[Note: This is Part A of the sermon on dying to sin, delivered 29 August 1982, Montreal. The series is titled "Regeneration and Renewal." Part B continues directly.]
At the camp we spoke and talked a great deal about this matter of dying — dying to the old man, the old way of life. And many people asked for a clearer understanding of what this dying means. So I purpose today, by the Lord's grace, to try to define and explain it a little more clearly. But I must say at once that when I undertake this task, I realize it is no easy thing. Many people also ask about total commitment, and it seems so simple to me and yet so complex for many. What is total commitment? If I give myself totally to something, my possessions are hers, my person is hers, my life is lived in total consideration of hers. That seems total. And yet people still find difficulty in understanding it.
In the same way, what is this dying? Dying to sin means I finish with my old way of life. I cut it away completely. Once and for all it is over. It is finished. It seems to me not so difficult to understand, nor even that difficult to apply. But people find it very difficult. And I take very much to heart what we have seen in Helen's case — I am still wondering what else to do to make this any clearer. It may be that something you do not experience, you do not understand.
Now, I have tried to illustrate this matter by sleep. Because I was trying to say, let us talk about something we are more familiar with than death. Most of us have not died yet, at least in the physical sense, so perhaps we have nothing to compare death with. But in the Bible, death is often compared to sleep — the sleep of death is a term in scripture. Now, if someone asks you to define sleep, you might say: what is the problem? If you have no trouble sleeping, you say, sleep is sleep — I lie down, I close my eyes, I take a deep breath, and I am asleep. But there are some who cannot sleep. And when you have finished defining sleep to them, they still cannot sleep. When you have told them all the techniques, they still cannot sleep. So, what is the use of the definition?
That is exactly where you can begin to see my problem with explaining dying. By the grace of God, when he called me to himself and said take up your cross, finish with the old life, I said: okay, it is over. I hand it over to you. Then you ask me, what is dying? I scratch my head and think: dying is dying. What are you asking? Just like if I asked Peter the other day what sleeping is, and he looked at me and said: sleeping is sleeping. I lie down and was away in two seconds. For me it is not two seconds. So what is the difference between you and me?
We can define sleep very scientifically — electrical currents moving from one part of the brain to another — and after all that study, you still cannot sleep. Some suggest hot milk, which contains tryptophan, an amino acid. You drink it, get indigestion, and then you cannot sleep because of the indigestion. Or someone says: just lie down, close your eyes, relax, and you are asleep. I lie down, close my eyes, and get wider and wider awake. I think I can understand the difficulty that people have, but the problem lies not in the understanding. So I am trying to identify with the people for whom what is easy for me spiritually is difficult for them, and to see my problem from the other direction. Helen has no trouble sleeping — she is a wonderful sleeper. She just goes out and sleeps. And there I am thinking: this is unfair. I am more tired than her and she can sleep and I cannot. And she tries to explain to me how she sleeps and I cannot do it.
Now you can see the parallel problem with this matter of dying. In the spiritual case it was the other way around — it was very easy for me to explain to her what dying is. She could not do it until, by the grace of God, the Lord enabled her to do it lately. But in the matter of sleep, I had to learn. And finally I learned this lesson: I am just going to pray and pray, and eventually I fall off to sleep. Even if it takes two hours or three hours, never mind. I am not going to waste my time otherwise. I used to get up and study more, and the result was that the more I studied, the more awake I got — awake all night. But in prayer, the Lord seems to speak in such a way that when the time comes, he just allows me to go off to sleep. Such is his kindness and mercy.
There is another parallel worth seeing. Those who have died to the old body, died to sin, have a spiritual strength and vigour which makes you envious — just as those who sleep well have a physical strength and vigour. You see someone running full speed down the path to the lake, full of energy, and for you just watching it is exhausting. So also those who have died spiritually have these wonderful spiritual experiences: the Lord did this for me, the Lord did that for me. And you wonder, what about me? Has God forgotten me? No — it is simply that his life has not yet reached the deepest part of your person. There is a parallel between sleeping and dying, and I hope that if you can grasp the one, you may grasp the other.
Now clearly, there must be a commitment to sleep. I often notice that part of my problem with sleep is that I am not really committed to sleeping. I lie down, but my mind is committed to thinking about something else. I am not committed to sleeping, so the more I think, the wider awake I get. I eventually sit up and start writing notes. Helen quite despairs of me because I keep turning on the light to write more notes — finally she gives up and looks for somewhere else to sleep. So there must be a commitment. And I confess, examining myself: it is quite true. I do not have a true commitment to sleep. I am still committed to thinking about this question and that question, much more than to sleep. The result is that sleep gets so low a priority that I cannot sleep.
