Session 17 – Romans; Romans 6:5-7: Mark Lanier, 09/28/25

Romans 6:5-7 - Mark Lanier Teaching Session
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Introduction & Context
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Bernard: We are looking at Romans and I am, uh, uh, just delighted to get to open up this book again with you today. someone accused me, in fact, I think it was Pastor Brent. Accused me of purposefully going really slow so I could not have to deal with Romans nine, 10, and 11 before I die. Romans nine, 10 and 11 are without a doubt, in my opinion, the most difficult, uh, passages in the Bible to understand.

And I'm excited to teach those one year and, but today we're not there. Alright. Last week, if you [00:01:00] were in the class last week, I talked about a poet, a WH Auden, and he wrote a Christmas oratorio, kind of a mini opera, if you will. Uh, he wrote the words to it. He didn't write music. And in that Christmas oratorio, Herod is giving a speech before Herod is going to slaughter all of the innocence.

And Herod says, Hey. The rumor is that the Messiah's being born, why does everything happen to me? This is a horrible thing. I've tried so hard to be a good, loyal administrator of Roman law and now all of a sudden the Messiah's gonna be born and one of two things is gonna be true. Either he's a fake Messiah.

In which event we're gonna have this massive PR problem. We're gonna have all these people following him. It's gonna create civil unrest, civil disturbance, and Rome will be none too [00:02:00] happy. Or if he's not the fake Messiah, he's the real Messiah. And Herod says, that'd even be worse because then all of a sudden you've got God wanting to forgive sins.

And if God decides to forgive sins through this real messiah, can you imagine how much people are gonna want a sin? You can just hear the thief saying, Hey, I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving 'em. Really, the world is admirably arranged. In other words, I like to sin. God likes to forgive sin. This is win-win.

That's a modern way of saying what he said, and it is a question that didn't only arise in the 20th century. This is a question that beset the teachings of Paul way back [00:03:00] in the fifties when he's writing this letter to Rome.

The Question of Grace and Sin
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Bernard: And so we get to Romans chapter six after Paul has explained that we are not made right with God.

Based on what we do, we are made right with God solely based upon what Jesus did. It is the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, which makes anyone right with God, nothing more and nothing less. And then Paul says, if you understand that, where's the predicament? And he goes to Romans six. At this point and he says, what shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin so that Grace May abound? Is Grace our license to sin card because [00:04:00] God has paid for all of our sins on the cross? Does it no longer matter how many we commit because we know he paid for all of 'em. Now we may not be so brash as to go rob a bank, but what's a lie between friends?

What's a little gossip here or there? Do we really need to care about what we're doing when we know God's forgiven all of our sins? And Paul's answer to this question is revolutionary. Some people when they are faced with the question of what should we do then should we send, Paul doesn't say, well, just try harder, Daniel.

Paul doesn't say, just try hard. I say Daniel, because Daniel's one of my son-in-laws who's actually not here because the baby was crying. They just texted and had to turn around and [00:05:00] go back. But his nickname in high school was try hard, Dan, because he would just try so hard for everything. So I wasn't insinuating anything other than a compliment to my son-in-law anyway.

Now that if he ever watches this on the internet, I fixed that little wagon. Paul doesn't say Try harder. Paul doesn't say, oh, I'm worried you're gonna be living a sinful life, so I'll threaten you with punishment.

What Paul does is he asks a logical question, but that question is a game changer. Should we just sin so that Grace May abound? Heavens no. He says, by no means how can we who died to sin still live in it?

Realm Transfer & Baptism
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Bernard: [00:06:00] Now the language there may seem a little unusual to you and me, but that's language of what we could call realm transfer. And I used this slide last week to, to introduce this idea. Paul's using language of realm transfer. He's saying, uh, we're not in the United States anymore, we're now in England. So the US law doesn't apply.

