What could be more glorious than to know that we are forgiven of our sin, redeemed from slavery to sin, and saved from eternal condemnation by God's amazing grace through faith in the redemptive work of Christ. And yet, some would argue that this superabundant grace not only permits the believer to keep on sinning, but encourages a life of sin: "God forbid," is Paul's emphatic response, "how shall we, that are dead to sin, still live in read more...
Just as the work of the Cross provides salvation when we believe it to be true, the work of the Cross also provides victory over the old sin nature when it is believed. We need to understand that the sin nature remains with us until our life on earth is ended - but the blood of Christ has given us victory over the functioning power of the sin nature within our life.
Before rebirth, we are connected to our sin nature much in the read more...
How important to know what our salvation means, and Paul tells us that the moment we trust in Christ we are baptised by one Spirit into His Body. At the moment we trust, the Holy Spirit places us into Christ Jesus and we become members of His Body, which is the Church.
But not only are we baptised into the Body of Christ at the moment of our salvation, but we have also been baptised into His DEATH. Water baptism may be a lovely read more...
The moment that we were born again, the Holy Spirit takes us from the kingdom of darkness, places us into the kingdom of God's dear Son, and we are baptised into the body of Christ and become one with Him. Sins are forgiven, we are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, fellowship with the Father is reinstated, we become children of God, citizens of heaven, and placed in unity with Christ Jesus our Lord.
Water baptism (though not essential read more...
There are many mysteries of our new life in Christ that are hard to understand, which remain a reality in the life of all who believe, and Paul's illustration of a believer's 'death to sin' through their 'baptism into Christ' is a difficult concept to grasp, while remaining a glorious truth in which to rejoice. "WE have been buried with HIM through baptism into death... so that just as CHRIST was raised from the dead, through the glory of the read more...
Christ died to pay the price for sins committed in our lives so that we might be forgiven, and Christ rose again the third day to break the power of sin in our lives so that we may live the rest of our Christian life free from the powerful strangle-hold of sin within our hearts. In this glorious chapter, Paul transports us to the pinnacle of who we are in Christ and what His death and Resurrection really means to all who believe on His name. Paul paints in read more...
Paul longed to know Christ and the power of His Resurrection, but his heart was also to share in Christ's suffering, for he desired intimate association with the Lord Who bought him, in the everyday circumstances of his life.
Paul knew the importance of relational closeness with the Lord Jesus, for by faith in His sacrificial death on our account, we were positioned in Him, and eternally united with Him. When Christ died, we died read more...
One could contemplate the wealth of truth packed into this single verse of Scripture for a lifetime and only scratch the surface of God's amazing grace towards those who, by faith in Christ, are united with Him. Jesus is our Substitute, our Representative, and heavenly Advocate. Jesus is the Author of a new creation, Whose resurrected life has become our new, born-again life. In Christ we have been made an entirely new race of people, which has removed us from the read more...
Christ not only died for sin - for our justification, but He died unto sin - for our sanctification. He not only died for sin, by paying the penalty of sin, but He died unto sin, breaking the power of sin in our life. When He died for sin, we were born from above to free us from the bondage of our old inherited sin-nature, and He gave us new spiritual life. At salvation, we were actually imputed with Christ's resurrected life so that we could function without read more...
Identification with Christ's death is the most thrilling doctrine for the believer. Christ died FOR our sins, to pay the price for our sins, but He also died TO sin; His death broke our relationship to sin which enables us to walk in newness of life. The moment Christ died unto sin on our behalf, we also died to sin once and for all, and now we are to live for Christ day by day.
Once we are placed in union with Christ by faith, read more...
We who by God's grace have been placed IN Christ by faith, are identified with Him and He with us. Indeed when we start to truly understand the significance and importance of our mutual identity.. we begin to understand the depth of the riches of both the wisdom of God.. and His gracious love towards us.
Christ identified with our sin and took the punishment that we deserve, so that we might identify with His righteousness, read more...
