Dock
Resource Kit
Sunday sermon, 3 May 2026
Summary
This week Michael talked to us about what it means to live in the freedom Christ has won for us, looking at Romans 6:6–14. Building on the Love Has Won series, Michael explored the difference between guilt and shame, reminding us that through Jesus we are no longer guilty before God, we have been justified and made righteous in Christ. Yet many Christians still struggle to live free from shame, sin and old patterns. Paul’s answer in Romans 6 is that we must actively “count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Michael explained that the Christian life is not about becoming slightly improved versions of ourselves, nor about passively waiting for change, but about recognising that we have been transferred from the dominion of Adam into the kingdom of Christ. Sin still calls out to us, but it is no longer our master.
Key Points & Takeways
1. In Christ We Are No Longer Guilty - Romans teaches that through Jesus we are justified and made righteous before God. Guilt is about our standing before God; shame is the feeling that often follows guilt. Through the cross, Jesus removes our guilt completely.
2. Freedom Must Be Appropriated - Paul says we must “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11). Living in freedom is not passive; it requires active faith and cooperation with God. Spiritual transformation involves continually reckoning what is true about us in Christ.
3. Sin Is No Longer Our Master - Christians still struggle with temptation and sin, but sin no longer has authority over them. The presence of struggle does not mean defeat. Romans 7 acknowledges the ongoing battle, but Romans 6 declares a change in ownership.
4. We Have Been Transferred from Adam to Christ - Salvation is not merely self-improvement, but a transfer of kingdom and identity. Our “old self” was crucified with Christ, and we now belong to a new reality. The authority over our lives has fundamentally changed.
5. We Live From Victory, Not For It - Christians do not strive to earn freedom or God’s acceptance. Because Jesus has already won the victory, we now live out of that reality. Spiritual disciplines help us walk deeper into life with Christ, further from the voice of the enemy.
Dock Discussion Questions
Michael distinguished between guilt and shame. How would you describe the difference in your own words, and why does that matter for the Christian life?
Romans 6:11 says, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” What do you think it looks like practically to “count” or “reckon” this truth day by day?
The sermon described Christians as no longer belonging to the “field” of Adam, but to Christ. How does understanding your identity in Christ change the way you approach temptation and failure?
Michael said, “We don’t fight for victory. We live from it.” How could that truth reshape the way you view spiritual growth, struggle or discipleship?
Long-form, edited transcript
LOVE HAS WON.
Freedom in Christ.
Romans 6:6-14
Since easter we have been taking a deeper look at the victory of Christ. In Jesus, God has defeated the powers of sin, We don’t fight for victory. We live from it. Today we will be considering how that trutch changes how we live our day to day lives.
Today we are going to be looking at Romans 6:6-14 and asking this question: “how do we live in the freedom that comes from Jesus’ victory over sin and death?”
What is the difference between guilt and shame?
It can be difficult to define these words because our current use of them is often interchangeable, they are both things that we feel. It is helpful instead to think of guilt of something that is either there or not there. Guilt is a positional word. Someone either is or isn’t guilty. Think of its legal usage.
Shame, is something that we feel in light of our guilt. The first 5 chapters of Romans deal with the truth that in Christ we are no longer guilty of our sin. In Christ we are Righteous, that means ‘in right standing’, in a right relationship, with God and with others.
In Christ we are justified, justification is the process of being restored to a right relationship. In Romans 6 we will see how we live out that truth, if we are no longer guilty, how do we live without shame. If we are free from sin, how do we live free?
I was 21 years old when I started working full time for the church. I had recently moved back from university, which for me had been a painful time of deconstruction, extremely poor mental health and some even worse lifestyle choices, compounded by the grief from the death of a close friend.
My parents let me move back in with them so I could afford to spend a year volunteering for the church as a youth worker. Football, table tennis. Assemblies in the local schools, the whole shebang.
Most importantly for me though, the youth pastor that was running the programme, shout out to Mike McLeister, took us through a Christian discipleship course call “Freedom In Christ”. Studying the materials on that course was without a doubt the single most important thing I have done in my Christian journey. The biblical truths explored in that course changed my life and transformed me in ways I didn’t realise were possible.
What we are looking at today in Romans 6 is some of the most important biblical foundation for the Freedom that we can experience in Christ.
Scripture
Romans 6:6-14
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
There are three main categories of things that Paul instructs on here:
Things we Know.
Things we should do (in light of what we know).
How we get the power to do them.
Things we Know.
Verse 6 – 10
I won’t spend a long time unpacking these things, as the last few weeks of this preaching series have done that. Paul outlines the gospel and our inclusion in it. That Jesus was crucified and our old selves with Him, so that we might be free from sin.
Verse 6: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin”
Verse 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.
Things we should do in light of what we know.
Our right response to these truths come to us at the end of the passage.
Verse 13 “Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. 14 For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
So there we have it. End of sermon. You are free from sin and death, offer yourselves to God and live accordingly. Except of course it isn’t really, is it?
We talked about Guilt and Shame earlier. Do you ever find yourself under the burden of shame? We believe that Jesus died for us. We put our faith and trust in Him. We give our lives to God in Christ. We read our Bibles, we pray, we meet as church, we worship. Yet we still struggle with anger, jealousy, lust, insecurity, comparison, greed.
Even Paul wrote about this struggle, in the next chapter in Rm 7: 21-25. He talks about experiencing a war inside himself between the good that he wants to do but that evil is still right there with him. If this was as simple as ‘you’re free, now live like it’—Romans 7 wouldn’t exist.
So, how do we get the power to live free from sin?
…to no longer be slaves to sin(verse 6)
… to live with Christ (verse 8)
…to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies (verse 12)
…to not offer any part of ourselves to sin as an instrument of wickedness (verse 13)
…to no longer have sin as our master (verse 14)
How do we access the power to offer ourselves to God?
