DEAD TO SIN 

ROMANS 6:1-2, 15-18

          To some the way that Paul begins this chapter would appear to be a bit strange.  But those who have studied Paul’s style of writing will notice that he is again using a tactic that he often uses, that is carrying on an argument with an imaginary opponent.  He is carrying on a conversation with himself so that he can pose questions or highlight points that the reader might bring up if he were in a face to face meeting with Paul.  The argument itself stems from Paul’s statement in Romans 5:20, “Where sin abounds, grace did much more abound.”  In our language such an argument between Paul and his opponent would go something like: 

The Objector: You have just said that God’s grace is great enough to find forgiveness for every sin.

Paul: That is so.

The Objector: You are, in fact, saying that God’s grace is the most wonderful thing in all the world.

Paul: That is so.

The Objector: Well, if that is so, let us go on sinning. The more we sin, the more grace will abound. Sin does not matter, for God will forgive anyway. In fact we can go further than that and say that sin is an excellent thing, because it gives the grace of God a chance to operate. The conclusion of your argument is that sin produces grace; therefore sin is bound to be a good thing if it produces the greatest thing in the world.

          Paul’s first reaction is to recoil from that argument in sheer horror.  “Do you suggest,” he demands, “that we should go on sinning in order to give grace more chance to operate? God forbid that we should pursue so incredible a course as that”. (Barclay, p. 82)

          Like Paul many of us would think such an argument as this is utterly ridiculous.  But many times we live our lives as if we think just like this.  We count on the grace of God and the forgiveness of God to be a shield from the punishment of God.  No we would never say that because God is merciful and forgiving it is okay to sin, but lives show that mentality every time we choose to sin. So Paul asked a profound question at the end of verse two.  He asked “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”  That is still a question to be considered today.  Let’s dissect this sentence.  What is the subject of this sentence?  Of course the answer is we.  And to whom is the “we” referring?  We who are Christians.  Now there is an adjective phrase behind that “we” and an adjective describes the noun.  So the “we” is described as “being dead to sin”.  So let me ask you another question.  If you are not dead to sin, are you included in the “we”?  No because the group of people that Paul is talking to is the group that is dead to sin. And Paul says that if this group is dead to sin, how can they continue to live therein?  I want you to ask yourself, “Am I really Dead to Sin?”

Illustration:  Dead Rose or other flower.  Would you expect to see any bees hanging around this flower?  Of course the answer is no.  Why not?  Because the flower is dead.  When the sun rises in the morning and the fresh dew is upon the ground this flower will not open up because it is dead.  It gives off no odor and drops no pollen so there is nothing to invite or entice the bee to come to the flower.  It is dead to the bee.  When the bee comes the flower does not have to fight to keep its petals closed or try to shield its pollen or hide its odor.  Why.  Because it is dead.  If a bee were to start hanging around this flower and if the flower could talk it would say to the bee, “go away you stupid bee, can’t you see that I am dead to you.  There is nothing left in me to give you.”  The flower does not struggle with the bee because it is dead.  Why do we struggle with sin if we are dead to it?  Well there could be several reasons. 

1.     We have not decided that it is sin and therefore we see no need to be dead to it.  What am I trying to say?

PROVERBS 6:16-19

          Would you agree with me that the fact that God hates these things makes them sin and that we should have the same attitude about them as does God.  Do you think that these are the only 7 things that God hates?  Many times we allow ourselves to use the fact that we cannot point to a particular scripture in the Bible to call something sin to give us permission to participate in that activity. Just because I can not point to a particular scripture does not make it not be sin.  The truth of the matter is that we don’t have the mind of Christ about sin.  We are still operating in our own mind.  When Jesus told the devil in Matthew 4:10 “For it is written, Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and him only shall thou serve,” not only was Satan not to be served, but he was also not to serve his own desire.  Everything that God saw as sin, Jesus accepted as sin.  And everything God asked him not to do He chose not to do.  Our problem is that sometimes we do not want to see something as sin even though we feel bad when we do it, which by the way is conviction.  Even when we know that something is not God’s will for us, we refuse to see it as sin because we don’t want to be dead to it.   But if we will not recognize sin as sin, then how will we be able to acknowledge that we are dead to it. 

2.     Even if we have decided that it is sin, we have not accepted that we are dead to it.  For example I may recognize smoking as sin, but rather than seeing myself as dead to it I see myself as struggling with it. We see ourselves as wrestling with it.  But answer me this, “Do the dead wrestle?”  We are never told to wrestle with sin.  Why because we are dead to it. 

