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[0:00] Well, in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. In Saddam Hussein, his regime, his tyranny was toppled.

[0:14] He had no more authority in Iraq. But if you're familiar with that time, it was months before Saddam Hussein was actually captured. So for months, he was on the run in Iraq, exerting all sorts of mayhem in that country.

[0:34] Though he was in hiding, he was exerting influence. Despite not having any authority, he was still wreaking havoc. It's a great picture of indwelling sin in the life of a believer.

[0:50] The cross of Jesus Christ has paid the penalty of sin. The cross of Jesus Christ has broken the power of sin. And yet the cross of Jesus Christ has yet to eradicate sin from the life of a believer.

[1:05] We are simultaneously justified in God's eyes, and yet we still sin. And we have this little tyrant called indwelling sin wreaking havoc in our lives.

[1:25] Today we're going to be looking at the second half of Romans 6. And what you need to know going into Romans, the second half, is that the Apostle Paul is assuming that a Christian is experiencing the influence of indwelling sin, and that that sin exerts influence, and it's wanting you to obey its passions, its desires, its cravings.

[1:53] You know what I love about my Bible? It's the best explanation for reality. It explains my experience as a Christian to a T.

[2:06] And so what we have here in Romans chapter 6, especially the latter half here, is a way in which we are to think about our relationship with sin now that Jesus has radically changed us by His grace.

[2:25] Last week I asked you, as the close of the sermon, to be thinking about a particular sin that you, in the vein of Romans 6, 12, and 13, that you regularly offer the instruments of your body to.

[2:41] Where are you tempted to sin? It would be very appropriate to be asking, okay, how am I presenting my body to sexual lust? How am I presenting my body to covetousness, to greed, to the fear of man, to this anxiety that can suffocate me, this pride that thinks I'm better than anybody else, or I'm not as good as anyone else?

[3:02] What is this thing in me that causes these outbursts of anger, and I end up giving myself to it? Brother, sister, God's will for you is your sanctification, for you to become more and more like Jesus in your everyday life.

[3:21] One old timer said it this way. Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. There's no such thing as indifference with regard to indwelling sin.

[3:36] If you're indifferent to it, you are already serving it. Christians, we no longer serve sin. We slay sin.

[3:47] And sanctification is the process of being ruled less and less by indwelling sin and becoming more and more holy like our Lord Jesus Christ.

[4:00] You see, God's grace isn't an excuse to sin. God's grace compels us, trains us to be holy.

[4:10] So we're going to move forward, as we have been over the next couple of last Sundays. We're going to look at doctrine defined. So we're going to circle back to this thing called sanctification.

[4:21] I'm going to walk you through that chart I showed you last week just to remind those of you who are here, and if you weren't here, so those of you who weren't here see a very important distinction between the doctrine of justification and sanctification.

[4:33] And then we're going to dive into Romans chapter 6, 15 through 23. I'm going to help you see that this doctrine of sanctification is biblical. We just can't agree to it.

[4:45] We must be engaging in it. And then finally, I'm going to apply this doctrine in two ways. A holy mindset, we've got to be thinking a certain way, and a holy skill set in which you are equipped to slay your sin and bring to life godliness.

[5:09] Hey, have you been using grace as an excuse to sin? Let's look at this doctrine defined.

[5:22] Two weeks ago, I preached a sermon on justification, and I think it ministered to many of you.

[5:37] Oh boy. Just, I know, I got it.

[5:50] Okay, this is my sanctification. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

[6:01] Yeah. I'm a graduate of Thompson Junior High School. And yes, I got a massive dry erase marker for this moment.

[6:15] Okay, justification, just to remind you. The doctrine of justification teaches this. We see this in Romans 5, 1. That God, in a one-time legal act, declares an unrighteous sinner righteous in His sight, based upon that sinner's faith in the finished work of Christ.

[6:38] And so, the moment a sinner believes in the gospel, they are now declared righteous legally by God.

[6:50] They're in right standing with Him. They were, at one point, they were without excuse, under God's wrath, unrighteous in every way, whether they were a moralist, or they were a hedonist, and then God changed them.

