In this deep dive into Romans chapter 6, we explore common misconceptions among Christian therapists and pastors about the phrase ‘dead to sin’. Learn why misunderstanding this key passage has historically led to spiritual turmoil and how it continues to affect the faithful today. This episode aims to clear the fog, bringing clarity to the true meaning of holiness and righteousness in the Christian context, while encouraging religious leaders to reevaluate their interpretations and teachings.
00:00:05 Misinterpretation of Romans 6 and its Consequences
00:05:30 Historical Misunderstandings of Sin and Holiness
I want to speak to professionals today, to professional therapists, to counselors, to pastors. And I realize that there may be only one or two listening, but if I can influence just one, it will be worth it. We’re looking at Romans chapter 6, which is about dead to sin. And there are among us Christians, there are Christian therapists, Christian counselors, and of course pastors are Christians. And there are some over the decades and centuries that have so badly mauled Romans chapter 6 and then preached it from the pulpit or counseled it in therapy sessions that they have created enormous fear and wounds in those who are their clients or their congregations. The reason for this is that the gospel has been terribly misunderstood. The truth is that the gospel is about Jesus Christ standing in for humanity, substituting for humanity, and taking the identity of humanity upon himself and suffering the judgment of humanity on behalf of humanity. However, that is not how some pastors and some therapists who are Christian have understood this passage. When they look at this passage and they talk, they see the phrase, dead to sin, we died to sin, Romans 6 verse 2 says, They completely misunderstand what Paul is saying and think he’s talking about the psychological effect of believing in Jesus Christ so that people gradually learn how to die to sin by having no more desire for it, no more temptation for it, and no more actual failure in it. so that the belief is that as we grow in the sanctified life, we will get to the place where we no longer have temptation to sin. Now, I grant you that this is a rare breed of people who believe that in these modern liberal days where even Scripture itself is not regarded as very much, and certainly no detailed study of Scripture takes place in most cases. We’re all generalists these days, and we all just slap on Scripture our liberal left- or right-wing views. But if you should really be a serious Christian and get it wrong, you could do serious damage to people. There are Christians who are very serious about reading and studying the Word and devoted to Jesus and wanting to serve Him, who have not been trained or guided in how to understand what Paul is saying, and when they read these verses, this verse here, We Died to Sin, they immediately think that it means that they should get to the place where they don’t feel any sin anymore or any desire for it. And they set themselves on a course, on a goal of overcoming sin in such a way that not even by a thought or a temptation does the urge take place or does the urge come upon them and the failure takes place. A century ago, maybe 150 years ago, this was called holy flesh. There were people who actually believed that you could get to the place where you no longer had a sinful nature, a human nature inclined to sin. And these people would do all kinds of things to get to that place. They would read the Word for hours a day. They would fast for sometimes weeks on end. They would go into ecstatic experiences to try to get to the place where they actually transcended their human nature. Some of these people would actually go insane. Others would get so sick that they would start hallucinating and all kinds of ill conditions. They’d run around becoming not hilarious, but the word is… I’m not coming up with the word I want here, but they would… Hysterical. They would get hysterical in their… state of mind and would be so troubled if they were not reined up to an unreal super-spirituality that they were trying to maintain where they had this holy flesh, never felt any sinfulness at all. These people very often would despise others because they would see that others were tempting to them because the others didn’t have these views and were just ordinary Christians seeking to live by faith in Jesus but with lots of flaws. And they hated, that is, these perfectionists hated the flaws in other people. And so what very often happened is that they became isolationists. isolationists today might be looked at from a psychological point of view, but centuries ago, and in certain areas today even, they would be looked at as people who closeted themselves in monasteries and kept themselves free from people. Other people in other cultures, they would be living in caves or isolating themselves in such a way as to keep themselves from humanity because humanity was a temptation to them. Some people even believed that Jesus was one of these people, that he was an isolationist. But this cannot be demonstrated in the Word of God because Jesus very much lived among people, ate with them, drank with them, and the Pharisees accused him of being a glutton. So it couldn’t be that Jesus was one of these Gnostics, as they’re called, who lived in caves and tried to supersede and transcend their human nature. That’s what Buddhists try to do. Now, granted that most, I presume most Buddhists are not crazy, they don’t go insane, but they do live a life that is so isolationistic that after some years it would be very difficult for them to live among ordinary society. So, what are we doing wrong here? What we are doing wrong is failing to understand the gospel. The gospel is not the gradual, slow infusion of holiness, infusion of holiness into a human being so that he slowly transcends his human nature, rises above it so that he’s no longer a normal human being. That is not the gospel. It is Buddhism that has a Christian cloak on it. It is a spiritualism, a spiritualism that is very, very far removed from the gospel. What went wrong? What went wrong is that people misread the teaching of godliness and the teaching of holiness. Paul is going to talk about the teaching of godliness. He spends three or four chapters on it, actually, in the book of Romans from chapters 12, 13, and 14, and 15. Well, chapters 12 to 15, roughly. But that godliness is not what people think it is. If we forget the salient truth that righteousness is counted, counted, counted to the human, to the person, to God’s children, not infused into them, but counted to them as if they were righteous. If we forget that truth, we turn the gospel into a terrifying, sick, religious psychology. There are churches that do this, whole churches. They think that when Paul talks about our being righteous and sanctified, that we are at the place or should get to the place where there is no more desire for sin and no more failures in sin in the human being. To get to the place where we have transcended our humanity. You may be one of these. You may have been under that teaching for years. If so, quit. Run. Get out of that church. It is a terrible danger to you, to your psychology. The person who feels this way, who has the idea that God is infusing Jesus’ righteousness so that you can be as righteous as he was— The person who believes that is endlessly neurotic, endlessly trying to have a holy mind when in fact some wrong thoughts come and go at the most inconvenient times. That is not the righteousness that Paul is talking about. He is talking about Christ who is counted and reckoned to be our righteousness because he has taken the place of all humanity and is substituting God. His judgment for humanities, that is, His judgment on the cross, was on our behalf. And His righteous life was ours. There are many Christians who get afraid of this teaching because they think, well, it’s soft gospel. It leads us to live in whatever way we want. No, it does not. It leads us to gratitude, to thankfulness towards God’s mercy, to loving Him in a way that being religious neurotic could never produce, a love that could never be produced by a religious neurotic. But it leads us to be so grateful to God’s mercy that of course we serve Him, but we serve Him imperfectly. We are still in our human nature. And that human nature, though, is not counted against us. Romans 4 verse 5, we are counted as if we were righteous. So I’m urging professionals, maybe a person is listening to me who is a professional counselor and a Christian, or maybe somebody is listening to me who is a pastor and And I’m saying to you, please, do your homework. Go back to the gospel and explore its meaning verse by verse so that you can catch the mind of Paul and what he is really saying, so that you don’t unconsciously—I know it’s not your intention—abuse sinners with a standard that is so unreal and unhealthy that you turn them into religious neurotics and make them worse sinners when they came to you than before they ever knew you. Thank you for listening today. Colin Cook here and How It Happens. You can hear this program on your smartphone any time of the day or night. 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