Romans 6

CHAPTER 6THEME: Positional sanctification; practical sanctificationWe discovered in chapter 5 that sin has come through the headship of Adam and that sanctification comes through the headship of Christ. Because of the natural headship of Adam, sin was imputed to the human family. But there is another head of the human family, and that is Christ. He brings life and righteousness. He removes the guilt of sin from us. And on that basis, He can move into the lives of those who trust in Him and begin to make them righteous. That is, He can begin to make them good. Now here in chapter 6 we begin with what I have labeled “positional sanctification.” Let me say a word about this matter of sanctification. There is a difference between justification and sanctification. These are two words from the Bible, my friend, that you ought to cozy up to and get acquainted with. There is a difference between merely being saved from sin and being made the type of folk we should be because we are separated unto God. Identification with Christ for justification is also the grounds of our sanctification. We are in Christ. These are two different subjects, but they are not mutually exclusive. Justification is the foundation on which all the superstructure of sanctification rests. Now let me put it like this: justification is an act; sanctification is a work. Justification took place the moment you trusted Christyou were declared righteous; the guilt was removed. Then God began a work in you that will continue throughout your life. I believe in instantaneous salvation, but sanctification is a lifelong process. In other words, justification is the means; sanctification is the end. Justification is for us; sanctification is in us. Justification declares the sinner righteous; sactification makes the sinner righteous. Justification removes the guilt and penalty of sin; sanctification removes the growth and the power of sin. God is both an exterior and interior decorator. He is an exterior decorator in that He enables us to stand before Him because He has paid the penalty and removed the guilt of sin from us. But He is also an interior decorator. He moves into our hearts and lives by the power of the Holy Spirit to make us the kind of Christians we should be. God does not leave us in sin when He saves us. This does not imply that sanctification is a duty that is derived from justification. It is a fact that proceeds from it, or rather, both justification and sanctification flow from being in Christ, crucified and risen. The sinner appropriates Christ by faith for both his salvation and his sanctification. We’re told in 1Co_1:30, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Up to chapter 6, Paul does not discuss the holy life of the saint. From chapter 6 on, Paul does not discuss the salvation of the sinner. He wasn’t talking about the saint and the life he is to live when he was discussing salvation. Now he is discussing that. Therefore, the subject of this chapter is the ability of God to make sinners, whom He has declared righteous, actually righteous. He shows that the justified sinner cannot continue in sin because he died and rose again in Christ.

To continue in sin leads to slavery to sin and is the additional reason for not continuing in sin. The believer has a new nature now, and he is to obey God. This section delivers us from the prevalent idea today that a believer can do as he pleases. Union with Christ in His death and resurrection means that He is now our Lord and our Master. He gives us freedom, but that freedom is not license, as we are going to see.

Romans 6:1

POSITIONAL SANCTIFICATIONPaul is being argumentative. He wasn’t, you remember, when he was discussing sin. Rather, he was stating facts. He wasn’t trying to prove anything. He just looked at life in the raw, right down where the rubber meets the road, and said that we are all sinners. However, now he uses this idiomatic question which opens this chapter, and he is argumentative. In the Greek the question is asked in such a way that there is only one answer. He precedes the question with “What shall we say then?” After you see God’s wonderful salvation, what can you say to it? Our only fitting response is hallelujah! What else can you say to God’s wonderful salvation? Now Paul’s argumentative question is this: “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” And this, my friend, is God’s answer to the question of whether, after we are saved, we can continue to live in sin. The answer is, “God forbid” or “perish the thought!” or “may it never be!”

