Romans 6:1–4Scripture
I'm excited this morning to turn the page from chapter 5, at least in my Bible, not sure how yours is broken up, to chapter 6. And this morning we're going to look at verses 1 through 4. I love the way they titled this section, of course this section goes all the way to verse 14, but they titled this section "Dead to Sin, Alive to God." Many of us, I think many believers today, would embrace that we are a new creation. Many people and many believers would embrace the idea that we have new life. We celebrate it every Sunday.
Maybe it enters our conversation around coffee, the dinner table, and we celebrate and it brings joy to our hearts that he has made us new.
Where we fail in the church, not just in our common everyday conversation but also then in the way we talk about baptism, the way we talk about our Christian life, or the way we talk about what God has done in our lives, we fail to have discussion or mention of this idea of death to the old man.
Most people can talk about their new life. It's very seldom does it enter the conversation that we are dead to who we were.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 1:26
And I believe that it is the obligation of the church today, much as it was in the heart of Paul, for us to begin to move into our conversation this idea that who we were no longer exists. It is gone. It is dead. Paul's words here are extreme. Now, if you know, and I think we'll discover in
Introduction
Time, that most of the epistles that were written in the New Testament used extreme and sometimes polarizing language to talk about who we were versus who we are now. There is no picture painted, if you will, of this in-between place where a Christian lives. First John is probably the most extreme in his language. He literally says things like, in comparison to the Christian life versus the non-Christian life, words like black and white, like light and dark, like life and death. Paul begins to adopt in his conversation then in Romans the same type of language as we then shift into chapter 6. Now, know this, we have been really laboring with difficult conversation about the gravity of sin and the way that it deals with us and the way that it affects us and the way that it destroys not only our personal lives but the lives of an entire community or the world, and it's been heavy. It's been heavy conversation. It's been heavy to think about how sin really has a stronghold, a chokehold, on the world in which we live. Then we turn to chapter 5, where the end of chapter 5 now into verse 6, and we get to celebrate. Listen, this chapter is a chapter of celebration.
There will be people today who walk out the doors of this church who won't feel so celebrate-y, it's not a word, but I like it, so i'm going to use it. There will be people who walk out celebrating and there will be people who walk out discouraged, overwhelmed, concerned, but the point is not to stress you out. The point is that we can celebrate what the grace of God accomplishes in the life of a believer. That's the goal. A heavy heart will become heavy because they're evaluating whether they have even experienced the grace of God at all, and as they take inventory of their life and you begin to consider and you begin to look at the things in your life, you will question. There will be some who question. I don't think it's a bad thing for you to sit and question whether you have new life. I don't think it's a bad thing. And although in the church today we have really created basically a pillow theology for people on Sunday, because we want people to be so encouraged on Sunday that we fail to even let truth be truth, and so we create a soft place for people that doesn't call people to evaluate their walk with the Lord, and then quite honestly because of it there might be some who go to hell never questioning and never turning to God. I've just found that letting God's word be God's word is good enough for me. I don't need to soften it for you. But there will be some who will be overwhelmed and there will be some who will be celebrating, and that's just the facts. I'm going to read this Scripture before we read Romans 6:1-4. I love it because I think it's kind of fitting. I think it somewhat is a summary to the church of Corinth of what Paul is saying in Romans chapter 6:1-4. So Second Corinthians 5:17 says, sorry, I don't have it up here, look it up, Second Corinthians 5:17 says, "Therefore," means there's something happening before that which you should go home and read, right? And there's something that happens after this verse which you should go home and read, but I'm only going to read
Point 1A new creation means the old is gone
This verse. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation." Now let him then clarify for you what a new creation is, because listen, no one can conflate things like people in the church.
We will create our own interpretation of a word or a phrase or what an apostle is saying as he writes epistles in the New Testament.
We will say "new creation" and then we will formulate in our own mind what a new creation is, and we will forgo anything that he says descriptive about that word, we'll just ignore it. But Paul for us here does us a favor and he begins to talk about what new creation is so that you don't take it and use "new creation" like you please in your own life. "He is a new creation." Here's what that is: "The old is gone."
Not hangs around a little bit, is gone. The old is gone.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 7:13
That's what Paul says. I didn't say it, you don't get to rephrase it, because he was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write it. So although you have a different opinion of what being a new creation is, although you want to gray it up and dilute it for your own good pleasure, you don't get the privilege to do that. The Bible says the old has not only gone, he reclassified it: the old has passed away and is dead. "Behold, the new has come." For the new to come, we learn the old has to pass away.
