In this sermon, the preacher focuses on the sixth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. He emphasizes the sense of completion and conclusion in the previous chapter and addresses questions that may arise in people's minds. The preacher highlights the concept of dying to sin and being baptized into Jesus Christ's death, which leads to a new life free from sin. He emphasizes the importance of not allowing sin to reign in one's life and instead yielding to God and living a life of righteousness. The sermon concludes with the reminder that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ.

Will you turn to the sixth chapter of the Official to the Romans? There is quite obviously a sense of conclusion of a phase, an aspect of what he has to say at the end of chapter five. There is a sense of completeness, and yet he has questions to answer which come in people's minds which set him off on some wonderful rich aspects of the gospel of Christ the Father. Chapter six. What shall we say then, in view of all that I have been saying? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid, how shall we that have died to sin live any longer therein? Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death? 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. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin, for he that is dead is free from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more. Death hath no more dominion over him, for in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lust thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, and by the way the word servant here, and the word serve is the word in the Greek which means a slave, and slaving for sin. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves slaves to obey, his slaves ye are, to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. That God beset, that ye were the servants of sin, that ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness, the slaves of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members slaves to uncleanness, and to iniquity, unto further iniquity, even so now yield your members slaves to righteousness, unto holiness. For when ye were the slaves of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become slaves to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Yesterday morning we ended with the great two verses, verse 20 and 21. The law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. We saw there the two reigns, the reign of sin, and the reign of grace. And as we approach chapter six, I want to say a little more about those two reigns, because until we fully appreciate them, we won't be qualified to go on into Roman six. We're going on into Roman six this morning, be assured, at least I hope. But we must get this more established. The reign of sin. Sin reigning as a king over his many subjects. And I want to reiterate again that in which the power of sin over us consists. It is firstly in its ability to get us to reiterate certain acts so that they become habitable, which we find it difficult to break. That is a fact, a thing that sin does. But its basic power over us is its power to accuse us, to reproach us, to condemn us. That is the great purpose of the devil in getting us to sin, because he knows it puts a whip into his hand with which to thrash us. Of course, some hearts are more conscious of the thrashing than others. But all are conscious of it, the most depraved, they have a bad conscious, a sense of being wrong with God, a sense of not being what they ought to be. And of course it can, with a different temperament, become very, very acute. Precisely what the devil wants. Which you might like to look at Revelation 12, a familiar verse to some of us may be, verse 11. No, verse 10. And celebrating the salvation of Jesus, the angelic beings make reference, however, to the work of the devil. Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ, for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night. It's Satan who provokes you to sin. But his main purpose, amongst many other purposes in doing so, is to give him the opportunity to accuse, to accuse you before God, and say you've got no right to have any relationship with him at all. And also to accuse you to your own heart. And I would say that when Paul uses this word sin, he means the whole thing. Perhaps the foundation of the building is only 25 percent of the thing. 