In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of not letting the patterns of the past and self-concern control our lives. He encourages believers to present themselves to God as instruments of righteousness, rather than instruments of wickedness. The preacher reminds the audience that the power of self has been broken at the cross, and believers now have the freedom to choose righteousness. He also highlights the significance of Jesus' death and resurrection, emphasizing that through Christ, believers have been purchased and set free from slavery to self.

We'll just examine the text together and ask the Lord's blessing. This is the heart of the heart of the gospel. To miss this is to be disqualified from any other consideration. Romans, chapter 6. I think we're going to start in 5 just to get the flow of Paul. Remembering that chapter designations were a later provision for the convenience of Christian readers. But it was not in Paul's letters. He didn't stop at 5 or 6. It was just a continuous flow. And the logic of the one thing led into the other. Our appreciation for 6 will be enhanced if we just see what precedes it. And it's the remarkable, what's the word, exacting, scalpel-like precision of Paul to open up this great heart of the faith and needs to be followed closely. And you'll not get it in a single or simple reading. So he's comparing Adam and Christ, the one who brought death, the other who brought life. And in verse 15, but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation. But the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. Here's Adam and Jesus and the polarity, the alternatives brought by one and brought by the other. If verse 17, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion throughout that one, much more surely will those who received the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Well, we would profitably spend the balance of the morning just taking apart that remarkable statement. What Paul says in one statement, what a mouthful, and the language that he employs is so remarkably unique so that there's a correspondence between grace, the gift of righteousness, and life, dominion in life. The object of the benefit derived from the greater Adam is in life, a dominion in life, not as with the first Adam, a death that came through trespass, but a gift of righteousness that we might exercise dominion in life. It might practically affect all the aspect of our life and being, which is righteous because the nature of God's life is righteousness. So one is the synonym for the other. Therefore, just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness, why is it an act of righteousness? Because it issues out a life of Jesus. It cannot be anything other than righteous. It's an act of righteousness that brings righteousness, that righteousness should characterize the dominion that saints have in life, which means that the conduct of the saint is in keeping with the nature of God who is righteous. This is so beyond religious categories. This is so beyond attending to the law and the details of observance that characterize a Judaistic righteousness. And the remarkable thing is that it's an unselfconscious righteousness. You don't have to be breaking your head. Should I? Shouldn't I? What about this? What about that? The life itself is inherently righteous by its nature. And this is the gift of grace. Is this life that is in its nature righteous? And those who live by that life will live righteously. You're freed from breaking your head to debate, if I shouldn't, what about, what if. Just let the life have its remarkable expression. That's not to encourage us to mindlessness, but even the mind itself is governed by and reflects and exercised and is animated by that life. It's not a faculty independent of the life. So just as one man's trespass in verse 18, chapter five, let the condemnation for all. So one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience, the many were made sinners. So by the one man's obedience, the many will be made righteous. But the law came in with the result that the trespass multiplied, but where sin increased grace abounded all the more. So that just as sin exercised dominion in death, the end of the wages of sin is death. So grace might also exercise dominion through justification or through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. We're almost running where we should be walking more slowly through these remarkable verses. But just enough to lead us into the argument that commences chapter six. So if grace abounds more where sin is, some naïve saints are even saying, well, does that give me license to sin? Because if I sin, so grace will abound. And Paul then begins chapter six. God forbid that you should think that. Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin go on living in it? This is not an invitation to luxuriate in sin, because you're confident that where sin is, grace abounds the more. Quite the contrary. The grace that has come is contrary to sin. It's not an invitation to sin. Now, if we substitute the word self everywhere with Paul employs the word sin, we'll more deeply understand this grace and gift of life. The word self was not current in Paul's generation, but the word sin was. But in our Freudian and psychological generation, we know that self is the problem and that all that issues from self is sin. But if we see this as God's provision against self, we'll more acutely understand the greatness of what was wrought at the cross, of laying the axe to the root of self, that we might be freed from its consequence, which is sin. Anything that issues out of self culminates and has its expression as sin. So how can we who died to self go on living in it? Now, pause. It does not just mean how can we who died to carnal self-life go on living in it, but self-life in all of its forms and expressions. And I was sharing with one brother yesterday, the last and final and deadliest expression of the self-life is not carnality or pornography, although there are some saints who are wrestling with those things, or even intellectuality. You go from the base, most carnal animal expressions of self, passion, lust, gratification of the senses, then there's the higher order of intellect and sensibility, where self can be just as profound and just as powerful as at the lower level of carnality and sensuality. Follow that? And if so, then, if you have been disabused both of the carnality of flesh and sensuality as the expression of self, and you've even risen above intellectual gratification, how many people know that level? If you've been at the university level, or you're interested and occupied in the life of ideas, writing, thought, that can become intoxicating. And it's so superior to base sensuality that you may