You cannot have the new, and it will not come until the old has passed away.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 8:00
That's the way it works.
Let's hear it in the words of Paul, particularly in the letter to the Roman church, in Romans 6:1-4. It says this: "What shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" Well, since grace comes more and more as sin comes more and more, well, let's have more grace. So how are we going to do that? Well, let's sin more so grace comes more. The best way to get grace to abound in our life is to make sure sin abounds, and if I want more grace I'm just going to keep sinning. Now, this seems ridiculous, right? Yet you live like this.
Are you with me? In a conversation around coffee you would never argue that we should sin more so grace could abound more, yet your life says something different.
And honestly, what hope is there in that? What hope is there in a life that stays in bondage to sin when Christ says that his death and resurrection empowers us to be freed from it? What kind of Christianity have we adopted in the world today?
It's pretty crazy. Have you watched the news? It's pretty crazy, and it seems as if sin is more powerful than God.
It's pretty crazy, but it's not. God's grace is more powerful. It's interesting today because I get in conversations with people to say, are you a works-based believer, are you a grace-based believer? This lets me know that I'm entering into an ignorant conversation where ignorance abounds. I'm not calling somebody stupid, but there's just ignorance there's just a lack of understanding of God's grace at all, because you cannot talk about God's grace where works is not a part of that. Matter of fact, we are not just justified by grace, we are not just made righteous by grace through his death and our faith, but he empowers us to do good works which he prepared in advance for us to do in Christ.
So you cannot ask if I'm a grace person or a works person.
Ladies and gentlemen, works is a part of grace, but it is the grace of God that empowers us to do any work for his glory.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 10:55
It's nonsense, it is an ignorant conversation. Are we justified by works? Absolutely not.
But will we do good works? Absolutely we will. All right, it's important. Romans 6:1-4: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? No, just in case you didn't know, "by no means!" Now, some of us will want to change what that means. It means no.
Well, "by no means" means, well, depends on, you know, what means are happening. No, it means no. "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" No, he's asking this with the belief that people have an understanding already. If you've died to sin, how then are you going to live in sin?
Now, for the apostle Paul this just seems like a ridiculous conversation. However, around lunch with Christians this is a common topic of conversation and often debated: can we habitually just continue in sin and still be a believer in Christ? How far is too far? There's a good one for teens when we're talking about sex, how far is too far? Now you make fun of teens for asking that question, but you live like you don't know the answer to that question. Are you with me?
He says if you're dead to sin, and you're dead to sin, how can we who died to sin continue to live in it? It's not possible. You died to it. This is good news, because God puts to death sin in you. For some of you it's scary news, because for you, when you look at your life you see sin reigning more than God reigning, and this black and white language doesn't make room for you to do that.
And so for some of you this is going to be concerning. I think Paul's comfortable with that. I don't think he's concerned about your concern. I think he's concerned about the truth of what God accomplishes in the life of someone who has faith in him. That's what he wants. "Do you not know that all of us," so he wants to clarify, just goes any further, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" This is the part we don't talk about much, the dying part. We talk a lot about the living part, we don't talk much about the dying part. We talk about Jesus dying, we don't talk about us dying. And just in case you didn't know, we were baptized into Christ's death with him, for all who believe in him.
So guess how dead you are? You're dead.
Completely dead. Not halfway dead, not almost dead, you're dead.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 14:14
You died to the old ways, you died to sin. "We were buried therefore with him." In case we're wondering if you're dead, you're buried, to make sure you're dead. So if you were hanging on, you ain't going to hang on long, because you were buried and you're eventually going to totally die. You're buried when you're dead, "in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk," I love this, it even gives clarification on what new life is, not just that you have new life and you lay around and do nothing, but you walk, and you walk every day, and the way you walk and the way you talk and the way you live is new and it's different than what it used to be. Notice here, there's no timeline. Well, eventually, in 10 years, there's no timeline.
You're dead, and you're new, and you walk in that newness of life. That's it. That's all he says here.
Point 2Grace empowers us; it is not a license
That's it. I have a few things I want to talk about. First is grace. I asked a few questions and out of those questions I've extrapolated a few things that I want to discuss from this verse here. Here's the first question, first grace. Here's my question: is God's grace inadequate?
That's the question we really have to answer. Really, honestly, that is the question that is centered in many debates. Verse 1: "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?" I'm going to try and do the translation of "by no means." Here's here's what some theologians write: God forbid, absolutely not, of course not. And ultimately, no one commentator said it's completely unthinkable. I'm like, well, I met some people that think it's thinkable, and he says it's not.
