Romans 6:7

FREEDOM BY DEATH

‘He that is dead is freed from sin.’

Romans 6:7

Christ came to be a federal Head. As the natural members of our body gather up into the natural head, so spiritual believers gather up into Christ. The Head acts, the Head feels, the Head loves, the Head does, the Head suffers, the Head dies. What the Head does, in God’s calculation, it is as if the members had done it. What the Head suffers, it is, in God’s calculation, as if the members had suffered it.

I. Observe the consequence of this representative system.—As soon as ever you are really united to the Lord Jesus Christ—which union is effected first by goings forth or drawings of love on His part, then by reciprocal acts of faith and gratitude on yours—as soon as that union takes place, you have died—you have died in your covenant Head. There was a sentence of death against you which must be executed, but in Christ you have undergone it. All the punishment, all the penalty you had to pay—the exile you had to endure—the execution you had to suffer—are past. God’s extremest justice is satisfied, and more than satisfied. What is the result? You cannot be punished for your own sins—you can never be required to pay the forfeit which has been paid, or to undergo the exile which has been endured, or to die the death which has been died—it is done in Christ, and you are dead—and ‘he that is dead is freed from sin.’

II. This was the only conceivable way in which it was possible that any man should be ‘freed from sin.’—God’s government of this world is a moral government, according to all our ideas of justice and truth. It is essential to moral government that every sin should have its retribution. Therefore, God laid it down at the first, ‘The soul that sinneth, it shall die.’ And bad and disordered as this world is, what would it have been—what a pandemonium!—if there had been no fear of judgment to come in this world! Having once laid it down, it would not have been compatible with the faithfulness of God to depart from it by one iota. Every soul that sins must die.

III. Look at the condition of a man who is ‘freed from sin.’—Had sin never entered into our world—or, having entered, had it been simply forgiven by a word—we should have been, I suppose, just as Adam was. But what is all that compared to what you have? An eternity of Christ—sunned for ever in His smile, never separated from His side, a part of His mystical body, higher than the highest archangel, called to the noblest services, reflecting the very image of God. To what do we owe that? To the necessity that was laid on the heart of Jesus to come and die for us. And the title He has given us, and the merit with which He has invested us, the sanctity of which He has made us capable, and the unity to which He has called us—oh! it is a good thing for us that Adam ever fell and that death did ever reign, since by death we are free from death, and being made free from death, we are the freemen of heaven.