Landon Coleman
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Not Ashamed: Romans 6:1-4
If you have a Bible, you can open to Romans chapter 6. There is an outline in your bulletin. You can track along with the message this morning, and as we've mentioned a couple of times, we are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper, and we're not going to be coming by with the elements. So if you need those to celebrate with us at the end of the service, you're more than welcome to get up and pick those up during the back of the room on either side. In chapter 6, our text this morning is Romans 6, 1 to 4, and so we're going to read those verses together, and then we're going to pray and ask the Lord to bless the reading of His Word. Hear the word of the Lord from Romans 6, beginning in verse 1, "What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means? How can we who died to sin still live in it?" Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 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. Me too might walk in newness of life. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful for Your grace to us. We are unworthy sinners, all. We thank You for the perfect, complete work of Your Son in His life and His death and His resurrection as we just sang His promise to return for His people. Father, we thank You for raising us to new life, for raising us to walk in newness of life. We ask for Your help this morning. As we think about this text and as we think about how it might apply to our lives, be with us. We pray that Your Spirit, who inspired the Bible, would bring conviction and encouragement to our hearts this morning, and we pray that You would add blessing to the reading of Your Word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well just about every Sunday morning, I assume that you've brought a copy of the Scriptures with you. I ask you to take your Bible out or grab one that is beneath you in the chair wherever you're sitting. And I think most weeks we take, for granted, what I'm asking you to do, the fact that you can take out a copy of the Scriptures and hold it in your hands, is nothing short of a miracle. Originally, we could talk about the miracle of inspiration. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit carried men along as they wrote down the books that make up our Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit breathed out these words. As human beings wrote them, they were breathed out or spirited out by God. So that what we have when we open the Scriptures is not just Paul's Word or Moses' Word, but ultimately it's God's Word. So there's the miracle of inspiration. There's also what we could call the miracle of preservation. And I would just submit to you that the fact that the original documents that Moses and Paul and David and John wrote down survived and were copied and were preserved and were eventually translated into a language that we could read and understand. The story of that, if you study it historically, is nothing short of miraculous. So what we hold in our hands when we open the Scriptures is a miraculous thing. It's an example of a miracle that God has worked through His Holy Spirit and through His providence down through the ages. When it comes to the book of Romans in particular, I would just remind you that once upon a time there was a Jewish Pharisee named Saul. And he met Jesus in a dramatic way as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians and his life was radically and completely changed. And one day, there was a day where this man Saul, who had changed his name to Paul, sat down with a friend named Tertius, we'll meet Tertius when we get to Romans 16. He sat down with Tertius and he said, "I want to write a letter." I've never been to Rome, but there's a church there and I want to write a letter to the church in Rome. Saul dictated the words of the letter and Tertius wrote the words that Paul spoke. And what we believe as Christians is that the Holy Spirit of God super intended the entire event so that the words that were written weren't just Tertius and they weren't just the Apostle Paul, but they were actually God's words. Originally, the document that Tertius wrote and that Paul spoke out, the original would have looked something like this. I think the photo I ended up picking is Papyrus 46. It has fragments of the Book of Romans. This is what an ancient copy of the New Testament looks like. This is not the original, but this is something that a scribe has copied down and as you look at that, you note a couple of things. There are no chapters and verses in the original. There are very few paragraph or section breaks. Mostly it's just word after word. In most ancient manuscripts, there's not even spaces between the words. They didn't have the resources to space things out, so they just mashed it all together and the readers of the language could tell the difference between the words and they could make sense of it, just like you could do this if English were mashed together. There's no chapters and no verses. There's no section headings. There's no title page that gives you a description of the book. And yet when we open our Bibles, we have all of these things. We have chapters and verses and paragraphs and section headings and punctuation. The original Koine Greek didn't even have punctuation. We've added all of those things in. It's not because what Paul wrote was incomplete, but it's to help us on a morning like this when we're studying these particular verses to say, "Would you please find Romans chapter 6?" We're going to look at verse 1 to verse 4, and we can open our copies of the Scriptures and we can all land in the same place and talk about God's inspired Word. When we think about chapters and verses and sections and all of these things, all of that is a human addition to help us. It's a tool to help us study and understand