Word of Salvation – Vol. 21 No.20 – February 1975

 

Hallelujah!  What A Saviour!

 

Sermon by Rev. Keith McPhail on Lord’s Day 16. (Romans 6:6)

Scripture readings: Matthew 27:33-60; Romans 6:1-11

Psalter Hymnal: 194, 84, 390, 440, 493

 

Beloved congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ died for us.  Knowing what the Lord our God tells us in Scripture about sin and its reward, none of us would ever want to face the condemnation which is due to us because of our very own sinful nature.  The thought of us having to bear the penalty of our own sins, surely strikes terror into the stoutest heart.

Remember that one sin of Adam.  Note its effect upon the whole human race.  Then in your imagination try to multiply the effects of that one sin by all the sins which you know you have committed.  Do not spend time just now thinking of the sins of all humanity.  Just consider your own known sins, and try to think of the effect they would have on the world if the one sin of Adam brought so much tragedy.  Since the one sin of Adam brought the wrath of God upon man, and creation itself groans and suffers under the present affliction of sin, how much more grievous are all our sins!!!  As we begin to think about the extent of sin in the world, and also in our bodies, we are brought to see the horror of sin, and are convinced that it pleases God to restrain sin, and to restrict its effects.  He will not let sin go beyond the bounds that He has set.  Sin may well appear to be out of control in the world, but it is not.  God lets man.  seemingly overstep the mark, that man might be disciplined and brought to realise that there is only a certain God-appointed distance which he may go in sin.  If God did not control sin in this world man would have eliminated man, blotted our own kind out of existence, centuries ago.  Despite the sin in the world, and despite the extent of sin in every man who is born into the world, it has pleased almighty God to call unto Himself, whomsoever He will, and to save those whom He loved by the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for sin.

Beloved in the Lord, is it not true that words fail us when we think of this?  Yet there is one thing we all say in our hearts, “Hallelujah!  What a Saviour!”  O wondrous love that God should die for us.  All praise be unto Him and His glorious grace.

But since He died for us, the catechism asks, “…why must we also die?”  Here we need to remember that there are two aspects of the death of Christ, His physical or bodily death and His spiritual death, or separation from God the Father as He carried our sin into the place of death for us.  But for those in Christ, His death has destroyed death.  Death is already banished and defeated.  “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

Maybe someone is saying, “Hey!  Wait a minute.  Are we not surrounded by death?” Yes we are.  That is, we see death on every hand as an expression of God’s wrath against sin.

By nature, man is relentlessly pursued by death and by the fear of death.  Even as our Redeemer, Jesus Christ faced death in the Garden we are told that He was sorrowful unto death.  Sorrowful – because He took upon Himself the wages of our sins, which is death, and the penalty of all the sins of those who are being saved through faith in Him.  He has removed forever the penalty of those who confess that their souls are dead in sin, and who plead the blood of Christ to cover all their guilt.

It is horrible to talk about the blood of Christ!  Imagine if you saw an accident on your way home.  When all the members of the family were gathered, you began to tell them about the sights you saw.  You describe the mangled bodies, the abrasions, gashes, smashed limbs and faces.  The blood, the mess it made of the scene, how it was trickling out of the mouths of several, how it flowed across the road, and down the gutters.  How the flies were attracted by it and a dog was drinking it.  I think it would be normal to suppose that before you had got very far in your description, the other members of the family would be saying to you, “Now stop this sort of conversation.”  But beloved, we talk about the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world and this is ten times more horrible than gruesome talk about some mere accident.  Why?  Because the shed blood of God our Saviour convicts us of sin.  It speaks about the rottenness and corruption of our hearts, and unless the Lord had born all this rottenness and corruption for us on Calvary’s cross, we would have perished everlastingly.  No wonder God has chosen His blood as the covering for sin.  Thus the horror of His death and our sin is brought home to us.

The death the believer dies is a casting off of this body of infirmity, to be set free to live in heaven’s joy, which now we know in part by the indwelling Spirit.  Death means to be free to know these heavenly joys in full.  It is to enter into the fullness of the joy of the Lord of Glory.  For the one who lives by faith in the Son of God, death is swallowed up in victory.  The believer’s soul has even now passed from death to life.  He lives evermore because he is in Christ and Christ lives to die no more.