It's unthinkable. There are some people who believe that because of grace, no rules, or in other words, because of grace the rules no longer apply to me. They don't apply to me. This is what is referred to in some theological circles as antinomianism. Have you ever heard that word, antinomianism? If you've ever heard the word, here is quite specifically what it means. Quite literally it means to be against law. Have you met anybody in church like that? That because of Christ, the law is obliterated, it does not mean anything to me? Listen, lady,
The law, I mean, ladies and gentlemen, the law is still the law, and God did not change his mind about how he wants us to live.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 17:44
Did not change his mind about that. We are merely not justified by it, we are justified by Christ, but the law is still the law, and listen, it has eternal implications for your life. It isn't like Jesus died and now it's okay to have sex before marriage.
It's still not okay. As a matter of fact, if the old man longed to have sex before marriage, the new man won't. That's what Paul says.
Some of you are going to walk out confused today. I'm comfortable with that. I'm comfortable with that because here's the reason, here's the reason why I'm comfortable: because
If you can't trust in the way you think, then maybe you should stop trusting in the way you think, because what has that got you in the end?
Pastor Shawn Gray · 18:44
What has your debating and your meditating and your thinking through situations got you? Got you more confused. It's because you're not supposed to depend on your thinking, you're supposed to trust in his thinking. His ways are higher than your ways, so your ways will never help you move to an understanding. It'll just conflate your life, it'll conflate your beliefs, it'll conflate everything, and the reality is you can either trust in your thinking or you can trust in his. This is what he says, this is what he says. Listen, in other words, let me say it this way: grace changes lives. I believe that. I believe that.
Do you? Grace is more powerful than sin. I believe that. Do you?
Grace reigns in the life of a believer. Sin no longer reigns in the life of a believer. I believe that. I really believe that. Do you?
I think most of us, maybe 100 percent of us in here today, would say yes, you believe that, but in the quiet recesses of your life you question it.
Here it is: who are you going to trust? Are you going to trust you? Are you going to trust him?
It's either one or the other. You don't get to trust a little bit of you and a little bit of him. It's either you trust him or you don't. Listen, we make this too difficult, and I want to encourage you today. We are hearing that
Grace does more than just save us from the penalty of sin, it saves us from the power of sin over our life.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 20:47
That's what he promised us, but I'm afraid that some of us only celebrate half the promise, and so we don't live in joy.
We don't live in the joy of our salvation because our salvation is only in part to us.
Listen, the rules still apply. God's not, just because Jesus died, he's not cool with you killing people.
He's not like, oh yeah, now grace will abound more just because Jesus died. He's not, and he's not cool with you cheating on your wife. She's still not cool with it. It didn't, like, he's like, oh yeah, go boy or girl. When it says in the Bible that profanity does not please God, any profane talk coming out of your mouth doesn't please God. He doesn't create a place then after Christ for you to be a Christian cusser.
That part of you is dead. It's dead. See, all of you were comfortable with the adultery and the murder, that got personal.
Are you with me? And you know how I know that? Because I see your Facebook page. Right.
And that's what we're talking about. It's like getting down to the heart of the issue, is you're not who you were. Sometimes, see, I believe it's possible for us to come to life in Christ but still dress up like we're in a masquerade. We wear the old self because we don't really know the new self. He says cast that off, put off the old man, stop dressing up like you, because that's not who you are no more. So once you're saved, if you put on sin, if you do that, you're dressing up as something you're not. Put that off, like that is not who you are anymore. It's amazing because there's a lot of conversation, particularly in youthful Reformed movements in the world today, maybe I'm speaking Christianese here, but there is this excitement about the liberty we have in Christ. Are you with me? So there's a lot of conversation about, well, now I am saved so I have liberty.
I have liberty to eat that Oreo, I have liberty to eat pork, I can eat shrimp, and you can't get up on my business about it, I have liberty.
You may not eat shrimp, you may not eat pork, but I'm a pork-eating, bacon-loving, bacon-licking man and I have a liberty, and that goes into all things, like, I have liberty to smoke, I have liberty to drink, I have liberty to smoke pot.
Some of you are like, why do you keep bringing pot up? Because some of you are pot-smoking people. I have liberty. So we began to have theological conversations. As a matter of fact, we have entire movements where pastors are Reformed in their theology but they have put so much emphasis on the liberty that they invite people into things that their old self participated in. Are you with me today? And we can talk about liberty, we can talk about it, I probably will talk about it, I'll talk about each of these things, but listen, if you find yourself fighting more for your liberty than your holiness, you might have a problem, because what you do with your liberty, you might actually be in bondage to. Are you with me today?
