Loren Larson - The Basics of the Cross: Part 2 (Romans 5:20-21)

Live any longer therein. And I want to minister a part two on the basics of the cross. The basics of the cross. We had a student in one of our classes back in nineteen ninety eight, maybe it was nineteen ninety nine. Who got up and gave a devotion one morning and and she said this because in ninety-seven the revelation of the cross through the book of Romans began to work its way into the heart and life of those at Family Worship Center.

And almost every single message was about Romans six, Romans seven, Romans eight. If you came to Family Worship Center in those days you would hear it again and again and again because we were learning, we were expanding our information. We needed desperately to change and bring about a reformation still due in the body of Christ through this message. And w we're still learning to this hour, to this moment, to this day. But she got up and she said, If you if you go into service tomorrow

And Brother Swiger gets up and says, open up your Bibles to Romans chapter 6, and you go, oh, not again. It's because you don't understand the message of the cross. If you ever get weary of hearing the basics, Of what it is that we're supposed to encounter and what our role is in the body of Christ, it's evidence that.

You don't understand it. I guess over the over the last twenty years I've been privileged to preach this text, teach this text, be a part of the program uh that taught this probably sixty to eighty times. I I don't know whether there may be more than that. Because of teaching and every time I go through it, it refreshes my faith. It teaches me again what I need to know. It implants new knowledge into me. It takes me a little bit deeper into the knowledge of how to live for God.

And as this new year begins, and I know it was in my heart back in December, I really wanted to once again traverse through these verses for you, for me, and let the new year start on this understanding. A fresh and anew in our hearts and our lives. And so we come to minister to you tonight the basics of the cross, part two. tonight. We give you praise tonight.

As I've said so many times to you, the book of Romans is the greatest single treatise of the Christian faith in a single volume. By that I mean it's the greatest explanation of the Christian experience from its beginning to its end in a simple book. If I, and thank the Lord that I don't have to, but if I had only one book as a New Testament Christian that I could consider or read, I would hope that I could study the book of Romans, for it has within its

Confines the holistic view of my Christian experience. Paul writing to a church that had never been taught. the apostolic message of the cross uh detail this experience of Christianity from its inception to ultimately where it's headed once we understand what we've been given. And so in chapters one through three, he details the truth that both Jew and Gentile are separated from God by sin and need a savior.

And starting in chapter three and verse twenty, we call it chapter four, but it's close enough. In chapter 3 and verse 20, he begins a study on justification. The problem with mankind is sin, but God had to come up with a solution, and he did. He came up with a solution. That did not require my effort because I had none to give. It didn't require my work because there was no work that I could do. It didn't uh demand my sacrifice because there was no sacrifice I could give.

Said that God working in all prudence and with all wisdom came up with the plan that was needed to bring about redemption. He said that if any man, woman, boy, or girl would simply place their faith In my son, and what he did for them at Calvary, that I would declare them legally innocent of all charges, not guilty. I would look on them as if they had never sinned, and I would open up

All of heaven to them as a member of my kingdom. All God has asked us to do to enter into this kingdom is to say yes to his redemption plan and what Jesus did for us at Calvary. And if that doesn't still excite you, then it's gotten old and it should be brand new. Perhaps the Christmas wrapping and the Santa Claus and the reindeer and have have kind of clouded our minds a little bit.

Because we need to brush away the cobwegs and get a clear picture of God's redemption plan. Because when we understand it and place our faith in it, it assures our continuance in it. Are you following the thought? And so when God made his redemption plan, he said, Whosoever will, whoever deceives himself as a sinner and calls on the name of Jesus. As their Savior, I'll declare them legally innocent, justified. Grant them a position of righteousness. I'll impute righteousness to them.

They don't come before me in their own righteousness. They must come before me in pure 100% holiness. And righteousness. And that's only the righteousness of Christ. And when you, the believing sinner, ask Christ to come into your heart, God places over your life the declaration of justification. Justified by faith. Accepted by faith. In the family by faith.

But the book of Romans doesn't stop with chapter five and verse nineteen. It goes on and starts to explain what now? What next? Now that I've been saved, now that I'm justified, now that I'm on my way to heaven, what's next? What's next? Where do we go from here? Do we just sit still in what we have and wait for the coming of the Lord? Should we w w where do we go from here? Well the answer is simple Romans six, seven and eight.

And it talks about the need of the believer to be transformed and conformed into the image of Christ. Because while you have been given the status and the position of Righteousness and justification by faith, there are still things in your person that are contrary to your heavenly Father. All right, let me preach over here a little. There are still things.