We are, we're in a different place. We're in a different realm, except he's saying, we died to sin. We're dead to it. So we're in a different place now. And his illustration of that, bless you, his illustration of that is baptism. So in verse three he said, don't you know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ and that Greek verb baptizo in its main means immersed?

So all of us who have been immersed into Christ have been immersed into his [00:07:00] death, and we were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Paul is saying baptism is a wonderful illustration, a living metaphor that we have transformed from who we were into who we are. Martin Luther used to go through periods of. Um, frustration over his sinfulness. I think he kind of had a temper and I think he was rather impatient and [00:08:00] afterwards he would see it, but he never seemed to see it in the process.

And one of the things he would say to himself afterwards was, I am baptized, I am baptized. I am baptized because he just needed that reassurance that, okay, I've got some habits that need changing, but I know that God is transforming me because I know that I have been aligned with Christ in death and resurrected to a new life, and Paul's saying that we now have an alignment with Christ.

Our life is no longer the dead end that sin brings. So we wanna pick up here and we're gonna talk about three verses today. The first verse is Romans ch. We're in Romans chapter six. The first thing we'll talk about is the certainty of our union with Christ. Paul [00:09:00] wants to leave no doubt in anyone's mind.

If you have given yourself to Christ, you are united with him. There is a union. And then the second verse we'll look at is the very next one, verse six, where Paul describes what it means for our old self to be crucified. And then the third verse, the very next one will be death brings freedom. Now these are three verses and the problem is we're in the middle of three chapters where Paul's dealing with this idea.

And because I'm gonna drill down so deep into these three verses, we don't get the benefit of all three chapters flowing together, but I assure you when we make it through Romans eight, which is the third one of these chapters, right before I do Romans nine, 10, and 11. Which we're so looking [00:10:00] forward to.

Once we get through Romans chapter eight, I will put all of this together into a nice pretty package because Paul's answering the questions in that that plague all believers questions like, okay, well why do I struggle so much with this sin? Why do I struggle with ones that aren't habitual? And why do I struggle with ones that are.

Why do I struggle with ones that I don't know about? But why do I struggle with ones that I do? What can I do about this? How can I walk in victory? So you'll be getting nuggets all along the way because Paul is discussing this, but those nuggets don't come unless we really dig in deep. So we're gonna dig in deep to these verses.

So that we get those nuggets and then we'll put 'em together into a total package. [00:11:00] Make sense? Alright, so let's start with the certainty of our union with Christ, which comes in verse five. Here's verse five. Paul says, if we've been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his Now Greek thought.

Was at its root, very logical. The Greek philosophers, you know, some of their names Socrates, his student Plato, his student Aristotle. These were people who spoke and taught in a very logical fashion. But while they may be three of the most famous. There are other Greek philosophers that you know as well.[00:12:00]

Pythagoras, he came up with the Pythagorean theorem. He was a philosopher who was pretty strong in math. Yes, because he saw philosophically the world is math.

The Greek mindset was a logical mindset. By and large doesn't mean they didn't have their mystical religions and other things like that. I don't want to to pigeonhole it as one thing, but you see in the Greek language. Some very logical things. The language itself is built, in fact, the word logic. Okay,

the word logic. Do you know what it comes from? [00:13:00] The Greek word logos,

which means word also references thoughts because you think in words. Logic itself comes from the Greek word for word. So you see the logic in their language. One of the key aspects of of logical analysis are what we would call if then statements. You even use it in computer programming if you computer program in basic code.

If then. If then is something we all know, if you flip the switch, the light will come on. If then, if, then Paul uses if then language with a twist in Romans six. So let's go back [00:14:00] to it for if in Greek it's the igar. And the e there is, um, if, uh, Gar is just, therefore, if, therefore we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly, and this is Allah, Kai, Kai means and, and Allah's.

But, but when, when, if, then. This is if then statement in the Greek, but it's an if then statement, like I said, with a twist. I'll show you the twist in a minute, but just be thinking if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly. Now notice your translator here. The English standard version I'm using doesn't say, then we shall be united with him in a resurrection.