God's Word. Likewise, when I present you with an outline for Romans, I'm not trying to just impose something that Paul should have included. I'm just trying to give you a human perspective on how you can understand the book and the flow of the argument within the book. As we've done the last couple of weeks, let's talk about a preliminary outline for Romans. In chapter 1, verse 1 to 15, we find a greeting and we find some words of introduction. In chapter 1, verse 16 and 17, we find the thematic verse, the theme statement for Romans. And in those two verses, Paul says, "You need the righteousness of God to be saved, and the only way that you can receive it is through faith in Jesus. You can't work for it, you can't earn it, you can't merit it, you can't deserve it. You can only receive the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus." 118, all the way through the middle of chapter 3, Paul talks about our need for this righteousness. He talks about our depravity, our sinfulness, our wickedness, and he talks about God's wrath as God's response to human sinfulness. In the middle of 3, up through the middle of chapter 4, 321 to 425, Paul talks about justification by faith. And he could not be clearer in this section that you cannot be justified before God by your own good works. You cannot obtain the righteousness of God by keeping the law or doing any good deed or any good thing. You only receive it through faith in Jesus. Chapter 5, moving on through the end of chapter 8, Paul is teasing out the impact of this doctrine. What difference does it make in the way that we think about God, the way that we relate to God, the way that we live our lives? How does the doctrine of justification by faith play out in our lives? Now, one more thing I want you to see that it's a structural concept, but it's very helpful for understanding our passage this morning, is that there's a shift from Romans 4 and 5 to Romans 6 through 8. In Romans 3, 21 to 5, 21, Paul emphasizes the fact that we have been saved from sin's penalty. We have been saved from the penalty of our sin. The wages of our sin is death and the wrath of God. And we have been saved from that penalty. We have been justified. We've been declared righteous by virtue of the fact that we have put our faith in the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So chapter 3 and 4, he details the doctrine of justification by faith. If your Bible is open, you can look at 5, 1 to 5. He says, "Because we've been justified, we have peace with God." We have peace with God. We're no longer under his wrath, but we have peace with him. It's not the peace of God. It's not a feeling or an emotion that you have, but it is an objective reality of your standing before God. You have peace with God. If you keep reading, verse 6 down to verse 11, he talks about substitution that Jesus died for sinners. Christ died for the ungodly. He died as our substitute and he satisfied the Father's wrath that should have fallen us. The text we looked at last week, chapter 5, verse 12 to 21, Paul says, "Look, there's two representative heads of humanity. The first is Adam, all who are born physically or born in Adam, and Adam's work brings death and guilt and condemnation." Jesus is the second representative head of humanity and his work brings life and righteousness and justification. In all of that section, the focus is on the fact that Jesus has saved us from the penalty of sin. Starting in Romans 6.1, Paul emphasizes the fact that we have been saved from sin's power by faith in Jesus, not by our moral effort. We're going to tease this out, the difference between being saved from sin's penalty or being saved from its power. We'll talk about this over the next several weeks as we work through Romans 6 and 7 and 8. Broadly speaking, you could say this, Romans 3, 4, 5, Paul's talking about justification in the centrality of justification. Beginning in 6 and 7 and 8, he's talking about our sanctification. Our growth and holiness are becoming more like Christ, our becoming set apart, and more like our Savior. So Romans 6.1 is a new section, and Paul starts with a question. Here's where we begin. If Paul is right and justification is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, is the believer free to continue in sin so that grace may abound? That's what he says in verse 1. What shall we say then? We've been talking about justification. We've been saved from sin's penalty. We're no longer under God's wrath, so what do we say? What do we make of this? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? And you see that phrase, grace abounding is the bridge between where we left off last weekend, where we start this week. At the end of chapter 5, verse 20, he says, "The law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." The law reveals our sin, it convicts us of our guiltiness and our trespass. And the work of Jesus, Paul is arguing in chapter 5, is greater. Grace abounded, Jesus' work supersedes the work in the law in making us transgressors. So grace has abounded. And now he's saying, what do we do with this? What do we do with this now that we're justified and saved from sin's penalty? Can we just continue in sin? Verse 1, "So that grace may abound." Here's his answer. Paul's answer to the question is a resounding no, a resounding no. The Greek phrase here in verse 2, by no means, is a very strong phrase. It's the kind of answer you would give to somebody who asked a question that you found laughable, like completely ridiculous, should we continue in sin so that grace may abound? It's as if Paul is saying, you have got to be kidding me. What kind of question is that? It's ridiculous, it's an emphatic, strong statement. And Paul is going to use it four times in Romans 6 and 7. Four times I've given you the verses, he's going to ask a question and he's going to respond with this phrase by no means. Chapter 