A New Pattern

The Struggle of the Story

I don’t know what your story is like. I don’t know what your backstory is, but I find myself, as I’m talking to people, very envious of two types of testimonies. The first is the person who grew up in church. You came to know the Lord at an early age, your mom and dad loved Jesus and passed on to you that sacred gift, and you’ve just walked with God for the bulk of your days. I hear that story and I think: there is the real miracle. It’s not the beer-drinking idiot who gets saved; it’s that guy. That is amazing.

When I was in college, my roommate, Brandon, was a pastor’s kid with that kind of story. One night, while we were living in the Bulldog Apartments, he told me, “You know what I want to do? I want to just go get a case of beer and get hammered.” I asked him why, and he said, “Because then I would have a testimony.” I told him, “Time out, dude. Let me tell you something. I would give up every case of beer I ever threw down with my friends for your testimony, because the real miracle is the person who stayed faithful.”

I’m also envious of the person who lives crazy for a while, comes to faith, and in that moment, something happens and they are completely different instantly. Like the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road—blinded, saved, and never looking back. I look at that person and think, “Dude, I’d give anything for that story.”

See, my story is a bit messier. I came to faith in Christ out of a locker room in a fraternity—not exactly a seedbed for spiritual growth. I spent twenty years living like a moron, so trying to walk with God was entirely new. What I found was that I loved Jesus, but I also loved the old life a little too much. I found myself in an unending pattern where I would do good for about forty-eight hours, and then sin would come back in. The difference was that I used to not feel guilty about it. But now, as a believer, I would sin like I used to and the weight of a thousand years would crush me. I’d cry out to God, He’d forgive me, and I’d be restored for another forty-eight hours. It was like the movie Groundhog Day gone bad. Every day I woke up to the same horror of trying to be good.

The Heavy Lifting of Grace

I really wanted to walk with Jesus, but I was under the impression that God did the heavy lifting at salvation, and then it was up to me. It was as if God said, “Look, I did my part. Now you do yours.” Being a competitor, I thought, “Okay, if it’s about me living for Jesus, let’s work hard.”

My personality is like the guy who tried to teach me to wakeboard. He told me, “It’s easy. Just put both feet up and hold on for as long as you can. As you pop out of the water, just stand up.” He didn’t know who he was talking to. I thought, “I can hold on a long time.” I was literally dragging through the water, refusing to let go, until finally the rope ripped out of my hands with so much inertia that it hit the driver in the back of the head. I thought if I could just hold on long enough, I would look like Jesus. I just needed to work harder, read more, and study more. But forty-eight hours later, I was back in the same spot, thinking, “What is wrong with me?”

I eventually went to seminary to learn how to be a pastor. I was sitting in Dallas Theological Seminary, wondering how I even got in, looking at these brilliant guys who are all professors now. To add insult to injury, I was in a class called “Spiritual Life,” and Professor Bill Lawrence said, “Open your Bibles to Romans chapter six.”

As he walked through this text, it was the most convicting and liberating experience of my life. He showed me that I had a faulty view of the gospel. I understood that positionally, having placed my faith in Christ, I was right with God. What I didn’t understand is that the gospel not only saves, but the gospel is continually sanctifying. Jesus was at work through the Holy Spirit bringing me to faith back then, but He is also at work making me more like Him today. I had assumed the Christian existence was just a constant struggle where you hang on and pray for heaven. My greatest hope was that God would just take my life so I wouldn’t sin anymore, because that felt better than the constant cycle of tear-stained journal pages and repenting for the same sin again and again.

Who is King?

If your story connects to that, let me encourage you: this passage might be the most convicting and relieving thing you’ve ever read. It starts by dealing with the issue of who is king in your life. Paul sets this up by looking at who is reigning. He says there are really only two options: either sin is king, or grace is king. There is no middle ground. You can’t be Switzerland; you aren’t neutral.

Paul asks a rhetorical question: If grace increases where sin increases, why not just live crazy so we can demonstrate the incredible grace of God? If I really booger it up and sin super-increases, then grace super-increases, right? His response is immediate.

Romans 6:1-2 (NASB)

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

When he says, “May it never be,” he means, “Oh heck no, no stinking way.” That’s not how the gospel works. He’s making the observation that if we claim to be in Christ, the idea of continuing to live in sin is categorically opposed to the nature of the gospel. When we place our faith in Jesus, life change comes. To continue in habitual, willful sin as a normal pattern of life is impossible for a believer. As John says in his first letter, if we claim to walk in the light but live in darkness, we are liars. It brings into question the genuineness of our faith.

Dead to the Mastery

Paul asks, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” This is where I got convicted in that lecture. What died? Is it the presence of sin? I’ve been to funerals with open caskets where the family weeps, longing for a response, but the loved one is dead—they are completely unresponsive. I looked at this passage and thought, “Is that what he means? That I should be completely unresponsive and oblivious to sin?” Because when sin comes across my radar, I feel very much alive. I don’t feel dead at all.

Paul is explaining the shift in power. Before we know Jesus, we are obligated to obey sin. Sin is our king, and we are slaves to it. But when we place our faith in Jesus, the mastery, the obligation, and the power of sin over us dies. We are now willfully enslaved to a new King: Grace.

Romans 6:3-4 (NASB)

Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

He’s saying that when you were identified with Christ, you were united with His death. Your old identity died. Your old self was crucified. And because you were united in His death and burial, you are also united in His resurrection so that you can walk in a newness of life. This is why Paul can say that if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things pass away.