When our Saviour died on the Cross, He did so much more than dying FOR our sins (so that we could be forgiven of the many sins we commit throughout our lives); He died TO sin. Jesus died UNTO sin and this means that He died to break the power of sin in our lives. He died to sever us from the old sin nature that we inherited from our parents because of Adam's sin. He died to deliver us from the very influences of sin in our lives: "Jesus died UNTO sin read more...
Christ not only died for our sins; to pay the price for our sin, but He died to sin; so that the power of sin might be broken in the lives of all who believe in Christ. Just as Adam was the federal head of all his physical seed (all humanity), so Christ is the federal head of all His spiritual seed (all Church-age believers).
Just as all who are physical descendants of Adam are imputed with Adam's read more...
Throughout the preceding verses, Paul demonstrated, by logical progression, that all humanity has sinned. He proves that we all fall short of God’s glory and that the consequence of our sin is death. Paul makes it very clear that the wages of sin for every sinner, Jew and Gentile alike, is death - everlasting death - eternal separation from God. He shows that everyone is a sinner, and every sinner is alive to sin but is dead to God. Everyone is born a sinner, read more...
Romans is the seed-bed for Christian doctrine and Paul lays out the foundational truth of the glorious gospel of grace in this book, in a clear, concise, and systematic way. In the previous chapters, Paul took pains to show us that all men are sinners - both Jew and Gentile alike. All are in need of a Saviour and the only way to escape condemnation, to be eternally justified, to be declared righteous in God's eyes, and to be positionally set apart unto Him, is by read more...
In other passages in the Bible we know that Christ died FOR our sins, but in this passage in Romans we know that Christ also died UNTO sin. In the first instance, Christ died to pay the price of our sin, and the price that Jesus paid for our sin was His death. In the second case, Christ died to break the power of sin in our life, which means that for the rest of the time that we live in this sinful world, sin does not have to have power over us.
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God spoke the world into existence by the power of His might. By the Word of His mouth, He declared His unchanging and unchangeable laws into being and so often in Scripture, we see God's immutable principles laid out so simply, and yet too often we are unable or unwilling to apply His instruction in our own lives.
One principle we must understand and accept is detailed in verse 16 of Roman chapter 6: "Do you not know that read more...
No doubt through the eternity of eternities, we will thank God that although we were once slaves of sin, estranged from God, and without hope in the world, His Holy Spirit convicted us of our own gross sinfulness, our need of a Saviour, of Christ's perfect righteousness, and of God's righteous judgement on all that is evil. No doubt in the ages to come we will show forth praise and thanksgiving to our heavenly Father that we heard and responded to the gospel of read more...
Paul is setting out the only two options for life that are given to believers. He explains the differences between the two choices we have, the benefits we derive, and the consequences of our decisions, which depend entirely upon which of the two paths we choose to take in our Christian life.
Paul explains that there is a principle of life for every one of us. We are servants under the authority of a master and as a servant we read more...
Either we are in the kingdom of darkness, or the kingdom of light. Either we are children of our father the devil, or we are children of our Father, the Lord God Almighty. Either we are in the old creation in Adam, or we have been born again into the new creation in Christ. Either we are slaves of sin, impurity, and lawlessness, or we are slaves of righteousness, life, and truth, which is the path that leads us into sanctification (the lifelong process of being read more...
In His final message to the disciples, the Lord Jesus explained that knowledge of the truth was man's greatest freedom, in a world that is enslaved by sin, oppressed by Satan, condemned to death, and bound for hell. And here in this verse we find that Paul is expressing the same truth, in a way that appears to be somewhat incongruous on the surface, for we read, "when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness."
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Christ died FOR our sin, to pay the penalty for sin which positioned us in Christ and baptised us into His Body. He also died UNTO sin, so that the power of sin could be broken in the lives of all who believe in Him for salvation. Not only did the PRICE of sin have to be paid-for, in order to secure our salvation but also the POWER of sin in the lives of believers had to be severed in order to deliver us from the tyranny of sin read more...
There is no more important issue in the life of every man than knowing the way of salvation, because there are eternal consequences that lead to an eternal life with God or eternal separation from Him; heaven or the lake of fire. But some ignore it or delay it, others misunderstand it, and still more do not consider that they need to be saved from their sin.
Many today do not consider that they are sinners but see themselves as read more...