And I noticed something interesting at this camp. My commitment to sleep has increased here, because I am determined to get to the meeting. I am not as determined to get to breakfast — I often do not eat breakfast anyway, so the camp managers may not complain about the food budget. But I am determined to make the meeting, so I know I have to sleep. And it is amazing that once I am really committed to sleeping, I do sleep quite well. In the same way, those of you who say you cannot die, or have difficulty dying to the old life — I think the basic problem is that you are not truly committed to dying. You think it is important, and it is vital; but when you come to count the cost, you realise you are not that willing. That is why some of you have said very honestly: the cost is too high. You cannot face it. And therefore you are not willing to commit yourself to the Lord, of which an important first step is committing yourself to this dying — because you cannot enter into the new life unless the old life is past.
So your difficulty lies not so much in understanding what dying is, but in being truly willing to die. Yet it is not only a matter of willingness — this next step is also very important: determination. Many times I go to bed feeling tired; I am quite willing to sleep. But not really totally committed to sleeping. I still think there is this and that to do first. And I end up not sleeping. I find this very true in my experience, and I find that many of you are saying: yes, I am willing. I see that I lack the energy and the power. But there are still things I would like to attend to before dying. And so this partial willingness is exactly what I mentioned at the baptism: the part is the enemy of the whole. You can say you are quite willing to sleep but not altogether willing — and that is precisely where it fails.
Now there is another remarkable parallel: is sleep something that you do, or something that happens to you? Those of you who sleep easily know that you do not do very much — apart from just committing yourself to sleep, relaxing, giving yourself over, and then sleep comes over you and takes over. You only do the preliminary step, as it were, and then something happens to you, which we call sleep. And this applies also in the spiritual life. It is not an act of suicide, even spiritual suicide. You simply commit yourself, give yourself over fully, and then something happens to you which is called death. It takes over. Sleep — is it active or passive? Very few people would define sleep as an activity. Surely it is something that happens to you. Yet there is still something that we on our part must do.
There are also problems to the commitment of sleep, just as there are problems to dying. You may be very committed to sleeping, but when it is cold, it is very hard. And the cold keeps you awake. Or if it is so hot, the heat keeps you awake. Or another thing: noise. Oh yes. A neighbour who likes a certain kind of boom-boom music — whether you can call it music or not I cannot say, but the booming goes on and on. And once it has woken you up, there is simply no chance of sleeping with this unless you are some fantastic sleeper.
And I see in this a terrible truth. Many people want to commit themselves to this dying. But the cold keeps them awake — the cold of rejection. You are afraid your friends will reject you, your family will reject you, your colleagues will reject you. This makes you feel cold. Or the heat: in the Bible, heat is compared to persecution. The sun rises up, the heat beats down — and you want to commit yourself to the Lord but the thought of persecution and privation scares you. Or the noise, the distractions of the world. You say: Lord, I really need this sleep, I need this death — but the noise, oh, the clamour of the world. Those from Hong Kong are very familiar with noise. Dogs barking, buildings hammering, people yelling at full volume because it improves communication when you yell. The noise, the noise. Somebody has tested that Hong Kong is the noisiest city in the world by sheer decibel count — they put a noise meter there and it registers the highest level. And so the stereo earphones and headsets are very popular these days, because you finally decide: if noise is forced upon you, you might as well choose the noise you want to hear.
And flashing lights are also difficult. I stayed once in a hotel where the neon sign was just outside the window. Green, red, blue, yellow, green — and the curtains were so thin you wondered why they bothered to give you curtains at all. The wall is flashing, the ceiling is flashing, everything is flashing. There is simply no escaping it. So the world clamours for our attention through our eyes and ears, demanding attention. Hong Kong must be a very hard place to die spiritually as well as a hard place to sleep — the material world shouts at you from every corner, everything flashing: buy this, do this, look at this. How can you die? How can you sleep?
So, having given you this parable, I hope it helps you to see that basically, like sleep, this dying is a matter of commitment — a commitment not always easily made because of all the distractions, the noise, the heat and cold that may interfere with us. But it is a commitment that we must nonetheless make. If I was in Hong Kong, determined that I was going to get some sleep one way or another, otherwise I am going to survive this circumstance in the first few days. Bye-bye.
[Continues in Part B]
# We Who Died to Sin (Part B) — Romans 6:6 Katargeo; Body of Sin Neutralized; Cholera Analogy; Freed from Sin; Philippians 2 Self-Emptying
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on dying to sin, delivered 29 August 1982, Montreal, continuing directly from Part A.]
It was really hard to sleep with the heat. So, I hope this parable helps you to understand something of the nature of death compared to sleep. But let us come to the word of God, since having given the parable, let us now mention a number of things. I would like to mention a number of practical steps. Let us turn to Romans chapter 6, verse 6.