have thought that you had arrived. And this is where most Jews live their life. Not in the realm of carnal sensuality, though there are Jews who are down there, and their talk is about food, pleasure, fun, going to the spa, all those kinds of things. But there's a higher order of Jewish life. That's to be found at the university level, music, culture, art, refinement. But self can be just as profoundly lived in that area as in the level of sensuality. So we mustn't miss it or allow it to be disguised, but to recognize. If self cannot be allowed to avail itself at the level of sensuality, it will gladly operate through intellectuality, so long as it is still on the throne. So long as it is still the central orbit of one's life and being, an intellectual endeavor can be that. I know enough of it to assure you of its power. And yet, there's a higher realm, and that's probably the area of the difficulty for most of us that we don't recognize it, that if self cannot find a place to operate either in sensuality or intellectuality, it will operate in the realm of spirituality. And there it hides itself most effectually because it is clothed with jargon and phraseology right out of scripture and serving God and uses the word worship. It even uses the word apostolic and prophetic. It'll use whatever it needs to use, so long as it is safely ensconced, established and unchallenged as the root pivot and orbit of anyone's life. This is where we have missed it, that we have not recognized self, this cloying, demanding, it's like a monster that will not be satisfied. It's got to be running the show, and everything has got to be predicated toward its gratification. So again, I repeat myself, if it will not be gratified at the lowest level, it will seek then at the intermediate level, and if you've graduated from that, it will find you at the highest level. That's why Paul despairs in Romans 7, who can save me from this death? What am I going to do, lie down on a bed of nails? Am I going to be disciplined and say, I refuse, I refuse to allow self to be enthroned in spirituality, and I'll watch for it, I'll guard it? No way. That very watchfulness in guarding makes more secure and strengthens the self-life. You've given it more ammunition, more room to operate out of that self-conscious defending of yourself in the realm of spirituality. So then, Paul says, woe is me, what can I do? And then he says, thank God for Jesus Christ. And that's where Paul takes us now. It's the cross that alone liberates the believer from any supplety of self, because the cross effectually lays the axe to the roof. And only the cross can, because the cross is the ultimate statement of death. Jesus wasn't mocking death, he wasn't play-acting death, although some have supposed that he was drugged, or he feigned it, and then later he recovered, but there wasn't an actual death and resurrection. This is striking, this kind of apostasy and heresy strikes at the very heart of the faith. Jesus was stone-cold dead. He was a limp cadaver. He was even becoming gangrenous. If you see that great masterpiece in the Colmar, France, the Eisenheim altar, as we have it here somewhere, rolled up on a scroll, you never saw a more pathetic-looking cadaver than what Jesus was on that cross. But if you walk around that painting, you come to the resurrection site, and the same one who was wounded with his pale lips and a little dried-up drool is burst out in resurrection light. When you read Ben Israel, you'll see how I met a German artist as a hitchhiker, and he said, Art, you must not miss seeing this masterpiece at Colmar, France. Well, at your recommendation. I've seen Jesus depicted before on velvet and little statuettes like a ballet dancer with a little loincloth. But at his recommendation, I went, the Jewish atheist, cynical, and despising the name of Jesus as we Jews are trained to do. When I stood in front of this painting, I don't have a word for it, my jaw dropped. There was something so beyond words in the depth of this death that the feet are gnarled and twisted. Someone said, you can't even tell whether this is a man or an animal. It's a grotesque, stretched out in such depth that what he bore kind of an asphyxiation at the cross where your body fluids actually drown you because of your strained position with your arms raised above, and that's why they broke the legs of the victims because the victims stretched themselves in order to not suffocate, to gasp another gasp of air. When they broke the legs, they were overwhelmed by their body fluids and drowned. What's the word? So this is pathetic, but if we could turn to the other side, we see the same Jesus every place where there's signs of brutality and cutting and bleeding, beams of glory are pouring out and the Roman gods have been set around the throne that this deceiver that his body would not be stolen and that the end would be worse than the beginning because this deceiver said on the third day he would rise again and so they set about a Roman guard and it shows them falling under the power of the glory of the father raising Jesus from the dead. They're falling headlong, their helmets are falling off, and here's this glorious figure emerging with beams of glory pouring out of every perforation in his flesh. This is the heart of the faith saints, Christ and him crucified. That's why Paul said I'm determined not to know anything but Christ and him crucified because every other knowledge contends against it and wants to drown out this knowledge, but this is the heart of our faith. It's an absurdity. Resurrection is the most difficult thing for any human to consider. It's a violation. It offends against human sensibility and intellectual it's a threat against rationality that a man could be raised from the dead and yet Paul is going to argue that this is the very basis for our liberation. If we join him in this in this death and that burial we will join him also in that resurrection. How can we possibly join him? That was 2,000 years ago. How can we now enter in to this depth of this reality of death and resurrection? Because this resurrection is not just a resuscitation of bringing Jesus back to life again he was raised in the power of God, the glory of God unto a newness of life. Resurrection is not just a reviving resurrection is a new quality of life that never was before Jesus' resurrection. He was the first fruit, the first son of resurrection. The power that broke the feathers of death is of such a unique kind that it's not only the power that raised him but the quality of life with which he was raised that we have inherited that enables us to live in a newness of life. That's how great this is. No wonder that the enemy has sought to minimize trivialize and in any way that he can have the church lose the heart