His Perfect Love

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Guest (Male): Pastor Matt says there is victory in Jesus!

Matt VanderVen: Sometimes I think I want to clap or help with Hallelujah or with joy because we came here this morning—and I know many of you know this—but when we sit under the Word and it's refreshed for us and we're washed with it and we're reminded, how much more do we appreciate Jesus and what He did for us?

We really begin to understand, "Lord, I knew I was saved, but I had no idea that You not only saved me, but You gave me a new nature, You gave me this desire, You even did away with the old man that was keeping me down and holding me back. You got me out of the Adamic nature; You gave me a nature in Christ so that I have victory and I can do these things so that I'm not neutered, so that I have a victory in Christ."

Guest (Male): As you're looking at the direction of so many in our world today, it really is a sad state of affairs. People by and large are living for themselves and embrace the sinful lifestyle, thinking it's no big deal. But the Christian is to stand out and be different. And by God's grace, we can and must.

Hello, friend. Thanks for joining us today for His Perfect Love. We're going through Romans, and today we'll see what it says about who we are in Christ and how to be successful in our battle against sin. Make your way over to chapter six, where we'll start at verse five.

Matt VanderVen: Let's look at verse five. "For if we have been united together in the likeness"—notice he's using this terminology, this is Paul's terminology—"likeness, image." He's going to pull this: "in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing that our"—here it is, circle it—"old man"—his terminology—"was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves."

That's how he defines it in human terms: that we were a slave, but we were a slave to sin. For he who has died has been freed. Now that word is in the perfect tense. It means it's already accomplished. It's the same Greek tense that we see when it was said of Jesus when He said, "Tetelestai. It is completed. It is finished." It means past, done, never to be done again. You can't redo it. We can't put Jesus Christ back up on the cross and repeat, rinse, and repeat.

There is no such thing. This is the same way. This word "freed" in the Greek is written in the perfect tense. It can't be redone. We're freed. There is no more freeing. We're freed. Do you understand what I mean now when I say that the Christian walk many of the church is neutered? They don't understand this. They don't understand the freedom that has been given to them. They're going back to what they used to know, thinking that has to be their life in Christ, when it doesn't. It's willful misunderstanding or disbelief. I don't know what it is. I don't want to get into the psychology of it, but it's a reality.

So from sin, now if we've died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live. He's contrasting death and sin, life in Christ. We're going to live with Him, knowing—again, there's that word in the perfect tense—you know, now that you know it's settled, you don't come back and go, "Well, do I still know? Or are you sure?" No, this is an absolute here. That's why it's written in the perfect tense in the Greek.

That Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has a dominion over Him. The *kyrieuō* in the Greek, the word *kyrieuō* here, dominion—the power, a power over us, he's going to tell us. It no longer has a dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once and for all. But the life that He lives, He lives to God. Underline that: "to God." That's the whole point. He lives now to God.

Let's talk about this as we look at it line by line. Verse five, he started out by doing just as he did in chapter three, verse one. What did he do? He unified and united everyone under sin. Now what does he do here? He's uniting the believer in the close union that we have in Christ in chapter six here. He says, "United together," again, both in His death and His resurrection. It's not one without the other. You can't have one without the other.

Very important. That means we all have the capacity for it. We may not all choose to receive it or walk it out, but we've received it. It's ours. It's our promise. It's our gift through grace. Think about this: participation in the death of Jesus makes our participation in His resurrection guaranteed. It's guaranteed. Every one of us that can be a believer in Christ in here know that we, whether it's through the *harpazō* and we're taken up, or as Second Corinthians 5:8 says, that absent with the body, present with the Lord.

If we should die tonight, tomorrow, whenever, we immediately will be translated—spirit will be with Jesus Christ immediately. And there will be the resurrection. We didn't stay dead in that body that's laying in a casket somewhere or in the ground somewhere. I don't mean to be insensitive to it, but your loved one, if they were a believer in Christ, their spirit is not in that body. They're with Jesus Christ. And I like to say when I'm doing funerals many times: they're dancing with Jesus.

They've been given a new body. They're experiencing these things that we don't even have an understanding completely of—the beauty, the perfection. And it's not just—we've been given senses: touch, smell, hearing. All these things, they're not fully alive here because of the curse. Can you imagine when we are in heaven, all that will be alive for us as we see Jesus Christ with our eyes, as we were always meant to see Him in the spirit? There's going to be nothing like it, I promise you.

