Romans 6:11-14
Tom Shrader walks through Romans 6:11-14, emphasizing that because believers are united with Christ and dead to sin, they are no longer under sin's mastery or the law's condemnation. Drawing on paraphrases, cross-references in Ephesians and Titus, and the pivotal call of Romans 12:1-2, he urges the church to present their bodies to God as a living sacrifice, which is the only logical response to His mercy. The message closes with a powerful illustration from a memorial service, where a letter written by a man transformed by Christ in prison gave a vivid picture of what a genuinely renewed mind and life look like.
“Sin has been dethroned and replaced by Jesus. Don't let this sin reign in your body anymore — and He wouldn't tell you to do it if you didn't have the power to do it.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Romans
Recorded: 2013 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 39 min
Themes: freedom from sin, surrender, renewal, living sacrifice, grace, transformation, obedience, identity in christ, struggling with sin, new believer, feeling trapped by habits, seeking renewal, recovering from addiction, young adult, doubting your salvation, husband
Scripture: Romans 6:3, Romans 6:6, Romans 6:8, Romans 6:9, Romans 6:11-14, Romans 6:12, Romans 6:13, Romans 11:33, Romans 11:36, Romans 12:1-2, Romans 5:6, Romans 5:8, Romans 5:10, Ephesians 1:3-13, Ephesians 2:1-4, Titus 3:3-7, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 13, 2 Corinthians 5:14, James 1:13-15, 1 John 2:16
Theological Themes: sanctification, union with christ, Romans 6, imputation, dying to sin, regeneration, becoming holy, law and grace
Full Transcript
A Personal Update
Sandy and I are doing great. We have been married about a year and a half now, and we have found something we have in common that is going to make this thing worse — we both love me. I tease about that, but unfortunately it is probably a little bit true.
Physically, about six weeks ago I got hit with a little uptick on some inflammation, nothing serious, but one of the things it did is put me back on the medicine I am on — steroids — which have some really good effects. I have almost no pain, which is great, and I feel like I could lift this building. The bad side is the side effects. A little bit tired, and I am vain enough to mention it — I bloated. I do not want you to think I am home just watching TV and eating. I am home watching TV, but not eating as much. It is the steroid stuff.
I have also been very emotional. I stopped at Arizona Avenue and Elliott the other day at a red light, and there is a Circle K there now. That had been a Christmas tree lot forever, and all of a sudden it occurred to me we were never going to have Christmas trees there again. It is dumb, but there is just a lot of stuff associated with it. The takeaway is thanks for asking, and I really am doing well. I went to a mega dose of steroids and I am already a third off of that, so all good.
Romans 6:11–14
Open your Bibles to Romans chapter six. That is where we are today. We are going to look at verses 11, 12, 13, and 14.
"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."
Walking Through the Passage
The key phrase for us here is "in Christ." Never skip over a connector word like "therefore" — he is connecting thoughts together. Because I am in Christ, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. We are talking about how you are going to use the members of this body, not for unrighteousness but, in contrast, as instruments of righteousness. The reason sin will have no dominion over you is that you are not under the law, under its guilt and penalty, but under grace.
Earlier this morning I worshiped in the way I love to do it, coming in without knowing exactly what the songs would be. Jed wrote a song, and the lines from that song are a perfect commentary on these verses: "Satan has no power in me, Jesus is my victory. Sin has lost its hold on me, Jesus is my victory." That is exactly what those verses say. Do not let sin reign in your body anymore, and He would not tell you to do it if you did not have the power to do it. You do not have to do it. Sin has been dethroned and replaced by Jesus.
Three Paraphrases of the Passage
Let me read you a couple of paraphrases of this passage and explain what a paraphrase is. It is not a translation. Your ESV or New American Standard would be a word-for-word translation. The NIV and others like it give more of a thought-for-thought translation, which I think is less accurate. A paraphrase is a person sitting down and saying, "Here is what I think this passage says," and sometimes you get great insights from that.
Here is the New Living Translation: "Don't let sin control the way you live. Give yourself completely to God. You were dead, but now you have new life. Sin is no longer your master. You no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace."
J.B. Phillips offers an older paraphrase, one of the first I was ever familiar with, and he always has a great way of expressing things: "Do not allow sin to establish any power over your mortal bodies in making you give way to its lusts. But, like men rescued from death, put yourself in God's hands as weapons of good for God's own purposes. For sin is not meant to be your master. You are no longer living under the law, but under grace."