In our person that are contrary to the Heavenly Father. And so progressive sanctification is the truth that until the trump of God sounds, You and I will be needing to be conformed evermore, ever closer, ever pursuant of the of the of the of the of the life of Christ in us, ever pursuant of righteousness. So you've got a job to do. It's a job

Of being conformed into the image of Christ. In Ephesians, Paul says, walk worthy of your vocation. What's your vocation? It's not your job, it's your standing as a believer. It's time, ladies and gentlemen, that we stop being infants in the faith. And started walking in the maturity and the grace and the power of God and let the world see Christianity in a living form in its people.

In a never-ending process of being changed, then we will not be those witnesses. In fact, a coined phrase by Bob Cornell comes to mind, we will be miserably saved. On our way to heaven, but not knowing what we have. And there's nothing more miserable than to be a believer that's not pursuing their vocation of being united with Christ in a more perfect union, being transformed and conformed into the image of Christ. That's our job from day one until the last day. That's our premier function.

is let Christ change me. Not her, not my husband, me. I'm the one that's in need of change. I'm the one that has to be transformed. I'm the one that needs to be conformed in 2016. I'm the one that has to get beyond that. Well, Brother Larson, I don't have any that. Well lying would be the first. Ignorance would be the second. And if you think there's nothing about you that needs to change, just ask your wife. So change is not the option. There is a way by which we can be changed.

In every arena of our life. Well you can't Teach an old dog new tricks. Oh yes you can. Because the minute you met Christ, the old dog died and the new dog rose up.

2016 is not the time to sit still in your maturing process. We haven't come far enough. We're not far enough along. We need to understand even more.

And so Paul writes the instructions and sanctification, and I need you to get this before I begin looking at the actual instructions themselves. He didn't write them there just so that we would have knowledge. He wrote them there to teach us what to place our faith in. Because the most important thing about you reading the Bible is not just coming up with knowledge of what it says, but knowledge of where it will take you.

If you read Romans chapter 6 and walk away and say, Oh, I know that, but you don't understand why it's given you. then the chance that you'll place your faith in something other than Christ and him crucified is large. Because this is written to secure our faith in the redemption plan of God. And the knowledge that is here, that is demanded of us. is something that we must grasp and then take to the next level of application by keeping our faith ever in what is explained here.

So we have to understand what is explained here, and we have to understand the purpose for which it is explained. The most important aspect of your Christian faith is your object of faith. What are you trusting in today? Because if you get that wrong, I guarantee you sanctification is an impossible task. Even for the Holy Spirit, because he won't work if our faith is in the wrong thing.

So when Paul writes Romans chapter 5, verse 20 and onward into 6 and even warns us against the wrong direction in 7 and shows us what happens when our faith is right in Romans 8. He's teaching us what to place our faith in. We are so fickle, it is so easy for us to transfer our faith to something other than Christ and what he has done.

And even those of us that have sit under this message for twenty years, we'll still catch ourselves motivated by rules and routines and laws and and there's a there's a default position of our heart and mind that wants to go to Rules and routines, because uh honestly, they demand a whole lot less of us than the constant attention. of placing our faith in Christ. The daily denial of self. Well, I got up today, I read my Bible, I prayed.

Are you depending on him? Are you desperate for him? Do you long for him? Or are you just Going through the routine that's become a rut that is just a grave with the ends knocked out.

So we come back to these verses once again to take a look and see, and I gotta hurry, I didn't mean to spend this much time, but it's why in my travels this year I'm going to go back and cover this again in the churches that I go to. Because this is what has to be taught, this is what has to be preached, this is what has to be understood. This is not just a fad that was introduced to the church in 1997. This is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it works. I said it works. I said it works.

And this gospel must be preached unto the ends of the earth. Yeah.

All right, let's get rolling. 5:20. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. Principle number one.

And the law is what we do, our performance, our routines, our 10 steps, our 40 days, our 21 days. Those are laws, rules that will never make a change, because the only thing that's capable of overcoming our sin problem, verse 20, but where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. Grace is the only entity that's greater than sin. Grace is the only entity that can defeat sin. There's no physical activity that I can participate in that earns me grace.