Look at these words: "We know that our old man was crucified with him, so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin." Notice this — the whole chapter begins with baptism, and the point of talking about baptism is to speak about one very practical aspect that results from it, namely the freedom from the dominion of sin. Paul is a very practical person, and what I am talking to you today is practice. I do not want to go off into high flights of theory that will do you no good. Paul, when he wrote Romans, was not giving a theoretical discourse — he is speaking about the very practical fact that we are wrestling with: freedom from the domination by sin. To be dominated by sin is to live in wretchedness and defeat. And Paul says: we know that our old self was crucified with him. We know this because we took the step in baptism. And what happened as a result? The sinful body — literally in Greek, the body of sin, the body possessed by sin, the body dominated by sin — what happens to it? It is destroyed.
Now wait a moment, you say. Destroyed? I am still very much here. I even managed to swim in the lake. Where was it destroyed? You must understand this word carefully, and this is exactly why in our training it is so important to work from the original. You simply cannot work with a word like "destroyed" without confusion. Even "abolished" does not help you much — your body still obviously exists. So how do we translate this word? The word here is katargeo. Kat-argeo. It comes from two parts: kata, and argos. And argos comes from another word — those who have done any Greek will know ergon, meaning work. Put an alpha-privative in front of ergon and you get argon, argos: not working, not doing, idle, something that does not function. We are very familiar with this in the age of machines. A machine may look beautiful, but when it comes to functioning, it breaks down. Some years ago I bought a cheap quartz watch. For two weeks it worked well, and then it went argon — quit working — and has not worked since.
So katargeo means: to leave unemployed, to leave idle, to make useless and void. Or, to use a military term, to neutralize. Neutralize means: you have an enemy position; you put it out of action. It may still exist, but it is no longer a threat to your onward movement. It may still be present, but it is no longer a problem. Now you can see how difficult this word is to translate, and why the translators render it differently in different contexts. We must not be too hard on them — they have a real difficulty.
So when it says the body of sin is destroyed, what it means is that the body of sin is neutralized. It is now no longer a threat or a danger to your spiritual life. God, through this work that he has done, whereby you have committed your old man to death — now this old man, this body once dominated by sin, is still there. But it is no longer a threat to your spiritual life. That is the good news. That is the beauty of Romans 6.
This word katargeo appears also in Hebrews 2:14 — the Lord Jesus was manifested to destroy the devil. Now in what sense has the devil been destroyed? Does it mean the devil ceases to exist? We know from our own experience that not only does the devil exist, but he is highly active. So what does it mean that he has been destroyed? The same Greek word appears in 2 Timothy 1:10, where it says the Lord Jesus has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light. What do you mean, abolished death? My friend died the other day. How can death be abolished? No — for the Christian, death has been neutralized. It has no longer power over you in the sense that death will not be the final experience of your life.
So when it says the devil is destroyed, it means not that the devil ceases to exist or that he is no longer active, but that he is no longer a threat and a danger to you and to me — if you abide in Christ. Neither is death a threat to us anymore, if we abide in Christ. Death is still a reality and still active; but it is no longer a threat to those who abide in Christ. Take an example from disease. Cholera and the bubonic plague once wiped out large sections of mankind. Now they have been neutralized — through improved hygiene and advances in knowledge. This does not mean cholera no longer exists, nor that the bacteria are no longer active. It simply means that it is no longer a threat to us, provided we observe the necessary principles. The same parallel applies here. The body of sin is still there, but like cholera, it is no longer a threat to me — provided I abide in Christ. And note this: even in a laboratory, cholera bacteria can kill you today. They are still very much active, and those who study microbiology know how dangerous these things are. Satan can destroy every bit as effectively if you mess around with him. The body of sin has been neutralized, we are set free from the dominion of sin — but if you play with sin, sin will destroy you as surely as before. It is still present and still active, but it has no more power over us.
This is the point that Romans 6:6 is telling us: when we committed ourselves to the Lord Jesus — because commitment is itself the expression of an act of faith — when we took the step of faith and actively committed ourselves, consigning ourselves to death, the body of sin is destroyed through the power of God in Christ. This is something you must experience as effectively as sleep comes over you. In the spiritual life, you must experience this dying to sin in such a manner that you realise sin has no more power over you.
This is what the whole of Romans chapter 7 is saying. "The good that I once wanted to do, I could not do. The evil that I would not, I found myself doing that very thing." You did not want to think those thoughts, but they came overwhelming your mind with an invincible power. And now Paul says: you are no longer at the mercy of sin. You can command the devil — resist the devil and he will flee from you. He, though far more powerful than you and me, must flee when we resist him. We now have the power to resist, and the power to resist sin so that we are no longer under its dominion. Is that your present experience? I said present experience — because that is what Romans 6 is about.