75 percent of sin is that which Satan builds upon you. It renders you feeble, it renders you inoperable. You don't want to get near God, you don't enjoy the fellowship of other Christians. The power of sin. This is sin having dominion over. As I said last night, a man may not be repeating certain sins continually. Maybe only once in his life for all I know. But that one sin can be had in dominion over him. Shadow is cast over him, it's condemnation upon him, it's repression upon his heart when he dares to think about himself and about God. Sin, the reign of sin. And as I said, the normal thing, of course, is when you feel like that, is to have recourse to what Paul calls the law. The moral principles of God. The do's and the don'ts of the Ten Commandments and every other moral principle. If only we could be like that, we should be all right. But we saw that law, rather than setting us free from the power of sin, only strengthens its sin. Indeed, law is that which gives sin its strength. In this sense, it gives us its ability to condemn us. In a way, it couldn't if there wasn't a law. And the more earnest a person is, the more sincere, the more conscientious, the more Satan condemns that man. He knows how far short he's come. Of course, there are those, the Jews were such in Paul's day, who thought that the law was just the thing that put them apart from anybody else. They didn't understand this, sensitive hearts did. That by the law, comes the knowledge of sin. And law enters only to make sin abound more. You see where you didn't see it before. And so we get the more condemned. And so, the natural thing, to be better and try harder, only plunges the soul into greater distress. Under the law, with its tenfold lash, learning alas how true, that the more I tried, the sooner I died, while the law cried, you, you, you, hopelessly still did the battle cry. Oh wretched man, my cry, and deliverance I sought by some penance book, while my heart cried, I, I, I. That is the thing in which the power of sin consists. That is sin, the whole thing. But sin has a further power, which I didn't mention last night. It's based on the former, in that it binds us, in that it acts as a master, and that it compels us to go on doing these things. And the way in which it works, we know from experience, is this. You reproach. There's darkness in your heart. You're out of touch. You're closed. You have a condemning heart, because of things you've been doing. All right, that occasion occurs again, to do the same thing. You may not yield to it this time. That you're failing, you're not yielding to it this time, doesn't put you in one better relationship with God. You're still reproached for what you've already done. And to the sensitive heart, the fact that he's ceased to do certain things, or on some occasions doesn't yield to the meaning he has in the past, doesn't make his situation one little better with God. Or in his heart, he's just as cold, just as dull, just as reproached. The sensitive heart can find no solace in the fact that on this occasion he didn't do it, because on many other occasions he has. So what's the point in not doing it? If you do resist that temptation, your situation is no better. You're not one little tiny bit nearer to God. God requires that which is past. And if you never sin, another sin from today you wouldn't be any better in your relationship with God. You'd still be the same old dull person cut off from God. So why resist the temptation? And a man gives in a second time. And every time you give in to your impulses, whatever they may be, temperamental ones or other ones, you're only succeeding strength. So the next time they give impulses so much stronger, and you're so much less able to resist. This is the power of sin to bind us. But even so, its basis is on that first one. Stronger situation is this, that you and I have an almost unlimited power to commit sin. But once it is committed, no power at all to remove it or terrify it. That's why I couldn't help but feel my heart rising when Harry quoted that text before he prayed. While we were yet without strength, Christ died, that means helpless. We got ourselves into a predicament which nothing in the world could get us out of. The fact that we are now not doing the things we used to hasn't helped us. We're just as reproached, just as condemned as before. How helpless and hopeless we sinners would be if he never had loved us, to cleanse from us, and he loved us while we were in that position. Unable to do the first thing, to extricate ourselves, our good attempts, the highest standard of life we're living on perhaps now, hasn't done a thing to bring us nearer to God. The law is still a thing. And of course the product of all this is what Paul calls death. Death now, death hereafter. And that doesn't mean physical death, it means spiritual death here and eternal death there. The physical death is part of Adam's inheritance to us. As sin hath reigned unto death. Do you know something about the reign of sin? Reigning as king? Who doesn't? Paul. But Paul says, if sin has reigned unto death, even so shall grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life. Oh thank God, the reign of sin hath sinned and death is all, and all may live from sin except for grace. He saw it, he loved it. He saw me ruined by the fall. He loved me, not withstanding, and it's against this terrible dark backdrop that this grace and the love of God, the believer in the gospel, is meant now. Again, I can't reiterate it too much. You say, tell me the old, old story. Well, let me repeat what grace is. Grace is that favor which is extended to condemned and helpless people. And it is undeserved. The basic thing about grace is it's undeserved. You know there's a difference between love and grace. All grace is love, but not all love is grace. You