There's no number of days that I fast that will earn me grace. There's only one thing that brings me grace, and that's faith. And that faith must be. I said that faith must be in what my Jesus did for me. It must be in what God has provided for me. It must not be in myself. So the first principle of the message of the cross is you've got to lay waste everything that you've placed your trust in and rely exclusively and dependently upon the grace of Jesus Christ to come into your heart.

and come into your life and change you from what you are to what you need to become. It is God that works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure. And he doesn't do it because we labor. And then he pays off by giving us grace. Faith is the only process. by which grace can come to the born again believer.

There is no physical activity you can perform that brings you grace. So you've got to throw away in this sanctification process, you've got to throw away all your trust in what you do. Now, when I say that right away the opposition raises up, well, you're just teaching us that all we need to do is believe. No, that's where it begins.

You must have the grace of God to overcome your sin problem, to overcome your temper problem, to overcome your lying problem, to overcome your trust in self problem. You must have faith. In God's provision in order to walk in his grace.

Did much more abound. What are you trusting in tonight? I shared it back in December. You should go back and look at it, December 2nd, but The understanding of this doesn't come to people who qualify for it in human A cumin or ability to think or theological, the message of the cross comes to those that are desperate. And oftentimes who have been broken by their failure, who are finally willing to say, okay, I quit my effort and I look wholly to Jesus.

Jesus died to send you what you needed. To provide for you what you needed, not just in your justification, but in your sanctification. Let's go on.

He says in verse 21 that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Now here It's where the term sin has to be understood. And you'll just have to forgive me as I travel through some technicalities here, but it'll help you better grasp. When Paul writes the term sin here, he's not talking about acts of sin. And the word sin and the word baptized in Roman chapter six are the two stumbling blocks of the church.

The term sin is hamartia. It's a singular noun. A noun is a person, place, or thing. And it's a singular noun, so it's not a bunch of things like bunches of acts of sin. It's a singular entity. Hamartya. Sin reigned. Not acts of sin reigned, but a sin principle. A principle of sin in the believer that reigned, that dominated, that had lordship. See, our problem is not acts of sin. It's the sin factory that's inside of us that produces acts of sin.

What Jesus did for us at Calvary was forgive us and pay the penalty for acts of sin, but it was far much, far more than that, my friend. It was far greater than that. On the inside of the human being, as a result of the fall, is the sin factory known as the sin nature. And the and then in the Greek you can see it because it's a noun, it's a singular noun, and oftentimes when the sin nature is indicated, the definite article, the sin, is there.

And all these encapsule to bring this thought that we're not dealing with acts of sin, we're dealing with the sin nature. So understanding sanctification in Romans chapter 6. demands that you know that he's talking not about acts of sin, but the sin nature. There's only one time in all of Romans chapter six, and this is found in verse fifteen of Romans six, where sin is in a noun form. It's or I'm sorry, it's in a verb form, and it it's clearly acts of sin.

But you could actually read, do this with me for a moment. You could actually read down through the 17 times that the term sin is in Romans chapter six. And if you would substitute it the sin nature, you'd be absolutely right, and it'll start to make more sense to you. Because sanctification is you learning how to live free. from a sin nature that still dwells and lives and abides in the heart and life of a believer. Now if you don't understand that about sanctification, it will never happen.

Because you don't know what the enemy is. You don't know what the problem is. The problem is you or I. We have to learn how to live free from the impact of the sin factory, the sin nature in us. So using this thought for sin, look at chapter six and verse one. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in the sin nature that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to the sin nature live? Look at verse six of chapter six.

Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of the sin nature might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve The sin nature. Verse 7: For he that is dead is freed from the sin nature. Now if you know Kenneth Weist in his dissertation on Romans chapter six, even goes so far if you'll take a look at five and twenty-one and put it on the screen again, he takes this further than anyone that I've ever read after, but he says this.

In chapter 5 and verse 21, please put that on the screen. Chapter 5 and verse 21, he says that as the sin nature hath reigned. Chapter 5, verse 21. There we go. That as the sin nature hath reigned. Now, acts of sin don't reign, but a person can. And what's being said is that the sin nature is being personified like a king who sat on the throne of your heart and reigned, dominating you, giving lordship over you, driving you towards acts of ungodliness.

He's a king, the sin nature that reigns in your heart. He's a king that reigns in your being. As a human being, it's manifested in two ways, ungodliness and selfishness, because as a result of the fall, those are the two things that really stand out about us. We don't want to do what God says, and we're all about us.