Romans 6:2

The very fact that Paul is asking this question makes it obvious that he understood justification to mean a declaration of righteousness; that it did not mean to make a person good, but to declare a person good. Justification means that the guilt or the penalty of sin is removed, not the power of sin in this life. Now he is going to talk about removing the power of sin. If God has declared you to be righteous and has removed the guilt of your sin, then, my friend, you cannot continue in sin. The answer is, “God forbid!” “How shall we, that are dead to sin"this is something that is misunderstood. We are never dead to sin as long as we are in this life. The literal translation is, “How shall we who have died to sin.” Note this distinction. That means we died in the person of our substitute, Jesus Christ. We died to sin in Christ. But we are never dead to sin. Any honest person knows he never reaches the place where he is dead to sin. He does reach the place where he wants to live for God, but he recognizes he still has that old sin nature. It is verses like that that have led a group of sincere folk, whom I call super-duper saintsI hope I’m not being unfair to themto feel they have reached an exalted plane where they do not commit sin. One such group is a branch of those who teach the “victorious life.” They feel they have reached the pinnacle of perfection. There are different brands of these, I know, but one group was especially obnoxious several years ago in Southern California. One young man approached me following a morning worship service, and he asked, “Are you living the victorious life?” I think I shocked him when I said, “No, I’m not!” Then I asked him, “Are you?” Well, he beat around the bush and didn’t want to give me a direct answer. He said he tried to. And I said, “Wait a minute, that’s not the question.

You asked me if I am living it, and I said no. Now you answer me yes or no.” And to this good day he hasn’t answered me. Like most of them, he was a very anemic-looking fellow; I suspected he was a fugitive from a blood bank. He continued arguing his case. “Well, doesn’t the Scripture say, ‘I am crucified with Christ?’ and doesn’t it say that we are dead to sin?” I said, “No, that is not what the Scriptures say. We died to sin in Christthat’s our positionbut we are never dead to sin in this life. You have a sinful nature; I have a sinful nature; and we’ll have it as long as we are in this life.” He persisted, “Then what does it mean when it says we are crucified with Christ?” So I told him, “When Christ died over nineteen hundred years ago, that is when we died.

We died in Him, and we were raised in Him, and we are joined now to a living Christ. This is the great truth that is there. I don’t know about you, but I’m not able to crucify myself. The very interesting thing is that you can kill yourself in a variety of waysby poison, with a gun, by jumping off a buildingbut you cannot crucify yourself. Maybe you can drive the nails into one hand on a cross, but how are you going to fasten the other hand to the cross? You cannot do it.

How are you going to crucify yourself? You cannot do it. My young friend, you were crucified over nineteen hundred years ago when Christ died.”

Romans 6:3

This again is a verse that has been misunderstood. If you find water in this verse, you have missed the meaning. Many years ago the late Dr. William L. Pettingill was conducting a conference in the church I was pastoring, and as I was driving him back to the hotel after a service, I said, “Dr. Pettingill, did I understand you to say there is no water in the sixth chapter of Romans?” (I should add that he was the strongest “immersionist” I have ever met in my life.) He laughed and said, “No, that’s not exactly what I said. I said that if all you see in Romans 6 is water, you have missed the point.” I said, “Well, if you go that far, that is wonderful for me because it confirms the great truth that is here.” What did Paul mean by the word baptize in this third verse? I do not think he refers to water baptism primarily. Don’t misunderstand me; I believe in water baptism, and I believe that immersion best sets forth what is taught here. But actually he is talking about identification with Christ. You see, the translators did not translate the Greek word baptiz, they merely transliterated it. That is they just spelled the Greek word out in English, because baptiz has so many meanings.

In my Greek lexicon there are about twenty meanings for this word. Actually baptiz could refer to dyeing your hair. In fact, there was a group in Asia Minor who dyed their hair purple; and they belonged to a bapti group. But here in Rom_6:3 Paul is speaking about identification with Jesus Christ. We were baptized or identified into His death. In 1Co_12:13 Paul says, “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body ….” We are identified in the death of Christ, as Paul will explain in the next verse. Now Paul is going to say that there are three things essential to our santification. Two of them are positional; one of them is very practical. For the two that are positional, we are to know something. Every gadget that you buy has instructions with it. When I buy a toy for one of my grandsons, I take it out of the box, and I try to follow instructions for assembling itand sometimes it is very difficult for me to do. Well, living the Christian life is such an important thing that it comes with instructions.

There are certainly things we are to know. We are to know that when Christ died over nineteen hundred years ago, we were identified with Him. Let me make it personal. Nineteen hundred years ago, they led me outside of an oriental city by the name of Jerusalem. By the way, I stood at that spot not too long ago. I looked up to Gordon’s Calvary, the Place of the Skull, Golgotha.