may love someone because they deserve it. They're so attractive, they've got such a sweet character. Well, there's no grace in that. It's not an act of grace that you love them. There's that in them that draws it out. But the love of God is grace, because there's nothing in man to draw out that love. Man is odious to the eyes of his holiness. Fred, you are odious to the eyes of his holiness. I am odious. I've got to see that. We've all got to see it all deeply, how odious we are. If the truth were known about us by our brothers, we'd be odious in their eyes. How much more odious are we the eyes of the Christ holy one? There's not a thing to attract God, and yet grace doesn't need to require something of you. Your attempt to produce something is only wasted effort. Grace isn't interested in whatever good you might produce. It loves you because it loves you. Because God's that sort of God who pities and has mercy. Mercy is for misery, grace is for forgiveness. Can you understand it? You can't until you really see Jesus, and you've got to take it on faith, hanging on that cross, oh match this grace. But Jesus there alone, for guilty sin of sugar-toning, didn't have to die. If God had left us in our sin and our condemnation, no angel in the sky could have accused him of injustice. You couldn't have done it. But he did that for which there was no cause. This is grace. This is God. He so loved the world that it's back to him that he gave his only begotten son. And grace offers you a forgiveness, and a rightness with God, as we saw yesterday, without any record to your good or your bad. Law says do, do, do. If you can do, then it offers you tremendous blessing, but you never will, you don't. And therefore the law which says this, do and thou shalt live, also says this, fail to do and thou shalt die. But grace says, not do, it's die. And it offers you life, and a perfect unassailable rightness with God, and everything else that goes with it, on that cross. Grace reigns through righteousness. Grace reigns! Why it's immoral it seems, but he reigns through righteousness. What righteousness? That great act of judgment-bearing of our Lord Jesus Christ. It gives God the righteous ground to extend grace. But don't think that Calvary is the source of grace. No, no. Grace is the source of Calvary. He was that before Jesus ever died. Calvary didn't persuade God to forgive us. God was the God of grace right from the very beginning. He conceived this astonishing way of satisfying the desires of his heart toward a lost man, a lost world, without compromising his justice. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life, and see what happens. Grace then, when I repent, gives me a gratuitous forgiveness, and a gratuitous justification, and a gratuitous eternal life. And that forgiveness and justification isn't made dependent on my good behavior in the future, because I'd lose it tomorrow possibly. It's gratuitous! What happens? Then I come to Jesus. I expose to him the things on which everything's built up, as best I know. The man I am, the things I've done. I've been blackmailed by strength. All right, I'll still have been perverted. I'll tell God. If he leads me to share it with others involved, I'll do that too. And the blood of Jesus cleansed me from sin, and I who confess myself to be so wrong, am prepared to be eternally right. What happens? The foundation is taken away from the building, which the devil for years has been building up, and the whole thing topples down, and I'm free! What from? I am free from sin. Now, that word, free from sin, occurs in hymns and three times in Epistles to Romans, chapter 6. Maybe it has sort of, well, deceived us, made us a tantalizer. Yeah, I can't say I'm free from sin. I know what's going on inside, so what? But notice, we're thinking of sin in this big sense. Not only the act, but what the devil builds on it. That sin, the whole thing. And in that sense, the work of the Lord Jesus said about it, free, gloriously free. Don't worry what's going to happen tomorrow, you're free now. But I may say, listen, if that happens again, you can be free then. As free as a bird, without any sort of condemnation, sure of a perfect righteousness with God, which isn't one little inferior to the righteousness of the speaker or anybody else. There is no difference in God's sight. This righteousness is unto all, upon all them that believe. You can't be any more free from sin in this sense, than if you were in hell. Free. And oh, it's so wonderful to be able to appropriate, when a person's been down, like that woman, who could in no wise lift up herself, whom Satan had bound, these people in the earth, made free, made straight. And you know, we could be bound for 18 years. You can't remember all the things you're being accused of, but there's just a great load, a great backlog. Oh, but when you express it all, and open it up to Jesus, the best you know it. And you see that he did that finished work, and there's a perfect righteousness for you. You come to the cross, you're made free. Oh, this rain of grace. Sin's captives free. Now, will you notice, here we're going