of his faith and not the least of his successes is infant baptism in my opinion. That tradition that grew up and has become central to all of the European mainline traditional state churches is the practice of infant sprinkling. When we see that the kind of union that God has provided waits for a joining with him in a death by burial and not by mere sprinkling. As you compare sprinkling to burial a light trifle few dots of water as against an immersion in and under you can see the difference in what will be the benefit obtained in the one virtually nothing in the other the union with Christ. So when I baptize someone they are baptized they are put under, they are buried and I keep them down long enough as I myself wanted to be kept down and I asked my pastor when I was baptized as a young I said keep me down I want to feel, I want to know and experience burial and I want to bring this this Jewish mindset, this arrogant mechanism by which my life has been ruled for the first 35 years into the place of death because I know it's antithetical to faith it's arrogant by it's very nature it's conceited, it wants to have a life of it's own and the only answer for this kind of thing that now wants to be used for God calling the shots of should I, shouldn't I, will I do this that is death keep me under and he did and I keep believers under also so what are we to say should we continue in sin or self if that grace may abound, God forbid no means, how can we who died to self go on living in it when did we die to self now he's going to explain, don't you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death oh I didn't know that I thought I was just fulfilling a religious ordinance well that's what you believe, that's what you got as your faith is so be it unto you and knowledge is not antithetical to faith knowledge is the object of faith and Paul is telling us where that death was obtained, if we didn't know that and didn't consciously go into those waters in order to obtain it it's a moot question of whether we ever have and that's why we're still kicking that's why the self-life is still functioning, still exerting itself at the most embarrassing moments we will betray him in the dark night that will come and come suddenly, if self-life has been hiding and prospering quietly and discreetly here and there, finding ways to continue its existence it will trip us up in a final moment when uttermost spirituality, authentic spirituality is called for we'll find embarrassingly self will have taken over, it was there all the while, it had never died it just hid itself in spirituality in spiritual language in talking about the will of God even welcoming the judgments of God, why? because then you know that you're the object of God's attention even in judgment, you're craving you're cravening, what's the word? egoism that self-life that will not be placated, cannot lie down on a bed of nails, will never be instructed never be disciplined, there's only one answer for it death, if it has not been killed, crucified and buried, it will hide and come forth to contradict us in the most embarrassing and scandalous moments that's why this is so critical, don't you know, Paul says you who have been baptized, don't you know that you were buried with him in death? I didn't know that he told me that, if you didn't know it, how then can you believe it? all you did was get wet that's why Paul is speaking in past tense and what a precious provision this is because Paul is speaking to believers at his own generation, but what he's speaking is so appropriate for our own generation and every generation because unmistakably and assuredly the overwhelming number of Christians who have submitted to even an immersion of baptism if they did not know what that represented and did not desire what that represented, did not receive it, so Paul is saying to them, here's what it meant, now is he saying go back again and get water baptized? No, what he's saying is now that you know this appropriate this meaning to what you have experienced, how can we who have died to sin go on living in it? Don't you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? I think the word baptism is not a translation it's a transliteration of a Greek word that actually means immersion therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death I have that statement underlined with yellow what do you call it? highlighting, that's key statement if you don't have a yellow highlighter put that in brackets and dwell upon that cogent statement therefore we have been buried here's past tense with him when by what means? by baptism unto death baptism is a burial unto death now if you have no stomach for that and you just want to be a respectable Christian maybe even with a superior vocabulary and a little show of spirituality and interest in Israel and have no stomach for death you need not take this route and I think that might be the condition of many to put it another way, if you had never before been baptized and you're candidates for baptism and I'm instructing you on what baptism means and saying this is the end of your life death is not a little figurative fancy, it's not a little poetic aside, death is death there's nothing more final and more total than the word death Jesus did not fame death, this was death in its totality and there's nothing more total than death that is to say when you go into this water you're not going to preserve your best it's your best that God is after it's your best that's ripping you up it's not that you're getting rid of your hang-ups you're only too anxious and willing to bring your hang-ups to death but God says no, it's the totality of death, hang-ups and virtues both, hang-ups and talents both every kind of thing that's in you that is natural that is with your own autonomy and your own humanity, there's only one place where it's death can't Ishmael live? Abraham cried out to God can't Ishmael live? can't the son of flesh live also with Isaac? can't both have their own kind of existence? see the flesh cries out, it doesn't want to let go and so if you were being candidates for baptism for the first time, I would say to you do you realize what God is providing? are you willing for that provision? especially being young it's one thing to be an old crock like me and you've lived most of your life in fact you've lived more lives than ten men or a dozen men will live in a lifetime you can well afford to die because you've had a sumptuous existence you've been all over the world and all that but when you're young and you've not hardly taken first steps and you want so much to sow your own oats your wild oats and do your own thing and achieve your own success and be recognized for that and God will say no you can't even take that route if you want to I'll