That's because when you put those two Greek words [00:15:00] together, it doesn't just mean if then it means if, then certainly. Absolutely. It's a no brainer. So Paul's putting an extra emphasis in his logical statement. It, here's an example. If we mix cocoa in the batter, it will certainly be in the cake. It is not like you could go in there and pick that cocoa out of the batter.

Once you've mixed it in. You can say if you put cocoa in the batter, then it will be in the cake. Yeah, but let's be emphatic. If you put cocoa in the batter, it certainly will be in the cake. There's no question about it. Right. You're not gonna Unix it. Can't. So that's what Paul's doing here. If we've been united with him in a death like his, then certainly no brainer, absolutely will be united with him in a resurrection like [00:16:00] his.

Now this word that is you. Well, ah, let's do it this way. Hold on. I'm gonna have some fun with y'all. Zoom FU toy. Sum, Futo is a great word in the Greek. It is a, uh, how many of y'all garden at all? Okay. There's an herb called com free, and it's relevant here. Sum Futo is actually a botanical, a gardening metaphor that Paul's using.

Here it is. Um,

this is comfrey comfrey. You can use the leaves and stuff, but you can also take the roots and, and chop the roots up. It's got an anti-inflammatory product, uh, I mean a anti-inflammatory, um, uh, reaction in the human body. It's been used in medicine [00:17:00] for thousands of years. Pliny the elder, wrote about it at the same time.

Paul's writing. And, and it's used to, um, strengthen bones and make 'em grow. If you broke a bone, they'd give you this because it'd make the bone grow back together. They thought stronger. All right, this is in Latin. The Latin name for comfrey is sym and that y is just the way we translate the Greek. You a lot.

That is the same word Paul's using. It's the exact same word, SU or Y-M-P-H-Y-T-O-I. Because of the ending. But that's the same word. It's a botanical man. But it means to, it's grown together. It's, it's, um, it's united organically. [00:18:00] It is, it's strengthened. It's, it's, it's grafted. It's, it's these things. And so how is it translated here?

It's this word, united. If we've been knit together, organically melded into one, if, if we've grown together with the death of Christ. Then certainly we're gonna be that way in his resurrection.

And then this gets even better. Sorry, I just, I geeked out on the language. We have been, we have been in the Greek is in what's called the perfect tense. And this is a tense that the Greek writers would use when they wanted to say, here's [00:19:00] something that happened in the past. It was a definite event. It occurred in the past, but I want to emphasize the present results of what happened in the past.

So it's something that happened in the past, but I'm emphasizing the present results. The results that are here right now. See, in the past you were grafted together and, and that's the way Paul uses it. Look at his word order. If you were grafted, you were united, you were grown together organically in the past with present consequences.

You don't come to Jesus and it's all over with. You come to Jesus and it changes every day for the rest of your life. You are different. You are united with his death every day for the rest of your life. [00:20:00] You can speak in the here and now. I am different because I became his and I was united with him in his death.

And so if we've been. Past tense at a point in time, United with him and his death with current consequences to that. We've been united with him in a death. That's like his, you know, Paul uses the, this word like hormo, uh, homo, homo, homo.

It means likeness, but in scholars struggle over what it means within the context. Exactly. How were, we like the death of Christ and, and I think John Calvin had it best. He said it's not the same death as Christ, but it's [00:21:00] similar to it. We're co-joined to him in his death if we have been co-joined to him in his death.

If that has happened, it's got present results. This is Paul's saying the spiritual reality of baptism. We are organically united with Christ's death and his resurrection. And Paul, this isn't something new that he was just unleashing a spur of the moment. This is, uh, his consistent theology in his writings, and he says it really well.

In two Timothy two 11,

Paul said to him, the saying is trustworthy. If we have died with him, we will also [00:22:00] live with him. See this the saying is trustworthy. Yeah. This isn't something Paul has just got new this. The early church was saying consistently, this was in their songs. This was in their confirmation process. This was, this was in their greetings.