See, that's a result of the fall. The emphasis of me. We lost God consciousness and became conscious of self and what pleases me. Don't tell me what to do. Don't give me a commandment. Don't give me a law. The minute you give me a law, that thing inside me that doesn't want to be dominated by anybody but what I think.

is gonna rise up on the inside of me and say, No way am I doing what you think. You're not as smart as me. You don't have it as together as me. You're not as good as me, me, me, me, me. Welcome to the human race, dominated by sin and selfishness as a result of the fall, the sin nature reigning. And impacting your soul and your spirit nonstop. all manner of evil desire.

For the believer, there's another way. We can, this is what sanctification is all about. We can either allow the sin nature to reign like a king and sit on the throne of our heart and demand ungodliness and unlawfulness. and selfishness and drive and work all manner of evil concupiscence in us or Something has been done. To facilitate a change. Something has been done where there's another option. Even so, now there's an option that instead of the sin nature reigning, grace. Grace could reign.

So sanctification is learning do we let the sin nature reign or do we let grace reign? And it's interesting to me, I'm gonna run out of time, but I'll do this. I'm I'm I'll just when you ask me again, I'm coming right back here until we get it. We won't get it until he gets home. 'Cause we need this. We need to hear this. We need to go back to this. We need to see it. Listen, even so might grace. Now it's interesting that in the Greek it's literally the grace reign. So grace is personified.

Just like the sin was. So you can have a king tonight on the throne of your heart. And that king can be the sin nature dominating you, or that king Could be the presence of the Lord through the person of the Holy Spirit. The grace, the sin, or the grace. Is going to be sitting on the throne of our heart. And while the sin works all manner of evil desire in us and is a corrupting force, the grace is an empowering and correcting force.

So now you believer have an option that as the sin nature once reigned like a king, as Lord over your heart, even now so might grace reign. I said, even so might grace reign. So the question is not what do I do, but it's how do I get grace to reign and sin not to rain? Sanctification is learning how to let grace reign and not let sin rain. And it's potential for you. You can have either one.

You will have either one. Every one of you sitting here tonight, under the sound of my voice, that's been baptized into Christ, a born-again believer, you're either allowing the sin nature to reign or Grace to reign. Well what makes the difference? Grace only reigns through righteousness. Well, Brother Larson, how do I get righteousness? Well, I gotta hurry and I'm gonna stop here with this, but put on the screen, if you would, please, uh a verse from Philippians chapter three and verse nine.

Paul counted on a lot of things in his life as a means to righteousness. Philippians 3 and verse 9. But if you want grace to reign, If you want the grace to reign supreme in you and empower you and correct you. Then you need to be found in Christ. Well, how do I get there? I'm not to have my own righteousness. Which is of the law.

But I am through faith of Christ given righteousness which is of God by faith. So when I place my faith in Jesus and what he did for me, and I leave it Leave it there, grace reigns. When I place my faith in what I perform and what I do, I'm in my own righteousness and I'm operating under a government of law. So what I place my faith in determines whether the sin nature reigns or the grace reigns.

Well, I'm kind of tired of here. I'm not tired of this. Because every day I need to understand more about how to get what's not right. In lor and out. And I can't do it. But if I'm found in him, trusting in him for my righteousness, trusting in who he is and what he's done, then grace reigns, and instead of being dominated by the sin factory, I'm dominated By the source and power of righteousness, the person of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God.

So we have an option today. We can live dominated by the sin nature. And have it be working all manner of evil desire on the inside of us, or we can be dominated. By the kingship of the grace of God, the grace, the power of the Holy Spirit that changes us, and it all falls on what you place your faith in. If you place your faith in Jesus, And you've learned that that's where it belongs, and that's what we're gonna learn as we travel through Romans six progressively, that that's Then both old sin

And new creation are going to be worked on. You'll be things will be eliminated and things will be added. That's what happens when grace reigns. Even so might grace reign. I pray tonight that you'll let this principle of the cross work in your life every moment of every day. Would you stand with me, please? Halleluja. I get carried away and don't call'em back up and they're not here, but they're coming. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no other way.

There is no other way to overcome the sin nature and live free from the sin nature. And if you've never been taught what I've just said, then you've never been discipled as a Christian. If you're listening to me on television and someone has never taught you what we've just explained to you, you've never been discipled. You don't know how to live for God.

I didn't say that you don't love him. I didn't say that you weren't saved. I didn't say you weren't filled with the Holy Spirit. I didn't say you weren't zealous. I didn't say you were giving your all. I said you didn't know how to approach. your walk with God and when we don't know how to approach our walk with God, we don't approach it scripturally, we approach it by law and not by grace. We're doomed. But God's got a route for us tonight. Grace Grace God scream. Great.