You Are NOT a Sinner

(Romans 6:1-11)

If there is one issue that Christians struggle with it is how they stand in relation to sin after coming to The Lord. I would like you to read the title of this post once again before I go on. Done that? Good! So let me repeat it…you are NOT a sinner.

And yet I know many of you in Christ are probably saying, “Yes I am. I am a sinner saved by grace.” In fact you may have those words on a bumper sticker or seen it on someone else’s bumper and read it nodding your head in agreement as you do. Well those words are wrong because that is not what the bible says and it is not the will and purpose of God or how His amazing grace works.

So I will say it once more. You are not a sinner…provided that you follow the pattern and the process that The Lord laid out for us to follow as we come to Him and learn to walk in His ways. Best of all, Paul outlines in some very powerful detail what that process is in these scriptures at the start of Romans 6 so let us take hold of these words and grasp the truth of the new covenant and the promises of God for us.

You Are Not A Sinner

The first couple of verses here say the following.

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Read those words very carefully, especially verse 2. How can we who died to sin still live in it is what the words say. If you have died to sin then you are no longer living in sin is what Paul is saying here. And so if you are no longer living in sin then you are not a sinner.

It is grace that saves us and covers our sins and even though we may still do things that are wrong, we are not condemned as sinners because our sin has been removed. We have also been set free from law so that we cannot break the law and thus if you cannot break the law you are not condemned as a sinner.

So now when we do something that technically was a sin under the law it is no longer a sin for we are not under the law and so we do not sin. How do we escape that condemnation of sin? By grace. It is grace that covers our errors now just as it was grace that removed our former sins from before coming to Jesus Christ.

But God does not want us to have to always and constantly rely on His grace. He wants us to be transformed into His image so that our human nature is changed to be like the nature of God. He wants us to do what is good, holy, right and true by choice and by nature.

That is why Paul says in verse 1 that we are not to continue in sin that grace may abound. We are not meant to continue in sin or to do sin so that God can show His grace to us by overlooking those errors. God wants us to change. That is what the new covenant is all about…transformation of the spirit and mind of man to be like God.

Why Did Christ Die?

The reason Christ died was to offer Himself up as the perfect sacrifice for what? For mankind’s sins. He offered Himself and took His blood as a sacrifice to provide release and freedom from sin for all of mankind who would accept His offering. He came to set man free from sin and, as John the Baptist said in John 1:29,

Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world

Jesus died to take away YOUR sins. He didn’t just offer you forgiveness for your sins…He took them away. He cast them far, far away from you so that you would not be just forgiven of your sin but cleansed and washed anew totally and utterly free from the slightest stain of sin.

And this is the will of God under the new covenant. This is one of the key principles of the new covenant…freedom from sin. Why? Because God wants to help man to be restored to perfection. He wants to be able to reconcile man to Himself and help man to be like Himself, alive in love.

But what is it that stands between man and God? Sin. And God said He would not help man who sins. In fact if you read Romans 1 you will see at least three instances where it says God gave up on man because of mans sin.

So if God was going to be able to help man and restore man to perfection, remember that Adam and Eve were created perfect and without sin until they succumbed to sin through satan’s temptation, then God had to get rid of sin. Not just forgive it, He had to get rid of it, remove it and take it away completely.

That is why Jesus died. And if God has taken away your sins when you come to Jesus in faith, the you are not a sinner. God said so, not me!

And yet still so many Christians think they are sinners. So let me ask this, who is more powerful, you or God? I hope you said God! So if God says you are not a sinner, who are you to contradict God? Do you think you can stand against what God says or does? So if you believe Jesus came to take away your sins, if you believe that He died for your sins and that His precious blood was shed to remove your sins…then STOP CALLING YOURSELF A SINNER!!!

Oh and if you have that bumper sticker that says, “I am a sinner saved by grace,” rip it off your car because it is wrong. It should say, “I WAS a sinner saved by grace.” You are not a sinner anymore because Jesus has removed your sin. And these scriptures also tell us how He does that in us.

Baptism

Look at the words in verses 3-4 of this section for they tell us how we enter into the death of Jesus Christ and how we receive the grace of God to be set free from sin.

3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, 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.

When we are baptised into Jesus Christ we are baptised into His death. Through baptism we die and are buried and we take on Jesus’s death as our own. We enter His death and resurrection when we are baptised into His name.