I tried to visualize the One who died there. When He died there over nineteen hundred years ago, He took Vernon McGee there. I was the one who was guilty. He was not guilty. Don’t argue with me about whether the Jews crucified ChristHe died on the Roman crossbut let’s not argue that. My sin put Him up there, and your sin put Him up there, my friend.

We were identified with Jesus Christ. That is something that we should know, and it is very important for us to know. We’re identified with him. Now Paul will amplify this:

Romans 6:4

“We are buried with him by baptism into death"just as we are identified with Christ in His death, likewise are we identified with Christ in His resurrection. We are joined today to a living Christ. In other words, our sins have already been judged; we are already raised; and we are yonder seated with Christ in the heavenlies. My friend, there are only two places for your sins: either they were on Christ when he died for you over nineteen hundred years agobecause you have trusted Him as your Savioror they are on you today, and judgment is ahead for you. There is no third place for them. “We are buried with him by baptism [identification] into [His] death.” Frankly, although I was reared a Presbyterian, I think that immersion is a more accurate type of this identification. I think the Spirit’s baptism is the real baptism. Water is the ritual baptism, but I do think that immersion sets forth the great spiritual truth that is here. This is the reason a child of God should be baptized in water in our day. It is a testimony that he is joined to the living Christ. That is all important. What did Peter mean when he said in 1Pe_3:21, “…baptism doth also now save us …”? How does it save us? Well, in the preceding verse he talks about eight souls who were saved in the ark. They went through the waters of judgment inside the ark. The folk in the water were those who were outside the ark, and they were drowned. The eight people in the ark didn’t get wet at allyet Peter says they were saved by baptism.

Obviously the word baptism has nothing to do with water in this instance; rather it means identification. They were identified with the ark. They had believed God, and they had gotten into the ark. God saw that little boat floating on the surface of the water. Now today God sees Christ; He doesn’t see Vernon McGee because I am in Christ. He is my ark today.

Christ went down into the waters of death, and we are in Christ. And we are raised with Him. We are joined to Him. This is important. Don’t miss it. If you do, you will miss one of the greatest truths of the Christian life.

Romans 6:5

In other words, if we are united by being grafted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also united by growthgrafted, vitally connectedin the likeness of His resurrection. We actually share the life of Christ somewhat as a limb grafted into a tree shares the life of the tree. The life of Christ is our life now.

Romans 6:6

“Knowing this"these are things we know. When Paul says your “old man” is crucified with Him, he doesn’t mean your father; he means your old nature is crucified with Him. “That the body of sin might be destroyed"the word destroyed is katargeo, meaning “to make of none effect, to be paralyzed or canceled or nullified"“that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Paul is not saying that the old nature is eradicated. He is saying that since the old man was crucified, the body of sin has been put out of business, so that from now on we should not be in bondage to sin.

Romans 6:7

For he who died is declared righteous from sin. He is acquitted. That is his position.

Romans 6:8

If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also be living with Him both here and hereafter. We share His resurrection life today, and we will be raised from the dead someday.

Romans 6:9

“Knowing"this is something else we are to know. “He ever liveth” is the visitor’s chorus. The glorified Christ says, “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev_1:18). The resurrection opens up eternity to Christ, and it will open up eternity to those who will trust Him.

Romans 6:10

He died one time, but He is alive today. And He ever lives to make intercession for those who are His. Because of this, He can save you right through to the utmost. Now we come to the second thing that we as believers are to reckon on.

Romans 6:11

“Reckon” doesn’t mean I “reckon” or “suppose,” as some of us Texans use it. Rather, we are to count on the fact that we are dead unto sin and alive unto God. We are to reckon (count on it) that our old nature lay in Joseph’s tomb over nineteen hundred years ago, but when Christ came back from the dead, we came back from the dead in Him. This is something to count on.

Romans 6:12

That is, don’t let sin keep on reigning in your body, that you should obey the desires of the body.