You're not going to be wondering and worrying about being back here. You're going to be happy at the feet of Christ, and you're not looking back. Not that you don't love your loved ones here; you do. But you know what? If they're born-again believers, just a little bit of time. Death was never meant to be a fear. We were never meant to be afraid of death. It's a door. It's a path if you know Christ.

But woe to those that don't know Jesus, because it is a door, but it leads to a completely different outcome and path, a completely different place. The Bible calls it hell. It's eternal separation from God, torment forever and ever and ever. But it's a choice. We have a guarantee, you and I, as believers in Christ. Amen? Amen. I like guarantees. And they can't rewrite the contract. You know how some of the guarantees, they rewrite—the guarantee is good, but we changed our terms and conditions, so now the guarantee is—no. Done.

Verse six, "Knowing this, that the old man was crucified with Him." This idea "crucified with Him" is written in the aorist. Again, I mentioned last week in the Greek, there is no such thing as a translation from the aorist to properly in the English of past, present, and future. It doesn't exist in the grammar because everything has to do in the Greek with the context in which it's being used.

Therefore, typically what we do when we see the aorist tenses is we traditionally take them through translation into the English as past tense. But I just want to make you aware that if you ever start in your study and devotional time going through the Greek or you start really getting into the grammar language, I don't want you to make the assumption just because we typically take the aorist as a past tense that it should be taken that way every time. It shouldn't. In these particular passages, yes, it is. It is past tense. But just be Bereans, be students of the Word.

Why does this matter that it says "crucified with Him"? It was done. When we became believers, it's in the past tense. It's completed. We don't need to redo anything. We're not back on the cross. Sometimes you see altar calls; people come up and they give their life to Christ. That's beautiful. But then if I see them one week and they do that, and then three weeks later they're coming up, I want to know why.

And I'll ask them, was there something maybe you didn't understand? But they're like, "No, no, but I just sinned. I screwed up." And I watch them; they do it over and over. I used to see it in other places I've ministered where they'll come up. There's no need for that. This is in the past tense. You were crucified with Him. That nature is dead. You coming up and re-professing it—now, do you want to rededicate your life to Christ? Okay, I understand that. Maybe you were backslidden or something like that. But it's not like that being born-again happens again. You're born-again one time. Like we said, you're born twice and you only die once. That's what the Scriptures teach.

So it's important to get into the tenses in the Greek. The death of the old man, it's an established fact. That's what he's saying here. It's not even debatable. It's not up for discussion; it's not up for interpretation. It's a fact. And it happened spiritually when we identified with Jesus at death. When did we do that? At salvation, when we accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Because immediately right after that, when we got saved, if it was available or we could, what did we do? We went and got baptized. We identified. But it wasn't the baptism that somehow saved us. It's like when somebody takes—I'm going to talk about this next week—when somebody says communion, a lot of time there's religions out there that believe that that communion, whether Lutheran, Catholicism—a bunch of different, not just any one—they believe that wafer, the bread, actually takes on the substance of Jesus Christ, His physical body.

What they don't realize because maybe they haven't read Luke is that would almost be blasphemy. Because Jesus Christ Himself said, "I will not drink of the vine again." What was He talking about in Luke? If I said to you, "You did not drink of the vine," what am I talking about? Wine. We're not struggling with that; we all understand that. He says, "I will not drink of the vine again until I'm with you in heaven." If that was His real blood in there, why would He be calling His blood wine?

He's not grammatically challenged. There's other places where He says, "My body must be broken." We read the verse, but that's not His actual body. He never claimed it to be. But that's what happens if we don't slow down. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but we need to slow down when we read. Because if we take certain things out of context, next thing you know, it messes everything else up hermeneutically in the Bible because then you get contradictions.

So we can't miss this fact. He's saying "crucified with Him." It's done. We can't turn around and recreate that alive again. We can't turn around and say our nature can come back, our old Adamic nature. It's either dead or it's not. And at salvation, okay. So who is the old man? This is the self that was patterned after Adam. It's deeply ingrained in the rebellion against God and His commands.

You see, the system of law that they had couldn't deal with the old man. Why? Because it could only tell the old man what the righteous standard of God was. That's all the law could do was a measuring rod. It could never change that. It could only make them aware of it. See, because there's two things we have to deal with. This is why this is so critical. We have a nature to deal with, which is original sin, and we also have sin to deal with, our ongoing sin.