to look into Romans 6, three times, you have this phrase, free from sin. Verse 7, he that is dead is free from sin. Verse 18, being then made free from sin. Verse 22, being made free from sin. And the extraordinary thing is, he doesn't labour the point. Say, hello Paul, wait a minute, free from sin. You say, being made free, you go on, wait a minute. Have I not? Oh, you may be. It's the elementary blessing of the gospel. It's not some super-sanctification reserved only for the few. Even our elementary gospel song has it in it. I do believe, I will believe, that Jesus died for me, that on the cross he shed his blood from sin, to set me free. Now, don't torture yourself, but what about tomorrow? You could be free now. You're more likely to walk in victory tomorrow, if you're free now. But if you equate this freedom with absence of any temptation tomorrow, or today, you'll never have it. It's a gospel freedom. Now, that is borne out in verse 14. Now, you who have been milling over Paul's epistles for years, I trust you have. I've lived with him for many years, I'm mild and mild over these as most of us have. I was so puzzled by verse 14, frankly. For sin shall not have dominion over you. One of the first choruses I ever heard before I was saved was in a CSSM boys' meeting, and they were singing as I came in, sin shall not have dominion over you. Oh, what a glorious message and it's true. Pass it on, it's simply grand, and so on. I couldn't bear it. Fancy calling it grand. But even later, could I really say sin has not got dominion over me? To what degree has it not got it? I couldn't say at all, because I was equating this with absence of temptation, absence of any uprising in my heart, and I for one couldn't say it. And as far as I know, I think normally most people do apparently equate it with that, and it doesn't mean anything. And what's more, as long as I thought that it meant that, I couldn't see what the next phrase, how it qualified or explained the first one. For, ye are not under the law but under grace. But now I can see, it is what we've been saying, it's the dominion of sin, it's power to accuse, and therefore all its incentive to go on in sin. I can see it. I'm not under the law which binds my sins to me, holds me accountable for them, and accuses me to its high standards. But I'm under grace, which tells me that Jesus has finished it all. There's a perfect righteousness for the one who admits he hasn't got any. And I'm given an unconditional place in the family of God when I repent. That's the great point. It's unconditional. Oh, I can be free. I'm not under that law. I don't look really living merely under moral principles that condemn me. Oh yes, there are moral principles for Christians, but the moral principles are in Jesus, and he's in you, and he expresses himself. There are directives in the epistles. There are indeed commands. In the last chapters I'm learning all the epistles. But as I heard Dr. Tozer in Chicago say, he said, but this isn't law, they're swimming in grace. They're simply the directives that you must intelligently cooperate with the living Lord of grace who lives in your heart, who wants to express himself that way. And your relationship with God, your position with God is not made dependent, even on your attainment. Please turn the cassette over now. Do not fast wind it in either direction. You'll know that what children crave is security. All sorts of things go wrong if they haven't got security. If mum and dad are falling out and life is apart, it has strange effects upon the children. They don't know whether they're going to come home and find dead God. They might have nobody there. Oh, how one will have security. Their home, it's theirs in any case. God wants you to have security. If you're only their conditioner, you don't know where you are from day to day. You see, in trying to get right with God by your effort, you're making things worse for you. You're making things harder for you than God has made it. We're not under law, but under grace. And if things go wrong, I don't lose my place in the home. A cloud does come between me and my heavenly Father, that I'm not turned out into the street and still there. Because I love him and I love the Lord Jesus, I'm not content to know I'm part of the family, but not in fellowship with my Saviour. And so I should avail myself of his provision again, and repent, and have a renewed sense of my righteousness with God through the blood of Christ in the cloud. For the rest, you know, I'm not under the law, but under grace. And in this matter of the dominion of sin, I can see I'm a sinner. If sin should come, and the devil should then begin to do what he planned to do, accuse me, then I needn't be under its dominion for one moment longer than it takes me to call it by its name and run to Jesus. I like that wonderful verse which says, when by sin oppressed, go to him for help. Normally under law, it's the last person you go to. You don't run to the judge when you're committed a crime, do you? But under grace you do. For the judge has the marks of Calvary. What a story that was, Peter, in that boat, when