 All right. Okay. So, welcome back to the class, everyone. We have just gone through Romans chapter 5. It is a truly amazing chapter where Paul shares with us some things that you don't find him communicating that in many other places, except as I mentioned, he touches on something similar in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. So, keep your hand in Romans 5 and let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 and we're just going to read verses 45 to 49. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 45 to 49. Could somebody read that for us as he contents back him? 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 45 to 49, please. So, shall I read? Go ahead, please. And so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first but the natural and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the second man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust and as is the heavenly man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have born the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. Thank you. So, this is one other place in Paul's episodes there. Paul is drawing a similar picture like what we saw in Romans 5. In Romans 5 he talked about one man, Adam, and he said he's a type of him who was to come, which is Jesus. And then he's drawing the contrast through one man's sin, through one man's obedience. And he's drawing the contrast of what happens to us. Similarly here in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 45 to 49, he's referring to Adam as the first Adam. He's referring to Jesus as the last Adam, verse 45. First Adam was a, he became a living being, whereas the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. Now think about this. Jesus is the last Adam. First Adam, Jesus is the last Adam. So meaning to say that in Jesus there is an end to Adam's race. This comes to an end. The last. So technically there are still people born of Adam's race. It's happening. But in Christ that comes to an end. So when we are in Christ, it's the end of Adam's race. Because Christ is the last Adam, full stop to the Adam's race. So technically people are still being born of Adam's race. But in Christ Adam's race comes to an end. Then he says, well, verse 46. Well, he's talking about the natural. He says, well, I'm actually talking about the natural and spiritual. So he's talking in Christ spiritually. You know, spiritually Adam's race comes to an end. The natural continues, of course. The natural people are still born of Adam's race. But spiritually in Christ he's the last Adam. And then he goes on, verse 47. The first man was of the earth. Then he refers to Jesus as the second man. Very interesting. The first man, second man. The first man was natural and of the earth, the second man. So if you want to think about it, there are only two men, so to speak, or two races. There is the natural earthly and then there is the spiritual heavenly. So Jesus is the second man. He says, verse 47, the second man is the Lord, the Lord Jesus, from heaven, heavenly. So there's one race of people who are of the first Adam, the first man. They are natural and earthly. There is another race of people who are spiritual or in Christ. We don't know what people in Christ. They are spiritual and they are from above heavenly. And these people, for them, it's the end of the Adam's race because they are in Christ, he's the last Adam. It's over. And he's the second man. It's a new race. And this race, second people are born of the second man. They are spiritual and they are from heaven. And then he says, verse 48, the natural, those who are born, those, verse 48, the natural, those who are natural, they bear the image of the man. Verse 49, they bear the image of Adam. They resemble Adam. They like him. Whereas verse 48 and 49, end of the verse 48 and 49, as is the heavenly, so are also those who are heavenly. That means the spiritual people, you and I, we bear the image of the heavenly, the one who is from heaven. That means right now, the way verse 49 is translated, it says, we shall also bear. But actually, the little Greek does not have a future to it. It says, we now bear the image of the heavenly. Let us also bear, let us show forth the image. So in these few verses, he's doing again a wonderful contrast. He says, first man, first Adam, the natural man, the first man, last Adam, second man, spiritual man, first Adam, man from Earth, second man or last Adam, man from heaven. In Adam, we all die in Christ. We are living. And he says, just as we have born the image of the first one, that means we were born of Adam's race, so we bore that image. Now we are of the last Adam. We are of the second man. So he says, we now bear the image of the last Adam, the second man, the heavenly man, the one who is spiritual. We bear his image. So this is very powerful that in Christ, we bear his image. We are like him. We represent him. We are also from above. We are born from above. We bear his image. So this is the only other place where the Apostle Paul is writing in this manner to express what has happened to us because of Jesus Christ. So we go back now to Romans. Any questions of Romans 5 so far before we start of Romans 6? Any questions? Okay. So now we go into Romans 6. So in Romans 6, Paul is building up on what he has already shared. So he has said, in Christ, we have received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. In Christ, we have received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness. So then he's