This week, Pastor John Arnold offers a message from Romans 6:1–11 titled “Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ.”
Many of us know what it feels like to be defined by our past mistakes, old habits, regrets, wounds, or failures. Even after experiencing God’s grace, we can continue living as though those things still have power over us. In this message, we explore Paul’s powerful reminder that through Jesus Christ we have been set free from the slavery of sin and given a completely new identity.
Using illustrations from history, everyday life, and Scripture, Pastor John helps us see that freedom in Christ is not something we earn—it is something we receive. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, believers are no longer defined by sin, shame, or brokenness. Instead, we are adopted into God’s family and called beloved children of God.
This sermon will encourage anyone who has ever struggled with guilt, shame, fear, anxiety, failure, or the feeling that their past still defines them. Romans 6 reminds us that because of Jesus, we are dead to sin and alive to God.
📖 Scripture: Romans 6:1–11
🎙️ Message: “Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ”
Whether you’re exploring faith, returning to church, or looking to deepen your walk with Christ, we’re glad you’re here.
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE GUIDE – One Minute the Holy Spirit is 50-days of short simple readings designed to help you understand the Holy Spirit better, and grow in your ability to hear and follow God’s guidance in your daily life. CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY.
📌 Subscribe for weekly sermons, devotionals, Bible studies, and discipleship resources from First Presbyterian Church of Rogers.
💬 Need prayer? We’d love to pray for you. Leave a comment or connect with us through our website.
🔗 Helpful Links:
👉 Plan your first visit – https://fpcrogers.com/plan-a-visit/
👉 Give Online – https://fpcrogers.com/giving
👉 Learn more about us – https://fpcrogers.com
If this message encouraged you, please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs to hear the good news that their past does not define them—God’s grace does.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Scripture Reading: Romans 6
We are in the book of Romans. Romans can be dense, but we’re going to break it down this morning and make it a little bit easier to understand. Listen with your eyes and your heart wide open to the Holy Spirit now as we read in Romans 6, beginning in the second half of the first verse:
Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we’ve been buried with him by baptism into death so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we may no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.
But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Blessed be the reading and the hearing of God’s word this morning.
The Reality of Slavery and Freedom
The Story of Juneteenth
I find it incidental and timely that we have a text talking about being enslaved to sin. A couple of days ago, we had a national holiday related to slavery, and now we have this text showing up today. Juneteenth became a federal holiday relatively recently, so it’s not necessarily widely recognized or celebrated by everyone yet; it’s sort of in its infancy as an official holiday.
It’s a fascinating story if you’re not familiar with it. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. He was sent with a message from General Order Number Three to announce that the remaining slaves there were free.
Here’s the interesting thing: he came to announce it that day, but the Emancipation Proclamation had actually happened two years earlier. For two years, there were folks waking up enslaved, working in fields and barns, being told what to do with every minute of their day. They had been awakening for two years in slavery unnecessarily, purely because they hadn’t heard the truth yet. They didn’t know or believe that they were free because the message hadn’t reached them.
Waking Up Bound
When Paul comes to the people, it is as if the Emancipation Proclamation has already happened. Jesus has died. Legally, sin has no grip on them; it no longer defines who they are or whose they are. Yet, they don’t necessarily know the truth of that yet. They haven’t received the message, so they keep waking up again and again bound by sin. Paul comes to let them know: you are free.
The Ghost of Old Habits
Breaking Ingrained Norms
The hard thing is that even though someone tells us we’re free, if we have lived enslaved to something for years, we may have absolutely no idea how to live outside of it.
We had a friend in seminary whose wife came by our house one day. We had a black lab named Sam who was about a year old—fully grown but completely a puppy. When the door opened, he was all excitement. When this woman knocked and I opened the door, Sam came over just wanting to be friendly. She physically jumped and jerked back in a moment of pure fear.
She quickly recalibrated, and though I tried to grab Sam, she said, “No, it’s okay, I love dogs.” She explained to me that she had grown up in the Middle East under an extremely strict, extreme version of faith. She had been taught for years that if a dog touched her, she became unclean. She would have to separate herself from the community and wash seven times. She had spent a lifetime with that as her norm. Even though she knew she was now free from that law, it is hard to let go of the ghost of the past. It was deeply ingrained in her.
This is deeply true in the Christian faith. It is easy for us to hear the Good News, but if we have lived with a broken truth or a sin for so long that it becomes normalized, it becomes ingrained in our identity. Then, it is extremely hard to let go and live in a free, Christ-like manner.
The Need for a Liberator
Beyond Our Own Power
At the time Romans was written, about a third of the population in Rome was enslaved. This was not a theoretical metaphor for them. They saw and understood the reality of slavery every day.
When you are a slave to something, it is beyond your power to free yourself. A slave cannot just wake up one morning, decide to work really hard at being free, and bootstrap themselves out of it. Nor do they have the means to buy their freedom. It takes someone outside of their situation—someone gracious and sovereign—to come along and free them.
That is the reality of us being enslaved to sin. No matter how hard I try to wake up and be really good, I’ve never made it through a day where I can honestly say, “I got it all right today.”
I feel like the guy who was praying one day: “Lord, I have not been angry today. I have not treated anyone poorly. I have not been jealous, and not a harsh word has crossed my lips… but in a minute, I’m going to get out of bed.” That’s closer to reality. We need a savior. We need a liberator to free us from what we are enslaved to.
From Freed Slaves to Adopted Children
The Metaphor of Adoption
It’s one thing to be released from something and be free, but you can be free and still be very lost. That is why we must couple the freedom from slavery with the richness of adoption that we have in Jesus Christ.
I ran across a story of a young woman named Katie Davis who moved to Uganda. Overwhelmed by the number of children orphaned by violence, she eventually adopted 13 girls as her daughters. She shared that she’d never forget one day when one of the little girls, who had been through harsh trauma, looked up and asked, “Am I still an orphan?”
Katie knelt down, took her face in her hands, and said, “No. You have a mother, you have a room in my house, you are no longer defined by the past, you are part of my family, and you have a home.” Everything shifted for that little girl in that moment.
Friends, we have been freed from sin, but we have also been adopted into the body of Christ. We are in a household with a heavenly Father. You may wake up some mornings and still feel as if sin has a hold on you. You may even behave in a way that reflects that old bond. But your heavenly Father does not define you by that.
Sometimes when we screw up, that’s when we feel and know the love of God the most. It’s when you are given grace when you know you should be in trouble. You understand just how deep someone’s love is when they forgive you, love you, and say, “It’s okay, don’t do it again, but you are part of my family.”
Reckoning Your True Identity
The Danger Zone
The danger zone is when we make our struggles our permanent identity. We tell ourselves a story for so long that we wake up and feed the narrative of: I am stressed, I am depressed, I am anxious, I am a failure, I am broken. We pick our favorite negative song to carry around like a heavy backpack. When we see those things, we need to say, “I may feel that, but what I actually am is a child of God.”
Balancing the Ledger
In the classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers focuses on verse 11: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
The word “consider” or “reckon” was originally a financial accounting term. It meant looking at a ledger to get ultimate clarity on what was true. Every day, we need to look at the ledger of God’s Word and reckon ourselves alive to God, alive to Christ, alive to love, and alive to compassion.
Through who Christ is and what Christ has done, who we are is a new creation. Whose we are is a child of God. Praise be to God that this remains true regardless of our circumstances, because it is based entirely on God claiming us in love. May we hear that truth and believe it to the freedom of our souls every single day.
All God’s children said, amen.