he saw, recognized it was Jesus on the seashore. He said, it's the vault. I know what he's going to do, he's going to run away from the shore. This is the one that I denied! But Jesus had prayed that in that hour of trial, his faith should not fail. And an old commentator says, faith in that case is confidence in the immutability of grace. The danger was that Peter would feel, I'm finished! I've gone too far! But Jesus had prayed to him in that hour, and this is the one thing I'm going to pray, that in the hour of your failure, you shall see that grace is still about for you. And his faith didn't fail. Shown by the fact, when he knew it was the Lord, he ran to Jesus. What an extraordinary You do that under grace. You know you're going to get received as kindly treatment when you do that, and tell him. When by sin oppressed, you're going to hear the rest, and you're as free as it's allowed to be. With a perfect relationship and fellowship with God, as if you've never done anything any wrong at all. Indeed, after that failure come new sweet lessons you wouldn't otherwise have learned. We don't thank God for sin, but somehow grace seems to turn ill to even greater good for your heart. Sometimes in relationships which are spoiled by our sins, when we run to Jesus and confess what's gone wrong and put them right, the result of sweetness and oneness between those two people is greater than before sin spotted. You see, grace is always greater than sin. Grace wins every time. In him, the tribes of Adam and Eve are more blessed than their father are. So here we have some talk about freedom from sin in this sense. But grace does more than that. It overthrows the binding power in our heart. I see I'm made free now. That foundation is gone. The superstructure's gone. And I've given a ground, a new ground on which let not sin therefore reign in my mortal body. I'm a free man. When you're down and licking your wound, you're an easy prey for the devil the next time. But a happy rejoicing Christian is so much less likely to want to touch the wretched thing. More than that, grace brings powerful motives into his heart. The motive not of beauty, but of love. I cannot work my soul to save. For that, my Lord has done, that I would work to have endless life. The love of God's dear Son. And grace also imparts to us when we come to him, new birth. So that you have a whole new range of appetites and desires. Oh, there's the old there, we know that only too well, but there's a new too. And we can yield to Jesus so that's those are the desires of the Father. And the end is eternal life. Well now, Paul, as he's been saying this and contemplating this, asks the question. We should only get so far to the actual Roman six, though we've slipped into it already. Well now, it's a question that probably is in your mind. A gratuitous, unconditional salvation, that even our sin doesn't rob us of. All right, that's fine, we can go on sinning, there's always grace, always repentance. That's fine, no need to change. Now listen, if as a preacher, your preaching of the grace of God doesn't provoke that question in people's minds, if you sometimes don't appear to be giving people license to sin, I wonder if you're preaching grace at all. It's a risk that God takes, a calculated risk. The natural thing is, when you see people taking, abusing the grace of God, they say, well hallelujah, I can repent, there's all of that, I needn't worry. You know what the danger of us preachers is, is to try and tighten up on grace. And you may check some people's looseness, but that tightening up will cause other souls to despair. I remember years ago at Abigail, a little bit of the Lord came in from this book, and people all over the congregation lost their peace. They were the sweetest saints. It was meant to tighten up on some, but it made others despair. Someone made a difference between bending and breaking. You can bend, but you can break. And we even made the Lord out of brokenness a little bit, on that one reason, only one reason. Oh, I don't think I've attained to that sort of brokenness. And if peace with God is dependent on that, I'm not sure that I've got it, you see. And now, God refuses to tighten up on grace. He's prepared to take a calculated risk in saving sinners and giving sinners a chance. Paul says, well, shall we? He says, well, if you've really tasted grace, it's the last thing you want to do for a beating. And he gives us his answer to that. Shall we continue in sin, that grace there bound God to this? And in giving his answer, he tells us how practically we may get out of the reign of death, and that most common. Now, you suddenly find in this epistle some concepts, some expressions, which are new, hasn't used them before. He says here, know ye not, verse three, that so many of us, as we're baptized into Jesus Christ, we're baptized into his death. In the New Testament, you're baptized into something. It's an outward sign of faith in Christ. We're said to be baptized into Christ, and into his body. You're not baptized into an outward church. You're baptized into Christ, incorporated into him, into his