Unit 3: Liberating Letters
Key Verse:
Romans 6:5 NLT
5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.
Our redemption is at hand… Focus…
What you need to know
Romans 1:1 NLT
1 This letter is from Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, chosen by God to be an apostle and sent out to preach his Good News.
Paul wrote the letter to the church at Rome during his third missionary journey to the region of Macedonia (Greece), to the churches at Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. Paul is committed to preaching the Gospel (Good News) to the entirety of the civilized world. Rome represented the western edge of the ‘civilized’ world. The epistle is dated 56 AD to 57 AD. Paul is writing to a gentile-dominated church that has a smaller Jewish contingent that has recently returned to the area after having been exiled by the previous emperor, Claudius. Subsequently, the epistle to Romans is the fullest, most well-rounded of Paul’s presentations of the gospel, as he is preaching to people who have never heard every side of the argument for the Gospel…yet.
Romans 1:16-17 NLT
16 For I am not ashamed of this Good News about Christ. It is the power of God at work, saving everyone who believes—the Jew first and also the Gentile.[g] 17 This Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight. This is accomplished from start to finish by faith. As the Scriptures say, “It is through faith that a righteous person has life.”[h]
Paul’s initial postulate concerns the power of the preaching of the Gospel. Per Paul, it is the very power of God. Through the preaching of the Gospel, God expresses faith to the world, thus saving with the same Agent by which creation was formed: Jesus, the Living Word.
Romans 3:22-24 NLT
22 We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are.
23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. 24 Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.
Paul’s Gospel informs us that we are saved by faith…alone. He preaches that, when we hear and receive God’s message, God grants us the greatest of gifts: eternal life. Undeserved, unmerited favor: God chose to save us because of what Jesus did on our behalf.
1 Corinthians 2:14 NLT
14 But people who aren’t spiritual[a] can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means.
However, to the un-regenerated mind, this is foolishness. “If these things be so”, they say, ”then it’s anything goes, does it not?”
2 Peter 3:16 NLT
16 speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.
However, Paul’s rendering of the gospel is so radical, that even those who knew Jesus personally struggled to keep up, to reconcile what they had heard directly from Christ to the inconceivable possibilities that Paul preached. Radical is the right word.
The Lesson
Romans 6:1 NLT
1 Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace?
So then, Paul restates the question that his proposal of grace, so radical, engenders. “Why shouldn’t we sin, so that God’s great grace may be made more evident in us?” Sadly, this reasoning contains a tragic flaw in logic that has plagued all who seek to, somehow, get God to do something for us based on our deeds, whether good or bad. No Beloved, grace is undeserved. There’s nothing we do, good or bad, to earn it. Anything less than that would not be attainable. Only Christ could bridge the gulf between us and God. Grace is a gift. It’s a gift.
Romans 6:2 NLT
2 Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?
Paul is adamant in his response. No. Grace cannot be attained by works; good or bad. Why then should anyone continue in intentional sin? We have died to sin. Sin is our past. Allow it to grow smaller in the rear-view mirror of your mind. Put it behind you…
Romans 6:3-4a NLT
3 Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4a For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism…
Paul now reminds his audience that when they underwent water baptism, they were, figuratively, identifying themselves with Christ’s death. Death means dead. They died, figuratively speaking, and the public funeral was held at the river, where they were very ceremoniously … buried… with Christ… by baptism. You were, in heaven and on earth, declared dead! Dead!
Stop. I’m not here to argue about baptism. It is only an outward sign of an inward change. Baptism does not save. That grace is reserved for God, through the completed work of Christ at the cross and the continued work of the Holy Ghost in our hearts. I’m just here to tell you that … when we believed, we died. Dead.
Romans 6:4b-5 NLT
4b And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. 5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.
Paul now turns the attention of His audience to the unrealized possibilities before them: new life in Christ. As Christ was after the resurrection, so shall we become. We have infinity before us, We must no longer dwell on the finite that our past once offered. Allow the treasure Christ offers take preeminence in your heart.
Matthew 6:19-20 NLT
19 “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. 21 Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
I’m just saying…
Romans 6:6-7 NLT
6 We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin.
So then, we are no longer held prisoner by our sinful desires. Christ set us free from them. Our old nature was the problem. It no longer holds sway over us. We must move on if we are to grow in this ‘new life’ in which we have been immersed. We cannot move forward, looking back. Don’t ask me how I know this, but a drunk driver weaves because they are constantly looking in their rearview mirror. Because their reasoning is impaired by alcohol, they react to what they see in the mirror, where everything is moving in the opposite direction from them. Thus, they weave, trying to compensate for something that they have already bypassed, when where their focus should be, is what they are approaching and… what is approaching them. (Smile). Way back when, when I found myself in certain situations, I disciplined myself never to look in the rearview mirror. (Smile). Many Christians would prosper from that same advice…
Romans 6:8-11 NLT
8 And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. 9 We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. 10 When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. 11 So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.
I purposely grouped this set of verses together, rather than speak to them individually because I need my audience (you) to identify with Christ through the entirety of what Paul wrote here. We are alive in Christ! We can be certain of this. And since we are alive in Christ, then like Christ, we will never ‘die’ again. In essence and in ‘fact’ death and the grave have no power over us. Death has lost its sting. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote, For me to live is Christ, fo me to die…is gain! For, to be absent from the body is to be present… with the Lord!
Beloved, if death has no power over your eternal future, how can sin have any power over this glorious ‘present’ that you now indwell in Christ. Christ is alive, and so are you… in him. Sin no longer has control of you, no matter how often you fail in it. When you fail personally, when you sin, intentionally or unintentionally, shake it off. Forgive yourself and move on. Christ has already forgiven you. He’s forgiven you for sins you haven’t yet committed. He is faithful like that. Because of His finished work at the cross, let us turn our hearts wholly toward Christ and through Him, to God, relinquishing our hold on sinful desires and setting the entirety of our being toward Him.
Romans 6:12-14 NLT
12 Do not let sin control the way you live;[a] do not give in to sinful desires. 13 Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. 14 Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace.
Again, let us serve God with the same passion with which we once served ourselves. We are no longer slaves to our sinful passions. How can we continue to live in them? No. we have been offered that which confounds and surpasses our greatest imaginations: everlasting and eternal life before God in Christ. Beloved, by grace; God’s unmerited favor, we have eternal peace with God. Reconciliation underserved. Live in it.
Philippians 3:12-14 NKJV
12 Not that I have already attained,[a] or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have [b]apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Beloved, like a child whose face is pressed against the window of a toy store, let us press wholeheartedly into the revelation of what God has set before us. Let us open our Bibles and press into the eternal truth that God has revealed to us through His beloved Son and our beloved Savior, Jesus Christ.
Selah,
wb
Revelations 21:5-7 NKJV
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said [b]to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
6 And He said to me, “It[c] is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. 7 He who overcomes [d]shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.
Very Good Read you covered all the bases., I really liked the part where you talked about Paul People need to really know Paul and how he changed when he saw Jesus he was Radical for Jesus after that . Also what you wrote about Sin and how we are going to sin but than you go on to let the reader know that sin know longer controls them and at the end in which I was going to tell you that when Jesus said on the Cross It is finished you covered that at the end . Very well Done Wayne thank you !!
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