[7:03] Remember this illustration? Here is you, with your unrighteousness. You had a fat list of that. And God's wrath was over you for that.

[7:16] And then here's Jesus Christ with His 33 years of perfect righteousness. And what God does, the moment a sinner believes, is He thinks differently about this.

[7:29] He considers your righteousness as now being placed on Christ. And He applies Christ's death from 2,000 years ago all the wrath poured out on Christ is now poured out on Christ for all of your sin.

[7:48] So it's completely forgiven. That's how He thinks about you. But that's just half that. Because now, God also thinks of Christ's righteousness as the fancy word is imputed to you. It's legally true of you the moment you believe.

[8:03] All of Christ's righteousness. And so at that moment, He sees you and thinks of you as completely forgiven, all of His wrath poured out on Christ for your sake. And now all of Christ's righteousness imputed to you.

[8:15] It's yours now. And at that moment, you are justified in His sight at peace with God. That's why that verse, 2 Corinthians 5, 21, and He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God.

[8:33] That's what that's talking about. That's double imputation. That's the internal workings of justification. And so, now, a justified sinner has an imputed righteousness in which they stand.

[8:54] This doesn't change. It's a work of God alone. It's immediate at the moment you believe. And it's not just immediate. What was the word I wanted there?

[9:05] Immediate and this 51-year-old brain. It was immediate. And it was complete.

[9:17] Because it's the righteousness of Christ imputed to you, there's no more additional righteousness of Christ that needs to be imputed to you. It's all yours. It's complete. The moment you believed.

[9:29] And therefore, it's unchanging. So now, if I came to Christ as a 19-year-old, for the rest of my days on this planet, I am fully righteous in God's sight because of the finished work of Christ.

[9:43] Imputed to me. Do I have an amen? Okay. This is justification. This happens the moment of your salvation. God alone, we add nothing to it.

[9:57] It's immediate, complete, unchanging. For by grace, you've been saved through faith. It's not your own owning. It's the gift of God. God. Now, when we get to sanctification, where justification is that one-time legal declaration of God, sanctification is a cooperative between God and a justified sinner in which we are working together to work out what God has started in us.

[10:22] It's a process of being less and less ruled by sin and more and more like Christ and His holiness. And so this, we can call it practical or experiential righteousness.

[10:36] It's right living, showing up day by day in your life. It's living for God, obeying Him. It's an outworking of your right standing. This is right walking day by day.

[10:50] This is the basis of it all. You're justified by God's grace, period. This is the outworking of it. You are now walking by God's grace, dot, dot, dot.

[11:05] So this is a cooperative between God and the justified, oh, bad writing, sinner, a.k.a. a saint, where this is immediate, justification is immediate, this is ongoing, where justification is complete, you've been given the full righteousness of Christ.

[11:28] This is incomplete because it's not until you are in the very presence of God, whether you breathe your last or Jesus returns, that you will now no longer need to put sin to death and bring to life what is pleasing to God.

[11:46] So you're not going to be righteously perfect this side of glory. It's incomplete and therefore it's changing. Sanctification is, some theologians call it progressive.

[12:00] It's like the Dow Jones Industrial Average over decades where you're seeing it gradually increase, but if you come into like a three-month period you see that like really sharp dips and rises and stuff like that, but the trajectory over time is gain.

[12:17] And so both are true of a Christian. a Christian the moment they believe is justified, that's never going to change, it's God alone, He doesn't revoke it, and they're being sanctified, which is a progress, progressive, cooperative with God.

[12:36] Last week I told you what happens when people confuse these. Do you know what happens when someone thinks that their justification, your right standing with God, depends upon your sanctification, your right walking with God, do you know what happens?

[12:50] Misery! Because you're living in fear. Because you think that your obedience earns your right standing with God and that is just not biblical.

[13:02] It's a recipe for misery. That's what all the other religions in the world propose. Our faith, the Christian faith, starts with grace that justifies.

[13:15] And then it moves to grace that sanctifies. So when you do get this relationship clear and right, now you're positioned to start putting sin to death and bringing to life godliness, realizing that your salvation doesn't depend on it.