This is something that they said because it's true if we're united with him in his death. If we have died with him, we will also live with him. You can be certain of the union with Christ that nobody should read verse five and wonder, I wonder if I was united with Christ. You were, if you have given your life to him.[00:23:00]

If you have trusted him to be the Lord of your life, that's the whole symbol of one of the symbols of baptism. I mean, nobody, when I was baptizing Brad this morning before we got in the baptistry, now Brad is bigger than I am. He's taller and, and I'm sitting there thinking, anytime I do this my I flashback to the first person I ever baptized.

I had these waiters, they were about up to here, and it was a lady that, um. I had gotten, we, I was on a mission trip. I was a senior about to go into my senior year of high school. And we were in Idaho Falls, Idaho. And this lady, uh, we knocked on her door and she invited us in. We talked to her about Jesus and, and led her to Christ and she wanted to be baptized.

And since I had let her, she wanted me to do the baptism and the, the, the church said, okay. And so we went to the [00:24:00] church. I put on those waiters. And I was thankful for him and, and, and I was scared to death. I was gonna drown her and I wouldn't be able to pull her out of the water. So, I mean, I'm getting ready.

Okay. I got, I, I'm thinking low, low, center of gravity, upper body, you know, gotta gotta pull this woman out. Can't drown her. Although it'd be pretty cool to say get to heaven and say, how'd you die? I was being baptized. Ah. Never came out. Um, so I put her down and as soon as I put her down, I'm down there and I'm about to pull her up.

All that water went gushing into my waiters. I had a billfold, I had a picture of every girlfriend I'd ever had in that billfold, just so I could remind myself of who I'd gone out with all of those melded together, and they were gone. I had $7 to my name, all [00:25:00] $7. Pasted it together. My driver's license absolutely soaked my Social Security card useless.

And, and, but I pulled her outta that water. So that's going through my head. Anytime I baptize someone that's bigger than I am, Brad's bigger. And I said to Brad, I said, look buddy. I'm gonna put you down in this water, but you're gonna help me get you back up. And he says, okay, I got it. I got it. And he was in, he was good.

And uh, I think he threw his back out, but he got out. Um, now, anytime you have done that, there's no question he wasn't doing that because he was interested in a warm jacuzzi before the eight o'clock service. He was doing that because he'd put his faith in Jesus and he wanted to show it.[00:26:00]

You should have no doubt about the certainty of your union with Jesus.

The Old Self Crucified (Romans 6:6)
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Bernard: Now, let's move to verse six, the old crucified self. Paul says,

now we know. GCO in the Greek, we know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Just stop for a moment on. We know Paul does not say, do you feel it in your bones? Do you, do you sense? Do you intuit? Is there this gut feeling that says, oh yes, I know that my old self was crucified.

No, he doesn't talk about [00:27:00] feelings. He talks about what, you know, he talks about your, your thinking. We know there is a difference between knowledge and feelings. There are days where I do not feel even remotely saved. There are days where I do not feel like I live in victory over sin. There are days when I feel like I am Satan's whipping boy.

There are days when I feel fill in the blank. I'm giving you three different options. You can fill in anything you want there. But there's a difference between what we know and what we feel. And this isn't something I'm making up. Look at one John Chapter three, one John chapter three verses 19 and 20.[00:28:00]

John says,

by this we shall know. He uses GCO just like Paul did. By this, we will know that we're of the truth and will reassure our heart before him whenever our heart condemns us because God is greater than our heart. This is something that we know when we don't feel it. This is something that we can recognize in our brain, even if we don't sense it in our heart, and that's what Paul is saying.

Oh, by the way, if you ever don't, if you are struggling with that, one of the scriptures I always recommend to [00:29:00] everyone is to go back and read Psalm 42 and Psalm 43. Let me read it to you in the native tongue of the Mayan. Uh, no, I don't have time for that and my pronunciation's really bad. Let's just stick with the English.