Jesus Christ dealt with them both. The sacrifices we read about in Leviticus only dealt with the sin of the nation, but it never claimed nor promised to deal with the nature. That's why even in the Hebrew, the translation is it was a covering. It was never a removal, as we see the word being translated in the New Testament. This was not something that was ever meant to trick us or to kind of make us question or to be confused about.

Jesus wasn't trying through the sacrificial system to give us a new nature. He was using that sacrificial system to point to one who would come, a foreshadowing: Jesus Christ Himself. As we've been studying the book of Leviticus, we're almost there. We only got two chapters left, 26 and 27. Go back and listen to the teachings online. You can't help but see Jesus Christ in that book and all the foreshadowing of it.

He was helping us understand that the old man will never meet the righteous standards of God. It wasn't the design. What's the law try to do? Well, think about it. What does the law try to do? It tries to reform the old man. Isn't that what it does? By taking standards and trying to get you to apply those standards to somehow bend or change, what are you doing? You're trying to reform the old man.

You're trying to take that nature and reform him to—if I use the term "turn over a new leaf," have you heard people say that before? "I'm turning over a new leaf." This is what he's saying here. But not the system that God's given us. He's already created a system for this. You know what His system is? Well, it's Jesus, but you know what it is? It's a system of grace. That's His system. It wasn't a law; it was a system of grace that He gave us.

Because even back in verse chapter 20, he says, "Where sin abounded, what abounded much more? Grace." It's a system of grace. Did any of us deserve it? Can anyone say that we honestly in here deserve to be saved? I didn't. I didn't. I was wicked in all ways. I didn't. But grace abounded. The system of grace abounded. You see, the system of grace understands the old man can never be reformed. That's what the system of grace understands. He must be put to death.

And for the believer, the old man dies with Jesus on the cross. That's what we learn here. Sometimes I think I want to clap or help with Hallelujah or with joy because we came here this morning—and I know many of you know this—but when we sit under the Word and it's refreshed for us and we're washed with it and we're reminded, how much more do we appreciate Jesus and what He did for us?

We really begin to understand, "Lord, I knew I was saved, but I had no idea that You not only saved me, but You gave me a new nature, You gave me this desire, You even did away with the old man that was keeping me down and holding me back. You got me out of the Adamic nature; You gave me a nature in Christ so that I have victory and I can do these things so that I'm not neutered, so that I have a victory in Christ." Well, that's important because the other thing it leads us in understanding, and that's why we know works—the system of works instead of the system of grace—they're mutually exclusive.

Because if the sacrificial system in the book of Leviticus could have accomplished the new nature, then why didn't it? The work of sacrificing, the work of offering, if it could have done away with that nature, why didn't it? All it did was cover and atone for sin until one would come to take the sin: past, present, and future. Jesus Christ. It's everything. And that's why in verse four, you read it says that we got a newness of life.

Now we understand what Paul's talking about. In place of the old man, God gives the believer a new man or new woman, if you prefer gender-specific. A nature that's instinctively obedient instead of disobedient, desiring to please God instead of disobeying God. The aspect to the person that was raised with Christ in His resurrection when they come out of the water, symbolically what they're communicating.

Isn't that what we saw when Jesus Christ was baptized? Well, Pastor, I appreciate this, but how do I know you're not eisegeting? How do I know you're not mere reading or changing the word to make it say what you want it to? Good question. Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians chapter four because we're going to use His terms, God's terms, because that's all that matters is what God says.

And in the Word, He says that there's this idea of the old man and new man, and He goes through and He describes it. It's only used in two places: Ephesians and Colossians. So it's easy for us to study the completeness of it. It's not like we have 20 verses on this. Look at Ephesians four. Let's look at verse 24. I think of the old life before Jesus.

This is what spiritually the transaction that happened when I accepted Christ. Verse 22: "that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man"—there it is, he uses the word again—"which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, that you put on the new man."

So we see something: we need a renewal, and it's got to do with the mind, which means we have to think about it. There's something we need to do on our part to receive it, to understand it, to walk it out. And that you put on the what? The new man, which was created according to who? To God. It's a chapter on sanctification. Who does the sanctifying? Is it you or God? God. He does the sanctification in us. He's the one that says, "I will finish the good work I began in you." It's not another man, it's not your pastor, it's not anybody but God alone. He gets the glory.