[13:34] It's not working of what God has begun in you. You guys tracking with me? Nods? Okay. This, 20 years ago, in the life of Mike Salvati, rescued me from a life of just heartache and misery.

[13:53] I actually thought my salvation depended on me. And it's just not true. It's not biblical. And so when I learned this, it was like, what? This is God's grace?

[14:06] It's amazing. So as a result, Christian, you know what you can say? You're as justified as you ever will be. You're as justified as the Apostle Paul because you've both been declared righteous with the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.

[14:20] But when it comes to our sanctification, we're working that out. And some of us who've been fighting for a while are going to be down the road a little longer than some of us who are just starting out.

[14:33] But here's what I want you to hear. The grace that justified you is the same grace that is sanctifying you.

[14:45] The grace that justified you, period, done, is the grace that is sanctifying you ongoingly. So, sanctification is the cooperative process between God and a Christian to be ruled less and less by sin and become more and more like Christ in holiness, day-to-day holiness.

[15:10] So, the question now we've got to ask, is this biblical? Do our Bibles actually teach this? And that's where I want you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 6 verses 15 through 23.

[15:25] In your pew Bible, I think it's like around 1120. I forgot to check. 1121. Thank you, Petey. I'm going to read this for us.

[15:36] Romans 6, 15 through 23, Paul makes a really compelling case here and he starts using a language he hasn't used yet in the book of Romans.

[15:48] Not this explicitly. What then? Are we to sin? Because we are not under law but under grace? By no means.

[16:00] Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness?

[16:12] But thanks be to God, this is the Apostle Paul writing, to a church in Rome, Christians in Rome. Well, thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

[16:31] I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations for just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

[16:50] For when you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness but what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

[17:02] For the end of those things is death. But now, now, that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life.

[17:22] For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Is sanctification biblical? Well, the word shows up twice in these verses.

[17:37] In verse 19, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification and then in verse 22, but now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God the fruit you get leads to sanctification.

[17:53] Being less and less ruled by sin and becoming more and more like Jesus. In fact, in 6.4 Paul uses a very different phrase to describe sanctification. It's the last phrase, we too might walk in newness of life.

[18:07] Walk, live, carry it out. Sanctification. So, here's what's happening in Romans chapter 6, 15 through 23.

[18:18] On one level, it's a simple Q&A. He asks a question in verse 15 and 16 through 23 he answers that question. Very simple.

[18:29] But what is he addressing? Paul is seeking to correct a possible misunderstanding of grace. Look at verse 14.

[18:41] For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. And the apostle Paul knows how people like us think under grace. Did God just write me a free check to sin?

[18:58] And so he says, what then? Are we to sin? Go on sinning, continue in sin because we're not under law but under grace. If grace is ruling us, if we're under the dominion of grace now, can we sin all we want?

[19:14] Is being under grace licensed to sin? Well, what we see here is his argument is, no, grace is not licensed to sin.

[19:27] grace trains us in holiness. You know, a lot of evangelicals think about grace in terms of fire extinguisher from the wrath of God.

[19:40] True. They think about grace as God's safety net. He'll never let you go. True. As God's kind of healing balm on our wounds. That's true.

[19:51] But grace is more than that. grace is like the best coach you will ever have in your life who will say, okay, Mike, I want you to push the envelope of holiness.

[20:05] You go now, boy! Grace is muscular. Grace is gritty. Grace rescues and it compels.

[20:16] And we're going to see that now played out with very interesting language. In 15 through 23, Paul makes clear that Christians are not to use grace as a license to sin.

[20:29] Rather, God's grace is an empowerment to obedience. The grace that justified you, Christian, is the same grace that is sanctifying you.

[20:41] So in verse 15, he starts by saying, okay, if we're under grace now, are we free to sin? And he says, by no means. Salvati translation is what are you are you kidding me?

[20:53] This grace that you've been brought under, you're going to use that as an excuse to sin? Behind this, Paul knows that if you think that about grace, you've misunderstood grace.