countering a question that people would ask. Should we therefore continue in sin because God is giving us so much grace? Should we just continue in sin? So now this whole issue of sin, we are forgiven, but how about living free from sin? We are forgiven from our sins. We have been justified. We have been made righteous. We understand that by the grace of God. But should we now continue living in sin just because there is the grace of God and this righteousness and we are justified and so on? So he's now transitioning to talk about Christian living. How do we live in view of the cross, in view of what has happened on the cross? And what he is going to bring out in Romans 6 is an in-depth understanding of the truth of identification. He has introduced that for us in Romans 5. He says, you know, in Adam it's like this, but in Christ we have received this. Wonderful. But let's take a deeper look at our identification with Christ. What does it mean? How does it affect our lives? A deeper look. So that's what happens in Romans 6. He goes deeper and says, okay, I want to tell you something more. Not only are we forgiven from sin, but we are delivered from sin and a lot of things related to that. So we don't have to live as slaves to sin anymore. So remember, Adam brought sin into the world and death came. We became slaves to sin. Here he's saying we are set free from sin, Romans 7 to 6, but he's explaining to us how that happened. Okay? So let's begin again. We'll go through a few verses at a time through Romans 7 to 6. Could somebody read Romans 7 to 6 verses 1 and 2 for us please? Sure. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace might may abound? Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? So he is asking a question which probably wasn't the minds of the people. Hey, this is wonderful. Christ has given us the free gift, the grace of God and the gift of righteousness. It's wonderful. So should we just continue living in sin because God has given us grace? And this is a question that I guess much of the church would be asking today, especially with all the emphasis on the teaching on grace. Thank God for the revelation of the grace of God. And we must embrace and be strong in the grace of God, the grace that God has given to us. We must live in it. We must enjoy it. But just like this question here, should we continue in sin that grace may abound? You know, the answer is very clear was to certainly not. Just because there is so much grace doesn't mean we just continue in sin. Verse two, certainly not. We cannot do that. We cannot continue in sin so that the grace of God will just be poured on our lives. Why? Why is that? There is grace, but grace doesn't empower us to sin or allow us to continue in sin. Why? Because now Paul is saying, look, in that same cross through which grace was given, some other things also happened on the same cross. And so he's going to tell us about that. Listen verse two. How shall we who died to sin live in it? So Paul said, wait a minute, I want you to know something about yourself. You have died to sin. Now he's writing to us believers. He said, you have died to sin. Then you say, well, Paul, when did I die to sin? I mean, I know I'm a believer in Jesus. I know I received grace, the grace of God. I know I've received the gift of righteousness. But when did I die to sin? When did that happen? Verse three. Can somebody read verses three and four, please? Paul, do you not know that as many of us as we are baptized into Christ Jesus, we are baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptized into death. That just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So he says, okay, don't you know, verse three, don't you know, that when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into His death. So he already said, we have died to sin. So he said, when did I die to sin? Well, he says, when you were baptized into Christ, you were baptized into His death. Now, is he talking about water baptism, or is he talking about some other baptism? The answer is he's talking about the spiritual baptism. He's not talking directly about water baptism. I'll explain to you why. Because he's saying we have been baptized into Christ. So we must understand it from the language of the author. What would this author, which is Paul, mean, being baptized into Christ? Well, where else does he write about this? Well, he writes about this in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 13. Over there, he says, for by one spirit, 1 Corinthians 12 verse 13, for by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body and made to drink of one spirit. That means the Holy Spirit baptized us into the body into Christ. So there it is being baptized into Christ, not baptized in water, but baptized in Christ. So he's talking about that. Now, water baptism, water baptism is a physical expression, is an outward expression of verse 3, Roman 6 verse 3. So it is perfectly fine to read Romans 6 and verse 3 at the time of water baptism. It's perfectly fine because water baptism, like we said, it's a physical expression of a spiritual reality. So it's perfectly fine. But what he's focusing on is a spiritual reality. And what happened? What is the spiritual reality of the spiritual truth? The spiritual truth is that all of us as believers have been baptized into Christ. We are brought into Christ. We are immersed. The word baptize means immersed, to submerge, to overwhelm. So we have been put into Christ so that we are clothed to be overwhelmed