Romans 6:13

PRACTICAL SANCTIFICATIONWe have seen that sanctification is positional. That means we are to know something. We are to know God’s method of making a sinner the kind of person He wants him to be. While justification merely declared him righteous, removed the guilt of sin, it did not change him in his life. It gave him a new nature. Now he is to know that he was buried with Christ and raised with Him. God wants him to live in the power of the Holy Spirit. The believer is joined to the living Christ. He is to reckon on that fact; he is to count on it. He is to consider it as true. You see, God saved us by faith, and we are to live by faith. Many of us, and that includes this poor preacher, have trusted Him for salvation, but are we trusting Him in our daily living? We are to live by faith. Now we come to that which is very practical indeed. You are to yield yourself or present yourself to God. Yield is the same word as present in Rom_12:1; “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God ….” This is a presentation of yourself for service. Yield is the same word, and it means “to present yourself.” The idea of the surrendered life or the yielded life sounds colorless to so many people. We talk about surrendering and at the same time living the victorious life, and they seem to be a contradiction of terms. I like the word present much better"Neither present ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.” The reason most of us get into trouble is because we yield ourselves to the old nature. By an act of the will we can yield ourselves to do God’s will through the new nature. A little girl fell out of bed one night and began to cry. Her mother rushed in to her bedroom, picked her up, put her back in bed, and asked her, “Honey, why did you fall out of bed?” And she said, “I think I stayed too close to the place where I got in.” And that’s the reason a great many of us fall, my friend. It is because we are actually yielding ourselves to the old nature. We’re following the dictates of the old nature; that is what gets us into trouble. Although we will not get rid of that old nature in this life, we are told now, “Yield yourselves unto God.” Just as you yield yourself to do sin, you are to yield yourself unto God “as those that are alive from the dead.” You’re now alive in Christ. You have a new nature. You’ve been born again. “And your members as instruments of righteousness unto God” deals with that which is specific and particular. What is your real problem, friend? I know what mine is. What about yours? Whatever that specific thing is, yield it to God. A bad temper?

Well, take that to Him and talk to Him about it. What about a gossipy tongue? A dear lady who attended a “tongues meeting” was asked if she wanted to speak in tongues. She exclaimed, “Oh, my no. I’d like to lose about forty feet off the one I have now!” If your tongue is your problem, yield it to God. And by the way, in this day in which we are living, what about immorality?

Sex is the big subject of the hour. My, everybody’s getting in on the act today. Is that your sin? Well, you’re to yield yourself to Godyour members “as instruments of righteousness unto God.” And don’t tell me you can’t do it. You can do it through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 6:14

The Law was given to control the old nature. As a believer, you are not to live by the old nature. You have a new nature, and you are to yield yourself or present yourself to God. What a glorious, wonderful privilege it is to present ourselves to Him!

Romans 6:15

Let me give my translation of this verse, which may be helpful: What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? (Should we commit an act of sin? For you are no more under law, but under grace.) Away with the thought (perish the thought). The form of the question is put differently here than it was back in verse Rom_6:1. Paul has demonstrated in the past fourteen verses that God’s method of sanctification is on the same basis as justification; it is by faith, faith that God can do it. You and I cannot do it. When we learn that we cannot live the Christian life, we have learned a great lesson. Then we are prepared to let Him live it through us. Paul’s question here is whether there should be an assist given to grace to accomplish its high and holy end. In other words, the natural man thinks there ought to be some laws, rules, or regulations given. In the course of the church’s history we have had all kinds of groups that have come up with rules for living the Christian life. There were the Puritans, a wonderful group of folk, and we owe a great deal to them, but they had a strict observance of the Sabbath Day (they called Sunday the Sabbath, which, of course, it is not). A strict observance of Sunday was an obsession with them. We have a carry-over of that today.

There are a great number of groups who put down certain rules for a believer. Some of our fundamental people have made, not ten commandments, but about twenty new commandments. If the believer does certain things and refrains from doing certain other things, he is living the Christian life. This is the reason, friend, that I oppose the idea that you can become a wonderful Christian by taking some of these short courses being offered today. That’s not the way you are to do it. We have a girl in our office who took a course, and, oh, she was enthusiastic.