[21:12] So now he's going to make a case. Verse 16, starting, verse 16, he shifts gear. He's like, okay, okay, I'm guessing you have a hard time understanding what I'm talking about, being under grace now, so I'm going to come at this from a different angle using kind of language you're going to understand, verse 19.

[21:33] Let's talk slavery. And Paul's point in verse 16 is that you become a slave to the one you obey.

[21:45] If you're presenting yourself to sin, you're doing something that's no longer true of who you are. He's now going to make a case that grace has made us slaves to righteousness, to God.

[22:03] So stop presenting your members to slaves to sin. That's the argument. It's like, do you not know? Do you not know that who you present yourself to as slaves you obey?

[22:20] So in verses 17 through 22, Paul sets out to remind the Christians in Rome and the Christians in Kenosha of three things.

[22:33] Who we are now, what we're to be doing now, and what is our trajectory now. So let me just draw these out to you. There's a device that he uses that will help us.

[22:46] Throughout this passage, not only is he talking in slavery, but he's using a kind of a literary device that is a before and after technique, a then and now technique.

[22:59] So let me show you. In verses 17 and 18, he says, but thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin before, have become now obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

[23:17] He's talking about the apostolic gospel. Christ, Jesus, died and raised God's kingdom. And he says, and having been set free from sin, you were a slave once, have now become slaves of righteousness.

[23:36] So he's using this device of before and after, then and now to help us understand who we are in our relationship to sin. And did you notice that little phrase in verse 17, have become obedient from the heart?

[23:52] Do you know what that's getting at? Your conversion. The moment you got flipped by God's grace. The moment you went from darkness into light.

[24:03] The moment you went from following the prince of the power of the air to now living for Jesus because you're in him now. You went from the proxy of Adam to the proxy of Christ.

[24:17] The point he's making is you were once slaves to sin, but you're slaves to sin no longer. You are now slaves of righteousness.

[24:31] Oh, I hope you are a little uncomfortable right now. Slavery is not the easiest thing to talk about, right? But here's what he's getting at.

[24:43] For many of us Christians, we think when we've been set free, we've been freed men, freed women. Now we can do whatever we want. That's not what he's saying. What he's saying is God's grace transfers you from one kind of slavery to another kind of slavery.

[25:05] You used to be a slave to sin. Now you're a slave of righteousness to God. God's grace freed you from slavery to sin so that you can start obeying God.

[25:22] God's grace is not this is slave talk. It's redemption talk. It's slave market talk. This is talking about this process back in the first century of when slaves would be sold to slave masters and they would go from being property of one to property of other to serve.

[25:48] God's grace flipped you brother and sister. you used to be a slave to sin and now you're a slave of righteousness. In 1 Corinthians 6 the apostle Paul is writing this church in Corinth and they were just messed up.

[26:04] They had a real sexual immorality problem. And so Paul writes to them and he says to them you are not your own. You were bought with a price.

[26:17] So glorify God with your body. It's redemption language. It's slave language. You're not your own anymore. You never were. But you've been bought by the blood of Jesus and now you belong to him.

[26:31] And now you use your body for him for his fame for his glory. And so what Paul is getting at here with all this slave talk this before and after you were this now you're this.

[26:44] Brother sister do you know why you don't present your body to sin anymore? You're not owned by sin anymore. You're owned by Jesus now.

[26:58] Property of Jesus. You belong to him. He didn't save you so that you can do anything you wanted.

[27:08] He saved you so that you could now live a life for him. So this passage starts out with who you are now as a slave of righteousness.

[27:20] You were a slave of sin now you're a slave of righteousness. And now we go to what are we to be doing now? Verse 19. Verse 19 after he talks about speaking in human terms because of their natural limitations he says for just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading more lawlessness so now present your members as slaves to righteousness.

[27:46] So there's the before and after. Before this is what Paul's saying hey Romans you know before you became Christians you were just excellent slaves to sin.

[28:01] You excelled at your slavery to sin. You just presented yourself to sin and impurity with just exceptional force and consistency.

[28:13] and then he says in fact you did it so well you went from one kind of lawlessness to another kind of lawlessness.