with Christ, immersed into Christ. And what he's saying is, when we were baptized into Christ, we were baptized into His death. That means by coming into Christ, we are now identified with His death. We are baptized into His death. So this is something to think about, to understand. Christ died approximately 2,000 years ago physically. About 2,000 years ago, Jesus died. Here you and I are 2,000 years later when we hear the gospel of Jesus and we believe in Jesus Christ. And today when we believe in Jesus Christ, we are baptized into Christ. We are immersed into Christ spiritually today, 2,000 years. But at the same time when we are immersed into Christ, when we are brought into Christ, God says, because you're in Christ, I'm going to treat you as though you were in Christ 2,000 years ago, so that what happened to Christ 2,000 years ago becomes effective in you today. So how is that possible? Well, he already spent time explaining in Romans chapter 5, Adam sinned. Everyone else, even you and me today, 2,000, almost 6,000 years after, in Adam we have sinned and death has come upon us. It affected by what happened 6,000 years ago by one man's disobedience. So the same truth is continuing here. Christ died 2,000 years ago physically. Today you and I believe in Jesus. We are baptized into Christ. We are immersed into Him spiritually. And the moment we become identified with Him, we become identified with His death. And he's going to tell us in detail what happened. But I want us to just understand this, the spiritual side of this. Spiritually, we are made one with Jesus. And because we are made one with Christ, we are baptized into Christ. We are also baptized into His death. That means when we are identified or we are immersed into His death, which took place 2,000 years ago, and verse 4, somebody could read verse 4 please. Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death that Jesus as Christ was raised from the death by the glory of the Father even so we also should walk in newness of life. So verse 4, we have been baptized into His death. That means when Christ died, we are made part of His death. Therefore, that means because we are part of His death, we are also buried with Him. That means when Christ was buried, we also were buried with Him through baptism into death. We are baptized into His death. We are buried with Him. Not only are we buried with Him, but just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, that means He was resurrected. So we are also resurrected with Him. So very interesting truth that today we have received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, but there's something more that's happened. We are baptized into Christ. We are identified with Him spiritually because we are with Him spiritually. We are identified with His death, with His burial, with His resurrection. This has meaning for us today. We are living here 2,000 years after that happened. 2,000 years ago, Jesus died on the cross. He was buried and He was resurrected 2,000 years ago. And Paul is saying, when Christ died, you and I died. When Christ was buried, you and I were buried. When Christ was resurrected, you and I were resurrected. This has meaning or it has implications for our life here today. And what is the implication? How does it make a difference? How does it matter to you and me today? He is explaining. Verse 5, somebody could read verse 5. For since we have become one with Him in dying as He did, in the same way we shall be one with Him by being raised to life as He was. So he says, look, we have been united with Him in His death. We will also be united with Him in His death. That means we died with Him, we will also be raised with Him. And that's the whole thing. Start to finish His death, burial, resurrection. We are with Him. We are identified in Him. So it's not like we just died with Him and were buried with Him. And when He rose up, we were left in the grave. No. We were crucified with Him. We were buried with Him. And when He resurrected, we also resurrected. That's the point. Okay. So he's saying we are identified with Him throughout this whole thing. We are united together. United together. We used the word identified or united together with Christ. That means when Christ died, we died. When He was buried, we were buried. When He was resurrected, we were resurrected because we are united together with His death, burial, and resurrection. And not only that, we know from Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 6 that we're also united together with Him in His ascension. That means when Christ ascended, we ascended. And we're also united together with Him in His exaltation. That means when He was made to sit at the right hand of the Father, you and I were made to sit at the Father's right hand. So in all of these five stages, crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, exaltation, or seething, all the five stages, the Scripture is saying we were united together with Him. When Christ died, you and I died. When Christ was buried, you and I were buried. When Christ was resurrected, you and I were resurrected. And Christ ascended, we ascended with Him. And when Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father, we were made to sit together with Him in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 2 and verse 6. But what does all this mean to us today? How does it affect our lives today? Paul is explaining, is going to explain to us. But remember what he started off with? He started with a