, of course, is right. No matter what you might do, you cannot stop these thoughts, proving that we have sinful natures. What a mixture human beings are! We are made in the image of God, with dignity and the ability to love and plan and design. And yet, as a race we can’t stop waging war on one another and exploiting one another. The world is full of injustice and poverty, even though there is enough food to go round. Why did one of the most civilised and educated countries in the world, Germany, murder six million Jews? Why the silent holocaust of the unborn? Why divorce and drugs and fraud? Because the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.

Sadly, throughout the history of the human race, this behaviour has always come to the surface. We are not improving over time! Even in the days between Adam and Moses (which verses 13-14 speak about) before the Ten Commandments had been given, the wickedness of our race was obvious. There was murder and rape and cruelty on a massive scale. When the law was eventually given, that just served to highlight our twistedness and rebellion all the more. Chuck Swindoll tells the story of riding his bike across his neighbour’s grass, making a mess of the lawn, even though he knew he shouldn’t have been doing that. Eventually, a sign was put up: ‘keep of the grass – no bikes’ This was like the giving of the law. But he carried on cycling over the grass anyway, so the sign just made his misdemeanours all the more evident. That’s what happened when the law was given – the sins of humanity were highlighted.

It is a bit depressing thinking about Adam being our covenant head, or representative. My favourite illustration of this situation is to picture a rock climber scaling a mountain, with countless others clipped onto his belt. If he falls, then everyone else on his rope will also fall. What happens to him will happen to everyone else. And tragically Adam does fall. This describes the history of humanity.

But there’s also another illustration. Through faith, we are unclipped from Adam’s rope and clipped onto Jesus’ rope instead. What happens to him will now happen to us. And wonderfully, he defeats death and sin forever. He scales the mountain perfectly. His obedience becomes our obedience and his death becomes ours, and his life flows into us. This leads us to our next point.

2. The rescue of mankind (verses 15-19)

Christians are those who are clipped on to Jesus’ rope. God does not want to leave humanity in a state of sin and misery and so in love and grace he sends his Son into the world. And on the cross, our sin is imputed to him and his goodness and perfect obedience is imputed to us. We might say, ‘That’s not fair.’ But it is true. It is grace. It is God’s remedy for us. Whilst Adam’s disobedience is so destructive, Christ’s perfect obedience brings us forgiveness, peace, hope and eternal life. ‘Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.’   (Romans 5:18-19)

Adam and Christ, the second Adam, do have something in common. Both of them are representatives whose acts has enormous consequences. Adam’s plunged us down into ruin. But Christ’s obedience and death on the cross changes everything for the good. Christ is able to deal with the sin which flows from our hearts. He forgives us. He gives us his Spirit in order to change us from the inside, and bring us back into God’s presence. His grace is greater than all our sin – much greater.

Adam failed at being a representative. But Jesus succeeded in every respect. What a privilege to be clipped onto him. He is always good and righteous and kind and compassionate. He did on our behalf what we could never do and perfectly kept the law. And he gave his life for our sins. You could not wish for or imagine a better representative than Jesus.

And this shapes our new identity as Christians. We are no longer in Adam but are in Christ. Yes, we still make mistakes, sometimes serious ones, but what happens to Jesus will happen to us, as we are clipped onto him by faith. The marvellous truth for the Christian is this: there is more grace in Jesus than there is sin in your heart.

Charles Wesley wrote the hymn ‘O Jesus full of truth and grace’:
O Jesus, full of truth and grace,
more full of grace than I of sin,
yet once again I seek your face;
open your arms and take me in,
and freely my backslidings heal
and love the faithless sinner still.
You know the way to bring me back,
my fallen spirit to restore:
O for your truth and mercy’s sake forgive,
and bid me sin no more;
the ruins of my soul repair
and make my heart a house of prayer.

Friends, let’s celebrate this amazing truth today – we are no longer in Adam but are in Christ. Christ’s impact on the human race far outweighs that of Adam’s impact: ‘But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’   (Romans 5:20-21)

Let’s end with another fantastic thought. Because Jesus is our covenant head, our representative, our salvation it totally assured. He has already defeated death and he cannot fail. And because he cannot fail, and what happens to him will happen to us, those who trust him are assured of eternal life. We are assured of eternal life. Were it down to my own efforts to enter Heaven, I would fail miserably. But it’s not down to me. It’s down to him. We are tethered to Christ!

‘And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.’   (Ephesians 2:6)

So, if you haven’t trusted him yet, then do so now.