Romans 6:5 (NASB)

For if we have become united with [Him] in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be [in the likeness] of His resurrection,

Since we have been united with Him in His death, the logical outflow is that we are also united in His resurrection. Now, for many of us, we still struggle in that same pattern: do okay, sin, feel conviction, and repent. I memorized 1 John 1:9 early on because I needed it over and over again. And yes, you are forgiven and restored every time. But that cycle is a flesh pattern; it’s not the design for the spiritual life. The gospel gives us an entirely different trajectory.

The New Pattern: Know, Consider, Present

This new pattern has three elements: what you know, what you consider, and what you present yourself to. It starts in verse six with what we know.

Romans 6:6-7 (NASB)

knowing this, that our old self was crucified with [Him], in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

Because we’ve been identified with Christ, the old unregenerate self has been crucified. This “body of sin”—the fleshly monster inside us—is rendered useless and powerless. The mastery is broken. We are no longer obligated to serve that old king. We are freed from the mastery of sin, though sin is still very much present.

I remember a guy in the free speech area at college who used to yell at everyone, calling them names. I had a friend in a wheelchair, and I wanted to know what it was like, so I borrowed a wheelchair for a week and strapped my legs together. I rolled up to this guy, wearing my “Jesus T-shirt” that had a picture of the Lord bench-pressing the cross. This guy told me he didn’t sin anymore. He argued that if you are in Christ, you literally do not sin. That is not biblical. I’m not suggesting the influence of sin is gone; I’m suggesting the mastery is gone.

Think of it like this: When I played football, I had a coach who was absolutely nuts. When he called and told you to run, you didn’t debate it. He was the authority. One time I did something stupid, and he told me to be at the practice field at 5:00 AM. I was out there throwing up while people drove by honking their horns. I had to be there because he was my master.

Eventually, I graduated. That coach could still call me today and tell me to go run. I could go. I could choose to obey him. But you’d drive by and think, “Brad is an idiot. He doesn’t have to submit to that guy anymore. That power is gone.” It’s the same with sin. Before Christ, when sin called, you answered because you had no choice. But now, the mastery is broken. You can go back and feed the pigs if you want, but we’re going to drive by and say, “Why are you doing that? You don’t have to!”

Romans 6:8-9 (NASB)

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.

His finished work makes our freedom from the mastery of sin secure and definitive. So why do we still sin? Why do we still feel that desire? James says we are tempted when we are led away by our own lusts. The problem isn’t the culture, the internet, or what’s on TV. The problem is what’s in here. We sin because we like it. It speaks our language and whispers in our ear. We fall back into it because we don’t fully understand that we are free.

Professor Lawrence said the flesh is like a traitor at the gates. It claims to help you but actually resists God at every turn. It is the most dangerous enemy we face. Only the Holy Spirit frees us from the flesh, and that happens when we face the flesh directly and deny its control by walking in the Spirit.

The Accounting of Faith

After knowing, we must consider.

Romans 6:10-11 (NASB)

For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

The word “consider” is an accounting term. It means to add up the books. It’s like an auditor checking the financials to see if they match. If I examine the books of your life, would they affirm what you proclaim? Does the word of your mouth match the deeds of your life? You have to live in a way where the expression of your life adds up to what you say you believe.

Finally, we must present.

Romans 6:12-13 (NASB)

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin [as] instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members [as] instruments of righteousness to God.

Notice the language: “Do not let sin reign.” This assumes it is possible for a believer to allow sin to reign. It is possible for us to allow the old life to have more power over us than it deserves. This is the painful part—confronting the flesh ruthlessly. You have to look at your life and say, “That’s flesh. That’s not the Lord; that’s me.”

But the Bible never tells you what not to do without telling you what to do. Instead of presenting yourself to sin, present yourself to God. Instead of stealing, do something productive. Instead of unwholesome talk, speak words that build up. Instead of being drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit.

I talk to people in recovery all the time. If your only focal point is “don’t drink,” you are obsessed with the very thing you’re trying to avoid. You have to pursue something else. Presenting yourself to God means pursuing Him. You take thoughts captive. You make a covenant with your eyes. You read the Word not as an idle book, but as your very life. You develop an ear to hear what the Spirit is doing. As you walk by the Spirit, the deeds of the flesh become smaller and smaller. Those forty-eight-hour windows of “doing okay” get longer and longer because the Spirit is driving you.

A Final Promise

Paul finishes with this:

Romans 6:14 (NASB)

For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

This passage is here to remind us of the sufficiency of the gospel today. Through the finished work of Jesus, the mastery of the old life is broken. You are no longer a slave to who you used to be. Why would you shake your fist at the God who saved you just to go feed the pigs again?

When I sat in that lecture hall, I was crushed because I didn’t feel dead to the presence of sin. But when I realized I was dead to its mastery, that crushing became exhilaration. There is hope! Your spiritual life doesn’t have to be a pattern of shame and guilt. If you embrace what Jesus has done, He sets you on an entirely different trajectory—no longer stuck in the cycle of regret, but moving forward in a pattern of knowing, considering, and presenting.

Father, would the gospel be true in our lives today? Not just as a concept, but on a practical basis. Many of us have spent years in the flesh, trying hard and failing. Remind us that the gospel is a different road. Remind us that we are free. When the old life calls and tries to woo us back, help us remember that we are no longer obligated to obey it. We can hang up the phone and move on. May Your Spirit finish the sanctifying work You started in us. In Jesus’ name, amen.