Romans 6:1-4 – Transformed!
James Calvert was a zealous 1800’s missionary to cannibals on the Fiji Islands. His faithful work bore fruit in the lives of those accustomed to taking the life of others. Years later and English earl visited the Fiji Islands and was critical of a chief’s conversion to Christianity. "You’re a great leader but it’s a pity you’ve been taken in by those foreign missionaries. No one believes the Bible anymore. People are tired of the threadbare story of Christ dying on a cross for the sins of mankind. They know better now. I’m sorry you’ve been so foolish as to accept their story."
The old chief responded with a gleam in his eyes, "See that great rock over there? On it we smashed the heads of our victims. Notice the furnace next to it. In that oven we formerly roasted the bodies of our enemies. If it hadn’t been for those good missionaries and the love of Jesus that changed us from Cannibals into Christians, you’d now be our supper!"
Jesus didn’t walk on this earth just to teach good moral values, or learn to sympathize with the weak and oppressed, or confront people with their sins. Yes, He did all this, but lots of other religious leaders have done that too. Nor was it that He ended His life. Jim Jones and David Koresh did that much for their causes too.
No, what set Jesus apart from any other religious leader was His perfect life, His perfect death, and His perfect resurrection. His rising from the dead sets Him apart from any other religious leader past, present or future. And in doing so, He can back up His promise that He can change us as well. Transformed lives give evidence to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection.
Today we wrap up our series on why we can believe in the Resurrection. We looked at His Fatal Torment – He really die that day on the cross. We looked at the Empty Tomb – His body was missing. We looked at His Appearances – He was seen after His death. And today we look at the last piece of evidence – Transformed Lives. Let’s read Romans 6:1-4 to see the change Jesus wants to make.
We will look at different people who were changed after the Resurrection, but first we will look at 3 traditions that were changed because of the Resurrection. 1) The tradition of the Sabbath. Now, the idea of the Sabbath going back all the way to Creation shows how deeply rooted it was. Saturday, the 7th day of the week, was the day for God. Every Jew knew that. It was their lifestyle.
So why did these early believers worship on Sunday? We know they did. Acts 20:7 tells us they had communion on Sunday. 1 Corinthians 16 tells us to take up an offering on Sunday. And John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day in Revelation 1. What caused the shift? Something must have happened to change their ideas of what day to worship God. It was Jesus’ Easter Sunday resurrection and appearances. He appeared the next Sunday as well. And Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out to all believers, was on a Sunday. The Resurrection changed the Sabbath.
2) The sacrifices also changed. Up till the time of Jesus’ life, blood sacrifices needed to be made. All the way back to the time of Abraham, every Jew knew that animals needed to be sacrificed in order to appease God. However, suddenly a group of Jews stopped sacrificing. Why? Because they came to understand that Jesus became the sacrifice – the spotless Lamb whose blood would work forever. The new covenant was better than the old. Jesus was the Lamb who took away the sins of the world.
And, 3) the sacraments changed. The sacraments were/are special commands by God that need to happen in the life of a Christian. The Catholic church has 7; we believe in 2: communion and baptism. Let’s look at each of these.
A) The Jews had Passover – a remembrance of God’s deliverance over the Egyptians at the Red Sea, out of bondage and into freedom. Jews for years had celebrated this. But then, these early believers had communion, or the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper. They remembered how Jesus had delivered them. But think about this for a second. Would followers of JFK celebrate his murder by Lee Harvey Oswald? Would fans of John Lennon celebrate his murder with joy at the hands of ? Would the families of the victims who died in the Washington sniper killings celebrate their loved ones deaths? No, of course not. There is no logical explanation for early Christians to celebrate their master’s death unless He rose again afterwards.
B) The Jews also baptized Gentile converts into Judaism with a baptism in the name of the God of Israel. But after the Resurrection, converts to Christianity were baptized in the name of Jesus as well. Obviously, the early believers associated Jesus with the God of Israel. Only the Resurrection would do that.
Folks, whole lifestyles were changed. How people worshipped God, when they worshipped God – all this was transformed. What caused all this? Only the Resurrection can account for it. Only new life can make such drastic changes in people. Well, like in whom? Here’s 3.
1) Peter. This is a man who was once afraid of a little servant girl of being exposed as Jesus’ follower. What happened to him that he died, as church tradition says, a martyr’s death, hanging upside down because he was unworthy of dying the same way as his Lord?
2) James. This was the half-brother of Jesus, born of Joseph and Mary, and author of the NT book of James. Originally, he had rejected Jesus as Messiah – John 7:5. He didn’t believe. What possibly could have happened to him, that he was willing to die at the hands of Anan ben Anan, the high priest in AD62? Well, 1 Corinthians 15 tells us that he got a special appearance by the risen Jesus. No amount of talking could have convinced him. Only the resurrection could have.
3) Paul. The man who had previously hunted Christians and killed them suddenly became a believer. Changes of mind and heart don’t happen suddenly like that. They take time. What could have happened to him? He saw the Lord. He saw Jesus alive and well on a road. In fact, his whole outlook on life and values changed. This is his words, from Philippians 3:7-11: “But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” That is a changed life.
And these guys weren’t the only ones. Within weeks of the Resurrection, perhaps 10,000 Jews were willing to give up everything they knew for this new system of beliefs. They spent the rest of their lives living this new system with no payoff from a human point of view. They went without food, slept exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten and imprisoned. And many of them died torturous deaths. For what reason? Good intentions? No. It was because they were convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead.
They didn’t merely believe; they knew it. Many had seen Him. They knew it wasn’t hallucination or legend. They knew it was true. They laid their lives down on the line for the facts, not rumors. Their transformed lives were proof that Jesus’ new life flowed thru their veins as well.
So here we are today, with all this evidence that Jesus really lived, really died, and really rose again. And what are we doing with it? Are we living transformed lives? Are we being changed? Are we showing that new life flows thru our veins as well? It’s meant to. The Resurrection is not meant to be some historical event with no affect on us today. It’s meant to change us. It’s meant to give us hope that we can be more like the Master. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” Ephesians 4:22-24: “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”
Folks, this is resurrection life. This is what He came to do. Not inform but transform. It’s not about conforming to a new set of rules, but it’s about letting the Holy Spirit inside to change us. It works like this: We spend time with God in prayer and in the Bible. We talk to Him, we listen and let Him talk to us. And as we listen to what He says, He puts convictions into our minds. That is, He lets us know areas in our lives that He wants to take over. He shows us areas that fall short of what the Bible says are appropriate for a Christian. And we are left with a choice: to agree with what we hear God saying, or to ignore it, blame someone else, say the Bible can’t be taken literally, or whatever.
If we ignore, then He will keep reminding us until we get tired of His voice. We either back away from people and places where we hear His voice: church, prayer, the Bible, and so on. And our hearts begin to get hard.
But if we agree with Him, then we ask for forgiveness, which He gives quite freely. We ask Him for forgiveness, and ask Him to help us. He does. He gives us strength to do things we didn’t think we could do. He tells us to stay away from areas where we are prone to get led away. He gives us courage to do the right things. He fills our hearts with love and peace to encourage us on. He helps us sort out right motives. This is Holy Spirit power. This is the resurrection lived out in 21st-century believers. This is why He died and rose again.
But is this you? Is there an area in your life where you need some power? Some forgiveness? Some encouragement? All it takes is a YES. Say yes to what He wants in your life. Say yes to His desires and no to your own. Agree in your heart, “Yes, I believe.”