He says, "which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness." Okay. Now turn further. Turn to Colossians, Colossians chapter three. We'll see the other use of this here. Colossians chapter three. All right, let's look at verse 10. The only other place you really see this. Look at verse nine, just to kind of back up. Or actually even go back to eight. Yeah, we can just back up to the whole thing. It's all in context.

How do you—where do you pick? It's like me picking a place to start. I want to teach the whole book again. I'm like, "Hey, you got another two hours? I'll teach Colossians. Let's go." I love the Word of the Lord. But start with eight. "But now you yourselves are put off"—or to put off, excuse me—"all of these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. All these things that we walked in in the old man, right?

Do not lie to one another since you have"—what?—"put off the old man," there it is again, "with his deeds." He's saying where do these deeds come from? Did it come from the new man or did these deeds come from the old man? The old man. He actually ties it to the Adamic nature. He didn't tie it to the conscience or soul in this particular case. While certainly the soul and conscience was more than willing to cooperate with the Adamic nature of the old man, because he wanted to do what was right in his own eyes.

Look at the book of Judges. Look at Israel. You can see that even with the presence of God like that, so physically manifested, that would be all of us. None of us should look to Israel and say, "Oh, but if we were," because Israel is the great example of every one of us are capable of walking in that same sin and ignorance. And if it wasn't for Jesus Christ, we would still be there. None of us have arrived.

He says, "and have put on"—here it is again—"the new man who is renewed" again "in knowledge according to the"—I'm so glad he put this in here—"the image." He links it back. The image of who? The image of Adam? The image of Seth? What's he say there? God. Him. God. That's exactly what we received.

That image that we had that was corrupted because of original sin, we received that new nature, and when we put that on, we are now conformed back into the likeness and image of God because of the nature. It had everything to do with the nature of where our conforming was. But again, why do we still sin? We're going to talk about that. "According to the image of God who created him." All right, you can turn back to Romans.

So if you look, he says, "all that the body of sin might be done away with." Again, it's in the aorist tense. God uses the death of the old man, the sin nature, to liberate us from sin. That's what we see here. A dead man can no longer have authority over us. That's what we see. We're to remember the account of the old man as crucified with Him.

As we read in the two other places in the New Testament we just talked about—Ephesians and Colossians—he reminds us to consider that he's dead, he's gone, and that we're to do what? We're to put off and to put on. So strictly speaking, if we're just following Paul's logic here, what's he saying? We don't actually battle the old man any longer as believers in Christ. He's dead.

So then what do we battle? Remember, we're three parts: body, conscience or soul, and spirit. And if we see the third here, the spirit, we have a new spirit, the nature. We're no longer battling that. It's going to be one of the two: it's either the body or the soul. What do you think he's talking about when he's talking about the flesh? It's the conscience. It's the only one it could be talking about.

But let the Word flush that out for us. It's a battle for the flesh. The old man is dead, but the flesh, our free-will desire to sin, is alive. Look at First John chapter two, verse 16. "For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh"—there it is—"the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, is not of the Father but of the world." It's not from God; it's got nothing to do with that.

It speaks to the fact that although the Adamic nature—original sin—is dead, our spirit wages war against the flesh while we're living in this evil world. Look at First John chapter one, verses eight through 10. It tells us, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say that we have not sinned"—this is important here—"we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us." So are we to say that we don't sin anymore? Certainly not. So if you're waging a war with sin and you're sitting here today and you've been convicted by this, or maybe this is something you're like, "Wow, I don't understand if I'm really saved, why is this happening?" All I want to say to you is: welcome to the new battle in Christ. Welcome to the new battle in Christ.

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt VanderVen on His Perfect Love. We're developing our study in Romans, and if you enjoyed today's message, we'd like to know. Email us at our website, hisperfectlove.org, and be sure to include your prayer requests. While you're there, you'll notice a place to listen to Pastor Matt's sermons, including all of Romans. That's at hisperfectlove.org.

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We want all of our listeners to have access to the Word of God, so if you're in need of a Bible, we'd like to get one into your hands. Just email us through our website and ask for the free Bible offer. Here's our web address again: hisperfectlove.org. This has been His Perfect Love with Pastor Matt VanderVen. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll share another study in Romans. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore.