A Freedom that Should Lead to Separation...

This week, we are looking at a potential response that we can experience, as followers of Jesus, to the idea that God’s grace would ultimately overwhelm and rule over selfishness, sin and rebellion. And that potential response is to think “If I am saved by grace, then it really does not matter how I live, does it? If it is not what I do for God that makes me right with God, but what God does for me that make me right with God, then why don’t I just do whatever I want? I mean I am saved by grace, and since I am not responsible for my salvation, then I can live irresponsibly, because God is the one responsible for rescuing me.”

And in a section of a letter in our Bibles called the book of Romans, we see a man named Paul reveal for us the timeless truth that God’s rescue should result in separation from selfishness and sin. And in Romans 6:1-14, we see Paul reveal for us four specific reasons why our rescue should result in separation from selfishness and sin. Yesterday, we saw that we should be separated from selfishness and sin because we are identified with Christ. When we become followers of Jesus and follow the Lord in baptism, we are publicly proclaiming that we are identifying ourselves with Jesus as our Lord and Leader and that we are turning our back on, or dying to, selfishness, sin, and rebellion and choosing to identify and live in a life that pursues Christ and a life of grace and Christ-likeness.

There should not be a desire to embrace the evil and destructive power of selfishness and sin, because our identification with Christ should result in separation from selfishness and rebellion. Today, we will see Paul reveal a second reason why our rescue should result in separation from selfishness and sin in verse 5:

For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Here we see Paul reveal for us a second reason why our rescue should result in separation from selfishness and sin. And that second reason is that we should be separated from selfishness and sin because we have been freed by Christ. The word united here, in the language this letter was originally written in, literally means to be associated in a related experience.

When we believe, trust and follow Jesus as Lord and Leader, we become united, or associated with Him. We are associated and aligned with the life that Jesus lived and the death on the cross that Jesus suffered as a penalty for our selfishness and rebellion. Paul then explains that if our confident trust in the claims of Christ and the message of the gospel result in being associated with His life and death, then it certainly also results in our association with His resurrection from the dead.

Paul then explains that reason why we can have this certainty in verse 6-7. We can have this certainty, according to Paul, because we have arrived at the knowledge that our old selfish and sinful life apart from Christ was crucified with Christ. For followers of Jesus, Jesus death on the cross for our selfishness and rebellion was accomplished so that our old body of sin might be done away with. In other words, Jesus death on the cross should cause our selfish and sinful lives to be done away with. Instead of embracing the destructive and evil power of selfishness and rebellion that causes us to do things that hurt God and others, that selfishness and rebellion should come to an end.

The reason that Jesus death on the cross should cause our selfishness and rebellion to end is because Jesus died so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. Paul’s point here is that followers of Jesus should no longer act or conduct themselves in total service or surrender to sin. Instead, followers of Jesus who are associated and aligned with Jesus life, death, and resurrection have died, or have been separated from sin. And because of that alignment and association with Jesus as a result of our rescue, we have been freed by Christ from slavery and service to sin.
You see, the fact that we have been freed by Christ should result in separation from selfishness and sin, not an embracing of selfishness and sin.

So, is that the case? Does the fact that you have been freed by Christ result in a life that is separating from selfishness and sin? Paul then continues to reveal a third reason why our rescue should result in separation from selfishness and sin. We will look at that reason tomorrow.