let you and you may cut quite an impressive figure but it will not be out of my life it will be out of your life and men will congratulate you for that and call you blessed and call that spiritual but you will have fallen short of my glory that's why you're here you dear saints God is so jealous over you he will not let you be processed in any other place than this place that is rooted and founded on this death when you come here abandon all hope we need to put that up at the head of the entry to this property your flesh your religious intentions your Hutterite background any other kinds of things that have served you so well and have brought here and there indications of reward and benefit and have you been complimented for it's the end death is total because God tells us that in us there is no good thing at all there is no good thing why call us only good Jesus rebuked this rich ruler who was going to compliment him and complimenting him and Jesus accepting the compliment Jesus would have been brought onto that Judaic ground that celebrates man in himself as good why do you call me good there is no man good but God Jesus knew with absoluteness where righteousness is, God nothing in man and nothing more disfiguring and contradictory than to attempt righteousness on the basis of a life that is inherently by nature unrighteous for that life to try and play at the game of righteousness is a travesty and a mock, that's what orthodox Judaism is, or orthodox anything that predicates itself upon man you've got to come to a place where you agree with God in his total condemnation of man he would not commit himself to man it says in John many believed on him because they saw the miracles that he performed but he would not entrust himself to them he would not commit himself to them for he knew what was in man he would not accept even their acknowledgement of himself as Messiah, because they came to it out of their humanity when Peter came to it who do men say that I am and here's Peter impetuous thou art the Christ, the son of the living God Simon blessed art thou this is the beginning of your blessedness because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, it cannot reveal this to you, but you have received this from the Father you know me, not by flesh by your humanity, by your conclusion by weighing the pros and cons and estimating and evaluating what I've said and done, this has come to you from above and that's the beginning of blessedness, he would not entrust himself to man, he knew what was in man, the question for you is do you know do you know what was in your humanity and your manhood that on the basis of which you want to succeed for God, talk about impudence and arrogance not only do you want to succeed, you want to succeed for God on the basis of your humanity you have a pretty low estimation of God and a very high exaltation of yourself if you think that you can so succeed, you've got to come to I shared with Brian yesterday, he said I said have you done your homework, have you written your own but how do I appropriate it I forgot what I said I walked away and I came back later and said I think I have an answer for you, through despair you appropriate through despair that's a magical thing I now believe there's some a despair of what, a despair of any possibility of ever succeeding in the high calling of God in Christ Jesus on the basis of your own humanity you despair of anything and you know that Oswald Chambers whom we quote frequently, had to go through a dark night of the soul and it went on for the longest period of time and I shared with you what I had to suffer as a high school teacher trying to succeed as a new believer in front of my students so esteeming the opportunity to touch their lives and think if I succeeded as an atheist, how much more as a believer I was worse as a believer and that God was not going to allow me to succeed on that basis however well meaning my intention only on the basis of his life so this is the long and short of it guys his life is so precious so utterly righteous so all powerful so the highest thing that could be understood as spiritual, holy that he'll not mix it he'll not allow you to toy with it and work out some amalgam of a little of you a little of him all of you has to go all of Jesus had to go in his humanity, he had to die totally in his humanity and don't you think that his humanity was more impressive than yours at the age of 12 he was instructing the doctors of the law when the family went up to Jerusalem for the Passover he was already about his father's business and he was growing in grace and in favor with God and with men he was impressive, he was so impressive in his humanity, men would have installed him as the Davidic king but God would not allow him to succeed even on that basis that humanity however exalted however precious however more perfect than our own itself had to die and if his humanity had to die how shall we preserve ours let alone have the presumption to think that we can succeed on its basis so woe is me Paul cries out in seven death, you know what answer wherever I look, I am the well-meaning Jew and rabbinically educated yet I'm confronted by my own inherent failure, I've kept all the law but the tenth commandment thou shalt not covet that I could not keep because something in my nature that cannot be disciplined, discipline envies and desires what others have, their position their place, their attainment I cannot swallow that down if I keep all of the nine others, I'll respect father and mother but coveting is the ineluctable and irrepressible part of nature, man's nature that wants that acquires there's the cane in us that means to acquire and is envious of Abel who is selfless and mindless about himself and makes the right sacrifice because he's intuitively recognizing the greatness of God and only blood and he's the object of your envy unto murder and death you cannot discipline that root, the only answer for it is death and Paul recognizes that, so where do we obtain it two thousand years later in the water of baptism buried with him by baptism into death so what is the requirement first to recognize the need that the only answer is death, self cannot be disciplined, it will find in all of its subtlety one form or another by which it can hide itself and continue to be the orbit of that life, just like my dogs they think my existence is to take them for walks they don't know that I have any other purpose for my being my existence is for them that's dumb brute animals but our humanity is not much better, we are the center, the universe is with us, we are the reason for being not Christ and the greatest cruelty and contradiction is to continue from that false orbit ostensibly for Christ, Christ has got to be the center, he's got to