6, verse 2, chapter 6, verse 15, chapter 7, verse 7, chapter 7, verse 13. Our question is, should we continue in sin? Can we just keep sinning? We've been saved from sin's penalty. It's not according to our good works, it's just according to faith in Jesus. Does that mean we can just keep sinning? And Paul says that is a ridiculous question. Reminds me of high school. My junior and senior year of high school at Emerald High, I had English taught by a woman named Dini Davis, Ms. Davis. I look back on Ms. Davis, I think she's one of the best teachers I have ever had. She taught us grammar, she taught us vocabulary, she taught us how to think. She was a wonderful teacher. Now some of you remember teachers in middle school, high school, and they had a little poster above their desk and the poster said there are no stupid questions, right? And that poster is hanging on the wall so that as a student, you read it and you think, okay, if I don't understand something, I need to ask. The teacher is encouraging you to ask, they want you to learn. There are no stupid questions. I very distinctly remember hanging above Ms. Davis's desk, a poster that said there are stupid questions. And I'm telling you, there were multiple times in the 11th and 12th grade where somebody would raise their hand and ask a question and she would simply refer you to the poster above her desk in saying that is an absolutely ridiculous question. Now she wasn't being cruel, she wasn't trying to embarrass anybody, maybe it was something she had just talked about, she knew the student wasn't listening, maybe she knew the student wasn't being earnest or genuine in their question and they're just trying to be cute and be silly, but she understood there actually are stupid questions. And what Paul says here, should we continue in sin so that grace may abound? And he says by no means the strength of that phrase, it's as if Paul is saying that is a stupid question. That is a ridiculous thing to say. Why would Paul raise this question? Well he raises a lot of questions in the book of Romans. He'll set off on a line of argument, he'll make a point or two or three and then he'll pause. He does this throughout the book, chapter six and seven, we'll see it repeatedly. He pauses and he poses a question. They're not hypotheticals. They're questions that Paul has heard from students in his class. Remember for the previous two years before he wrote Romans he was teaching daily in the Hall of Tyrannus arguing and debating and interacting with his students and he would teach and they would give feedback or they would give critique or they would raise objections or they would have questions. And Paul has heard people say this, probably as Jewish listeners and Ephesus are listening to him teach about justification by faith alone and somebody in the back of the room raises their hand and says, Paul, do you mean to tell me that I can be right with God and it has nothing to do with my good works, only my faith in Jesus. Paul says that's exactly right, you've got it. And that student says, I have one more question. If I'm not saved by my works, can I just continue in my sinful works? Can I just keep sinning? I mean my works aren't the thing that saves me. Can I just keep doing it? Probably Paul had some students who raised this question, not because they really wanted to continue sinning, probably they're trying to expose Paul as some kind of phony, false, confused teacher. Paul had enemies everywhere he went who said to him, Paul, if you teach what you're teaching, people are just going to keep sinning. I mean they're just going to keep sleeping around, they're going to keep drinking, they're going to keep doing all these things, they're going to keep being dishonest at work. I mean, on and on and on, they're just going to keep living the exact same way that they're living if you keep teaching this way. Paul, you've got to tell people they've got to do some good stuff. Paul had heard it. You know who else heard it? A German monk named Martin Luther in about 15, 17, 18, 19. When he started reading the book of Romans and he started reading Galatians and he came to the realization that his good works contributed nothing to his justification, that justification was by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus alone and he started teaching people, common people in Germany, look, your good works cannot save you, you can only be saved through faith in Jesus and you know what the initial reaction to Martin Luther was from the Roman Catholic Church, they said, Luther, if you teach this, people are just going to keep sinning. They're going to put their faith in Jesus, they're going to be justified and then they're just going to keep doing all sorts of terrible things. Luther, you can't teach this. The implications of what you're teaching are going to be disastrous. People are going to continue in sin and they're just going to say grace is going to cover all of it. The people who objected to Paul in the first century, the people who objected to Luther in the 1500s and the people who objected to this doctrine, this teaching of justification by faith today, they hold to an unbiblical, reduced, diminished, truncated view of salvation. On Wednesday nights, we've been talking about salvation and all of its parts. We've been breaking it down into different aspects of how God's grace comes into our life. One of the things we've talked about is the miracle of regeneration. It's a miracle. The Holy Spirit takes what is dead and he makes it alive, he takes something that is hostile to God and he gives us new hearts in the miracle of regeneration. In a couple of weeks, we're going to be talking about sanctification. It's also a miracle ongoing in the life of a believer where the Holy Spirit comes to live in us, to make us his temple and he begins to purify us and change us and convict us of sin. Look when you have