question, should we continue to live in sin? Because God is giving us grace. And his response was, we died to sin. So how can we live in sin? He says we died. He's going to explain to us how this happened. In order to explain that to us, he has introduced this truth of being united together or being identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating at the right hand of the Father. He's introduced that. But now he's going to explain bit by bit how this affects us being free from sin. Let's read verse 6, please. Verse 6 and 7. Knowing this that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. So verse 6. Knowing this. Knowing this. So this is something we must know. And God's people, meaning the church, must be made to know this. So many people don't know it. When I say many people, I'm talking about the church people, God's believers, they don't know it. So he says, knowing this, know this. What? That our old man, our old man, was crucified with him. Old man versus new man. Old man is what came to us through Adam. The new man is what comes to us through Jesus. That's why now when we say Jesus was the last Adam, we understand it. Because in Jesus, the old man comes to an end. It's the end of the old man. And in Jesus starts the new man. We had a new creation in Christ. So he says, know this. Our old man, which is the sinful, Adamic nature, the sinful nature inside of us, the nature that made us, that gave us the propensity to sin, the tendency to sin, our old man. What happened to our old man? He says, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. So when Christ died, you and I died. That means when Christ was crucified, you and I were crucified. What part of us was crucified? The old man says, know this, that the old man, the old sinful nature was crucified. To be crucified means to be put to death. It's the end of it. So the old man is no longer alive because he's been crucified. He's dead, just crucified with him. So as a believer, you don't have the old man. You have the new man, which comes through Jesus. So there is no sinful nature in your spirit. Now, the mind and the body is different. The mind needs to be renewed. The body needs to be crucified. The mind needs to be taught how to think differently, renewed. It may still think according to the old ways, but the mind needs to be renewed so it can think differently. The body needs to be crucified because the body would still want to behave like the old. But it needs the old things to be crucified and it needs to be retrained to live according to the new man. Yes, he will explain to us in Romans 6, but understand this, that in the spirit, in your spirit, there's no more old man. It's the new man because the old man was crucified. And what else? Because of that, verse 6, the old man was crucified with him that the body of sin might be done away with. The body of sin representing the sum totality of sin. So when it says the body, the word body is used in many different ways in the New Testament. It can talk to about the physical body, or it also can refer to the sum totality of something and the full measure of something. So that's the way it's used here in verse 6, that the body or the sum totality, the totality of sin, the body of sin might be done away with. I mean, just it must be done away. It's the end of it. It's caught and rid of. So the old man was crucified so that the totality of sin in our lives was done away with so that we no longer are slaves of sin. We are no longer slaves of sin. Verse 6 is so powerful. This is truth. And as a believer, we are no longer a slave of sin. Because the old man was crucified and the totality of sin was taken out of your life. When you and I died with Christ on the cross, that's what happened. And so in verse 7 he says, He who has died is free from sin. So you think about this in the natural. And a simple example is to think about a man who was a drunkard. So imagine a man who was a drunkard all his life. I mean, just a total drunkard. If he dies, now you can lay his body out and you can put all his favorite alcoholic drinks around him. He won't even move his little finger. Why? He's dead. He was dead. He's free from sin. He's not going to get up and drink because he's dead. That's just an example. But Paul is saying verse 7. So what Paul is saying in verses 6 and 7 is, we are dead. We meaning the old man, that sinful propensity within us and the sum totality of sin that was controlling us is gone. So we are dead. Therefore he says, we are free from sin. And this is what took place on the cross. When Christ died on the cross, we died with him. Our old man was crucified and the power of sin in our lives was broken so that today we can live free from sin. That happened 2,000 years ago. We were not born. We were not alive at that time. But God is saying, because today you are identified spiritually with Christ. You are also identified with what happened 2,000 years ago. Just like we saw in Romans chapter 5, the earlier chapter, how what happened to Adam affects everybody else or what Christ provided is available to all of us. Same way what happened 2,000 years ago. Today becomes effective in your life and mine so that we can walk free from sin to the truth that the old man was crucified and the power of sin over our lives is broken is real. It comes to you spiritually. It is spiritual truth. And so you and I can walk in that spiritual truth today. That today you and I can say my old man was crucified with Christ and the body of sin or the power of sin over my life was destroyed so that I no longer am a slave of sin. I am dead to sin and I'm free from sin. We can say that today because spiritually this is ours in Christ. Is it clear? Any questions on that? Okay. We just look at two more verses before we close. Let's look at verses 8, 8 and 9. I think we can do that. Yeah. Let's read 8 and 9 please. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead there is no more death no longer has dominion over him. So he says if we died with Christ, it will also live with him. That means the story doesn't end with just the crucifixion. Christ was buried. Christ was resurrected. And if we believe that we have been united together with his death as he has already told us before in verses 4 and 5, we believe we are also united together with him in his burial because we are buried with him. And we also believe that we are united together with his resurrection. So we live with him. So Paul says the rest of it is true. And when Christ died, when Christ was raised up today, death has no more control over him. So in the same way, these past things that we have put behind have no more control over us. But what does this mean? We know that when he mentioned this already for us in verse 4, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also walk in newness of life. So to be resurrected with Christ means we have been raised to walk in newness of life. So he's saying I don't need to go and explain all those to you because he's already mentioned the rest of it to us. We can probe deep, we can go into that in detail. So when Christ was buried, you and I were buried with Christ. What does that mean? When somebody is buried, it's the end of the old. The old has no more claims on that person. Example, if a man on the earth, let's say he had huge debt, he may have, let's say, 100,000 rupees in debt. Let's say he was alive, he had a lot of cases against him. Maybe in the court, there are many cases against him. Let's say he had all these problems. But the moment he dies, none of these things matter. He's dead, he's buried. This world has no more claim on him. The 100,000 rupees that he owed. Nobody can come and say, hey, wake up, pay that 100,000 rupees. He's dead, he's buried. It's over. There's court cases going on. Nobody's going to come to his grave and say, hey, come on, wake up. Come to the court, it's over. So burial, being buried, signifies a complete transition, a release from the old. The old has no more claim on you, the buried. So Paul is saying, we were buried with him. When Christ was buried, we were buried with him. He says, verse four, we were buried with him. That means the old life has no claim on you. Whatever sin, whatever problem, whatever was there in the old life, no claim, because you were buried with him. And he says, we were raised from the dead, just like Christ. So we can walk a newness of life. So resurrection means new life, new life. So crucifixion, end of the old man, breaking the power of sin, burial, end of the old life, no more claim on you by the old life. Resurrection, you're given a brand new life. You're living the eternal life now. Eternal life does not start in heaven. Eternal life starts the moment you're born again, because all this is applied to you that instant. So right now you are walking in eternal life, meaning the life of God is in you. I know there is some part that's not true yet, meaning our bodies are mortal and we're going to go into the grave. All those things are there. But in our spirit, we have eternal life. It's already there. It started. And I know it will get better. We will receive glorified bodies. We will be with the Lord in heaven. All those things will come. But it has already started inside us. Eternal life has already started inside. We are walking in newness of life, because we are resurrected with Jesus. I'm going to pause here. We will pick this up starting from verse 11. We will pick this up next week. And I trust that you've been following with me. And these are just amazing chapters, Romans chapter 5 and 6, maybe my most favorite chapters along with Romans 8. It's like in the book of Romans, Romans 5, 6, and 8 are like just wonderful, wonderful chapters. So take some time to read on it. Think about it and chew on it. Just enjoy it. Okay. Any questions before we pray and close? We'll continue this next week. Okay. All right. I would just request somebody to please pray and dismiss the class. We'll go for a break after that. Who would like to pray? Okay. Go ahead, Kiran. Or Thomas. Okay. Let Thomas pray, because... All right. Let's... Thomas, go ahead and pray, please. Father, in Jesus' name we thank you, Father, we pray that you will be living. Father, thank you for such a wonderful revelation through Paul to the Holy Spirit of Lord. We thank you for this wonderful book of... Thank you for sanctified us. Thank you for justified us. Thank you for made us righteous. Lord, give your spirit to righteousness. Let me manifest this righteousness in this lot. We thank you for this privilege and honor. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. We have died and resurrected in you. Thank you for this new life of Lord. Bless you, Daddy. Let your grace and mercy stay with us. Abundance. We love you. Praise you. We give you glory and honor. Jesus' name is written. Amen. Amen. Thank you, everyone. Enjoy. Oh, sorry. We have a quick break. We have one more class. I'll see you in a bit. Just have a quick break and we will join. Yeah. Thank you. Bye now. God bless. Bye.