On the other hand we know that unless Christ shall come again in our lifetime, we shall all pass through physical death.  We cannot expect to be exempted from the death of the body.  But what does that death mean?  It means the end of sorrowing and suffering and grief, and all those things which speak of heart-wrenching and heart-breaking experiences of this life.  All these things die with death.  Remember the words often used in our celebration of the Lord’s Supper, “Take, eat, remember and believe that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was given as a complete atonement for all our sins.”  And the same is said about the blood of Christ, “…a complete atonement for all our sins.”  Also 1John 1:7 has it, “…and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses from all our sins.”

It follows then that our death is but the passing of this body.  Rejoice, for this will mean for us the abolition of sin.  Even if it were possible for us to forget the glory which awaits us as children of light, children of the Father entering into our inheritance in Christ, we can never forget the blessedness of being set free from this body of sin.

What we have said so far is not some strangely detached statement of doctrine that stands by itself in isolation from other things of the Kingdom.  Every part of Christian doctrine and faith ties into the unity of the Gospel.  What we have just said of Jesus Christ and His love directs our attention to other treasures from the storehouse of God.  With this in view the catechism twice refers us to Romans 6:6 which says that “Our old man was crucified WITH Christ.”  We are therefore made to be AT ONE WITH CHRIST.  He has died for us – as our representative, and as our substitute.  Through the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit teaches us that by grace, by God’s loving mercy as a gift from heaven itself, we are united with Christ.  The Lord God speaks to us plainly when in the Bible it uses marriage as an example of the Christian’s unity with Christ.  Of the marriage relationship the Scripture says, “And they shall be one flesh.”  Being thus joined to Him as members of His body, we died when He died.  This is only a picture, and not the reality of our union with Christ.  Our union with Him is endless union.  It cannot be broken.  Therefore being united to Christ, by grace through faith, we died to sin when Christ died to sin.

Our text says, “Our old man was crucified with Christ, in order that the body of sin might be done away with.”  That is, our old man was crucified with Christ for a real reason, a definite purpose.  What was that reason???  That the body of sin might be destroyed.  What is this body of sin?  Some will tell you that it is this body of flesh and blood.  But is the body of sin this body of flesh and blood?  It is our physical body possessed by sin.  That is, sin in some degree remains in our physical body.  Or might we say that the body of sin is that measure to which sin lives in the members of this physical body.  Hence the Scripture speaks of the lust of the flesh.  The old man has been crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed.  BUT THE OLD MAN HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST.

Therefore the old man and the body of sin cannot be the same thing.  What has been crucified IS DEAD.  The body of sin IS BEING DESTROYED.  For us who are in Christ, the old man is crucified, the old man died with Christ in His death.  The rule of sin under which we lived is finished.  Nevertheless, there still remains within us this body of sin, as it is called.  It is the remnant of sin and death which remains within the members of the body.  It is a shadow of the old man.  It is that measure to which sin is co-extensive with the body.  Go back in your mental vision to Adam before the fall into sin.  Observe him, if you will, as he yields to the cunning and deceit of Satan.  In a moment, sin had the mastery over him.  His whole life was affected.  It turned sour.  It was ruined.  Sin governed him.  The blessedness which he knew of fellowship with God, was replaced by the curse of God’s judgment upon his sin.  Sin in his members regulated and controlled him.  So also were we in Adam.  But now we are in Christ Jesus, if truly we know Jesus as our Saviour.  And being in Christ’ we are joined to Christ, as members of His body.  Joined to Christ Who died for our sins and rose for our justification.  Therefore we too have died so far as sin is concerned.  With Christ we are also risen to new life.  In Him we are new creatures, new men.  AS TO OUR SOULS, that is the God-revealed truth.  However it is not yet fully true, AS TO OUR BODIES.  Sin still works in our members.  Therefore Paul could say, “O wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from this body of sin?” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say, “That does not apply to me!”  Ah yes, that would truly be wonderful.  One day it SHALL BE SO, but NOT JUST YET.

