Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2933
“Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof.” Romans 6:11,12.
How remarkably interwoven and intertwisted are the duties of Believers and their privileges! Indeed, it is often very difficult to say which is a privilege and which is a duty, for that which is a duty under one aspect is a privilege under another aspect—and that which is evidently a privilege may involve sin if it is not enjoyed and, therefore, it has something of duty about it. I think there should be no dividing asunder the duties and privileges which God has manifestly joined together—and that we should count it our highest privilege to do His will in every duty which He has enjoined upon us.
Equally remarkable is it how closely the privileges and duties of the Christian life are connected with the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are one with Him, therefore are we beloved of the Father, therefore are we redeemed from death and Hell, therefore are we separated from the world, therefore are we dead to sin, therefore do we live unto the Lord and therefore do we confidently expect a final triumph over all our adversaries until the last enemy of all shall be put under our feet! You get nothing, dear Brother or Sister in Christ, except as you get it through Christ! Apart from Him you would be miserable, poor, blind and naked—as you were until you came to Him. But in union with Him you are rich to all the intents of bliss. All things are yours because you are Christ’s and while the Father views you as one with Christ, He will bless you—and while you view yourself as one with Christ, you will be conscious of the blessing and, at the same time, will be led to devote yourself more completely to the pursuit of holiness and the fear of God.
I have been specially praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in handling a subject which belongs not so much to the worshippers in the outer court, where we preach the Gospel to all, as to those in the inner court where we speak only to those who are, we trust, already saved. If I have the gracious guidance of the Spirit of God, my words will drop as dew upon the hearts of those who are living unto God—and they will be refreshed and encouraged. But I could not bear the thought that my sermon should have no bearing whatever upon those who are, at present, outside the visible fold of Christ. Therefore, at the very outset of my discourse, I let you all know that I am preaching now especially to the Lord’s own people. Judge you yourselves, therefore, as to whether you belong to that privileged company or not! And if you have not believed in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, know that you have no share in the privileges of the Covenant of Grace. And while I am preaching to Believers, sit down and sigh from your inmost heart over the sad fact that you are an alien from the commonwealth of Israel! If the Lord, by His gracious Spirit, will lead you to do so, He will hear that sorrowful sigh of yours and I trust that you will be led, sighing and crying, to the Savior’s feet to believe in Him to the salvation of your never-dying soul! Then will you enter at once into all the privileges which belong to the children of God—those privileges about which I am now to speak.
The two verses which form my text seem to me to set before us, first, a great Truth of God—a great fact which is to be the subject of our reckoning—“Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And, secondly, a great lesson to be put into practice. “Let not sin therefore”—for the argument is carried on from the former verse—“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof.”
I. What is the meaning of the first verse? What is THE GREAT TRUTH which is taught to us by the Holy Spirit? It is this—“Reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
It is quite certain that God never asks Believers to reckon anything to be true which is not true, for to reckon a thing to be what it is not would be to build upon a false basis and, in fact, to argue upon that which is false. This would not be consistent with the Character of God, Himself, nor with the nature of the Gospel, which is, essentially, a proclamation of the Truths of God. There are no suppositions and imaginations in the Gospel—it tells of positive sin, positive punishment, positive substitution and positive forgiveness—for God would not have His people reckon upon anything which is not absolutely true. Therefore the text does not mean that you are to reckon that there is no sin in you, but that you are “dead indeed unto sin.” You are not to reckon that which is lie—that which God the Holy Spirit intends you to reckon is a matter of positive, undoubted fact. If you read the context, you will see what that matter of fact is.