Father God, thank you that we can spend time together reading and studying your holy word. Lord I pray that we will learn as believers to use our freedom in Christ to lovingly and thankfully serve God by allowing Christ to live in and through us. In Christ's name we pray, amen.
Romans 6:1-4
In Romans chapter five we learned that we are eternally secure in Christ Jesus. This means that once we have believed the gospel of the grace of God unto justification, we can never loose our salvation NO MATTER WHAT. This will usually cause our flesh to then ask "well then, what sins can I get away with?" Usually after a person is saved they start to ask questions like "Can I still listen to secular music as a believer?", "Can I drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes?", "Can I buy lottery tickets?" Etc. The questions we should be asking is "now that I'm saved, how can I serve God, bring glory to God, help others to be saved and how can I mature spiritually?" The next three chapters will teach us how we can serve God, bring glory to God and mature spiritually by walking in the Spirit instead of after the flesh. We will learn too that we do not serve God by trying to keep the law, but by getting sound grace doctrine in Paul's Epistles (doctrine written specifically TO us today) in our inner man, believing it and obeying it.
In Christendom they usually get you to "serve God" in your flesh right away after you have been saved instead of helping you to be established in foundational grace doctrine first. They water baptize you, tell you to join a specific church or denomination, get you to start paying tithes, have you volunteer at your church, etc. These are religious works done by your own fleshly efforts especially since you will not yet have any sound grace doctrine built up yet in your inner man right after getting saved (and some of these things aren't for our mystery grace program anyway!)! You will then feel prideful in yourself. And most churches do not start out teaching you Romans foundational grace doctrine, and they do not even understand the differences between prophecy and mystery etc because most churches do not rightly divide the scriptures. I recommend that after being saved a person can start a bible in a year reading program to read through the whole Bible to get familiar overall with the Bible, but that they also begin an actual verse by verse study in the book of Romans. It might be best to read commentaries (or watch videos) by other Midacts Rightly Divided Dispensational Grace teachers to help you understand Romans, as well as to teach you how to study the Bible for yourself. This is basically what I do with my podcasts, blogs and videos. We need to have sound grace doctrine in our inner man, (our mind and heart) before we start serving God because otherwise it's an effort of our flesh. Everything that we do for God should be by God's word working effectually in and through us as believers.
1Th 2:13 KJV -
13 For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God,
So all of that being said, our flesh will want us to focus on either what sins we can get away with, or what religious works it can do to boast in itself.
Romans 6:1-2 says,
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
So addressing the issue of "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" The Apostle Paul tells us, "God forbid" which means NO WAY! He then reminds us that we are actually dead to sin and that we shouldn't be living like unbelievers.
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
The moment that we believed the Gospel, our old man was crucified WITH Christ. It died and we are to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin but alive unto God. Our sin nature still resides in our flesh until the rapture (or until we die physically if that happens first) however it doesn't have power over us anymore. It is like a chicken with its head cut off, dead but still temporarily running around. We are to "put off" the old man and walk in the new man instead.
**It's also very important to understand that even when you DO sin, you have not lost favor with God. You will NOT loose your salvation nor your spiritual blessings in Christ. God isn't looking at you with wrath and anger to punish you when you sin. It pleases God when we walk in the Spirit instead of after the flesh, but he doesn't suddenly hate YOU when you sin. You are now God's dearly beloved. God is using GRACE to teach us godliness today, NOT THE LAW.
Titus 2:11-12
11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
12Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
When believers think that God is punishing them for sin, that is legalism. When we put ourselves or others under a similar performance based system, that is also legalism. I will talk about this more in a future study.**
The moment we believed the Gospel we were baptized by God's Spirit into Jesus Christ and into his death. The Lord Jesus Christ did everything that was required for us to be made spiritually alive in Him from the moment that we choose to believe the gospel.
4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Buried with him means that our old man and our old life - our old ways of thinking and living is dead and buried! It's in the past! We ought to now move forward in our new life in Christ. This is the spiritually mature thing to do. We were also RAISED UP to newness of life! This means that because our old man is dead and buried, our spirit was also then raised to life and we have God's Spirit living in our spirit. We are spiritually alive in Christ FOREVER! Praise the Lord! One day we will also have our physical bodies transformed to be like His glorious body and we will never sin again, but for now we have these earthen vessels. Therefore, we should walk in newness of life.
2Co 4:7 KJV -
7 But we have this treasure [God's Spirit and His word in our inner man] in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.
1Co 3:16 KJV -
16 Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
1Co 6:19 KJV -
19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?
Because our old man was crucified and buried with Christ and we are also risen together with Christ, Paul says that "we also should walk in newness of life."
How we walk in newness of life is by getting sound grace doctrine built up in our inner man, by reading and studying God's Word rightly divided, believing it and yeilding ourselves over to obey it (live it out).
Homework: Re-read Romans chapter 6 and find a favorite verse in this chapter to memorize.
Video
Comments