body. Well, says Paul, if that's the case, you're also baptized, incorporated into his death. It's a bit queer, I must confess, at first sight. We are buried with him by baptism into death. Verse five, we are planted together in the likeness of death. Apparently, God not only saw his son dying, but in some strange way, apparently we were supposed to have died with him too. There. You've got there verse eight. Now, if we died we died. Not only he died, we died. And so on. Now, there is the concept, it would seem that Paul not only regarded Jesus dying for him, but he regarded in some strange way that he had died on the cross too. And I must confess, for a long time, I was puzzled. And I must say that I'm, this morning, felt well and truly out of my depths, and I was thinking this through. I can only tell you what I know. There's a whole lot of things I shan't talk about, because the Lord hasn't made them clear. That's all we ever can do. We're dealing with vast depths here, but very simple nonetheless. Now, will you turn to 2 Corinthians 5. Verse 14. For the love of Christ constrained us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all were dead. Actually, the revised puts it, then all died. If one died for all, then all died. What it means is only really quite simple. That if I'm in debt, and unable to meet my obligations, and I have bills, there they are, on my debt, and if someone else comes and undertakes my debt, and he gives me a cheque for each of those accounts, and I pay him, I send it to them, they send me the receipt, and I'm regarded as having paid myself. And it's as simple as, if I died for all, as my substitute on the cross, then God says, well, I'm going to regard that you do that. You've done it. In the first of your substitutes, you have been remitted your debt. I get a count that you've done it yourself. You've done it. Now, that's the basic consideration. There are tremendous implications that follow from it, but the basic thing is really quite simple. I've paid the price of my sins in the person of my substitute. There are often stories told to illustrate this point, and I can't profess to give you the details of any one of the several stories, but there's a story current amongst Bible teachers, which I pass on to you, just for the sake of it's so helpful, of some country where there was conscription, and certain categories had to be called up, and a young, one man was, for one reason or another, found it very difficult to respond to this call to duty. Perhaps there was family and children, I know not what else. And another man volunteered, unofficially of course, to take his place. And he appeared, not only for that man, but as that man, with his name, under his name, under his number. And when he applied, he told them his name, it was the other man's name, and they kicked him, and he took his place in the force. And in battle, he lost his life. Later, the authorities discovered that the one who died was not that particular man, but this man. And he was arrested, but he was, but he claimed that he had already served his place in the forces, and he'd already died for his country, in the person of the one who died as he was. And the thing was legally gone into, and it was decided he was free. Now, what country it was, and what legal code, don't ask me. You're very wise, we don't ask too many questions about the illustration which preachers use. But it's the principle, and it's something like that. You know the Lord Jesus not only died for me, he died as me. He was represented, not only my substitute, but my representative. God treated him as he would otherwise have to be. He identified himself, made himself one with the human race. He became sure people, confessing their sins as if they were his own. And when he bore the due penalty of them in his body on the tree, it's regarded that I have died. When the surety settled, it was settled for me. And I'm regarded having died, having paid a penalty myself. How free was that man? Did he go past recruiting offices without a flicker of the eye, did he? No, he was free. It's so at his turn, he died for his country. And oh, don't you see that this is the basis of freedom. Now, this is what Paul means when he says, he, in Romans 6, that is dead, is freed from sin. That's it. Free. The interesting thing is, the revised foot, free from is justified from sin. You've actually paid the penalty in the sight of God yourself. Will you turn to Galatians 2 to see this same thing. We're only just touching a foundation for going deeper into Romans 6, but we need this foundation. Verse 19, I, through the law, have died unto the law, that's again the revised, that I might live unto God. Now you take Daniel. The law of the meat and person said he had to be cast into that den of lions. You see? Right, he was cast into the den of lions. Instead of the lions eating Daniel, it almost seemed that Daniel was going to eat the lions that day. The Sunday school boy said, in his answer to the question, that Daniel was cast into the den of lions and the lions cried to God all night. The man filled with the Holy Ghost. I tell you, that's