Let me begin by just expressing my delight in having the opportunity to be with you this morning. I come as a pastor among pastors, and it's always a joy to do so because I recognize the fact that I am looking into the faces of fellow soldiers of Christ. It's been my joy to have spent almost 30 years now in the ministry of God's Word. And every so often, I have opportunities to preach at pastors' conferences. And when I go there, the main delight in my heart is not so much that I will be ministering, It's not even so much that others will preach to me, but it's the fellowship, the fellowship, knowing that I'll spend some time with others who are coming from the trenches of ministry. It's sweet. I don't know of any other context that I can compare to that. I bring you greetings from fellow pastors in Zambia. And Phil Hunt was mentioned here a few moments ago, who I'm pretty sure most of you know. So it's been a joy to serve together with him at the Central Africa Baptist College. And our brother Hector, who's just been mentioned here, is one that I have come to know in the process. And so to know that he's here seeking to raise support to come back to Zambia, I definitely would want to urge you to consider him. We would love to have him back. It's been a delight to know him and his wife and little Asha that they have adopted. And so I will be standing, as it were, at the shores of Africa, peeping across the Atlantic. And I'm hoping he will soon come back. And if you can be part of that process, we at the Zambian Church will be most grateful. Please stand with me to Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6, as we consider the subject of sanctification, and especially in the pastor's life. I will read the first 14 verses, though I want to center my attention on verse 11. Romans 6, the first 14 verses. 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 were 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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, 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. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. And here is our text. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for righteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. Well brethren, I'm pretty sure as I was reading that passage of scripture your mind was already saying what a dense passage of scripture this is. As the Apostle Paul is coming and going, coming and going, coming and going with respect to Jesus Christ dying on the cross and what that should mean to the believer with respect to his or her sanctification. But this passage is a very practical one. Because in the midst of everything that the Apostle Paul has said in this epistle, he finally comes to give his first injunction to those to whom this letter would be written. And the first injunction that he gives is not something that must be done practically, or better still, physically, rather it is that which should be done in the mind. He says there in verse 11, so you also must consider yourselves. You should reckon yourselves. You should think like this about yourself. And how should you think about yourself? That you are dead to sin, that you are alive to God in Christ Jesus. And this is where sanctification begins. It doesn't begin with actual outward activity. Sanctification begins in the mind. And that's particularly important for those of us who are pastors. Because often, We are individuals that people look up to. They look up to us as symbols of victory, symbols of spiritual maturity, symbols of godliness. After all, that's what we continue to do as we stand before them regularly, preaching to them. We are saying to them, abandon sin, cling on to holiness, godliness, cling on to the Lord Jesus Christ. And consequently, they assume we have done that ourselves. And consequently, we are on the path to victory. What it means is that in our own individual struggle with remaining sin, we are very lonely. We have very few individuals that we can therefore go to and say, I am struggling in this area. I'm struggling, perhaps, in the area of my thought life. I'm struggling with respect to the area of my temper. I'm struggling with lust. I'm struggling with greed. I'm struggling with pride. We find it difficult to open up because, again, we would not want to be too vulnerable before the people round about us. And in that sense, therefore, as I already hinted at the beginning, it's good to come to a conference like this and see John over there and Michael over there who are already close friends that you can pull aside and share with and pray together so that you might receive encouragement. The evil one knows this. And consequently, often in the quietness, the silence, the loneliness of ministry, he tortures our minds. First of all, with the guilt of hypocrisy. How can I be preaching to others victory over sin when I am struggling in this area. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. Hypocrite. That's what you are. And then secondly, it is with an extreme sense of guilt The kind of guilt that ultimately makes you feel like just quitting altogether. That if I am to be not just a child of God, but an actual servant of the Lord, then issues to do with struggling with sin must be in the past and buried. It mustn't be in the present, at least not in the present experience. What should I say in the context of all that? It is this, that the Apostle Paul is a great encouragement if that's what you are going through. Chapter 7, which some people tend to think refers to the Apostle Paul at the point of his conversion or even before, is in fact in the present tense. And this is what the Apostle Paul says there. Romans 7, and I commence reading from the 14th verse. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh. Not I was, but I am. Sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. If I do what I do not want, I agree with the law that it is good. So now, not yesterday, not when I was a young believer, but now, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin that dwells within me. Paul is recognizing that there is an actual battle taking place in his soul, and it is taking place now. Listen to verse 21, chapter 7. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. That's Paul in the present as he writes this, the greatest piece of literature, I would argue, even in the entire New Testament. He's saying, when my soul thirsts after serving the living God, I want to sow to the highest levels of Christian service. I feel chains dangling by my ankles. Evil is right there with me. Look at the way he puts it in verse 22. For I delight in the law of God in the inner being. That's me. But I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. And here is his cry. I hope you identify with it this morning. Wretched man that I am. In other words, all that I was more godly than him. All that I would say this is history, it's in the past, done with long ago, but alas, it is with me now. Now later on in chapter 8, the Apostle Paul answers this pretty well by bringing in the work of the Holy Spirit. But I want to suggest to you that that's not where we should start. We should not start with what the Spirit of God does in our hearts in making us more and more like Christ. As important as that might be, we must begin in the foundation. Romans 6. Let's go back there. As a pastor ministering to your own people, you need to have a certain mindset about yourself. You need to appropriate to yourself certain biblical truths. And that's what that little phrase means in verse 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. In other words, the first level of victory over sin is not so much spirit of the living God, fill me afresh, manifest your sanctifying power. Rather, it is asking yourself the question, What has happened to me? What is it? Where am I positionally in Christ? Where am I? The phrase that the Apostle Paul uses, which is translated in the English Standard Version as, consider, consider yourselves, consider, or I think it's the new version that uses the phrase reckon yourselves. It is the phrase logizomai. It's the word logic. Logic. Logic. In other words, it is where you are taking time to think to reason, to add one plus one and say it is equal to two. In other words, you are deliberately taking stock of facts. You are summing them up and you are arriving at an all-important conclusion. Let me quickly show that to you in one or two texts, and then we must hurry on. Let's go to chapter 2 and verse 3, where this is first used. Chapter 2 and verse 3. I begin from verse 1. Therefore, you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another, you condemn yourself because you, the judge, practice the very same thing. We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. And here's the question. Here's the logic. Do you suppose, O man, You who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourselves, that you will escape the judgment of God. What's the logic there? The background to this passage is quite simple. The Apostle Paul has just shown eloquently that the Gentiles deserve the wrath of God because of their life. They have abandoned the true God who has created the universe in all his glory, and instead they have put together, chiseled a piece of stone or carved out a piece of wood into something that looks like a human being, man, in his mid-twenties. having come out of the gym for about three to four years, looking very, very powerful, and then they are bowing down to it. Or Samson in all his glory. God looks at that and says, how can they mistake me for that? And consequently, he of God is being revealed from heaven. And so he abandons them to sexual misconduct, sexual perversion, and finally to everything that is wrong, to a depraved mind. And he sort of imagines the Jews saying to Pope, preach it, brother. Tell them. And he turns to them and says, hang on. You are there saying, tell them, look at your life. You're doing the same thing. And if you're doing the same thing, surely, this is the logic now. If God is going to punish them for sinning, and you are sinning, The logic is you must also be punished. That's the consideration. That's the logic. Do you honestly suppose you will escape? Well, it's that mental process that the Apostle Paul is asking for in Romans Chapter 6, that deliberate thinking. The logic. Now whereas in chapter two, the logic goes in the negative direction, in chapter six, the logic goes in the positive direction. And oh brethren, we need this. Because as I've already said, so often we are alone. And the devil gives us wrong logic that almost causes us to quit the ministry. What is the right logic? Let's quickly go to this. The right logic is this, back to Romans 6 and verse 11. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ, or in Christ Jesus. Remember, this is an outcome of that dense coming and going about Jesus Christ on the cross. And what Paul is saying is that whatever it is that Jesus underwent when he died, consider yourself to have gone through it. Let's go to it for a moment. I'm tempted to begin with verse 1, but let me avoid that. Let's go to verse 9. Let's try and stick to 9 and 10 for the interest of time. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. Now I know you're pastors and you don't need me to have a little drawing in front of you like Sunday school kids, but every so often I do wish I could be treated like a Sunday school just so that my mind can grasp the basics. So let me use this pulpit as some kind of diagram. On my left, which is your right, Consider this as the life in which sin rules, the life in which death reigns. On this side, consider this as the realm where God's glory, God's goodness, God's holiness reigns supreme. the Lord Jesus Christ came into this life. And in this life, he died, was buried, and was raised to newness of life. The death there cannot affect him on this end. He's done with the consequences of this realm where certain sin and death rules. The day he died, he died to sin once for all. And the life he leads, he now leads to God. He has moved from one realm to the other through Calvary. That's basically what the preceding verses to verse 11 is all about. It's arguing again and again and again. Paul is basically going like this, 10 times over, 10 times over, so that we may grasp this reality. And then here is the final blow. When you became a Christian, you were joined to Christ by His Spirit. You were baptized into Christ. And therefore, that which He underwent, you have undergone. Let's go to those earlier verses. Verse 3. Or maybe let me begin with verse 2. By no means, that is, shall we continue in sin. How can we who died to sin still live in it? He's saying, look, you have died to this realm where sin rules. And you're asking how? Well, here's the answer now in verse three. Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus, notice he's not saying into water, but into Christ Jesus, that which the Holy Spirit does at our conversion. Those of us who were immersed into Christ, What has happened? We have actually been immersed into his death, and if you can follow my hands for a moment, one eye in your Bible, the other eye here. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism. I know you can't see my hands, but I'm sure you can guess what's happening here. 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. There has been a movement from one realm to the other in Christ. That's the point. And what the Apostle Paul is saying to all of us as ordinary believers, pastors throw them in as well, is recognize this, reckon with this. that you have moved from that realm where sin had mastery over you, where Satan had mastery over you, you are no longer there. By the work of Almighty God, omnipotent, grafted you into Christ, and consequently what Jesus underwent is now yours. Recognize this. Appropriate it to yourself. In other words, act like it. You see, our difficulty is to so realize it that we can look sin in the face, we can look the devil in the face and say no to him. You are no longer my master. It's done. Back home in Zambia, A number of years ago now, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when you finished high school, you would have to go for military training. I did that myself for six months. The main reason was that our nation was involved in the liberation struggle for Southern Africa, and consequently, the nation needed as many soldiers as possible. So we all underwent military training. Now, when we went for military training, upon arrival there, we were civilians proper. So we were being taught how to march, how to listen to the instructions of the commanders, and it just wasn't first nature for us. You know, they would tell us turn right, and others are turning left, others are turning right, others are going around and sort of hitting each other in the foreheads and so on. It was a mess. Well, by the end of six months, we had been so trained that all the commander needed to do was to issue the first command. And we learned what was called automatic drill. So half of us would turn this way, the other half would turn that way. We'd go in opposite directions, march a certain number of steps, turn around, come, walk right through each other, and so on. We'd go different directions. Others would kneel. Others would go past them. I mean, it was just beautiful. And all the commander did was just stand there as we're going through all these motions. but in our minds was playing what he had been commanding us to do. It had been worked into us. In fact, the commander's voice was so ingrained in us, at least his commands, that it was now a reflex action. What used to happen is when we would get our pocket allowances, the different monthends, we would sort of run away from camp and go into all kinds of beer halls and so on to drink. And all that would be necessary is a sergeant would come through, stand at the door, and simply shout, sit up! And without thinking. Those who were actual recruits would suddenly go like this, and they would be picked out and taken to the guard room for punishment. Well, after six months, we left and went to college, university, and so on. We were finished. That became the dirty trick that would play on each other. You'd come into your friend's room. He's studying. And then you just say, sit down! Suddenly he would go like this, and then turn to, ah, come on, man. It had been worked into us over time that we didn't think. We just suddenly obeyed. Now, it's very much like that with