Colin Cook invites listeners to deconstruct the profound and liberating message of Romans 6. He addresses common misconceptions among Christians about freedom from sin and clarifies the difference between being free from sin’s identity and judgment versus being devoid of sin’s desires. As we journey through this impactful scripture, we learn the importance of reckoning our old self dead with Christ and the resulting freedom from guilt and shame. This episode encourages a reflective study of Romans 6, providing listeners with the spiritual tools to experience genuine liberation in their daily lives.
00:00:05 Understanding Romans 6 and Slavery to Sin
So we’re still exploring Romans 6, verse 6, and you remember it goes like this, “…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, or rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” We didn’t look at that last part yet, or haven’t looked at that last part yet, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Now, remember, slaves to sin implies addiction, doesn’t it? It is a state in which we are trapped. We can’t get out. We seem to do the same thing over and over again, even though we seem not to decide for it. It seems to just flow with the flow, and we simply can’t escape. But here is a message of escape. Yet it is very different from what we think the method of escape is. So many people go to meetings, and there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and go to support groups and try to count the days, three days, three weeks, three months, since they last did it or whatever it is. They did, and on it goes. We try to change our thinking, but we don’t know how to change our thinking without the gospel. The message then is this, that we know something. What do we know? That our old man, that is our natural humanity, that is the humanity in which we live, which has an inclination to go downwards… has been crucified with him. Well, of course, that doesn’t make sense if it’s literal. We weren’t there 2,000 years ago, and we didn’t go on a cross and get nailed to it. But what this is saying is that Jesus represents us and took our place, substituted for us, and went to the cross, executed for our humanity. And so we are to believe then from now on that we are no longer under the judgment and the condemnation of sin to the extent that we have to be executed for it. We are no longer under that condemnation because our natural humanity was identified with Christ at the cross, or Christ identified with our natural humanity and took the judgment for it on the cross. First of all, notice, as I mentioned the other day, how incredibly intimate this links Jesus with us and us with Jesus. What he went through, we are accounted as having gone through. What we are accounted as having gone through, he actually went through, being judged and executed for sin. knowing this that our natural humanity then was crucified with him, that is, it was reckoned and counted as if it were with him on the cross, that the body of sin, that’s the old man, the natural humanity again, might be rendered powerless, not destroyed as the King James Version says, that is a mistranslation, And we should understand that it’s very seriously a mistranslation because we do not destroy our natural humanity in this world. There are many Christians who have fallen for this false doctrine and attempt to somehow eliminate or destroy their humanity by… superseding it or transcending it by meditation and fasting to such extreme lengths that they don’t feel sin anymore or temptation anymore or any sensations of the flesh. That is not the biblical teaching. We do not believe that you have to become a hermit to be a Christian. We don’t believe that you have to escape social life and society in order to be a Christian. This teaching of the gospel is not how to transcend humanity, but rather how to understand that Jesus took our place so that we are counted as if we were already, that our judgment had already been completed and finished. So then, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be rendered powerless. Notice, how is it rendered powerless? It’s not rendered powerless by fasting or by extreme departing from society or meditation. it is rendered powerless by knowing that it is no longer under judgment. How then is sin or the human nature rendered powerless by knowing it’s not under condemnation? by this fact, that guilt and shame and fear, which is what the human nature experiences outside of Jesus Christ, unsettle the mind, make it unstable and frightened and obsessive. We worry about guilt. We obsess over guilt. We become frightened of guilt. And we are ashamed. And these emotions are so unstabling that the desire to escape from them increases the intensity of temptation. A temptation becomes far more intense when it is an escape from pain. And the pain is guilt and shame and fear without knowing that Christ took our judgment on the cross. But when we know that he took our judgment so that we are not condemned anymore, then gradually we begin to realize a settling of the mind, a calmness that comes over us, a reduction of the obsession over guilt and fear and shame. And when that happens, then temptation lessens, because if temptation is an escape from pain, Well then, or rather if sin is an escape from pain, well then