Dead and Alive

It's good to have you here at Thrive this morning. We are in the seventh week, believe it or not, of our series. So just over the halfway point in our series called Justified, how God mends broken lives and a broken world. And we are now going to be in Romans chapter 6. So we're kind of moving along. In this series, we've discovered how God does these things. He does them by justifying us. That is a very key word that comes up again in our text today. It comes up through the book of Romans. What does this mean, to be justified by God? What we find out, though, at the first week, and it runs through this whole lesson, is that Romans is not simply about being justified. Romans is in the context of a society where it was fractured. Where there were groups of people against each other in a lot of ways, in competition with each other, ranked ahead and below each other. Slave versus free, Gentile versus Jew, even male and female didn't, quote, get along in this society. And Paul says that is an important sign when in the church, if we have fractures, if we have divisions, if we have one group opposed to another group, we are really not understanding this teaching of God's justification. Okay, justification. And so we're looking at that today. So today, as I mentioned, we're in Romans chapter 6. It's kind of a shift. We are now going from just talking, quote, about, in a sense, to getting into the practical aspects of what it means to live in this life and how your life and my life can actually change, change, to actually grow, to actually not just be stuck in the same old, same old of our, well, at least I know, my selfishness, my egotism, my wrapping things around my life, you know, in my ways. And so we're going to look at how that happens, a decisive break that has happened through Jesus Christ, how it actually comes about for all of us to experience on a daily basis. I think Timothy Lane puts it well. He writes, the change most needed in our lives isn't a change in our situations. Although a lot of people, I think, are thinking if COVID just goes away, everything's fine. Right? No. And relationships. But in us, the thing God is most intent on rescuing us from is ourselves. Okay. Now that might be a hard point for you to say amen to this morning. Could I hear an amen? Okay. Maybe it's easy. I don't know. But I'm my greatest obstacle. I'm not the first who said that. Some, a couple of you might know who this man is. Jack Parr. Very few. He was the original Tonight Show host, wasn't he not? And he said, my biggest obstacle in life is me. So I think he understood that. And I think his life probably portrayed that from what I've been told. I never saw him. I'm sorry. I just remember Johnny Carson, which most of you don't even know who that is. Let alone Jay Leno. You kind of have heard of Jay, huh? He's still alive. Well, Johnny is too. Anyways, back to the point. The biggest change that needs to happen is me. I got to get out of my way. It's not even my way. I got to get out of God's way. So today we're going to look at that. And it starts in Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 14, as we're going to read along with this. And you can follow along with this through the YouVersion of the Bible app. And if you go to events, more and events, you will find the notes to this sermon right there. And all of the quotes, just like the last one from Timothy Lane. But we're going to start reading in Romans 6, verse 1. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from death, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. Wow, we could continue in this text. It keeps going and you might want ...