[28:25] You pushed the envelope of lawlessness. You were so good at sinning that you blew through any kind of restriction that was put on you and you graduated from one degree of lawlessness to the next.

[28:38] You were really good. And he uses that as an argument. Just as you excelled at presenting yourself as slaves to sin, so now present yourself all in as a slave of righteousness.

[29:00] All of who you are for all of who Christ is all of the time. And so what are we to be doing now? So now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

[29:16] Because you're now, by God's grace, a slave to God and righteousness, now what you do is present your members to him, leading to sanctification.

[29:29] Less and less ruled by sin, more and more like Christ. And so now, do you know what envelope we push, Christian? we push the envelope of holiness.

[29:42] We press into becoming more like Christ in what we crave, in our character, in our conduct. We seek to, by God's grace, push into greater degrees of holiness, to excel at that, to prioritize that.

[30:02] That's what we do now. Grace is not an excuse to sin. Grace compels us to holiness because you now are a slave of God.

[30:21] The last piece, he's told us who we are now and what we're to be doing now, sanctification, presenting our bodies to God, to righteousness. And finally, in verses 20 and 22, he reminds us of our trajectory now.

[30:36] And again, there's the before and after. Look at verse 20. Before, when you were slaves of God, you were free in regard to righteousness. In other words, you were not a slave of righteousness, you were not a slave of God, you were dead to God and alive to sin outside of Christ Jesus.

[30:53] But now, that has changed. Look at verse 21. He uses the word fruit. When you were a slave to sin, what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

[31:10] Fruit is talking about the produce of your sinning. When you were sowing to sin, you were reaping things that you're now ashamed of.

[31:24] He's like saying, hey, do you remember back in the day, in the years, the slave to sin years? Do you remember what you were doing? And you remember how ashamed of that you're now?

[31:34] It's not like back in the slave to sin years, you were now eager to tell your kids about that time, eager to post on Facebook for everybody to see. It's kind of like that phrase you hear about Las Vegas, what happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas.

[31:50] It's kind of like, hey, what happened back in the slave to sin years, it's going to, I don't want to talk about those years because I'm ashamed of those now. And that fruit that you were bearing, you were sowing to sin and you were reaping things that look at the end of verse 21.

[32:13] For the end, the telos of those things is death, spiritual death, without excuse, under God's wrath, judgment, condemnation. That's what that was waiting. that's who you were doing those kinds of things.

[32:31] You're not proud of those now. You know, if you open up your Bible, I'll just read this to you. Back in the slave to sin years, you were just reaping all sorts of works of the flesh.

[32:49] Now, the works of the flesh, Galatians 5, 19, are evident. Sexual immorality, that was me. Impurity, sensuality, idolatry, check, sorcery, enmity, strife, definitely, jealousy, for sure, fits of anger, a lot, rivalries, yes, dissensions, divisions, envy, uh-huh, drunkenness, not so much, orgies, and things like these.

[33:20] you want to go post those on Facebook? You're ashamed of those things now. Why would you ever go back to giving yourself to those things?

[33:39] That's who you were. Look at verse 22. but now that you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. There's this great redemptive work of grace in which he flipped you.

[33:53] fruit. And he says, the fruit you get, same word, fruit, that you get now, it's not the stay in Vegas stuff.

[34:10] It's the stuff that you don't need to be ashamed of. It's the stuff that pleases God. For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

[34:30] Against such things there is no law. God delights in these things. You don't have to be ashamed of these things now. This is the fruit of sanctification. You're being less and less ruled by sin and becoming more and more like Christ because that fruit of the Spirit forms a profile of Jesus.

[34:47] You want to be like him. And the end of that, the telos of that is eternal life. That's the trajectory we're on, brothers and sisters.

[34:59] We're on the grace trajectory of becoming more and more holy which results in eternal life because we've been justified by his grace. We've been united with Christ in his death and resurrection.

[35:11] We've been redeemed. So we don't go back to that stuff. life. You're no longer a slave to sin but a slave to God on a grace trajectory.

[35:29] The fruit is sanctification and the end is eternal life. That's who you are now. Period. So Paul's making this argument in Romans 6, 15 through 23.

