Romans 6:1-14

Grace means that we can’t earn or merit acceptance with God no matter how hard we might try. Grace means that God offers spiritual restoration on the basis of a free, undeserved gift, that there’s nothing we can do to earn it, buy it, perform for it, or merit it. Grace means no amount of trying will make God love us more and no amount of sinning will make God love us less (Yancey).

Every other religion of the world rejects the idea of grace, and insists that we must contribute something to our salvation. Only the Christian faith dares to suggest that God offers a relationship to people on the basis of pure grace.

Because of this scandalous idea of grace, many people through the years have felt that the Christian faith actually encourages people to live sinful, immoral lives.

Today we’re going to talk about how grace changes everything.

A Fact we need to know for grace to make a difference in our lives in (Romans 6:1-7).

Every person born since Adam has been born spiritually dead, deeply in need of restoration with God.

Where sin abounded in Adam, God’s grace abounded even more when Jesus Christ came as the second Adam to overturn the effects of Adam’s failure.

Paul anticipates a misunderstanding of grace, namely the misunderstanding that we believers should continue in sin in order to magnify God’s grace more.

Paul claims that the Christian has died to sin. Baptism symbolizes "our old self" being "crucified with Jesus."

Think of the old self as who we were in Adam.

The new self is who we are in Christ after we place our faith in him.

The fact we need to know: When We Encounter God’s Grace, We Die to Our Previous Way of Life.

A Realization (Romans 6:8-11). If we’ve died with Christ then we also have confidence that after we die physically, our bodies will be raised from the grave and we will live forever with Jesus.

Paul is commanding us to change the way we think about ourselves, especially how we think about ourselves in relation to sin and God.

A realization. When We Encounter God’s Grace, We Are Introduced to a New Way of Living.

In this new way of life we’re introduced to a resurrection kind of life where we live by a different set of values, we direct our lives by a different set of assumptions.

A Decision (Romans 6:12-14).

Even though our conversion has taken us out of the old reality of Adam, we struggle with habits and patterns that are deeply ingrained in our lives that feel like reflexes.

The Bible commands us to not allow sin to rule and reign in our lives as we go through the activities of life.

Since we’ve died to sin and are joined to Jesus in his resurrection, now we are to offer ourselves to God.

We’re able to be on God’s side now, because we’re no longer under the power of sin--it’s no longer our master--because we’ve died to its dominion.

Here we find the decision we need to make. When We Encounter God’s Grace, We Offer Ourselves to a New Master.

Grace does not give us an excuse to sin or a license to live any old way we want to. God’s grace changes us, because when we encounter it, we die to our old way of life in Adam, we are born into a new way of living in Jesus, and we offer ourselves to a new master. God’s grace changes everything, absolutely everything.