Experience drives home the painful truth, saying, “You know that you have a body of sin.”  For again we are Paul-like, saying, “The good that I would, I do not, and that which I would do not, that I do.”  The problem is not the old man, for we were born again and the old man was crucified and is dead.  The problem is the body of sin which remains.  The life in the Spirit has begun, but we still do battle with the body of sin.  In other words, we may say, that though in our hearts we know that we are delivered from the wages and effects of sin, sin both inherited and committed by us, so that sin no longer governs our lives; even so our bodies have not yet been fully delivered from sin’s influence.

On the other hand, we are not to think that our bodies are basically evil.  We have many reasons to claim this, but this one thing will suffice: the believer’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who dwells in him.  Would the Holy Spirit dwell in a body which was essentially evil?  No beloved!  On the contrary, it is no more than the shadow of the life of the old man which remains with us, which is the body of sin.

O let us rejoice in the Saviour, who slew the old man when He became sin for us on Calvary’s cross.  None but Jesus could and did raise Himself up from the dead.  The old man could not.  The old man remains dead forever being crucified with Christ!  When we died with Christ, we also rose to newness of life with Him.  Only Jesus could say, “I have power to lay down my life; I have power to take it up again.”  That, the old man could never do!

Since we are the redeemed of the Lord, it is our business to live like it.  Let us leave off every sham and mockery, every hypocrisy by which we FALSELY live as men of the world, when in truth we belong to Christ.  We are therefore called to live as Christ’s people.  Indeed, the normal life for us as the people God is to live as redeemed people.  Let us be done with playing games, that we may play the part of men and women of God.  Let us resolve that with the help of the Lord we shall live the life of a child of God, for that is what we are.

Suppose that we bought a watchdog, which after a time decided that it would no longer behave like a watchdog.  It left off barking loudly, and began to run away and hide when strangers appeared.  Of what use would that dog be?  Would we not wonder what had brought about the change in the animal’s nature?  We would say, “He is not himself!”  Nor must the people of God act any other way than befits their nature as His people.  Let us behave as children of the Heavenly King!  Let us live the life of resurrection unto everlasting life – the life which is ours in Christ!

Beloved, are we living like the very people we were created to be in Jesus??  Do we live lives of carelessness as to God’s law?  Let’s be done with careless.  Have we forgotten the vows we made upon confessing our faith??  Did we not promise to live a godly life all our days?  The call to do battle with evil is often in our ears.  What do we do?  Are we true Christian soldiers, or do we put our fingers in our spiritual ears so that we are unable to hear?  Beloved brethren in the Lord, there is only one way to keep faithful to God: Look always to Jesus.  Never let Him out of your sight.  O can you by faith look to Jesus and forget the death He died for you.  Can you forget the blood?  His blood?  Can you forget the price at which your salvation was bought?  Even as we look to Him there comes upon us a sorrow and grief over sin.  Can we live as the world lives when we remember Gethsemane and Calvary?  Can we live as the world lives when we see that it was our very sin which nailed Him on the cross?  It is almost as though the nails with which He was crucified had your name written on them for they were intended for you.

If there is any strong emotion which burns in the hearts of those who are saved by His blood, it is marvelling at redeeming love.  That which stirs up this emotion is the knowledge and remembrance of Him who died for them.

O beloved, can we who have been redeemed by His death, turn to sin and death even as “…as a dog returns to his own vomit?”  Can we set our hearts upon sin, when there still rings in our ears the cry of Jesus from the cross, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  Can we go on in sin knowing that He was forsaken for us?  By His wounds, by His every pang of pain and suffering, by His grief over our sin, by His blood shed, see that sin, your sin and my sin is exceedingly sinful.  There is no longer any pleasure in sin for us who are truly the blood-bought possession of Jesus.  NEVER AGAIN can sin hold any delight for us, for sin brought about the Saviour’s death.  NEVER AGAIN can we entertain thoughts of evil, for it was evil that lay His body in the dust of the tomb.  How can we go on in sin when we see that the grace of God, by which we are saved, is held out to us in the nail-pierced hands of Jesus.

            Now none but Christ can satisfy,
            None other name for me,
            There’s love and joy and lasting peace,
            Lord Jesus found in Thee.

Amen.