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Romans 6:11-12—"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."

How intimately the believer's duties are interwoven with his privileges! Because he is alive to God, he is to renounce sin, since that corrupt thing belongs to his estate of death.

How intimately both his duties and his privileges are bound up with Christ Jesus his Lord!

How thoughtful ought we to be upon these matters; reckoning what is right and fit; and carrying out that reckoning to its practical issues.

What Does It Mean To Be Dead to Sin?

"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

1. We are dead with Christ to sin by having borne the punishment in him. In Christ we have endured the death penalty, and are regarded as dead by the law (verses 6 and 7).
2. We are risen with him into a justified condition, and have reached a new life (verse 8).
3. We can no more come under sin again than he can (verse 9).
4. We are therefore forever dead to its guilt and reigning power: "Sin will have no dominion over you" (verses 12-14).

This reckoning is based on truth, or we should not be exhorted to it.

To reckon yourself to be dead to sin, so that you boast that you do not sin at all, would be a reckoning based on falsehood, and would be exceedingly mischievous. "For there is no one who does not sin" (1 Kings 8:46; 1 John 1:8). None are so provoking to God, as sinners who boast their own fancied perfection.

The reckoning that we do not sin, must either go upon the Antinomian theory, that sin in the believer is no sin, which is a shocking notion, or else our conscience must tell us that we do sin in many ways; in omission or commission, in transgression or shortcoming, in temper or in spirit (James 3:2, Eccles. 7:20, Rom. 3:23).

To reckon yourself dead to sin in the spiritual sense is full of benefit both to heart and life. Be a ready reckoner in this fashion.

Adapted from Charles Spurgeon's sermon notes.

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