a fully biblical view of salvation, you listen to this question that people raised against Paul and you say, what kind of regenerated person, person who has a new heart, what kind of regenerated person would want to continue in sin? God's given us a new heart in this miracle of regeneration. And what person who is actually indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God and who is being sanctified would want to just continue comfortably in sin as if there was nothing wrong with what they were doing. Your answer would be, this is a ridiculous suggestion. This is a ridiculous objection. Do people make this objection today? Do people teach this idea that we're justified by faith in Jesus so we can just continue in sin? They do. I've met preachers everywhere I've lived including this town who are bold enough to say it to my face. I believe if a person prays a prayer and they put their faith in Jesus, their life does not have to change one bit. They can just continue in sin. Many times this false teaching is based on what we might call decisionism. Now I want to be careful here. You do need to make a decision about Jesus. The Bible calls you to make a response to Jesus and that response is repenting from your sin and believing in Jesus. You're called to make a response to the gospel message, a hundred percent. And if you've never done it, you should do it today. You must respond to the gospel. But this idea of decisionism is the idea that strips away regeneration, it strips away sanctification, it strips away adoption into God's family, and it boils salvation down to a decision that you make or don't make. It's just all up to you. Yes, no. Are you in or are you out? It's up to you. If you're in great, you're in, that's all we needed for you to say you're in. Just make the right decision and nothing has to change. This idea is taught by many today who would be advocates for the LGBTQ, panopoli, worldview, lifestyle, all of it. There's a whole lot that we could unpack with this worldview. But there are some people who say, "You know what? God's grace covers all of our sin." Who says one sin is any worse than another? Grace will abound. God will be gracious. You don't need to worry about it too much. There are people today, maybe some of us. We think about people in our lives who are completely unrepentant today. They are living a life marked by sin. To quote what Paul says in chapter 6, "They are living in sin." Verse 2. What could we who died to sin still live in it? Well, maybe you talk about somebody who is living actively, unrepentantly in sin. And maybe you speak about that person and you say, "Look, I don't like what they're doing." But at least back in sixth grade at a camp, they raised a hand. They kind of did a religious thing, a spiritual thing. I know that their life is completely marked by unrepentant sin, a love for sin. But at least they did this thing back there. And we speak about those people as if they're saved, justified people. When Paul clearly says this is a ridiculous suggestion, that somebody who had died to sin would just continue to live in sin. Many times in the Bible, you'll hear people talk about God wants a relationship with you. Can I be honest with you? God does want a relationship with you. God has gone to the greatest lengths from the book of Genesis all the way to the book of Revelation to enter into a living, eternal, loving relationship with His people. He desires that. But many times where we live, the way this gets discussed is forget all the religion, forget all the rules, forget all the stuff, the only thing that matters is a relationship. Nothing else has any importance, just a relationship. And what these people are saying is if you in your heart feel like you have some kind of connection relationship with God, that's the only thing that matters to the exclusion of everything else that we might talk about in salvation, regeneration, sanctification, appalling, justification, adoption, reconciliation, it's a reduced view of salvation and it goes completely against what Paul's suggesting in Romans 6. So if Paul's right, justification is by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone is the believer free to continue in sin. So that grace may abound, Paul's answer is a resounding no. And he backs it up with two points. Number one, the believer has died to sin. We have died to sin. Look at verse two, by no means, how can we who died to sin still live in it? That word died is probably the key word in this paragraph. It's a Greek tense that describes an action completed in the past that is a finished work. It is not an ongoing work. It is something that has happened and it's done and it's forever done. It can't be undone and it has ongoing impact in the present. The believer died to sin. When God caused you to be born again, you died to sin. Now we'll clarify this and expand on this over the next few weeks. Let me make two caveats. Number one, dying to sin does not mean we no longer commit sin. Paul's not saying you're dead to sin, you're never going to sin again, absolutely not what he's saying. He's also not saying that we no longer want to sin. And as we work through Romans 6 and 7, we're going to read Paul speak very honestly about the struggle in his life with sin, that he is still fighting sin. He does still have the desire to sin and there's a conflicting desire in his life. There's a desire of the flesh to sin and a desire of the spirit to be obedient and these things are at war within his heart. So when he says we've died to sin, he's not saying we're never sinned again, he's not saying all your sinful desires and temptations go away. This is what he's saying, dying to sin means we are free from sin's power. We're no longer under its power or its dominion or its reign like we were when we were lost. So we'll just cheat and look ahead and we'll come to these verses next week. Look at