be the orbit the wellspring, the whole purpose for being and the only way is to get that usurper off that throne through death it's a death sentence so if you have never been baptized do you recognize the necessity have you come to a place of despair are you sick to the teeth with play acting with trying, with devices with running from one school to another, one mentor to another to find an answer here or there that will yet establish you in your desire of spirituality without the necessity to die because you don't want to throw in the towel you want to continue your life, only you want it to be more spiritual so you'll go from school to school, ministry to ministry looking for something that will enhance but not challenge or threaten, well you've come to the wrong place this time the Lord has trapped you, cut you off at the pass the building of the tower of Babel is another perfect illustration of man exalting himself at the expense of God even to ascend higher than God how? by making bricks and employing slime whatever ingredients can be found that are artificially contrived and not to be found even in nature human from beginning to end to ascend higher than God is a beautiful picture of what is the nature of man to exalt himself at God's own expense and even ironically ostensibly in the name of God so that's, can you see the only answer is death now the question is, you see it but now how do you obtain it what am I going to do I'll nail myself to a cross so instead you might succeed with the one nail but how are you going to nail the other but a provision has been made for us that's why Paul says as I've mentioned, I'm determined not to know anything but Christ and him crucified for in that crucifixion he suffered the death of all as sin came upon all through the transgression of one man Adam so has deliverance and righteousness in life come by the God man, Jesus Christ through his death, his crucifixion and what is the provision a sacrament, baptism of water that when you go down into it and let it come up over you and being baptized by another, you don't go in by yourself their self-life is proud as one Jewish brother when I was with him in Israel, he ran off into the Mediterranean I'll baptize myself he said all he did was got wet and availed nothing, because if you're that yet coquettish about I'll do it myself how then are you bringing yourself to death the very act of submitting to the hands of another is already a sign of death, especially if you have thought yourself superior to the one who's baptizing you it's going down and under so, first despair, and I can only pray for you young brothers that you'll not have to knock your knuckles bloody against walls and walk into walls and open yourself to every kind of defeat and failure and frustration until you finally come to this recognition if you only by faith now vicariously receive the word of an older man who's gone that way and not have yourself to do it and recognize there's no future for self in the end you'll come to this recognition, why not come to it now and save an unnecessary trail of blood and mishap and misfortune not only for yourself but on those upon whom you will inflict yourself in failed marriages in raising up children that will be parentless in hurting the body of Christ and doing other kinds of damage while you're still striving and wrestling to find some way out of yourself to succeed before God we're commending to you now, it's a dead end why not face the prospect of death now and throw in the towel and say you're right, I see that and man is no good thing, I never can out of myself ever come to a place that will be ultimate okay, having therefore come to that conclusion, then what? then you submit to the ordinance to the provision of baptism in water you go under but you're not getting wet you recognize what baptism represents and you're entering it with that understanding and with that faith that it will bring you to that death and when you come up out of the water you'll be a new creature and in fact if there's no power in that sacrament and you're just merely getting wet you of all men will be most pitied most to be pitied if this doesn't work that's why Paul says I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ it is the power of God unto salvation unto eternal life this works, God is in this water he's waiting to receive you and bring you into the death which he himself bore 2000 years before and the remarkable mystery of a sacrament that he himself established in his wisdom that every successive generation can enter his death by virtue of it at any time water baptism so you have first to desire it you have second to believe it as your faith is so be it unto you you understand it as death you'll receive it as death but for a young man to understand and to desire it as death is uncommon and rare and that's why I think the Lord is taking the pains and the time now to articulate this to invite our young men and older ones to understand and to desire and to achieve and obtain now what must necessarily come and believe it that there is a newness of life for if we have been united with him in death like his we will certainly and assuredly be united with him in a resurrection like his if you join him in the one you cannot help inescapably but to participate in the other there is no newness of life except you first join him in the death you can't over leap this and just embrace the life part and shrink from the death part they are inextricably and ineluctably joined you cannot have the one independent of the other you must first of all sow the spirit of your own natural life and agree with God in his word that there is no good thing in it and secondly you must so esteem the newness of life which is the life of God which is righteousness which is a life that has been exalted by being raised to the throne and it is a throne life it is an ascendant life this isn't just animal vitality this is not just energy this is a wholly new kind of life and energy and power with a particular quality of a kind that Jesus himself never knew in his earthly tenure but experienced in the power that raised him and now pours out that new quality of life upon us who will join him in death it's a newness of life even in repeating a familiar thing in the statement now there is a newness he makes all things new and so this is the nature of that life once you taste it once you can believe for it how can you ever go back to the dreads of mere human life trying to be religious trying to be identified with Israel it's pitiful it doesn't compare this is glory this is life it's eternal, it's righteous it's new and it's God's definitive intention for all saints can you imagine an entire church living in this power and this reality whew if that doesn't move Jews to jealousy