Here is Eugene Peterson's The Message: "This means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourselves wholeheartedly into this, remembering that you have been raised from the dead. Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under the old tyranny any longer, but under the freedom of God."
Who Controls You?
We start to hear some words — the words about control. Who is going to control you? Paul admonishes us to be filled with the Spirit, not drunk with wine. When I am under the influence of wine or alcohol, that is what has control over me. Paul is saying you don't need to be controlled by sin or dominated by sin, but live under the control of the Holy Spirit.
Part of this is going back and remembering what God has done. When it comes to living, don't present your body to be used for sin and destruction, but present your body — and by this we mean mind, choice, will, all that we are — present ourselves for God's righteousness. Because I am no longer living under the law, but I am living under grace. I am no longer under the condemnation of an enslaved man, but I am now freed.
In fact, one of the commentators uses as a title on this section: "Who's slave are you?" Paul, who tells us not to let sin reign in our body, identifies himself in chapter one, verse one of this book as "Paul, the bond servant" — Paul, the slave. Dylan was right: everybody's going to serve somebody. Everybody's going to have a master somewhere.
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
What Paul is saying is, listen, you are a new creature. Look at chapter six. This is what Tim covered last week. Paul begins in chapter six, verse eleven with "even so," which carries with it the idea of — here is what Paul has been talking about. He has been talking about what you know and what you believe.
Chapter six, verse three: "Do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ?" Verse six: "knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him." Verse eight: "we believe that we shall be alive with Him." Verse nine: "knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death no longer has mastery over us." Because all of that is true, Paul says in verse eleven: "consider yourself" — it is an accounting term, reckon it as done — "know this, that you yourselves are dead to sin, but you're alive."
Here is the key phrase, and if you mark, underline, or circle anything in your Bible, get this one: "in Christ Jesus." That is our status.
The Meaning of "In Christ"
Keep your finger on Romans and turn to the right — through First and Second Corinthians, Galatians — to Ephesians. When we studied Ephesians, I remember well teaching that first chapter and making the same point we just made: the importance of understanding this phrase "in Christ."
One of the things I find helpful when looking at a theme in a passage is to mark it — perhaps with a square or a squiggly line — so your eye is drawn to it. Looking at Ephesians chapter one that way, here are the occurrences. Verse three, the end of it: "in Christ." Verse four: "chosen in Him." Verse seven: "in Him we have redemption." Verse nine: "His kind intention, which He purposed in Him." Verse ten: "the summing of all things in Him" — all things upon earth, "in Him also." Verse eleven: "we have obtained an inheritance." Verse twelve: "we also have the first hope in Christ." Verse thirteen: "in Him you also have listened to the message, and you were sealed in Him." It is this idea of being in Him, in right relationship.
Reconciled to God
What it means to be a follower of Christ is to believe in Him and to understand that we come into the world separated from Him by our sin. I know that at least once this Christmas season we will sing a song that has in it the line, "God and sinner — reconciled." Reconciled carries with it the supposition of a preexisting hostile condition. If I say Timmy and I were reconciled, you can conclude from that alone that there had to be a preexisting hostile condition. So if God and sinner are reconciled, then what we know is there was a preexisting hostile condition between them.
A Greatest Hits Passage: Titus 3
Now keep your finger there and let me take you to a passage you will want to mark and put on your greatest hits list. Titus chapter three, verses three through seven. I actually came today with my first ever study Bible — the first Bible I had as a believer. In the blank pages, I began what turned out to be a really smart practice: I started listing certain passages that either my teacher Larry went to over and over again, or that I returned to repeatedly, or that had a profound impact on me when they were mentioned. After a while, they become second nature.
The very first one listed is 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter. Then 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter. That list is a bit like the cheat sheet a quarterback wears on his wrist — when you are sitting around thinking, you go to it. I would suggest you do the same, and Titus 3:3 through verse seven should be on it. Let's take in this passage, because this is what Paul is driving home: "For we also once were foolish ourselves, disobedient, deceived..."
Freed from the Bondage of Sin
That is who we are by nature. The corresponding passage is Ephesians 2:1–4, where Paul says we are by nature children of wrath, separated from God. The wage of sin is death, and death means separation — I am separated from God. But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared — that is Jesus — He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we had done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we might be made heirs according to the full hope of life.