Romans 6, 12, he says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. If you're a believer, you are not under sin's reign. So don't submit yourself to its reign. You've died to it. You're not under its reign or its power. Look at verse 14, sin will have no dominion over you. Will you still sin? Yes. Will you still have to battle the desire for sin? Yes. But as a believer, you are no longer under sin's reign or its dominion or its power. And we'll make more sense of that next week. Here's Paul's second point and it goes with the first. The believer has been saved to walk in newness of life, to walk in newness of life. One of the most fascinating word studies you can do in scripture is the word walk. Sometimes it just means to walk. You put one foot in front of the other and you move from one place to the next. Many times in the Old Testament and the New Testament, it means more than that. Many times the Bible speaks about our walk as the manner of our life, the direction of our life, the orientation of our life, the progress that we're making in life. And what Paul says here is that God has saved people so that they would walk in newness of life. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so that we too might walk in newness of life, that our life might be different. I read Luther's commentary this week, Romans 6. Here was his section heading for Romans 6. The content of the sixth chapter, the apostle shows us that we must not continue in sin but live in holiness, that your walk would be marked by holiness. Look, this is how God always works in people's lives. I want you to think about Abraham. Abraham met the Lord in Genesis 12. In Genesis 15, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and in Genesis 15, we read that Abraham believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. That's justification by faith. That is receiving the righteousness of God, not by works, but by faith. Genesis 17 comes after Genesis 15. And only after he had received this righteousness by faith, God said to Abraham, I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless. I want your life to be lived in my presence and I want you to be blameless. I want you to be different. I want you to be completely set apart. You've entered into a relationship with me. You've received this righteousness by faith and now I want your walk to be different. When you move from the first book of the Bible to the second book of the Bible, it's the same pattern. First, Exodus 1 to 15, God saves a people by his power for his glory from slavery in Egypt. They contribute nothing. Moses contributes nothing. God just goes and he saves them. He doesn't even ask them if they want to be saved. He has just heard their cries under the oppression of Pharaoh and he goes to save them. He does all the work. And then after they sing about all the things that God has done in Exodus 15, we read this in Exodus 16. The Lord said to Moses, "Behold, I'm about to reign bread from heaven for you. The people shall go out and gather a day's portion every day, one day, one day. I want to test them whether or not they will walk in my law or not." God didn't say to Abraham. "Abram, if you will walk before me and blameless, you and me will be buds." He went to Abraham and he said, "You and me are buds." And Abraham believed the Lord and he credited it to him as righteousness. And then God called him to walk and be blameless. God didn't send Moses into Egypt to say to the people, "Look, I've got ten rules. If you can keep them, God will come and get you out of here." God just went and got them. And when he had them, once he had saved them, he said to them, "Now I want to see how you're going to walk because I want it to be different." Believer, this is the same way that God is at work in your life. In Ephesians chapter 2, the apostle Paul says that before God's grace came into our lives, we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked. You understand, he's not talking about your gate or your strut. He's talking about your life. It was marked by trespass and sin. Very same paragraph, verse 4 and 5, "God was rich in mercy and because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ, alive with Christ, dead to sin, by grace you have been saved." It's all from God's grace, it's not your works, Paul clarifies, but then look how he ends this paragraph in verse 10. We are God's workmanship, we're created in Christ Jesus for good works, not by good works, not because of our good works, but for good works, and God prepared them beforehand that we would walk in them, that our life would be marked by these good works. That's God's design in the life of a believer, is that you walk in newness of life. What does that look like? How do you do it? I just looked up the references in Romans that have the word walk in them. Here they are. Number one, we're called to walk in faith. That's chapter 4. Number two, we're called to walk in obedience. That's our passage this morning, chapter 6, verse 4. Thirdly, we're called to walk in the Spirit. We'll see that in Romans 8. Our life should be marked by a relationship, an ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit. Number four, we're called to walk properly. That's Paul's word in Romans 13, walk properly, and then he gives a whole list of things you should not do, to do those things would be to walk improperly. Walk properly. Fifthly, we're called to walk in love, Romans 14. We could say more about our walk, but we'll finish our text. I want you to note the middle of the passage. We've talked about the beginning and the end, let's note the middle. Coming to Paul, baptism is a picture of our union with Christ, our death to sin, and our being raised to walk in newness of life. Baptism is a picture of these things. Romans 6, verse 3, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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. I