You Need Not Sin
You Need Not Sin
Romans 6:13-18
How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?Romans 6:2
We have to build in faith on the presupposition of the perfect Atonement of Jesus Christ, not build on an experience. If we construct our faith on our experience, we produce that most unscriptural type of holiness, an isolated life, with our eyes fixed on our own whiteness. If we do not base all our thinking on the presupposition of the Atonement, we shall produce a faith conscious of itself, hysterical and unholy, that cannot do the work of the world. Beware of the piety that has no presupposition of the Atonement, it is no use for anything but leading a sequestered life; it is useless to God and a nuisance to man. We have to base resolutely in unshaken faith on the complete and perfect Atonement of Jesus Christ.
“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” How many of us reckon like that, or do our prayers, our piety, come in the way? Our prayers and our piety are the evidence that we are on the right foundation. Is the Atonement the one thing that exerts a dominating influence in my life?
1. If You Obey in the Matter of Dedication
Yield . . . your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (Romans 6:13)
There is something we must do, viz., dedicate our members. Have we ever, as saved souls dedicated our bodies to God? “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,” not “Present your all,” but present your body. If you obey in this matter of dedication, you can keep your bodily life free from vice and sin. Sin dwells in human nature, but it has no light there, it does not belong to human nature as God created it. Deny the disposition of sin, says Paul, bring it to the place of crucifixion (v. 6). Let not sin i.e., your right to yourself, rule any longer, deny that disposition and let Jesus Christ rule. Never let any member dominate and say—You must.
2. If You Obey in the Matter of Deliverance
For sin shall not have dominion over you. (Romans 6:14)
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body,” that is, do not let sin command your body. Sin is a monarch ruling on the outside, demanding obedience on the inside. We can add nothing to the Atonement, we can do nothing for our deliverance, but we must manifest that we are delivered from sin. If you obey in this matter of deliverance, you will realise that there is no bondage in the Atonement. “Even so reckon ye yourselves to be . . . alive unto God in Jesus Christ” (rv).
3. If You Obey in the Matter of Discernment
What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? (v. 15)
Do you discern that Jesus Christ means His Atonement to be recognised there—in my home life, in my business? The grace of God is absolute, but your obedience must prove that you do not receive it in vain. Continually bring yourself to the bar of judgment and ask—Where is the discernment of the Atonement in this matter and in that? The grace of God in a human being is proved by the discernment of the Atonement in unobtrusive practical ways. The amateur providence element, the insistence of common-sense morality, is the great enemy of the life of Jesus in a saint because it competes with the Atonement —“Of course God does not mean that the Atonement is to be worked out through my finger-tips, in the getting of meals, in my business!” If the Atonement does not work out there, it will work out nowhere. Beware of the piety that denies the natural life, it is a fraud. We can all shine in the sun, but Jesus wants us to shine where there is no sun, where it is dark with the press of practical things.
4. If You Obey in the Matter of Debate
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield [kjv] yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey? (v. 16 rv)
What do you debate about in your mind? When Jesus speaks, never say: “Let us talk this matter over.” Some of us obey God in prayer meetings only or in devotional times; we never think of obeying Him at mealtimes or in our offices, etc. We fail whenever we forget to do in the insignificant details those things we were delighted to see when we were looking into the law of God. (See James 1:22-25.) When things come out against us, do we sit down under them, or have we such a habit of mind that God is always first, not piously and pathetically, but actually? Prayer does not place God first; prayer is the evidence that our minds are fixed on God. We have to get our minds used to putting God first, it is conscious to begin with. The snare is putting common sense first. Jesus says—Reverse the order, put God first. The tiniest thing that comes between you and God will blot God out. A twinge of neuralgia is sufficient to make some of us forget the Atonement.
5. If You Obey in the Matter of Delight
But ye have obeyed from the heart. (Romans 6:17)
“Obedience of the heart is the heart of obedience.” Whenever we obey, the delight of the supernatural grace of God meets our obedience instantly. Absolute Deity is on our side at once every time we obey, so that natural obedience and the grace of God coincide. If we look at obedience apart from the presupposition of the Atonement, it makes it seem absurd. Obedience means that we bank everything on the Atonement, and the supernatural grace of God is a delight. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless there is this deliberate building on the presupposition of the Atonement.
6. If You Obey in the Matter of Devotion
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (v. 18)
Thank God we can do what we ought to do—when? NOW! We are free to become the servants of righteousness. Sin is nothing but a big bully. Sin was killed at the Cross of Christ; it has no power at all over those who are set free by the Atonement of Jesus and are prosecuting their life in Him: “. . . in nothing terrified by your adversaries.”
We have to “grow in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” The more we are taught, the more we can be taught, and the more we are taught the more the growth and the glorifying of God will go on in our souls. Have we ever been taught anything? Being taught of God is a delightful life, it means the discernment is exercised. God does not put us in His “show room,” we are here for Him to show His marvellous works in us and to use us in His enterprises.
We have to prosecute our life in Christ, not be dragged in His wake or the strain will be too heavy and down we shall go. The only place to prosecute our life in Christ is just where we are, in the din of things, and the only way in which we can prosecute our life in Christ is to remember that it is God Who engineers circumstances, and that the only place where we can be of use to Him is where we are, not where we are not. God is in the obvious things.
Am I banking in faith on the Eternal Fact of the Atonement? Am I so devoted to my Lord that He is working out His purposes in me? Or am I one of those miserable individuals who is working out his own particular type of religion by himself? We have to measure every type of experience by the Lord Jesus Christ and His Atonement. We must build on the great fact of the Redemption which God has performed through Christ, and continually presuppose that Redemption. If we fail to prosecute our life in Jesus, and build our faith on our experiences only, then the further away we get from our experiences, the dimmer will Jesus Christ become.