[35:40] It's like, hey, you know what? We're not, we don't come under grace so that we can keep sinning. No, it's not who we are anymore. We're slaves of God, slaves of righteousness.

[35:54] What we do now is offer our bodies to him unto sanctification, holiness, and we are on a whole new trajectory. We're going to glory. And so we live like that now.

[36:08] The point is, is that we don't offer ourselves to sin anymore because we're now slaves of God. It's all by his grace. And at the heart of this, what flipped the script is the redemptive work of God in Christ Jesus for you.

[36:30] He bought you with his blood. You are not your own. You've been purchased by the blood of Christ. So present yourself to God as slaves of righteousness.

[36:46] Anybody asking, how do I do that? What does that look like? How can I present myself to God day in, day out as a slave of righteousness?

[37:00] Well, let me tell you. Doctrine applied. Would you quickly look at Titus chapter 2 verses 11 through 14?

[37:18] Listen to this. As my friend says, peep this. Look at that. for the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us.

[37:29] The grace of God is training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age now, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possessions who are zealous for good works.

[37:58] You're in grace training, brother and sister in Christ. When you were flipped by God's grace, you went into grace training.

[38:08] The grace that justified you, period, is the same grace that is making you holy, dot, dot, dot. It's training you. It's going to train you in two ways, a holy mindset and a holy skill set.

[38:24] Here's the holy mindset. The holy mindset is a way of thinking about yourself through the lens of the Bible. This morning's passage calls you Christian to believe something about yourself.

[38:42] It calls you to trust in God's word, what God's word is saying about you more than how you feel about yourself. You are a slave of God now, a slave to righteousness.

[38:57] That's what God's word says. He bought me, he bought you with his blood. It's done. I'm his. You're his. And so now call to mind the sin that you're tempted to present yourself to.

[39:14] What did I just get hooked on? Call to mind that sin that you regularly offer your body to, your mind to, and bring it against that mindset.

[39:29] So when you're tempted to obey the passions of lust and greed and pride and anger and anxiety and fear, you say to yourself, but that's not who I am. These things do not rule me based upon the authority of God's word.

[39:42] this is not me anymore. This is that tyrant kind of making things messy in me. And so now Titus 2.11, I renounce these things.

[39:54] I say no to these things. I say to my sin, you don't own me anymore. Jesus does. You know how to do that?

[40:08] You get your nose in your Bible every day. So if you think, you know what, I should be reading my Bible because other Christians read their Bible, that's going to last like two days.

[40:20] When you start seeing it this way, I've got to read my Bible, otherwise I am going to drift back into some kind of slavery to sin. Do you know why I read my Bible?

[40:33] I miss two days and all of a sudden I'm walking by sight, not by faith. I forget who I am. I forget who so I read a passage like Romans 6 and I say, yes, this is God's grace.

[40:47] This is who I am now. So brother and sister, one of the things that you can do to develop this mindset is to renew your mind on truth of who God says you are by His grace.

[41:02] You stand on it. That will help you fight. God. That's grace training. Training your mind to believe what is true of you.

[41:18] The second type of training is a grace, a holy skill set. I alluded to this last week. It is the two aspects of sanctification.

[41:32] It's putting sin to death and bringing to life godliness. Godliness. The old timers would call it the mortification of sin, mortify, mortician, death, and bringing to life, vivifying godliness.

[41:47] So let me help you take a step in each of mortifying your sin because you're a slave of righteousness now. It doesn't rule. You've got to slay that tyrant wreaking havoc in your life.

[42:02] The old timers, here's where to start. How to mortify your sin. This is where it begins. Pick that thing that you're tempted to give yourself to and start here.

[42:14] The old timers called it loading your sin. You're loading your sin with the way that God sees your sin and feels about your sin.

[42:26] I am going to seed my lust the way that God through his word tells me he sees my lust and how he feels about my lust. I'm going to load my sin that way.

[42:39] I'm going to talk about lust in terms of Matthew 5, 28. I'm going to talk about greed in terms of Colossians 3, 5. I'm going to talk about anxiety in terms of Philippians 4, 6. I'm going to talk about fear of man in terms of Proverbs 29, 25.