how it can be with us. Sometimes unconsciously, we don't know. Complete and correct impressions may remain on others when we're filled with the Spirit walking with Jesus. Right, and the next day the king came so sorrowfully expecting to find Daniel dead. He was alive. He was brought up. Could the law of the meat and person ever put him into that pit again? No, he didn't. The law had nothing more to say to Daniel. And I, through the law, which condemned me, in Christ have died to him. I can't have any more condemnation. Oh, do you see the added basis for freedom? And all the implications of this are manifold. When it comes to practical living, you are to regard yourself at your best as well as your worst as a man who has been hanged at the cross. You haven't been maimed. You've been hanged. This is one of the basic implications of this simple fact. God says, you have died in the eyes of the law, which means that God really isn't expecting anything good from you. He doesn't expect a good, a dead person to live in a Christian life. You say, I'm so cold. Of course you're cold. Dead people always are. Don't spend time trying to warm up the corpse. But you say, where is the Christian life to be lived from if it isn't going to be me? It wasn't intended to be lived by you. Galatians 2.20 goes on. He says, well, you say, have I died to the law? You did so with Jesus. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I. But Christ lives in me. God's intention with a Christian life is that it shouldn't be lived by you, but by Jesus, through his Holy Spirit, through me. That's the only hope. Victorious Christian life is the life of a victorious Christ. And he can only express himself as I'm prepared progressively to see that that's me on the cross. And when something comes up that's unsavoury and, of course, unexpected of a man whom God had to judge and put on the cross. And I accept God's verdict again and myself and repent. And so much more room is left for the law of Jesus Christ. These are some of the implications. We're going to try and go into them more clearly. Here's just a simple basis before we go any further. Captain Reginald Wallace used to say, trouble is, instead of letting the Lord Jesus displace the old man whom God put on the cross, we are, in a sense, putting good money after bad into the old Adam's improved society. And it doesn't yield any dividends. Blessed is he who expects nothing from himself. Therefore, if you find this and that in yourself, that's conscious of the will of God, you say, that's just what I would have expected to have found in that. I take sides with God against that man. I accept the verdict of God upon me. I see myself ended rather than mended in the cross of the Lord Jesus. And I want to yield to him and let him express himself to me. And just as often as that other man pops up, you know where to take him. You're quickly cleansed and restored. And as you repent of the unlove that may be there, you find a love that isn't yours still is Christ's in you. As you repent of the worry, you find there's a peace that just isn't yours. As you repent of whatever else it is, resentment, you find there's a forbearance towards the other man that just isn't yours. You find a peace that isn't yours. There's a characteristic of you to be peaceful like that. The other race is characteristic of that man, but you've gone afresh and seen him there and readied him there and confessed it and repented. And you find there's a light in you that just isn't characteristic of the old man. And so Paul begins to introduce us into something a little deeper. But oh, it's the basis of learning to live with the Lord Jesus. We'll sing, I think, one day. We haven't time to learn it. A chorus we sang a year or two ago at Abigail. Jesus died as me. Jesus died as me. Because he loved, he went to Calvary. Jesus rose to me. Jesus rose to me. Jesus lives in me. Jesus lives in me. That I with him might walk each day in confidence. Well, let's come to this point, if we come to nothing else this morning, that you begin to quit putting good money after bad in the old Adam and Eve. Believe in your own wrongs. Believe in your own condemnation. Believe in your own hopelessness and see your condemnation finished on the cross. The crucifixion of the old me is something God's finished. I'm not going to try and improve that which he's finished it, but I'm going to acknowledge it to be worthy of his death, take it wherever it shows itself to Calvary, and learn to regret about this lovely Lord Jesus who lived again his life in me. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank thee for things which we've been speaking our reality, bigger reality than we ever thought. And Lord, we turn away from words to the one of whom we've been speaking, thine own dear self, Christ. Give it meaning for us that was never perhaps intended. By the spirit of which thy spirit is made, may it make for us joy, may it make for us joy, may we see that holiness, this sort of holiness is excessive, even for sane people like ourselves. The grace, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us always. Amen.