Let us look at the next verse: Romans 6:7. "Because he who has died is freed from sin." He is talking about something present — not that one day the body of sin will be no longer effective, but now, now. He who has died is freed from sin. And if I am freed from sin, I must know it. How can it be that I am freed from sin and do not know I am freed? You can see it; you can experience that freedom. Once you could not help but sin, as Paul explains in the next chapter. But in chapter 8 he says: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death." The new principle of life in Christ Jesus has overcome the principle of sin and death in me. The power of life in Christ Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, is even greater than the power of sin. So it has freed me from the power of sin.
Let us return to chapter 6, verse 12: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passion." Now you see the word is let — it depends on you. Before, you had no choice: sin could reign in your life and you fought against it utterly in vain. Sin was too powerful for you. But now you have the choice. You can let sin reign, or you can refuse to let it reign. And if you let sin reign in your mortal body, you are going to lose the life that God has given to you. Chapter 8, verse 6: "To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace." Once sin reigned over you and you had no choice. Now it is up to you not to let it reign.
Then, verse 14 of chapter 6: "For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace." Under the law we did not have the Holy Spirit — he was not the sign and seal of the old covenant. Under law, sin had dominion over us; we had a commandment we could not keep. The law brought sin to light but found us powerless to fight it. But sin will have no dominion over you. Chapter 6, verse 18: "Having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness." You have been set free from sin. Verse 22: "Now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life." The end of this life of being free from sin and living in sanctification is eternal life. This is not something you can take or leave — it is essential. Only when you are freed from sin are you on the narrow path that leads to life.
Now, there is so much here that I could share, but our time does not allow it. Let me summarize as we close. On our part, it is like consigning ourselves, committing ourselves to sleep, amidst all the noise and distractions that try to prevent it. We must consign ourselves, commit ourselves to death. That is your choice. A person being baptized actually walks to his own burial. Have you ever seen anyone walking willingly to his own burial? Normally they are carried. But we cannot carry anyone fighting and kicking into the water and say: now you are buried. This will not do. You have to make the choice deliberately, consciously walking down into the water to your own burial, having first made the conscious choice to die. If that is done — if you do that totally and without reserve — the other part is passive. Death comes over you like a wave. The billows come over you, as the Old Testament foretells, and bring the body of sin to death. That part you cannot do anything about — it is what happens to you, what comes as an experience. Death takes over from there.
One brief word before we close. Verse 6 says our old man was crucified with Christ so that the sinful body might be destroyed — this is the consequence of our old man, our whole person, being crucified and united with Christ in his death. In the Bible, man is spoken of basically in two parts: spirit and body. You are familiar with this — Matthew 26:41: "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." The spirit is being overpowered by the flesh. In order for the spirit to survive, the flesh that always drags it down has to be removed. And this is exactly what happens in Romans 8:10: "But if Christ is in you, although your bodies are dead because of sin, your spirits are alive because of righteousness." Our bodies are dead. And by now I think you understand what this means — the body has been consigned to death, the power of sin removed from it. But the spirit is alive because of righteousness.
This means that in the consigning of the body to death, the spirit has a primary part. It is not only the body that must be committed to death — spirit and body together are committed to the Lord. And what does this commitment of spirit look like? We learn from Philippians chapter 2. Turn there briefly, as we are about to close. Verse 5: "Have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus." We are to think in the same way the Lord Jesus thought. But how did he think? "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself." In emptying himself, what is the concrete expression? He took the form of a servant and humbled himself, obedient to death — death on a cross. The spiritual counterpart of the physical consignment of the body to death is, on our part, having this same mind of Christ: emptying ourselves, pouring ourselves out utterly to Christ and for Christ.
And what does this emptying mean? When the Lord Jesus emptied himself, he gave himself for the salvation of others — for us. When we empty ourselves, we give ourselves for the salvation of others. Paul in the same chapter, verse 17: "Even if I am to be poured out as a libation upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all." He pictures himself as a vessel, his life blood poured out as a liquid offering. His whole life has been one of emptying himself, to be a servant of the Lord's people — just as the Lord Jesus said, I came not to be served but to wash your feet. You do likewise. That is the expression of emptying oneself.
So here is where the cost comes. We may desire to be freed from sin — of course, why should we not? And we may even have the choice now to sin or not to sin. But the cost lies in our pouring ourselves out in spirit, to become a sacrifice to the Lord for the blessing of others. We become, as Jude says, people who snatch others from the fire. And so, in summary, our time is gone and we must close. I hope that through this message, those of you who asked me these questions at camp have received some measure of an answer. If not sufficiently clear, please continue to ask and I will seek to try. But understand this: what we must do on our part is pour ourselves out from henceforth, no longer living for ourselves but for him and for the body of Christ. When you have that commitment, there will be no great difficulty in giving your body over to death, being united with Christ so that the power of sin is broken in your life — and you enter into the fullness and the freedom that comes to those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us be quiet before God in prayer.