[42:53] The anger of man in terms of James 1, 19 through 20. I'm going to talk about the sins of my mouth in terms of James 3, 1 through 12. I am going to see these things the way that God sees them.

[43:08] That's loading your sin. And you know what happens? You start to hate it. You're like, this does not belong here.

[43:22] This is grievous to my God. What fruit will this produce? What end does this result in? Would Jesus do this? How does this affect others? Does this advance the gospel?

[43:33] Will I be ashamed of this? These are the things that we ask to load our sin. And we're praying all along, oh God, would you help me to see this thing in me the way that you do?

[43:44] And would you make me feel about this thing the way that you do? You're going to have some compelling reasons at that point to renounce it.

[43:55] To say no. If there was a mic in my car while I'm driving, you'd hear me say no a lot. No, I'm not going to think that.

[44:07] No, I'm not going to go there. No, that's not who I am. That's how we fight. It's part of the Christian walk now.

[44:19] We fight sin, not give ourselves to it. The other side of this is called vivification, bringing to life.

[44:30] Putting off mortification, putting on vivification. And so here's how that works. So if you lust, you're putting that to death and now you've got to bring something to life in its place.

[44:43] Something that pleases God. Oftentimes if you're a brother who is looking lustfully at women, what you need to do is put on image bearing, dignifying, seeing a woman as God sees her.

[45:00] You're asking the question, what would God want to grow in the place of this sin that I'm putting to death? What fruit of the spirit? What craving and desire that would be pleasing to God?

[45:14] What character trait, what conduct needs to be now grown in me? God help me become like Jesus. Kill these things and bring to life Christ likeness.

[45:32] Okay, I'm going to give you two strategies. You've been great. Two strategies that apply to both. You're going to want, if you're taking notes, put down 2 Corinthians 3 18.

[45:48] Beholding the Lord Jesus Christ. Beholding the glory of God, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to the next. You know one of the best things that you can do to slay your sin and to bring to life Christ likeness?

[46:03] Set your gaze on Jesus. Be awed by Him. Be amazed by Him. Just savor, behold His glory. And you know what?

[46:14] That godly desire starts to crowd out sinful desires. The second thing I would recommend, bring in like-minded brothers and sisters.

[46:30] There's little to compare to fight sin by bringing brothers and sisters whom you trust in in the process. I called a couple brothers, had conversations a couple weeks ago.

[46:42] I was being tempted to lust. I'm like, here's the situation. And man, they helped me so much. It was just so helpful talking to Him about it. Bringing it into the light. Walk in the light.

[46:54] Who can you confide your fight to sin with? Not only will you grow in your sanctification, it will raise the bar. Okay.

[47:07] I even cut down this sermon. Man, I started to go long. Let me wrap it up. Justification. God's legal one-time declaration of you that you are in right standing with Him based on the finished work of Christ, that doesn't change.

[47:22] You are in right standing Christian with God. If you're not a Christian, that's the next step. Believe in what God has done through Jesus and be saved. Sanctification is the cooperative between God and a Christian to become more and more like Christ, to be less and less ruled by sin.

[47:40] And we all know there's this gap between our imputed righteousness and our experiential righteousness. Amen? Let me close with some good news.

[47:52] We're one day closer. When Jesus comes back and all the dead are raised and He distributes our resurrection bodies back, and yes, the penalty of sin is paid for, and yes, the power of sin is broken, but you know what's going to be amazing?

[48:13] The presence of sin will be eradicated. And now, our experience is going to match our legal standing.

[48:27] Is that good news? It's one day closer. So now, we fight. Let's pray.

[48:38] God in heaven, would you take my fish and loaves of your word, and would you multiply, and would you attend to my brothers and sisters, and that, God, you would stir in them a hunger and thirst for your righteousness, a boldness and a courage to fight and slay sin, and to become more and more like Christ.

[49:06] Christ. Thank you, God, for your justifying work with which you've done by your grace for us, and now pour out your grace more and more, that we would become more and more like Christ in all that we do.

[49:18]  Amen.