there is nothing else that can or will to see this life manifest and express itself it's the ultimate paradox and irony that we by discipleship are going to imitate or bring forth something like this out of our flesh discipleship can only be enacted, fulfilled and obtained on the basis of that life and no other for that discipleship is cross centered in it's very nature you cannot humanly well you can take a stab at it and you'll have some kind of disjointed and caricatured expression that might even impress many people it has it's shoulders above ordinary pew in the church religion but it falls short of the glory and therefore your ministry, your kingdom your denomination and how is that turning the world upside down it's not even affecting the world there's that church in Brooklyn where the Jewish community is growing right up it's doors and they have not been an iota affected by the presence of that Pentecostal Evangelical denomination smack dab in their midst because they're living out their Pentecostalism religiously and humanly out of themselves the newness of life has not been obtained or expressed yet that would flow out into that community and affect Jews so yes see this is religion what is religion? an attempt to fulfill the requirements of God out of our unaided humanity if God would only help us will help me to do that's shabby I'm not here just to help you I'm here to transfigure and to transform you I'm here to be in union with you that I will be your life your courage, your speaking your utterance, your compassion, your patience your forbearance, your trust you'll have the faith of the son of God, you'll have the love of the son of God or how are you going to address those bones? you think that your discipline is going to bring resurrection to dry bones however well meaning you are it'll fall as flat with a thud pathetically unless it's the life of God unless it's the resurrection life speaking to those bones but out of a faith that believes that it could take place out of your mouth it's out from the son of man but it's that life and if it's faith it'll not work unless it's a faith that works by love that is to say mere sentimental attachment to Israel and desiring you know humanly religiously for their success that word will fail it has got to be both the faith of the son of God and the love of God which so exceeds anything that we can issue out of our own humanity or out of our stricken German consciences which is still our humanity so praise God for this provision the great if of Paul, if we have been united with him in a death like his we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his no sweat, no question no doubt at all if you have attended to the one the other will assuredly follow Paul is is absolutely convinced because he is the absolute demonstration of this very reality that's why we don't hear Romans 6 expounded who can really expound it how is it that Paul is the one who gives us the the ultimate definition and exposition because he is so much the result, so much the product, so much the man of the resurrection, he is not speaking abstractly, this is not a piece of bookish knowledge this is the man whose very life is predicated on this truth, he is the man who lives out of that munis of life that's why he can tell you assuredly I gave up my Judaism I gave up such treasure, I had such distinction my intellect, I was a candidate for such success, a prize student of the Rabbi Gamaliel I counted all that as done I was not at all impressed with succeeding on that basis, I brought it into death, I counted it as done only worthy of death and because I joined him in that death of totality, not just to the worst that I have it on but to the best now therefore I am joined with him in munis of life, and my apostolic career is that expression and I can guarantee you that if it works for me who was a murderer of the church in the zeal of my human religiosity it will work for you if you are united with him in a death like his which is total you will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his for we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of self or sin might be destroyed put out of commission, we might no longer be enslaved to it because we are slaves every consideration is how will it serve my purposes how will I obtain greater recognition from them how will I be established in my own ministry which I know is higher and above and choice more so than others you are a slave you are every thought every breath you draw is tinctured and tainted with self consideration he has come to make us free to be free in Christ is to be free in deed all the way through the cookie because his death has cut laid the axe to the root it cannot survive the cross self cannot survive it cannot come through it's just like the Egyptians could not follow after Israel and pass through the same Red Sea the waters came up and engulfed them and Israel looked back and saw their pursuers drowned Egypt cannot follow through those waters baptism is the effectual cutting off of ourselves from Egypt and that aspect of Egypt that wants to pursue us which is called demons they can't pass through that water only those who are joined with Christ can pass through it and be raised up from it and no longer be enslaved to it for whoever has died is freed from self death is liberation but if we have died with Christ we believe that we will also live with him Amen we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again this is a once and for all all inclusive death and that's why Paul could say grave where is your terror and death where is your sting I'm not afraid of martyrdom or by what means my bodily life is going to be finally put aside the issue of death is already resolved isn't that a wonderful freedom not to be worried about how you're going to end it has ended and what goes on after that is the grace of the God who is now your life your bodily life even and for as many length of days and for whatever purpose you walk through the world like a giant in the world of pygmies, that's me afraid, not intimidated by anything, you're not impressed you've come out your death has freed you from the world, it's wisdom it's power, it's influence it's need to be esteemed or to be celebrated a man can slam the door in your face and not even come and give you an explanation as if you're some kid off the street and you're old enough to be that man's father and you're not receiving the most elementary courtesy, let alone respect and you walk away totally unaffected you're hurt for the Lord's sake but for yourself, it's water off the duck's back there's no ego there's no esteem, no reputation that needs to be preserved, you've died you are what you are by the grace of God men can belabor you, be critical of you they can