Um, Psalm 42 and 43

as a deer pants. For flowing stream. So my soul pants for you, oh God, my soul. Thirst for God, for the living God. When will I come and appear before God? I'm bawling like a baby all day and all night people are saying, Hey, why's your life so bozo up? Where's your God?[00:30:00]

And look what he does. These things. I remember as I pour out my soul, I remember I can call to mind where God has come in and rescued me. I can recall the goodness of the Lord. I can recall his favor. I can recall his mercy. I can recall how I, I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

And then the mind starts talking to the heart. Why are you cast down? Oh my soul. Why are you just ripping up my insides? You know what? You can know hope in God because I will again praise him. Let the mind tell the heart [00:31:00] to get in line. Recall the goodness of the Lord. He died for you. Recall the goodness of the Lord.

Now I'd, do you know what I really like about these two Psalms? After he does all of that, he doesn't say, and I was much better. Instead, he says, well, that didn't help much, and this after all of that, he says, but right now, man, I'm still really down. My soul is cast down within me. So he says, I'm gonna keep doing it.

I'm not gonna quit. Therefore, I remember you. I remember you from the land of Jordan and Herm Herman from Mount Azar. Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls. Now I'm just gonna keep remembering. By day, the Lord commands his steadfast love at night, his song with Vimy, and I say to God. Why have you forgotten me?

Why am I mourning and get right back to it. Why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you in turmoil? [00:32:00] Hope in God I shall again praise him. My light and my salvation. And that ends the Psalm in English in Hebrew. Psalm 43 is part of Psalm 42. Yeah. That's why I said read the two together because after a second time you think he's okay.

I got that fixed. Got it outta my system. Praise the Lord. No, he goes right back into it. He's still having trouble vindicate me. Oh God, help me out. Help me, help me, help me. I'm taking refuge in you. Why do I go about mourning? Because of everything that's happening to me. Send out your light. Send out your truth.

Why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you in turmoil? Hope in God I shall again, praise him, my help and my God, my salvation and my God. That's just, you gotta sometimes talk to your heart. Don't let your heart don't just say, [00:33:00] well, that works for the logical people, but I'm an emotional person that that was not written for Dr.

Spock. That's written for everybody. You may be more emotional than you are. Logical. That's fine. That logical voice needs to have more authority in it. When you speak,

Paul says, we know this is what we know. We know that our old self was crucified. That word old, it's not our K in the, the Greek, it's, it's, uh, pals. It, it technically if, if Paul's using it in this way means old in the sense of worn out,

um, our old worn out self, that useless self. That's self. That wasn't good for anything. [00:34:00] It was crucified with Christ. If we understand that it was our old self was crucified with Christ and the word crucified with Christ here is actually soon as star is, is crucified with it. Puts the word with on the word crucified.

So I, I like to translate this myself as we were co crucified with Christ.

Anybody ever heard of Mahalia Jackson, ed Sullivan Show?

Were you there

when the [00:35:00] crew

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my Lord Paul says yes.[00:36:00]

To Tre.

Amen. Paul would say Yes. [00:37:00] Paul said to the Galatians in Galatians two 20, I have been crucified with Christ. I was co crucified. It's no longer I who live. But Christ lives in me. Then two chapters later, Paul says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Then the next chapter, Paul says, far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

I have been crucified with Christ. We, our old, useless self was co crucified with him and not just because we were in the wrong place or the right place at the right time. Paul uses this [00:38:00] word heena in the Greek first year Greek. You learn about a Hena purpose clause. Och is often used to express a purpose, a reason why our old self was co crucified with him in order that for the reason that the purpose behind our crucifixion with him is that the body of sin might be brought to nothing brought to nothing.

Kata, uh, from Argon and Kata, kata, agathe, um, it means afe. It means basically rendered powerless, put out a business, made impotent. Our old worn out self was co crucified with Christ in order that for the [00:39:00] purpose that the body of sin might be made impotent out of business, powerless, brought to nothing, so that we would no longer sin.