respect to our sanctification. We've so been accustomed and traumatized in obeying Satan's voice, that when he says, slave, so, even when you are no longer his slave, you've been liberated from him. You are on this side. And what Paul is saying is realize this. Appropriate this to yourself so that you stop obeying him who is not your master. You are no longer he. You are he in Christ Jesus. And that's what he goes on to say in verse 12. Really, verse 12 is the consequence of this process of reckoning yourself or considering yourself. It says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passion. That, therefore, is all important. It's the fruit of your thinking. You were once here, and it made sense when the evil one would say, sling! And you say, so! And he says, there you go! And off you go, satisfying your fallen passion. Twor is saying, stop it. You are no longer here, but here. And instead, what you ought to do now is to refuse to allow sin to be ruling in you so that you should be listening to, obeying it. He says in verse 13 as well, do not present your members to sin as instruments for righteousness. Why? Verse 14, for sin will have no dominion over you because you are no longer under law. In other words, dually under its stewardship here. listening to it externally and failing to obey it. Rather, you are now under grace, the power of grace working in your soul. Now, the reason why I love this is because it's up here. It's up here. In other words, if you remember where I began, As a pastor, I often don't have the luxury that most of my members have, who come to me looking rather low as if the world has come to its end and saying, Pastor, Pastor, this is what I am struggling with. I don't have that luxury to go to my church members and start saying. And the Lord is saying, in fact, that's not even the number one area. What I need, first of all, is to think right. They are in my home. They are in my study. As I sense the chains on my ankle pulling me down, I should first of all say to myself, Conrad, you are not here. You are no longer a slave to sin. In Christ, you have died with him, been buried with him, been raised to newness of life, you are on this end. It is God, it is his holiness, it is his grace that should be reigning in your life. Don't obey that call. Don't. Let me ask you, have you learned to do that as a pastor? to first of all lay down that foundation. Have you learned to do that? Now, one of the reasons why we fail to do that is simply that too many of us don't appreciate the unsearchable riches of Christ through the cross. We don't. Although our people pay us, at least I hope they do, so that we are not in their kind of jobs and consequently can have time to study this book and the classics, the Christian classics that enable us to have a deeper understanding of this book. Too many pastors are intellectually lazy. We are content with some kind of vague notion that Jesus died for us. As to the nitty gritties of that truth, we say, well, ask my college professor. Now, the problem with a watery understanding of Calvary is that you rob yourself of the power of your own sanctification. You do. And this is a very clear example of it. Our victory over sin is intricately tied up with our appreciation of Calvary. Let me say that again. Our victory over sin as God's servants intricately tied up with our appreciation of Calvary. And therefore, if this morning you are struggling with sin in your life, I want to ask you and plead with you to go to your bookshelf and look for a book that opens up the cup, Calvary, that enables you to drink deep concerning what Jesus Christ did on the cross for you. And study it. Study it. Refuse to move away. until the cross melts your heart. To borrow the words of Isaac Watts, when I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and poor contentment on all my part. See from his hand, his head, Sorrow and love flowed mingled down. Did ever such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich the crown? Let your meditations on the cross finally say, Were the whole realm of nature mine, That way an orphan far to see. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my everything. And may you rise from your knees at that point, wanting to go back into the world and look the devil in the face and say to him, no! no, certain no. Which part of no don't you understand? I'm in Christ. He's given me the victory. I must live for him. Oh may that help us to be pastors having victory growing in Christ-likeness, being sanctified. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, thank you for each one of these brethren here. They come among them as a fellow soldier, with the smoke of the trenches still on my Thank you for the victory in the world represented by each one in this place. Souls won to Christ. Souls helped in Christ. Yet Lord, sometimes we ourselves are the casualties. as remaining sin wreaks havoc within us. Often tempted to graduate from the cross to some kind of seven steps, secrets to victory over sin. Thank you this morning for taking us back to the foot of the cross. reminding us that there's no graduation from the cross on this side of eternity. Oh, help us all, God, to gaze with the eye of faith on the dying form of him who died for us. and renew our faith, O Lord. Help us to come to the end of this conference, go back to that place of temptation, and with the power of our new position in Christ, say no to Satan. Lord, make us holy instruments in your hands. For Jesus' sake, Amen.