But you ought to see her today. She is really in a depression. Why? Because she tried to do it by rules and did not let Christ do it. The Christian life is not following certain rules; you can follow rules and regulations and still not be living the Christian life. Somebody asks, “Then what is the Christian life?” The Christian life is to be obedient unto Christ. It means communication with Christ. My friend, do you love Him? That’s the important thing. He says, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (Joh_14:15, italics mine).

Identification with Christ is positional sanctification, as we have seen. That is basic. But obedience to Christ is the experience of sanctification, and that is practical sanctification. It is just as simple as that, my friend. It is not how you walk, but where you walkare you walking in the light, walking in fellowship with Christ? Sin will break the fellowship, of course, and then we are to confess our sin.

The Lord Jesus said to Peter yonder in the Upper Room, “If I wash you not, you have no part with me” (see Joh_13:8). We don’t have fellowship with Him unless we confess our sins to Him as we go along. Our part is confession; His part is cleansing (see 1Jn_1:9). The important thing for you and me is to have fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and to obey Him. Then we will be living the Christian life. Vincent once said to Godet, “There is a subtle poison which insinuates itself into the heart even of the best Christian; it is the temptation to say: Let us sin, not that grace may abound, but because it abounds.” You see, there are many Christians today who say, “I am saved, and I can do as I please.” My friend, if you have been saved by grace, you cannot do as you please, as we shall see in the eighth chapter of Romans. In his letter to the Galatian believers, Paul makes it clear that there are three ways in which you can live: (1) You can live by law; (2) you can live by license; (3) you can live by liberty. To live by law, everyone puts down some principle. I read of a movie star who said that his whole life was given to sexthat’s his law; he lives by that. Regardless of who you are, if you are living by law, you are living by the old nature. Then, the other extreme which Paul is guarding against here, is license. If you are a child of God, you can’t do as you please; you have to do as Christ pleases. You must be obedient to the Lord Jesus Christ, present yourself to Him. This is practical, a great deal more practical than you may realize.

Romans 6:16

“Know ye not"when Paul says this, we can be sure that we believers don’t know, and we need to know. “To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are.” Every person who is living is a bond servant to someone or something. I heard a contemporary commentator observe that every person obeys some person or some thing. That is true. You could even be obeying Satan himself. Because of our very natures, we are servants or slaves to something or to somebody. Now Paul is saying here that the one who is our master is the one whom we obey. If you obey sin, then that is your master. Don’t say Christ is your master if you are living in sin; He is not your master. He brings you into the place of liberty. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (Joh_8:36)free to do what? You will be free to live for Him, free to obey Him. And the Lord Jesus said again, “…Verily, verily, I say unto you.

Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (Joh_8:34). Now let me use a very homely illustration. There is a very swanky club across the street from the church I served in downtown Los Angeles. It is made up of rich men, and I’m told that it costs several thousand dollars to join this club. If you belong to it, you probably own a Cadillac and have a chauffeur. Well, one day as I looked out the window, I saw a group of chauffeurs standing around talking, and there were several Cadillacs parked there.

It was after lunch. Finally, I saw a very distinguished-looking gentleman come out of the club; he made a motion and said something. I couldn’t hear what he said, but I saw one of the chauffeurs leave the group of about fifteen men. He went over, opened the door of the car, the distinguished-looking man got in, then he went around, got in the driver’s seat and drove off. Now, I came to a very profound conclusion: that chauffeur was the servant or the employee of the man who called him. I don’t think those other fourteen chauffeurs were employed by the man in the car because they didn’t obey him.

Only the man who obeyed him was working for him. He obeyed him because that man was his master. This is what Paul is saying. Regardless of who you are, whomever you obey, whatever you obey, that is your master. You are obeying something or someone. Now that brings us to a personal question. Is Christ really our master today? Just because you don’t murder, you don’t lie, you don’t do other things the Mosaic Law prohibits, doesn’t mean you are living the Christian life. It may mean you are living a good life, but that is all. The Christian life is one where we obey Christ.