applaud or they can damn you, it's all the same you're not ruled, you're not enslaved by the need for human response or evaluation or appraisal or approval you're freed dying daily is a mock, unless this is the foundation of all your dyings once you have allowed this act to be laid to your root, then it's possible and needful in the moments of obedience to die again, the same death afresh in what's come to you now so, it's a daily dying and for every daily dying there's a newness of life, there's another resurrection from now on and unless this is consistently our history and our experience, how shall we in that ultimate moment, address the bones, in the moment of God's calling, if we have not had a history of consistent submitting to death and expressing the life of God prior to that time we'll not come to it in a moment if we have not characteristically lived in death and resurrection till that moment where the word here says destroyed, it does not mean obliterated, it means that it's power is effectually cancelled, but it's still there, working if you want to condescend to go back into the flesh and into your humanity God will allow you to act from it so that's why every moment is a choosing again a choice, walking in the spirit is nothing more or other than successive consistent choices to be willing to die to that possibility that the life of God might go forth that's why Paul says, it's death that works in me, but life in you but you have to understand it's a willing death that Paul is embracing that life might go forth in you because at any moment he could have fallen back again into his Judaistic mode of living, into his own humanity and gotten by but he he chose each moment to submit to death and that's why he talks about his weakness and that he was not impressive in his human form of speaking and they had to bite the bullet that's why I can go to a Lutheran seminary for two years and can't remember one message given at the what do they call their chapel service time, not one why? because every single utterance, totally biblical carefully arranged men knew months in advance when their day would come because it was the faculty and administrators who were assigned each chapel service and they knew well in advance so they had weeks and months to prepare air tight messages that there would be no way in which they could be criticized or fail because their reputation was at stake, I never heard one man stand at that pulpit and trust God and come up with just a verse or a thought or a very intimation of the disposition of God and trust it and even this pastor in Brooklyn where I said you spoke on respite, did you speak out of the rest? he had to admit to me later over his coffee table, over his kitchen table, there was a moment of brother cats, you see he's still religious I have to admit that there was a moment when the Holy Spirit said to me let go of your notes and trust me, I said what did you do? I knew what he did he said I swallowed it down and I went on cleaving to my notes, I was afraid to let go, I was afraid to take the risk, I was afraid to fail, I was afraid to die to that area of proven and tested success religiously that enables me to get by before a congregation that my continuing my reputation and success with my people was more important than letting God in in the hope of his glory, I could not take the risk of failure, I'm too alive for myself self had not been crucified still there and here's a man who has probably preached on the cross but no more effectually than he can preach on the rest because you can't preach beyond the realm of your own experience and the reality that has been brought in obedience unto death, that's why we don't hear this where do we hear the proclamation of the cross, where do we hear the exposition of the rest so few so we believe we will also live with him, verse 9 we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again, death no longer has dominion over him that's that wonderful freedom you don't have to be afraid to trust God you don't have to be afraid of the loss of reputation, you've died to it, there's not even a consideration for reputation the death he died he died to self, once and for all underline all, that means you here's reason to love the Lord, he's purchased your deliverance he's purchased your freedom from slavery, you would have been unquestionably a slave till the end of your days to self, you could not help it but be concerned for being recognized, being admired being successful, you'll be a slave ever but he died for all with his death comes the one freedom from bondage as Adam's sin affected all, Christ's death equally affects all but in that he lives he lives unto God, this is the remiss of life you dear saints, this is the first time, because previously we lived unto ourselves and for ourselves, even religiously, even when we said for Christ's sake, it was really in the last analysis but obviously now for the first time, this new life that we have, what is it's character it lives, it's very nature is to live unto God and for God that's it's nature it cannot do otherwise it cannot live for self that would be a contradiction of it's nature it's very nature is to live unto God, why do we take the bread and the blood, we're taking the character of God and the nature of God, in that line is the spirit of his life which is poured out for many, so this is the spirit of being poured out, that's why he celebrated that woman who broke that alabaster box and poured the ointment over his head and she was mocked and derided by his disciples, he said let that woman alone, she's done a good work on me, it's the only time he ever acknowledged anything by man that was good and where so ever this gospel shall be proclaimed in all the earth, this that this woman has done shall be spoken of as memorial for her, why? because what she did was the gospel what she did in that one act was the very essence of what God is in himself, he's a God who pours out, don't you know haven't you glimpsed it a little bit in me pouring out not because I'm self conscious I want to make sure you guys get your money's worth, there's no way that you can ever pay for this but the nature of the life that's in me it's very nature is to pour out and that's the way I can go from Holland to Germany to Asia to Indonesia, to Singapore to any place and come back for two weeks and go out again that's God's nature, it's a newness of life, this is the nature of the life to try to imitate that self consciously, religiously is a mock so he died to self once for all but the life he lives, he lives unto God and we will live unto God and for God there will be a new orbit, a new orientation a new purpose, reason for being, we are out of the picture he's totally in it, he's enthroned so you must also consider yourselves as dead unto yourself and alive unto God, on the basis of this these words, these scriptures spirit inspired Paul says now reckon yourself dead why does he make that a final statement because you're always tempted to consider that you're not dead it seems that you're still thinking thoughts of a kind that are self aggrandizing you still see yourself disposed to be tempted by lust of flesh or whatever the enemy knows what to play upon even to simulate your own voice and knows the pattern of your past and will so fabricate and affect your thought as if you are still alive to those things when the scripture says you've died for them so you've got to decide again and again where reality is and your thought that says look I prayed and I did what art was recommending and I agreed but look I'm still thinking those thoughts and I still have this temptation I still see my vanity and pride I guess it didn't work you got took you didn't reckon yourself dead you allowed yourself to be impressed by the imitator, the mocker who knows how to simulate your voice and knows your past only too well and knows what to play upon when I get temptations like that you haven't changed Cass, you're the same this you're the same that and I say oh really and I give the enemy a chance to reveal himself and when he begins to say yeah didn't I tell you already I say okay flake off that's not the way my God speaks to me you mocker you tempter that's not God that's you trying to ease me away from what God has already wrought in the power of his own death and by joining him in it by baptism I believe myself dead unto God unto self and alive unto God and when do I believe it? when I stand before 2000 people when I'll go to the Frankfurt conference on Jewish evangelism and speak once that that speaking is unto God, by God, for God through God while the enemy is saying that's just you Cass that's your personality you're a wet blanket out of the north and you spoil everybody's fun and you picked up on this because that's the tendency of your own personality you're doing your own thing how come God can have the confidence that the word that I speak is his word because I have no other word how can I have the confidence that what I'm willing and desiring is his will and his desire because I have no other will or desire the art Cass that wills and desires was crucified and buried I can tell you the date and the place in which he was buried and put away and the life that I now live as Paul says, I live by the life of Christ if Paul can say that why can't he say it was that God's provision for one apostle only or is it God's provision for an entire apostolic church especially the apostolic church of the last days yeah but Art it sounds so much like you well what were you expecting hear the Lord thus saith that would have convinced you I mean if it comes with a Brooklyn accent that ifso fact that it's not God it will necessarily come with a Brooklyn accent it will come with the coloration of your personality your background, your race, your origin but it's his life being transmuted and expressed through the vessel that he has wrought for that purpose it will never sound like something out of an echo chamber Jesus had that same problem it's easier for us to believe in Jesus two thousand years later in the record than had we lived in that time and seen the man who sweats, defecates, urinates goes hungry, gets tired that was the test before Israel can you see God through the the veil of that humanity so don't you be naive and look for some kind of demonstration can you see God in the flesh this is the mystery of incarnation and it will come to you with a Brooklyn accent but it will come to you Jesus said the spirit lists where it will and you cannot tell from where it has come nor where it goes follow me in the land that I will show you God said to Abraham are you willing to be led by the life and trust the life because the life is not only the energy it's also the wisdom of God and it's the will of God he's in us to do his good pleasure this is the glory of the church if we fall short of this great provision and living out of this inexhaustible life that is endless, infinite and indestructible what then is our prospect some wearisome predictable plotting religious kind of thing are you willing to trust in the confidence that if we have been buried with him unto death we shall also live with him unto newness of life and that life is all pervasive not just energy but wisdom, direction, love mercy and it may not even appear that to men it might appear as being unloving it might appear as being unmerciful but if it's a life of God that's its nature we are dead and hid with Christ in God until his life is revealed and when his life is revealed so will his glory be also so therefore in verse 12 do not let sin exercise dominion don't let the patterns of the past and the power of self concern affect your mortal bodies to make you obey your passions or your ambitions no longer present your members to self as instruments of wickedness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life present your members to God as instruments of righteousness for self will have no dominion over you, its power has been broken at the cross it's there lurking waiting opportunity but it doesn't have dominion its power has been broken and now you can rightly choose a new freedom in the life of God for you're not under that but under grace good stuff believest thou this desirest thou this so Lord what shall we say unto you what a provision what a provision we knew that the cross was central we knew that the issue of sin was met at that cross by the shedding of your blood which was accepted under the benevolent gaze of the father as you sprinkled it at the mercy seat of heaven but we didn't know that there was so much more affected by that death and that that death is supreme death even to that intractable thing that refuses to let go and wants under any guise to continue to function even being spiritual but we thank you Lord that your spirit can discern and find it out and that your cross has provided an end to it the totality of death through baptism in water total identification going under being buried because you'll not bury something that is still kicking and wanting to preserve itself and still have its autonomous and independent existence you'll only bury that which is dead crucified with you let there be a rejoicing in heaven for this is the repentance for which those that are around the throne of heaven wait to rejoice this is a repentance of not just feeling sorry but of a repentance unto death for in us is no good faith and we thank you my God that you've provided such a redemption such a freedom from that slavery my God that could never have been overcome nor mastered