want to be clear with you here, there are a lot of churches, there are a lot of denominations that teach something called baptismal regeneration. Some of you may have grown up in a church like this. It's the idea that the act of baptism itself is the thing that saves you. Because that baptism in various churches takes a form of sprinkling that to do this thing to a young child or a baby is the thing that saves you, sometimes this is done by immersion in water. It looks like what we do on a Sunday morning when we baptize somebody, but the idea behind it is that the actual act of baptism is the thing that saves you. Lot of churches, a lot of denominations teach this idea, baptismal regeneration. You know better, you know better if you've read Romans 3, 4, and 5, where Paul has gone to the greatest links over and over and over again, not to say you're justified with God through baptism. That's not what he says, it's not the theme verse of Romans, chapter 1, verse 16 and 17. He has gone to great links to talk about the centrality of faith. You are justified by faith, not by works of the law, not by your good deeds, not by any religious, ceremonial, spiritual thing that you can do, but you are justified with God only by faith. Baptism is a beautiful picture, Paul says here of several things. Number one, our union with Christ, he says we were baptized into Christ Jesus. We were united to him and just as he was baptized, so we are baptized. It's a picture of our death to sin. You're buried with Christ in baptism. You are plunged underneath the water to a place where you cannot live, a place where you die under the waters of judgment, buried with Christ, dying to sin, and just as Christ was raised to new life so the believer is pulled out of the waters to walk in newness of life. It's no coincidence that many churches have used this text as a baptismal formula throughout the years that were buried with Christ in baptism and were raised to walk in newness of life. Baptism is a picture of these things and a person is baptized once at the beginning of their life as a Christian. As Christians, we celebrate the Lord's Supper over and over and over again and so while this is not central to Romans, I'm going to share it with you this morning. The Lord's Supper is a reminder that just as we begin the Christian life by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, we also continue the Christian life by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The Lord's Supper is not a magical thing that saves us any more than baptism is, but it is a picture of the gospel and it's a reminder that left to ourselves we're dead in our sins and that Jesus Christ bore our sins in His body on the tree. It's a reminder that we were enslaved to sin and that Jesus redeemed us, not with precious things such as silver or gold but with His blood, He purchased us. We take the bread, we drink of the cup and we're mindful of the body of Christ broken and the blood of Christ shed to save us. We're reminded when we take the Lord's Supper of the catechism truth that we teach our children. Our only hope in life and death is that we are not our own, but we belong body and soul both in life and death to God and to our Savior, Jesus Christ. We take the Lord's Supper essentially what we're saying is that Jesus paid it all, that our hope is in the Lord Jesus. We're going to sing about that truth in a minute, but first we're going to celebrate the Lord's Supper together. If you're a follower of the Lord Jesus, if you have put your faith in the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and if you've been obedient to His command to be baptized, then we invite you to celebrate the Lord's Supper with us this morning. I'll ask you to take the elements that you've picked up and I'm going to read for us from 1 Corinthians 11. You can open the side that has the bread and I'm going to read 1 Corinthians 11 verse 23 and verse 24. Paul says, "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when He was betrayed took bread and when He had given thanks He broke it and said, 'This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.'" You can open the side that has the cup and I'll read the next two verses 25 and 26. Paul says, "In the same way also He took the cup, after Supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, or as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.'" Now this morning we're grateful, we're grateful for the fact that your spirit miraculously inspired the words of Holy Scripture and we're thankful that in your providence you have worked to preserve your word for us down through the ages. Father, we're thankful for the book of Romans, we're thankful for the gospel truths that we see on display in this book. Lord, we are often prone to be confused. We're prone to insert ourselves where we don't need to be inserted in matters of salvation. Father, the truth is the plain truth that we are sinners all and that Jesus paid our debt, that He died for us, for sinners, for the ungodly. He redeemed us, He satisfied your wrath. Father, the only way that we can receive righteousness that we need, the righteousness of God that leads to salvation is by believing the truth about your Son, Jesus Christ. Father, we pray this morning that you would give us new hearts, that you would give us hearts to believe the truth of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And Father, we pray that as believers that we would understand that we are not called to live in sin, to continue in sin. But your intention, your aim in our life is that we would walk in newness of life. Father, we want to take a moment to celebrate what Jesus has done for us, that Jesus has paid at all, that sin had left a crimson stain on our lives and that Jesus has washed it wide as snow. Lord, be honored as we lift our voices and sing. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.