Part of that inheritance, returning to Romans 6, is that I am no longer in bondage to sin, because I am in Christ and those bonds are broken. There is that updated version of Amazing Grace that has the line about the bonds — I have been set free. Set free from what? Set free from the guilt and the bondage of sin. I have been forgiven.
The Adoption Illustration
It was powerful when Jeremy was talking about adoption and taking kids out of the system they are in. These are kids who, as he described, have not been loved, have been abused, and may have been isolated. Here is what I want you to understand: that was you, separated from Christ. That was you working hard, perhaps, to try to earn His pleasure, but you could never do it.
But now you are forgiven. Now you are delivered. You are not under the law and its condemnation — there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. We can call Him Father. We have an intimacy with Him.
Therefore, Do Not Let Sin Reign
Because that is true, Paul says in verse 12, "therefore" — because that is true — do not let sin reign in your body. He is affirming what is already there. Sin has been displaced. You now have the power and the confidence, in the midst of temptation, to know from 1 Corinthians 10:13 that no temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man, and God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able to endure — He will provide a way of escape.
You have the confidence that you cannot out-sin God's grace, that you are not on probation. Your relationship with Him is permanent. That is genuinely hard for some people to receive, because so many human relationships — I would say most — are somewhat conditional. The message is: I will love you if, I will love you when.
The Baseball Story
When I was a young boy, I was a decent athlete — you would not know it now. By high school I went out for basketball, but they already had one, so I was done. My sport was baseball, and I do not mean this as a criticism — it is just the way it was. If I went zero for four, the ride home was very different than if I went three for four. But I never heard "I'm really proud of you, buddy" after I struck out.
My boys Braden and Yale played a game yesterday morning. I was not able to go because I was speaking downtown at something arranged a long time ago. Braden asked me on Friday if I was going to be at the game, and I had to tell him I would be downtown speaking to grandparents about going to their grandchildren's baseball games. The irony of it was not lost on me. Haley called afterward, and I asked how it went. She said it was good, but that there had been a "Tom moment." She had been over by the other team's dugout when a kid made an out, and his dad was there. The dad said, "You didn't do what I told you to do — that's why you made an out." Haley knows how I feel about that. You could just see all the air go right out of that kid.
My instinct is to get angry at that dad, but that dad probably heard the same thing all his life — not as an excuse, just as an observation. Some of you have been raised with an idea of God that pictures Him in heaven saying, "If you had done what I told you, you would not have made an out." But He does not say that. He says, "You are My child. You have been rescued and delivered. I knew that was going to happen, and I loved you anyway. You are Mine." You are, as you sometimes see posted in restaurant windows, under new management. You are no longer under sin's authority. You are a new creature, a new creation, driven by God's love for you.
Grace, Truth, and the Response to Sin
Sometimes this is very hard for us to receive, because we flinch right back into the old way of thinking. To talk about grace is difficult, because we immediately want to ask, "But what about truth? What about when I sin?" Here it is: you are forgiven. That does not become an excuse to sin — rather, it breaks your heart. You look at God's love for you and ask, "How can I do that to You?"
One of the great indicators of how you are doing spiritually is how you respond to sin. If you can simply sin and say, "Well, boys will be boys — I'm forgiven," that is the very question Paul is dealing with: can I just be the same old person and say Jesus is Lord? Can everything stay the same? And Paul's answer is no, because it is a new relationship. You do not let sin reign in your body.
The Process of Temptation
This sinful pull lives in the flesh. It is what John describes in 1 John — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. There will always be that attraction. James 1 gives us a clear description of how temptation and sin work, and I will read it to you.
James 1:13–15: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth" —
The Lure of the World
There is something internal in the flesh — that old flesh is attracted to something external. I watch a lot of television, and a lot of it is good, but then I watch things that make no sense. I watch home and garden shows even though I never do anything with that information. I don't even know how to turn on a hammer. I watch cooking shows I'm not going to cook from.
I watched a fishing show the other day, and this guy had a new lure — state-of-the-art, the real thing. Then they showed a picture of some sort of fish alongside the lure, and they looked identical. Then they showed a fish coming along thinking he was going to get dinner, and he became dinner. That is James chapter one. The world comes along and shakes something that looks like the real thing, but it never produces. False gods never fail to fail.
Those things look so good, but James says think about it — consider. Don't just live like an animal driven by your desires. Think about how this is going to end. Don't present your body as an instrument for unrighteousness, for sin, for rebellion, but present it for righteousness. You have been delivered from the slavery of sin. You are not under its bondage any longer.
