Why Most Christians Never Experience a Deeper Life in Christ

Do you ever remember reading, “Eye has not seen, or ear heard, and you think, isn’t that wonderful? Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard…listen, he was boiling mad when he said that. The eye looking at miracles hasn’t seen. Nor the ear heard Apollos preaching great things. Nor has it entered into the man the deep things of Christ. Not what you see in the way of miracles; it’s not what you hear in the way of knowledge; it is an indwelling Lord.

A free-swinging bunch of people who are having the craziest time in the world in meetings, and Paul said, ” It’s all right if three people talk at the same time. Just let one talk, and if the other one wants to start talking, let the first one be quiet until the second one finishes.” I have been in meetings. I have been in meetings where a brother would stand up to speak, and someone else would speak- a sister or a brother, either one. That person would get interrupted, and a third person would speak. These two were waiting. Someone else would interrupt that person, and that had to process all the way back to the first person—one of the most beautiful things in the world. I’m sure y’all did this last Sunday morning at church.

Now, I said I was going to bring a message on the three chapters that most affect the Christian life. Believe it or not, I graduated from seminary before I found out that Romans 6, 7, and 8 were THE passages in the New Testament. Now, I know you’re all thinking I’m about to really tell you something. You all kind of get in your Bibles. You’ve shifted a little bit. Here it comes. Yes, here it comes; I’m going to give it to you right between the eyes: the book of Romans was not written to you. Romans 6, 7, and 8, the great passages, and you can be there with it forever; Romans 6, 7, and 8 were not written for you, and the relevance of Romans 6 will help you only momentarily as an individual. Romans 6 was written to a body of people.

Romans 7 was written to an individual. It’s I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, all the way through. It describes each of us as individuals as we journey toward Romans 8, which isn’t relevant to your life except for a short time because it is written to a body of people. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about Romans 6. Let me tell you, for the people who know the Word of God, Romans 6 is really powerful. They can teach it to you, and I’ll tell you again: I don’t care who that man is, where he is, what radio station he’s on, or what book he’s written…He has missed the point.

As he opens Romans 6 and says to you, “You should reckon yourself dead; dead to sin and alive to Jesus Christ.” And it is true, my dear brother, and it is true, my dear sister, that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, you were in Him, and you died. I mean you died dead, and sin came out with its little lantern looking for you, and sin could not find you. That’s true. In God’s eyes, you are dead.

Now…you rose from the dead, and sin can’t find you, but the strangest thing in the world is that when Paul went to write this passage, and he said, “As sin may no longer have dominion over you,” he also said, “The law would no longer have dominion over you.” He put the law in the same category as sin. Which is shocking; we’re talking about the law of Moses. You want to hear something else really strange? He was writing the Gentiles, and yet he brings up the law.

Let me show you something, folks. Something that everybody forgot. It’s called Romans 16. Have you ever read it? You don’t have to look. You see that? That’s who this book was written to. Their names are there. They are a church. They’re a body of believers. You know where they’re meeting? They’re meeting in Priscilla’s home, in the southern part of Rome, Italy, right near the Tiber River. That’s where they’re meeting, and this was written to a body of people. It wasn’t written to you…and Romans 6 is irrelevant to you long-term.

It is glorious that I have been crucified with Christ, but Paul never said once that you have been crucified with Christ or that you’ve been raised from the dead. I’m going to repeat that slowly so that you can be shocked. Paul never said to you that you have been crucified with Christ, and you have risen from the dead with Him, and therefore sin no longer has dominion over you. Let me tell you something. I’ve been through Romans 6, and I can jump up and down and thank God; I hang a lot of my life on Romans 6, but I missed a point as a young man, just about the time I left the organized church. You want to know what the point is? It’s as simple as it can be.

Nobody ever told you this. At least 41 times, Paul addresses Romans 6 in the plural. I’m going to repeat that. Romans 6 has 23 verses; there are an absolute minimum of 41 references that are plural. In fact, that’s being strict. Except for four references, virtually every reference in there is a “we” or a “you plural.” Do you understand what I am saying? Let me repeat myself. Romans 6 is irrelevant to you as an individual on the long haul. Romans 6 applies to a body of believers for the long haul…and only a body of believers.

It is not you who reckons yourself dead. It is not you, the individual…yes, it is, but no, it isn’t…who has been crucified with Christ and has died to sin and has risen from the grave and is dead not only to sin but to the law. This was written for an entire whole…please hear this…for an entire body of believers meeting together in Priscilla’s home to say, “We have been crucified with Christ. We have died to sin. We have risen with Him. Sin no longer has enslaved us, and we are dead to the law.”

I’m going to read just a little of it. If you’ve got a Bible, you might want to follow this. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not…this is going to be a plural. You’ll understand why…do you (plural) not know that all of us have been immersed into Christ, having been immersed into His death, that 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 the newness of life if we have been made one with Jesus Christ in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of the Lord’s resurrection. That’s relevant only to a body of people.

The Christian life does not make sense outside of the church of Christ. It is an unworkable, incapable product that cannot work in our lives long-term except within a living, breathing experience of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ…and anything else is cheap.