          You might ask “why do I have such problem with sin if I am dead to it?”  You know why.  Because we resurrected sin back into our lives.  When we got saved Jesus delivered us from the power of sin in our lives.  But before anyone could tell us that we had been delivered from the power of sin, before we got the real revelation of that word, before it could take root in us and bring forth seed of righteous living the enemy came to sow weeds of doubt in your heart.  He told us that we were only human and that we all sin, none of us are perfect.  We started out with a mentality that one day we will get better at resisting sin instead of realizing that sin was already beat, having no power over us.  We were dead to sin.  Not knowing any better, we brought sin back to life in our lives.  How?

PROVERBS 18:21

          We began wrong.  We walked in agreement with the enemy not so much in what we did but what we believed and what we said.  We may not have resurrected a particular sin but we resurrected the spirit of sin.  We gave it power by our words and all it had to do was test the water to find the particular sin that we could be enticed to surrender to.

We need to start over.  We need a new mentality as it relates to sin.  Ask yourself is the Word true. Yes.  Well the true Word says that I am dead to sin.  If I receive that, then when sin comes knocking at my door, my answer to him is why are you here, don’t you know that I am dead to sin, move on because I will not resurrect you.

          To living a life dead to sin will require some will power on our part, because sin will not give up.  He wants to be resurrected.  But listen, we can choose to exert our will over sin and remain dead to sin or I can choose to surrender to sin and see the death of my will.

ROMANS 7:15-20

          The person described here is out of control.  He is not be controlled by the Spirit of God, nor is he being controlled by his own will.  He is being controlled by sin and even when he wants to resist sin, he has no power to do so.  Why?   

ROMANS 6:16

Why is the man in Romans 7 being controlled by sin?  Because when you resurrect sin it has but one underlying desire and that is complete control over you.  It wants to make you its slave.  It will move slowly at whatever pace you allow, because it realizes that as long as it is alive it will make progress and will have a chance to accomplish its goal.  Sin wants to keep us as his servant.  If a man accepts the invitation of sin for long enough, the time comes when he cannot accept anything else.  Habits grow upon him until he can no longer break them.  He comes to hate his sins and love them at the same time and no matter how much he wills himself to do so he cannot break himself away from sin.  But if he will again turn to Christ he will find deliverance because Christ has made us free of the power of sin.  We must learn how to walk in that freedom.

To live a life that is dead to sin I must die to my feelings and resist sin. 

MATTHEW 16:24

The Devils plays a lot on our feelings.  If I am unhappy about something then He works to convince me that I deserve to be happy and then presents me with a host of things that should he says make me happy.  Sometime the things he presents are not bad in and of themselves, but they are not God’s will for me at that time.  He seeks to keep us on the emotional edge because he knows that being driven by our emotions will eventually bring us to sin.  If we are going to live a life that is dead to sin we must deny ourselves, not operate based on feelings and resist sin.  If we will not do this we will eventually see sin bring death to our feelings.

I TIMOTHY 4:1-2

          To sear something with a hot iron is to brand it.  Do you know that the branded area loses all feelings because you deaden the nerves by the heat?  Here their conscience is branded by sin.  They lose sensitivity to sin.  They no longer feel bad about it.  In fact you can become so entangled in sin that you lose the sense of what is right or wrong, and you have no feelings about anything or anyone one.  In fact nothing matters to you but satisfying your sin craving.  You are a slave to your sin and you do not even care.  The process of becoming a slave to sin does not happen overnight.  The first time a man sins he does so often with great anxiety.  But the day comes, if he goes on doing what is forbidden when he will find himself participating with no anxiety in that which he once would have been horrified or ashamed of doing.

          Sin will bring death to all that is lovely.  It can turn the loveliest things into the ugliest things.  Through sin the longing to be the best that you can be can turn into the quest for power; the desire to serve can turn into unholy ambition; the desire of love can become the passion of lust (Barclay).  What was lovely in life can become ugly and dead.  Sin can take the prettiest girl or the most handsome boy and turn them into the ugliest person physically, emotionally and spiritually.

          Sin breeds death.  I Timothy 5:6 says, “She that lives in pleasure (or sin) is dead while she lives.  But when we came to Christ he made us dead to sin so that sin could no longer breed death in us.  If we who are Christians are dead to sin then how or why do we continue to live therein?  Ask yourself “am I really dead to sin.”