We can see whether, what you're in bondage to, by what you fight for.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 25:36
Oh, come on now, that's good.
That's really good, and we've got to really begin to evaluate that, because I think some of us are so fighting for our liberty, or we're fighting for what grace accomplished for us, that we take advantage of grace, not realizing that the same grace we use in our argument is the grace that can empower us to live differently than we did before him. This is good, it's good to think about. We've got to start thinking about it, because I'm all for grace, but let us not too quickly forget that grace empowers us to not be in bondage to the things we used to be in bondage to. Will there be smokers in heaven? Yeah, I believe so, and there will be some smokers in hell. Will there be people who drink a beer in heaven? Yes, I believe there will be, and there will be some people who drink a beer at night in hell. Will there be pastors who drink a beer in an evening in heaven? Yes, and I believe there will be pastors who don't drink a beer in the evening in hell.
The problem is not the issue with liberty, and it certainly is not about who wins that argument in the issue of liberty. The issue is when you use your liberty to do what you please. Are you with me today?
Some of you are like, so does he believe you can drink, does he not believe you can drink? I'm glad you're confused, because my liberty may not be your liberty and your liberty may not be my liberty, but the moment you begin to hear people preaching about liberty to defend what they do, they might have a problem. They might be in bondage, and God died that we would not be any
Point 3Baptized into his death, the old you died
Longer. It's good. Did you know, next thing, that's grace. Next thing, death. Did you know that the you of old is dead?
Verse 3: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death." My wife asked the teens, when we do baptism and you go down, what is that? There were some answers like, you go completely underwater, you get wet, those kind of answers. Then she asked, what happens when you come out? They all said unanimously, new life. Isn't it interesting that this is lost on them, but everyone knew this?
That's a problem in our church, that part of what grace is death to the old man. We have said this is not necessary for this to happen in your life. In other words, then we have two men living at once, and we've created a Christian theology
That says the old you and the new you can live in the same house and be friends.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 29:49
Seems crazy, but that's what our young people understand. We should not let the modern association of baptism blind us to the point Paul is making so strongly. This is Leon Morris. He says this: "He is saying that it is quite impossible for anyone who understands what baptism means to acquiesce cheerfully in living a sinful life. The baptized have died to that."
That's what he says. I like that. That was good. I pulled that off Brook's notes. That was good, that was a good study. I like that was good. Here's something else I'll pull off her notes because I just thought, well, I'm cheating, let's just keep going. Warren Wiersbe says this: "This means that the believer has a new relationship to sin. It's different than it was before. He is dead to it." In other words, "I am crucified with Christ," Galatians 2:20.
And then he goes on, and I love this, I love this, I think it's fantastic: "If a drunk dies, he can no longer be tempted by alcohol, because his body is dead to all physical senses. Now he cannot see the alcohol, he cannot smell the alcohol, he cannot taste it or desire it. In Jesus Christ we've died to sin so that we no longer want to continue in sin, but we are not only dead to sin, we are also alive in Christ. We have been raised from the dead and now walk in the power of his resurrection. We walk in newness of life because we share his life.
I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live." I love that.
Point 4Walking in newness of life, not mostly
Warren Wiersbe. Let's talk about the third thing that we see, the third movement we see in this. We've talked about, first, grace.
We first talked about grace, I forget what we talked about the second time, death, and now the resurrection. This is the third movement. I actually see another movement that I threw in there and I'm gonna throw at the very end, but here's the third movement. Here's the question that asked me, that helped me find this movement: are you walking in newness of life? Resurrection. Here's where it is in the verse: "In order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." It didn't say walk in newness of life mostly but the oldness of life sometimes. It doesn't say well, 20 percent the oldness of life but then 80 percent the newness of life. It doesn't say mostly in the newness of life.
He gives no liberty for that. If you're dead, you're dead. You're not half dead, you're not almost dead, you're dead. You're dead to that. You're dead not only to that, you're dead to sin, you're dead to those things, you're dead to the penalty that was given to your account because of those things before belief in him. You're dead, you're dead to all that. Why is it that in the church we believe that all the penalties of sin we acquired before salvation, that all that's dead, and how come we can embrace that but then not sin being dead?
What is happening? What's happening? How do we even, how do we even have these arguments? How do you read the Bible and actually debate these things?