So after you have been baptised the first thing you MUST believe is that you are now dead. Yes you read that right…you are dead!myou have died with Christ. But why is that important?

As you read verses 5-7 Paul explains further why this death is crucial to the beginning of our walk as Christians.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.

In verse 5 we see that through baptism we are united with Christ in His death. We put on His death as our own through baptism as it says in Galatians 3:27.

Verse 6 tells us that just as Christ was crucified, so too in baptism we have been crucified with Him. Why? Well the words above say that the body of sin, that is our old life or the pre-baptism person that we were as we lived unholy godless lives as sinners in the world, might be brought to nothing. The actual Greek word (katargeo) which was translated here as “brought to nothing” in effect means to be destroyed. We enter Jesus’ death so that our old body or life of sin will be destroyed. Why? As you continue to read verse 6 we are told it is so that we are “no longer be enslaved to sin.”

You are not a sinner. You are no longer enslaved to sin because Jesus has taken away your sins when you were baptised into His death. You have died with Christ through being united with Him in death by baptism. And as it says in verse 8, “For one who has died has been set free from sin.”

A dead person cannot sin and a dead person is set free from all their sins because death is the payment for having sinned. You earn death because you sin, as it says in Romans 6:23,

The wages of sin is death…

But when you die, the wages are paid and the debt of sin is covered.

But now through baptism and His amazing grace, God accepts the death of Jesus on our behalf to replace our death and so set us free from sin so that He can help us and transform us into His image. This is how Jesus paid the debt we could not pay and how we receive the grace of God to be set free from sin. We are free from sin because God said so and God made it so.

You are not a sinner so don’t you dare say you are because when you do say you are still a sinner you are saying God is wrong. What is more you are saying that the death of Jesus and the blood He shed to set you free from sin was not good enough. You are NOT a sinner.

What to Believe and How You MUST Think

All of this that I have explained is based upon faith. You accept the death of Jesus in baptism through faith. You believe what God said He would do and what the purpose of the death of Jesus achieved and so you receive the grace of God. And when you believe and have faith in these things you are reconciled to God and He gives you the free gift of righteousness by faith.

Now not only have you died with Christ in baptism but you have also been resurrected with Him as a brand new creation born of God, born from above and a citizen of God’s kingdom. As you are lifted out of the waters of baptism you are raised up with Christ and your life is hidden with Him at the right hand of God as it says in Colossians 3:3.

For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

So you need to change the way you think about your life. You are a new creation in Christ Jesus and you need to think differently about all things.

We see how we are now to think about our lives in Romans 6:8-11.

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

First, in verse 8 we must believe that we have died with Christ and now we will also live with Him. And then in verse 9 we see that Jesus will never die again because death no longer has dominion or power over Him. And now that we are in Christ Jesus through the grace of God and faith in what He did as we enter by baptism, death no longer has power over us for we are in Christ. We put on Christ and so we put on His freedom, His righteousness and His life.

In verse 10 we must now believe that Jesus died once. The death He died was for the purpose of dealing with and doing away with sin. He died to sin so that we may be freed from the bondages of sin and death, and the life He now lives He lives to God. As we entered His death through baptism, we also entered His life in the resurrection through baptism.

And finally we are told plainly what we must think in verse 11. Just as Jesus died to sin and is living His life to God, verse 11 speaks to us individually and says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

You MUST consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God. And if you are dead to sin, you are not a sinner. You have been set free from sin and death through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You are not a sinner but a freed man or woman of The Lord through faith, by the grace and the will of God. This is how you are to think of yourself for this is the starting place for your walk in Jesus as you commence the path of transformation into the image of Christ and the way of love.

No sinner will stand before God the Father so sin must be removed. No sinner was able to be helped by God to be made perfect until sin has been dealt with, and this is how He deals with it.

And now as we understand these things, if we say we are still a sinner we are saying God’s power is insufficient and the blood of Jesus Christ was not enough. God has taken away your sins, not just forgiven them but removed, destroyed, wiped and forgotten your sin through the working of the new covenant in Jesus Christ. So who are you to call yourself a sinner? Are you greater than God?

You are not a sinner. Remember it and hold onto that thought by faith for that is the starting point of a walk with Christ. There is along way to go before you reach perfection in thought and deed, but until you reach this starting point of faith in the knowledge that you are freed from sin, the journey has not even begun and it will slow, even prevent your full growth into the perfection that is possible in the new covenant and the ways that Jesus set down for us to follow.

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