I mean, that old man is gone outta business, closed forever. Our old identity as a slave to sin has been legally and actually terminated. Sin no longer has any business in our lives. Now I know what you're saying. I hope. I hope you're saying, but I still sin. Yes, you do. And we're gonna talk about that 'cause Paul's gonna talk about it.

But the [00:40:00] first thing we need to do is make sure we all understand sin does not rain in our mortal bodies anymore. Amen. We are going to walk in a different life than we would if we had not been redeemed. It's gonna take some time to grow out of old habits. Paul will talk later how God's transforming our mind.

Paul will be spending a whole chapter talking about how we can do the things we don't wanna do and the things we wanna do we don't do. He's not naive. But he's setting it up with what we know. We need to know and reassure our hearts that the part of us that belongs to God that will live eternally is not bound to sin.

Paul will tell the church in Ephesus, put off your old self, which belongs to your former [00:41:00] manner of life and is corrupt. Through deceitful desires and then put on the new self that's created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. This is, this is something he's teaching them to do and he's gonna teach us to do it as well because it's the right thing.

We know it's right because we've been united with him and his death and in his resurrection. So it's Paul's setting your mind right to teach you and motivate you to walk right in Colossians, he says it this way, Hey, don't lie to one another. You put off your old self with its practices you put on the new self that's being renewed in knowledge after the image of the creator.[00:42:00]

Death Brings Freedom (Romans 6:7)
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Bernard: That old self has been crucified, which moves us to the third point. Death brings freedom. It's a short verse, Romans six, seven. Paul says four because one who has died has been set free from sin. If you are dead to sin, you have been set free. Now, if you look at your Bibles here, if you have a revised standard, I mean an English standard version, at least I did not look at what the NIB does to this.

Sorry. But something really interesting here in the. English standard version verse seven,[00:43:00]

for one who has died has been set free from sin, and that's what I've put up there. See, one who has died has been set free from sin. That's where I got it from. But look after Set free at that number nine. You see that it's not verse nine. It's a footnote. And if you go down to the footnote, footnote nine.

Whoops. Here it is. Footnote nine. The Greek says,

has been justified

and he's, they're right in the footnote. This word that's translated here, been set free.

The DE from [00:44:00] DEOs to justify, it's the word Paul's been using throughout Romans. Justified means declared not guilty in a courtroom. How can some what? What does he mean? One who has died has been declared not guilty from sin, actually. Yes. It also can denote the idea of having been set free because if you're declared not guilty, what happens?

You're set free. And so the translators have to make a choice. Paul didn't have to make a choice. Paul can use the word that is very rabbinical of him as my friend, John Monson would say, very rabbinical, to use a word that's got two different meanings, and he means them both. Paul frequently embraced ambiguity as an efficient way to express multiple ideas.

If we have died, not only have we been [00:45:00] declared righteous, but we've also been set free from sin. I mean, you do you want to try and make a choice? What do we do? Do we translate that free? Do we translate that justified? Either one or both because the point that Paul is making is you can't make a dead man do anything.

My wife has an incredible ability to get me to do some things.

I'm not saying I'm wrapped around her finger, but I'm saying I know when there are times. Hold on. I don't have my glasses. Are Gracie and JT here? Would y'all two stand up for just a moment please? I'd like to introduce y'all. This is our oldest daughter, Gracie, and her husband jt. They're just wonderful people, godly people, godly marriage.

I've seen Gracie has an [00:46:00] ability to make JT do things. See, this is why I'm getting out of trouble that I started with me and Becky. I've seen my daughter has an ability now, he doesn't always do it. It, but sometimes he knows when she means action and, and he'll do it because it's just, okay. That's not a good way to do it either.

Remember, if you were at the eight o'clock service, how Pastor Jarret said he lives in a house with a wife and four daughters. He's president of his own sorority house, and they just all know how to make him do. Uh, there's a better way. The point is, when I'm dead, Becky can't make me do diddly squat. There is no way I'm taking out the garbage after I'm dead.