You know the problem? We don't read the Bible. So here's what we have uneducated,
Ignorant people debating for God things about God without knowing God.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 34:42
That's what we have. Most of them are on Twitter.
I'm not even trying to be hateful, I'm trying to be observant. We have a problem in the church today.
We have a problem. But if you're a believer, he's resurrected you're not the same. Let me read this, Second Corinthians 5:17. Let's talk about what it's saying: "If any man is in Christ," he is not just declared righteous, that's not what Second Corinthians says, that's not what Romans says, he's not just declared righteous, "he is a new creature. Old things passed away, behold, new things have come."
It's important for us to understand that salvation involves, in other words, transformation. It's transformative. And when you want to look at your life to discern your spiritual condition and you might wonder whether or not you're a Christian, you don't look back to some past moment when you prayed some specific prayer and someone told you God would forensically, judicially declare you righteous. That's not what you evaluate. I could have just breathed again and not done that, but I just wanted to get it all out.
Does anybody just, like, sometimes stop inside, like an internal dialogue, and laugh at yourself and have a conversation? Anyway, if you want to know whether you're a Christian and you're evaluating that, you have to look at your life to discern that the evidences of transformation are manifested. And that's how the Bible tells us to do it. You will know them not by declaration, you will know them by their fruit. It's not enough to go back to some moment in time when you prayed a prayer, because James puts it this way: faith apart from works is dead. A Christian does not have a confession of faith that is accurate, theologically sound, that is to say he confesses to believe in Christ and put his faith in Christ and accept Christ's atoning work on his behalf and come before God in repentance to receive the mercy God gives for those who believe in Christ. That content has to be there, but not only does that content have to be there, the evidence of transformation has to be there, and that's how you discern the reality of your spiritual condition. Sometimes we talk about justification, we might assume that if at some point in time we prayed a prayer and God declared us just, that's all we need to remember. I was five, I prayed a prayer. And the fact of the matter is salvation was not just a declaration, it is also a transformation, so that you are a new creation, you're not what you used to be. It is that issue that we have got to begin addressing in the church, because we need to understand that this is absolutely at the heart of the Christian faith.
Everything we do as Christians, everything that we look at the core of our Christian living, manifests that transformation,
And where that transformation is absent
Pastor Shawn Gray · 38:54
Point 5Don't be an in-betweener
There is no justification. That's what Paul is saying. Here's point number four, and my final point: don't be an in-betweener. Oh man, don't be like the Israelite people that were freed from slavery but rejected the blessing of the promise, so died as an in-betweener.
Don't be like that. Question: are you an in-betweener?
Too many Christians are in-betweeners. They
Pastor Shawn Gray · 39:47
live between Egypt and Canaan, saved but never satisfied, or they live between Good Friday and Easter, believing in the cross but not entering into the power and the glory of the resurrection. That's what Paul's saying.
That's what Paul's saying. It's actually what Warren Wiersbe said, but that's also what Paul is saying.
I stole that part too from Brook. Let me read you some things. Some of us want to use our liberty as a way to live however we want. Here's some Scriptures that should cause pause and a reason for concern. First Corinthians 6:12: "All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything." Let me tell you when you cross the line. Let me tell you when you cross the line making decisions in your freedom: when you use your freedom to partake in things and it begins to dominate you and enslave you've crossed the line.
Are you with me today? First Corinthians 6:19-20: "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You," your body, your eyes, your mouth, your ears, your whole body, every part of your body, "are not your own, for you were bought with a price." Let me tell you, that price was great. "So glorify God in your body."
We should be asking the question with everything we do: is this glorifying to God? Oh man.
And for those of you sitting here like itching in your seat because you have something that you know is not glorifying God, and matter of fact is dominating your life and you're enslaved to it, and you're nervous today, let me come at everybody else. You can think of things, specific things that people have a tendency to be addicted to that destroy their life, you can think of things. Let me tell you, having a piece of cake is nice and you have liberty, but there is too much. Having a cup of coffee is okay, but are you in bondage to it?
Are you with me today? Everything. If you're in bondage to it, you should consider if you should continue with it,
Because you're his, and he's not okay with you being enslaved to anything else but him.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 43:34
It's important.
