- What is the purpose?
SPIRITUAL CLARITY
- What is the central message?
THE GOSPEL OR GOOD NEWS
- SIN
- The goal of today is to move from sin MANAGEMENT to FREEDOM from sin.
Romans 6:1-2 // What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Romans 5:20 // The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.
1 John 3:4 // Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
- SIN: Missing the mark
- Sin is missing the MARK, whether intentionally or unintentionally, of God’s moral STANDARD or law as described in His word.
Five effects of sin:
1. Sin Separates
Isaiah 59:2 // But, your antiquities have separated you from your God.
2. Sin leads to death
- “Sin always overpromises on fun and underdelivers on fulfillment”
James 1:14-15 // but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death
3. Sin keeps us from God’s best.
Galatians 5:19-21 // 9 The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.
4. Sin traps the sinner.
John 8:34 // very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.
5. Sin is a counterfeit.
- Everything God has for you, the devil has a counterfeit.
Genesis 3:1 // Now the serpent was craftier than any of the wild animals. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
- How do we live a life free from sin?
1. Count yourself DEAD to sin.
Romans 1:1 // What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
Romans 6:11 // In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
Galatians 5:6 // But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Jeremiah 17:9 // “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked.
- Practical Atheism - acknowledges God by mouth, but denies him through action.
Romans 6:3-7 // don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
- God doesn’t call us to an improved life, but rather a NEW ONE!
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
- How do we live a life free from sin?
2. You need a MAKEOVER.
- Your identity changes when you become alive in Christ.
Romans 6:11 // In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ
Romans 5:12 // Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned
- My identity is no longer in sin, it is in Christ.
- How do we live a life free from sin?
3. Understand FREEDOM is meant for you.
Galatians 5:1 // It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
- Next steps to live free from sin:
- Live in community
- Cut it out
- Repent often
- What you feed grows, what you crave controls, but what starve dies.
- Don’t walk around with the noose of shame and guilt.
1 John 1:9 // If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Romans 5:8 // But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