Paul explains the process in verse 11, this is the connection, the link, between the truth of Christ’s victory and the power to live it out.
Verse 11 “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
This small verse, Romans 6:11, might be one of the most important for us for our lives as Christians.
The victory over sin that God has won for us in Christ, is a victory that must be appropriated. Putting away the sins that plague us will not be an automatic process, something that will happen without our cooperation, a determination of our own will is required. We have to count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word Paul uses here (logizomai) has an active implication. To reckon, to calculate, to estimate, to take into account.
I have the great fortune of being married to an incredible woman, who happens to be an American, here’s something that I learned 10 years ago when we got married. American’s that live outside America have to file a U.S. tax return, so they have to pay taxes both in the country they move to, and in America.
You best believe that Natasha does some Logizomai, some calculating, reckoning and taking into account twice a year.
Counting ourselves dead to sin but live to God in Christ, is an active, ongoing process, that requires our cooperation, determination and active participation.
I want to equip us today, by spending some time together in this counting, in this reckoning.
Reckoning Together
If we’re going to obey verse 11. If we’re going to count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Then we need to be clear about what it means that our “old self was crucified with him.” The better we understand that, that better we can count ourselves free from sin.
Douglas Moo says there are two very popular views on this, which I’m going to illustrate.
Model 1
The first is the position that mankind has two natures. Sin Nature and Life in the Spirit. The believer’s old “sin nature” is dealt a deathblow when we put our faith is Jesus. That nature still exists but is no longer dominant, for the believer also possesses a new nature. Progress in the Christian life comes as one uses spiritual disciplines to grow the new nature and the other shrinks.
I don’t know about you, but this feels relatable to my experience. I feel the tension between sin and the Holy Spirit, between a desire to please God and a desire to go my own way.
The problem with this understanding is that it lacks the power and finality that is clear in the saving work of Jesus.
It leaves us thinking that sin is still part of who we are. That deep down, the sin nature is just me. And if that’s true…then when temptation comes, what do we say? “Well, part of me just wants this too much.” And suddenly, Romans 6 loses its power:
Verse 7: “because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.”
Verse 10: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”
Model 2
Another potential way of thinking of the relationship between our old and new selves is, that we are a new creation:
2 Cor 5:17
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone the new has come!”
You had an old self. In Christ it was replaced with a new creation. In this model, progress comes not from a life of spiritual discipline, but from letting go and letting God do the work. All we need do is let our new nature take over and we will do what pleases God.
The problem with this model
It fails to account for the fact that we struggle with living free from sin. Because we still struggle. We still have to fight. Paul still says: “do not let sin reign” (v12), “do not offer yourselves to sin” (v13). If it was all automatic those commands wouldn’t be there.
So if it’s not that we are divided in two, and it’s not that effort disappears, what is Paul saying?
Paul’s Model
Paul’s theology, I believe, says this, You haven’t just been improved, You haven’t just been reset. You have been transferred. Paul’s emphasis here is not on two parts inside you, but on which reality you belong to—Adam or Christ.
In chapter 5, Paul’s describes our sinful condition as children of Adam. Our guilt is an inherited guilt, and shame is an emotion that we are born to. What is crucified is our relationship, our link to Adam, as fallen mankind. But in Christ that old relationship has been crucified. “our old self was crucified with him…” What died was our connection to Adam. And now: “alive to God in Christ Jesus” We are joined to Christ. This is who we are now.
Which means: Sin is no longer your master even if it still speaks. The struggle is real but the authority has changed. And this is why Paul doesn’t say: “feel different” or “wait until this becomes natural” He says: “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” Because this is something we must reckon to be true even when our experience hasn’t caught up yet.
David Martyn Lloyd Jones - Two Fields
Explains this with a wonderful analogy of the two fields (Exposition of Chapter 6: The New Man, pp. 26-27).
“Think of two fields with a road between them. The field on the left represents the dominion, the kingdom, the territory, the empire of sin and of Satan. This is where we all were by our natural birth. But as a result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ for us and upon us through the Holy Spirit, we have been taken hold of, and transferred to the filed on the right of the road – ‘Delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of his dear son’. I was there on the left, I am now here on the right. Yes, but I spent many a long year in the first field, and the devil is still there with all his powers and his forces.
This is a picture of what often happens. As a Christian I am here in the new filed and Satan cannot touch me…He cannot touch us because we are no longer in his kingdom. He cannot touch us; but he can shout across the road at us.“
Douglas Moo adds to the analogy, that as we live out our relationship with God in Christ, we move further into the field of Christ, further from the old field, and the voice of the devil gets fainter.
Conclusion
So what does this look like in real life?
When sin calls from the other field?
When the voice feels familiar?
When temptation feels strong?
You don’t walk back across the road. You reckon. You count yourself. You say:
“That is not where I live anymore.
I am not in Adam.
I am in Christ.
Sin is not my master.”
And then—you act on that truth.
You offer yourself to God.
Not to become free, but because you already are.
We don’t fight for victory. We live from it.
And day by day, prayer by prayer, quiet time by quiet time, as we meet together, and learn together, we go on reckoning together, counting ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus,
Thank you that through your death and resurrection we are no longer slaves to sin, but alive to God in you.
Thank you that our guilt has been dealt with at the cross, and that we no longer belong to the kingdom of darkness, but to your kingdom of grace and life.
Help us to truly reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to you. When temptation calls out to us, remind us that sin is no longer our master.
Teach us to offer ourselves daily to you our thoughts, our words, our desires and our actions not out of fear, but from the freedom you have already won for us.
By your Holy Spirit, help us to live from victory rather than striving for it.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.