There's no way I'm unloading the car after I'm dead. I mean, when I'm dead, it's over. You don't make a dead person do anything at all, [00:47:00] and that's what Paul's saying. Your old self is dead. Sin can't make you do anything at all. You are free. You are righteous.

Points for Home
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Bernard: Which brings us to the points for home because look, I could do this for the next 20 hours nonstop if someone will feed me, but y'all will all be gone, so we're gonna spread this out over the next few months.

All right. Point for home Number one. Know the truth. Know the truth. You may not feel it, but make sure you know it. Know that your old self was co crucified with Christ. Know it whether you feel it or not know it. It's going to be so valuable when the enemy comes against you and says, you know, I don't, [00:48:00] Jesus doesn't have anything to do with you.

How many of you have watched. K-pop demon hunters on Netflix. I'm really proud of several of you. Okay, five. Um, hey, that's one out of a hundred. The, the bad guy in K-pop. Demon hunters. The head demon. It, he, he's, his whole goal is to get people believing that they have no choice but to be evil. And the idea that someone could believe that they might not be evil is impossible.

There is no redemption. When the enemy comes at you and the enemy says you're terrible, you need to be able to know that you were co crucified. That terrible old self worn out, no count was co crucified with Christ, and you've been raised in a new walk. And so we want to learn to live [00:49:00] our new nature. Not our old habits.

That's where we're going with this. That's what Paul's gonna do. He's gonna teach us to live our new nature and not our old habits. So those old habits, you can say that's part of that old worn out self that was co crucified with Christ. I am a new person with a new nature. One who has died has been set free from sin.

Then we wanna learn to use the tools that God has given us, that Paul will speak of, that the rest of scripture gives us to help us grow. You know,

um, I always, I need Charles Mickey up here because Charles knows the songs of my youth. What was the song we sang, Charles? I'm not the same person that I used to be. [00:50:00] Sometimes it's hard going, but there's a knowing that one day Perfect. I will be. Um, did, did anybody sing that song in youth group growing up?

Um, okay.

You're not fighting to become free. You're learning to live free. We are free. That's the fact. That's what we know. And I am so thankful that I am not the same person I used to be. I can look at my life of the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. Poor Gracie, our oldest daughter. Do you realize how much better the youngest daughter had it than Gracie Gracie's?

Oldest daughter. Then we had like two more shots of learning how to do it after Gracie, before we got to Sarah. Now, the counterbalance to that is, is we cared a lot more with Gracie than we [00:51:00] did for Sarah. It's kinda like, well, we've already got three. We've been through this, whatever you wanna play in the street, okay, have a good time.

But remember, come back in for your second birthday party. Um, you know, uh, you, you don't, but there is. There is we, we change, we grow, we get better. And I still fail miserably, but not nearly as bad as I used to fail, because that's the way God's transforming us, little by little every day. So what we're doing is we're not fighting to become free.

We're learning to live free. We're no longer enslaved to sin, and we're learning what that means. So if, if Herod's able to say, I like committing crimes, God likes forgiving him. Really, the world's admirably arranged. I would say Herod thought Grace was a cleanup service for inevitable sin. But Paul reveals grace is a transformation [00:52:00] power that makes new life inevitable.

That's what we're learning as we walk through Romans. I mean, bless you in the name of Jesus, and I know some of you are gonna want to talk about this. I've gotta get some people to the airport. So I'm gonna leave and y'all talk amongst yourselves. It's a great thing to do at Sunday. Lunch. Lord, thank you so much for the honor of getting to expose, expound, uh, exposit your word.

I pray that you'll always, by your spirit, give me the grace to, to, to work and to do it in, in alignment with your word Father. But I also pray for everyone to have listening and discerning ears, and that the enemy not ever be able to persuade us anything less than the fact that we have been crucified with Jesus Christ through whom we pray.

Amen.