There is no condemnation for you. To put a bow on this section: you are not under the law, not under the guilt of the law, not under the penalty of the law. That is what the law does — the law condemns. But you are under grace, under forgiveness.
The Pivot to Romans 12
When I read that passage, there is a phrase that stands out. Tyler — I saw Tyler the other day, and he is teaching today at Tempe — asked me where I was going in this passage. I told him it was the phrase in verse 13. You see the word "present" at the beginning of the phrase "don't present," and then in the middle of verse 13, "present yourself to God." That makes me think of another passage in this book.
I want to take you to that passage and then share something that happened to me recently. Still in the book of Romans, turn to Romans chapter 12. Romans 12 is the pivot point in this book. Romans chapters 1 through 11 have Paul laying out these amazing doctrinal truths, and look at how that section ends in chapter 11, verse 33: "the depths of riches of wisdom and knowledge and of God." Chapter 11, verse 36: "for from him through him to him are all things." Paul looks back at Romans 1 through 11 and breaks out in doxology.
When he gets to Romans chapter 12, he moves toward exhortation — toward the practical part. Here is what he says: "I urge you therefore, brethren." He is talking to believers. "By the mercies of God" — that is the motive. Because of the mercies of God. Let me list some of those for you: salvation, His kindness, freedom, reconciliation — all that God has poured out on you while you were a sinner, while you were helpless, while you were a child of wrath. In spite of you, not because of you.
Present Your Bodies
Because of all of that, Paul says: "present your bodies as a living sacrifice" — not those old dead sacrifices of the Old Testament — "holy" and "acceptable to God," which is "your spiritual service of worship." It is the only logical response when you contemplate what God has done.
I have been in Sports Illustrated twice. Once as a photographer, which is interesting because I don't own a camera, but I took some pictures at an Iowa-ASU game that were published the following week with the credit "Tom Schrader, AP." The other time, I did a chapel for the University of Arizona Wildcats years ago. There was a writer from Sports Illustrated covering the U of A that week, and I didn't know it. Part of what he covered was that chapel, and in the chapel I talked about Romans chapter 12, verse 1. I came up with the phrase "Give your bod to God," which was silly then and silly now, but it got picked up. Though honestly, I probably didn't give the Wildcats my best — I gave them what they deserved. I heard they won last night, so that's a big game for them.
The Only Logical Response
This is Paul saying: give your body — your mind, your will, your emotions, all that you are — to God. Present them to Him. The idea is to yield, to surrender. And the reason is that it is the only thing that makes sense. When you stop and contemplate all that Paul has written in Romans 1 through 11, those passages I have taken you to many times — Romans 5, verse 6, "while we were helpless"; verse 8, "while we were sinners"; verse 10, "while we were enemies" — you see that Jesus moved toward you. As we saw in Titus, He saved you not on the basis of what you have done. Anything you would present as a sacrifice in terms of atoning for your own sin would be flawed, and it requires a perfect sacrifice. That was Jesus, who died in your place.
So the most logical thing is to present to Him your bodies, which is your spiritual service of worship. Ray Stedman writes that this is your logical worship — this is the way you worship God. I hear many people talking about worship when they come to church to worship corporately, but worship does not start and end at church. You are worshiping, or not worshiping, all week long, depending on what you do with your body. Is it His?
How you do what you do matters. Your job tomorrow is a reflection of your relationship with Christ. Whether you are a stay-at-home mom or a CEO running a Fortune 500 company, either way it is a reflection — it is your worship. I was just reading a book on leadership — more for the biography than anything — and this author is talking about that very thing.
Don't Be Conformed
Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Some paraphrases are helpful here. The Message puts it this way: take your ordinary everyday life — sleeping, eating, going to work, walking around — and place it before God as an offering. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without thinking. Going with the flow is great if the flow is going where you want to go.
The Living Bible says: don't copy the behavior and customs of the world, but be a new and different person with a freshness in all you do and think. The Phillips translation is much more aggressive: don't let the world squeeze you into its mold — it will — but let God remold your minds from within so that you may prove in practice the plan God has for you. Unlike religion, biblical Christianity changes us from the inside out, and it begins with the renewing of the mind.
Long before we get to action, we begin to see the world differently. There is an old song we sing every once in a while that captures this well. "I'd rather have Jesus than silver or gold. I'd rather be His than have riches untold. I'd rather have Jesus than houses or land. I'd rather be led by His nail-pierced hand than to be the king of a vast domain and be held in sin's dread sway. I'd rather have Jesus than anything the world offers today." Is that true? That is what it means to not be conformed — not to say that things are unimportant, but to hold them in the right perspective.