we have less need for escape, because there is less pain, and we are able to go before the Lord and say, Lord, I feel this temptation, I thank you so much that I’m not condemned for it, and I praise you that I can talk to you about it without any judgment. How wonderful is this! And this is why Paul says in the last part of the verse that we should no longer be slaves to sin. You see, slavery comes about by a state of the mind. Slavery does not come about by a certain kind of chemical, whether it’s alcohol or drugs. The chemical of choice is not the core of addiction. The core of addiction is the state of mind, whether you are guilty and ashamed and afraid. or whether you are peaceful. If you experience continued guilt over the memory of your sins, or the realization of what you might do, that guilt will urge you to escape from it. It is too painful and frightening. And so the guilt is there with the shame that comes along with it and the fear of that, and it leads to a state of mind which causes you to switch off from God, to turn away from him because he seems to be so uncomfortable. He seems to be the one that is causing your guilt. He seems to be the one that is making you ashamed. He seems to be the one that’s always pointing the finger at you and saying, you’re no good. But he’s not actually doing that, because God himself has taken your burden upon the cross. The very opposite is true about God. And so when we realize the gospel of God, the good news about God, we no longer try to escape from him. We say, oh my goodness, Lord, you are my friend and I thought you were my enemy. You are the one who comforts me when I thought you were condemning me. It is our guilt, our sin, our brokenness that condemns us. God is for us, not against us. It is we who are against ourselves by believing all this nonsense that, well, it’s not nonsense, it’s reality that goes through our head that we’re no good and that we can’t amount to anything. But in Christ we are precious, we are special, and we are good. So then, we affirm these things. My humanity, my natural humanity, is on the cross with Christ. Jesus took my humanity by substitution, substituting for me, so that my humanity has gone under the judgment of the cross. and therefore I am counted as if I were already dead to it, and so the body of sin that I walk around in has no power to harm me. It has been rendered powerless because it cannot condemn me anymore. This is how faith operates, how faith speaks to itself, how faith speaks to God. And because it has been rendered powerless, I am no longer a slave to sin, because what made me a slave to sin was all the guilt and the shame and the fear that made me crawl under a rock. I praise you, dear God, that I can now come out from under that rock and into the open sunlight and the warm air and open my arms to your love and thank you that I am safe with Jesus Christ. What a glorious message this is. Romans 6, verse 6, I tell you, go to your Bible, break it down, this verse, meditate on its meaning, make the connections between one phrase and another or one clause and another. and you will find marvelous liberation by faith in this verse. Romans 6, verse 6, “…knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with or rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” So then Paul says, for he who has died has been freed from sin. Now do you see how so many people, so many Christians misunderstand this freed from sin phrase and get all bent out of shape and become neurotic Christians over it? This is not being freed from sin in the sense of never sinning anymore or never having a desire for sin or a temptation to sin. It means we are freed from the judgment and identity of sin because Christ has taken our humanity on the cross with him. He died in place of guilty humanity. So we are freed from sin, not in the sense that we don’t fail anymore or that we don’t feel the temptation, but we are freed from its identity and judgment. Yes, you are a sinner. But the truth is you are no longer counted a sinner anymore. Don’t fall for the trap that freed from sin means actual psychological freedom in the sense that you must get to the place where you never feel a temptation or a failure anymore. Don’t fall for that foolish trap. That leads you to religious neurosis. You are freed from sin in that Christ has taken your judgment and you are counted in him and therefore counted as if you were or considered as if you were or treated as if you were never a sinner ever again. What a glorious truth this is. Why are we freed from sin in this accounted way then? Because we have died to it, but not in the psychological sense of slowly meditating it away so that after a few years we never feel it anymore, but we died to it in being counted on the cross with Jesus, or with Jesus being counted as if he were us on the cross. This is the good news of the gospel. Embrace it. Thank you for joining me today. Colin Cook here and How It Happens. You’ve been listening to my broadcast, possibly on the radio, but did you know you can also hear it online on your smartphone? Simply download an app, soundcloud.com or pudbean.com, and key in How It Happens with Colin Cook when you get there. This is listener-supported radio now in its 27th year. 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