First Corinthians 10:21: "You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons." That's good stuff. That, I feel like, that's what Paul is saying in this. Notice what he says: you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Why do Christians believe we can? I'm gonna have a little sip of this sin, a little sip of that, a little sip of this demon cup and a little sip of God. I'm going to go to church on Sunday and i'm going to get drunk on Friday night. I saw a T-shirt design, my wife saw a T-shirt design and told me about a T-shirt design. I had an image in my mind, so I guess I did see it in that sense, but she told me about something and it was this: "I'm a Christian." What does it say? "I love Jesus and I also love the F-word."
Here's what Corinthians says: you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Here's the way Jesus said it. "You've heard it said," for all you antinomians out there, "you've heard it said this, but I say this." Notice that when Jesus says the "but I say" part, it was harder than the first law part.
Why is that important? Because he ups the ante. Not only is it bad to have an affair on your wife, but you look at another woman with lustful eyes, you have already cheated on her with your heart. Notice this, why does he up the ante? Because only by Christ's death and resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit can we live that kind of life. He is trying, you know, because you had this one guy, right, that comes to Jesus and says, what must I do to be saved, and Jesus says, obey the Ten Commandments, and he goes, I've done that. In other words, and notice here that Jesus doesn't argue with him.
He didn't say, no you haven't, because I saw that you did this. You say this but I saw this. He didn't say that. It's almost like, yeah, he did that, but then he goes on and he ups the ante. And his death, listen, doesn't abolish sin, it ups the ante on sin, and then he gives us the Holy Spirit to live a life free from the bondage of sin. It's crazy, and we should celebrate. "A Christian man is most free, a Christian man is the most free lord of all." This is Martin Luther saying this, let me say it again: "A Christian man is the most free lord of all, lowercase l, and subject to none. A Christian man is the most dutiful servant of all and subject to everyone."
I love that. That's good stuff, man, that's good stuff. I read this in an article, and I'm closing, I read this in an article and I'm closing. It was an article talking about why YRR, the YRR movement, specifically young Reformed pastors, or what they call Young, Restless, and Reformed.
That's what they're referred to. Probably in none of your circles or your blogs you are subscribed to will you read this, so I'm just going to read a couple sections from this blog as certain theologians or pastors are challenging these Young, Restless, and Reformed pastors on their joy for the freedom they have and are celebrating in Christ. Here's what is said in encountering them and challenging them. Here's what a coalition of pastors got together to say: "It is wrong for Christians to define their identity as Christians according to their love of beer." They continue: "All kinds of activities deemed vices by mothers everywhere have been adopted as a badge of Calvinist identity and thus redeemed, such as tobacco, tattoos, gambling, mixed martial arts, profane language, and lots of explicit talk about sex." He later notes, they later note: "Until fairly recently, no credible believer in the entire age of the church would have suggested that so many features evoking the ambience of a pool hall or a casino could also be suitable insignia for the people of God, and this tendency to emblazon oneself with symbols of carnal indulgence as if they were valid badges of spiritual identity is one of the most troubling aspects of this new YRR movement's trademark restlessness in the holiness of God." That was a mouthful.
The problem is that these YRR pastors are using, in case you didn't know, that's a lot of pastors nowadays, are using taboo or formerly taboo cultural practices as their badge or insignia or to symbolize or identify their spiritual identity.
In other words, they're using the freedom they have in Christ and they're identifying more with the things of the world than they are the Christ they celebrate.
That's how I would summarize that. "If drinking is treated as a defining characteristic of following Christ," notice here that drinking is not in question but rather the celebration of drinking as an identifying marker of the freedom we have in Christ, "if drinking is treated as a defining characteristic of following Christ, then we will exclude those who are unable to drink and those who find it distasteful, and also provide approval of cultural practices that may or may not be appropriate for all the individuals in that context." Guys, this is good stuff.
Don't be guilty of celebrating the things you participate in, the freedom you have in Christ, more than the Christ you should be celebrating.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 51:21
And certainly don't be calling people into the freedoms you have, thinking that your freedom is theirs, because it is not.
And just know this: whatever you're in bondage to that is not Christ is a problem, because the old man is dead. There is no in-between. And let me just say this, some of you today, some of you who've been in the church for 15 years and you still pop off at the mouth and use profanity in your house, you should come under extreme conviction this morning, because you insult the grace of God and the power for you to become new. You insult the cross, you insult the death and the price he paid, and you insult the resurrection, and you insult the Spirit which resides in you. It's important.
You are better than that. What he's made you is better than that.
Pastor Shawn Gray · 52:57
Let us not, like the Israelites who were in-betweeners, cater to the religions of the world and worship idols we fashion in the in-between, because this makes God angry and he is not pleased with this behavior.
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