The Renewing of the Mind
This all begins with the renewing of the mind — a mind like Christ. Sandy is teaching a Bible study in the Gospel of John, and she read something to me yesterday and said she thought I could use it. She was right. The author writes: "Men will flock to a teacher or preacher who can really give them guidance for the tangled business of thinking and living. Jesus is the one who, amidst the shadows, makes things clear, who, at many crossroads of life, shows us the right way, who, in the baffling moments of decision, enables us to choose aright, who, amidst the many voices which clamor for our allegiance, tells us what to believe."
That is what we receive from this Word. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. We begin to get the mind of Christ through His Word, and from there we see the world differently. We see people differently. This is biblical life change.
A Transformed Life
I did a memorial service here yesterday for a man I never met. I know that may sound awkward, but I have done it enough times that it does not bother me, because I get to hear people paint a picture of who he was. Tim mentioned that we started East Valley Bible Church twenty-two years ago next week, and I have invested a third of my life in this church. When I try to think about what has been most satisfying, I keep coming back to the original purpose statement of East Valley Bible Church: to help one another learn God's truths and live biblically changed lives.
That statement says a great deal. We are learning God's truths — whether in a redemption group, here on a Sunday, with five guys over coffee, or with three ladies meeting in the commons on a Wednesday. And the end result is that change takes place. That connects directly to where we are today. I no longer let sin reign in my body. I am no longer just driven by impulse. I will still do what I want — but God changes my wanter.
The man who died was incarcerated. He was not a famous man. There may have been two dozen of us there, and yet it may have been the most powerful memorial service I have ever attended. His mother-in-law, father-in-law, and wife all spoke. Both he and his wife had drug backgrounds, and his had landed him in prison. While there, he was being written up quite a bit for his behavior. Then a moment came that people might describe as him getting it together — but he did not get it together. God saved him, and everything began to change.
That is what this is about. This is about a life that is transformed. It is not about perfection. It is about, as 2 Corinthians 5:14 says, the love of Christ compelling us. As his wife Jen closed her remarks yesterday, she read a letter her husband had written her on New Year's Day. It is not the kind of letter you might expect from an incarcerated man with a drug background. It is the letter of a transformed life. His sin was simply more visible than yours or mine, but just as he was delivered — though he remained physically in prison — he was spiritually free. And you have been delivered as well.
Listen to this letter: "Lord, I pray that You would give Jen and Rusty a vision for our future. Help us to understand that Your plans for us are for good and nothing else — to give us a future of hope. Fill us with the knowledge of You in all wisdom and spiritual understanding."
A Prayer Worth Stealing
"That we may have a walk worthy of You, fully pleasing You, Lord, being fruitful in all good work and increasing in knowledge of You, Lord. May Jen and Rusty live in the Holy Spirit and not walk in doubt or fear, but in faith. Lord, help us to mature and grow in knowledge of You daily, submitting to You our dreams and desires. I pray, Lord, that You give us the opportunity to achieve goals that seem overwhelming at times."
"Jen and I will, in fact, have the motivation to be active in service as a family for the remainder of our lives. Lord, I pray that You have a hand in keeping us from losing our purpose and keep us filled with hope in our future, as an anchor of our soul, both sure and steadfast. Lord, place our family in Your house and keep us fresh, Your knowledge of You current, flourishing, bearing fruit in old age together. Watch over our kids."
I wanted to take that prayer and cross out Rusty and Jen, put Tom and Sandy, and send it to her. But I thought honesty was a better policy. And that is the transformation we have been talking about.
Closing Encouragement
My fear is that we spend so much time talking about sin and not reigning in it that you are beat up in the battle and never get to the joy of living the Christian life. Not easy, not free from sin, but free from condemnation. Tim will pick up there next week.
If you are here this morning and that was just gibberish — if you are thinking you have no clue what he was talking about — there will be some guys at the front of the service right afterwards who would love to meet with you and talk with you about what it means to know Christ. For those of us who would say Jesus is Lord, I hope that was 45 minutes of encouragement. That is what I hope.
Father, thank You for this awesome truth. Drill it deep in us. I look at the clock and we have to go, but God, thank You that we have forever to be Your kids. Thank You for loving us and saving us. We pray to You in Christ's name, amen. Have a great week. We will see you next week.