Romans 6:17

In other words, when you were in the world, when you were lost, you obeyed sin. It was natural for you to do that. A man may live such an exemplary life that the chamber of commerce presents him with a medal and a loving cup and makes him the citizen of the year. I overheard such a man talking one time after he had been presented with the cup as the outstanding citizen of a certain community. The language of this man was the foulest language I had ever heard. He may be the outstanding citizen of that community, but it’s quite obvious whom he’s obeying. He is obeying the Devil! The fact that you obey Christ is the thing that is important. Now, another thing that we need to understand is that, when you have been saved, you have a new nature that can obey Christ. Paul went through the experience, as we shall see in the next chapter, of being a new Christian and discovering that there was no good in his old nature. Paul says, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Rom_7:18). Although many of us have not discovered this, there is no good in us; the old nature has no good in it. You can do a lot to improve it, but you sure can’t make it good. The second startling fact is this: there is no power in the new nature. That’s where most of us make our mistake. We think that because we are now Christians, we can walk on top of the world. We can’t. We are just as weak as we’ve ever been before. This is the reason that we have to walk by faith and in the power of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit of God can produce the Christian life, as we shall see.

Romans 6:18

We have been liberated. In other words, He has made it possible for us to live the Christian life. It does not mean that sin has been eradicated or removed. It does mean that now we can live for God.

Romans 6:19

Let me give you my translation of this verse: I speak in human terms on account of the difficulties of apprehension or the weakness of your human nature; for as you presented or yielded your members slaves for the practice of impurity and to lawlessness; even so now present your members slaves to righteousness. Paul explains here, I think, why he uses the term servants. He half-way apologizes in the last verse for using it. Slavery was common in the Roman Empire. Out of the 120 million people in the Roman Empire, one-half were slaves. Many Christians were slaves. And the little Epistle to Philemon reveals that freedom was a prized possession and difficult to obtain. Now Paul uses this familiar metaphor which he describes as “human terms.” He doesn’t mean he is not speaking by inspiration, but he is speaking in a manner which we will understand. And we will understand by these human terms that we are actually slaves. Now, the religious rulers were insulted when the Lord suggested that they were slaves of sin. Remember the Lord Jesus said to those Jews that believed on Him, “…If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin” (Joh_8:31-34). Oh, how many men and women today are slaves of sin! Observe the tragedy of our young people who have rebelled against the rules and regulations of the establishment and who have been destroyed by the thousands by drugs and alcohol!

You may be delivered from one group with its rules and regulations, but if you don’t turn to Christ, you may be getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. What is happening in our culture today is one of the saddest things of our contemporary age. The Lord Jesus says that when you commit sin, you are the servant of sin.

Romans 6:20

That is, you don’t think of serving Christ then; you weren’t interested in that. You were free from Him.

Romans 6:21

You were not only free from Christ, you were fruitless. You did as you pleased. The only fruit was shame. Actually, it was not real freedom, it was license. Do you want to go back to the old life? I receive scores of letters from young people who were formerly known as “hippies” and have turned to Christ. They are ashamed of that old life. When you drop into sin, does it break your heart? The difference between a child of God and a child of the Devil is that a child of the Devil just loves doing what the Devil wants done. But to the child of God it is a heartbreak.

Romans 6:22

He sets before believers now the golden and glad prospect that is theirs as slaves of God. They are freed from sin which leads to death, and they can have fruit which will abide into eternity. Life eternal is in contrast to death. An illustration of this is seen in the lives of pioneer missionaries. I think of the group of young people, some of them still in their teens, who went out to the Hawaiian Islands in 1819. They gave their lives gladly, joyfully, to the service of Christ. (They have been maligned in recent years.

Oh, how the godless tourist loves to hear them ridiculed!) But they laid the foundation for the greatest revival that has taken place since Pentecostmore people were won to Christ per capita. I never grow weary of hearing their story. They had fruit, my friend. How wonderful it was!

Romans 6:23

The Devil is the paymaster, and he will see to it that you get paid. If you work for him, the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life. And you will receive that gift by faith. You are saved by faith. You are to live by faith. You are to walk moment by moment by faith. You cannot live for God by yourself any more than you can save yourself. It requires constant dependence upon Him, looking to the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit.