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Rebrand | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding · Rewind

Rock Point Church

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Jan 16, 2022

Pastor Daniel Goulding · Jan 16, 2022 · 70 min watch · 3 min read

Rebrand | Week 2 | Daniel Goulding

Devotional days

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7

Scripture in this message

Romans 6
Romans 5
Romans 6:1
Romans 5:20-21
Romans 6:2
Romans 6:5

Big Idea Key points Application

Big Idea

Grace is not a license to sin — it's the power that lets us actually win, because Jesus's death and resurrection broke sin's power over us, not just its penalty.

Grace is a free gift we could never earn, but it was never meant to be a loophole for sin. Because Jesus's cross and resurrection broke both the penalty and the power of sin, we've died to our old selves and are united with Christ in new life — and that union, not willpower or rule-keeping, is what actually frees us to live differently.

Key points

1
1Romans must be understood through Paul's own transformation from Saul the persecutor to Paul the church planter.
Pastor Daniel retells how Saul, a brilliant Jewish scholar, hunted Christians because Jesus's claim to be God threatened to end the Jewish faith. After Jesus rose and confronted Saul on the road, God gave him a new name and a new mission, and Paul went on to write Romans, the theological backbone of the New Testament.
2
2Romans 1-5 establishes that all people are separated from God by sin, and Jesus alone bridges that gap through grace, not works.
He walks through Paul's argument that no one — regardless of background — can earn their way back to God, but Jesus lived the perfect life and died the death we deserved, restoring us to our original design as God's image bearers. He notes Romans 5 ends by declaring grace more than sufficient to cover any sin.
3
3Paul anticipates the obvious question: if grace is free, why not keep sinning? His answer is an emphatic no.
Pastor Daniel uses Rasputin's twisted theology — sin more so grace can abound more — as an extreme picture of the self-justifying rationalizations Christians make. He argues humans are endlessly capable of telling themselves rational lies to keep sin around while still claiming grace.
4
4Baptism pictures the reality that our old self has actually died and cannot be dragged into the new life.
Drawing on the Greek word for baptism meaning 'buried underneath,' he explains that for Paul's Jewish audience baptism and salvation were nearly simultaneous, symbolizing that the old person - with its coping mechanisms and old patterns - is dead, not just modified. He warns that clinging to that old self eventually costs people their faith, not just their comfort.
5
5The power to change comes from staying united with Christ in His resurrection, not from formulas.
He points to John 15's image of the vine and branches, where Jesus says apart from Him we can do nothing, to argue that our one responsibility is to remain and abide. Practically, he names corporate worship and personal time in the Word as ways believers stay connected to that resurrection power.
6
6Jesus's death broke not just the penalty of sin but its power, so no one has to stay enslaved to old patterns.
Reading through Romans 6:6-14, he stresses that believers are no longer slaves to sin because something within them now resists being overwhelmed by it again. He promises this is the greatest news anyone could hear, even for those who feel chained to something they've tried and failed to quit.
7
7We were freed from sin so we could live for God and become instruments of grace to others.
He closes by tying purpose to mission: the same grace that saved us is meant to be lived out and then extended to others, illustrated by his own story of Vegas friends who later called him for marriage help because they saw the fruit of a life submitted to Christ. He quotes Spurgeon's warning that grace which cannot change a life probably cannot save a soul.

A story from life

Daniel's story of attending a friend's bachelor party in Las Vegas at age 22 as a young married Christian, and the temptation to treat grace as a loophole

Application

Grace was never meant to be a trump card that gets you out of sin — it's meant to empower you to truly win.

Stop dragging the old self into new life
Identify the specific coping mechanisms, thinking, or behaviors from your old self that you keep bringing with you, and let them stay dead rather than rationalizing them as compatible with grace.
Give God 100 percent, not 98 percent
Whatever area you've been holding back from God — marriage, business, kids, quiet time — surrender it fully rather than negotiating partial devotion.
Build a rhythm of remaining
Stay connected to Christ through corporate worship and a daily habit of time in the Word, since abiding in Him, not willpower, is what sustains change.
Ask God to change your desires, not just your behavior
Rather than relying only on accountability tools, pray honestly for God to transform your heart in the one area you know you need to stop or start doing something about.
Have an honest moment of reflection on your fruit
Examine what your life is actually producing and ask whether your grace has changed your behavior; if you've never had the moment of new birth in Christ, start there this morning.

Take it into your week

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Scripture in this message

From the transcript
“Hey, if you have a bible, open up to Romans chapter six. I know there's playoff football happening, so I will get us out here in at least two hours or less”
From the transcript
“Romans five emphatically states that there's nothing that the cross can't cover. Grace is enough”
From the transcript
“that's where we start in Romans six verse one. He says, well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace”
From the transcript
“He developed an entire theological disposition centered around Romans five verses twenty and twenty one. Where sin increases, grace increases all the more. Therefore, God is in the business of forgiving sinners”
From the transcript
“Here's where he continues in verse two. He says, of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it”
From the transcript
“He says, or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and we were buried with Christ by baptism”
From the transcript
“Here's where Paul starts to get practical with us in verse five. He says, since we have been united with Him in His death, here's where the key and the power is. He says, we will also be raised to life as He was”
From the transcript
“It's John 15. John 15, Jesus again trying to explain this mystery, this concept to his disciples. He said, guys, you have to understand. You are the branches. I am the vine”
From the transcript
“he says 11 times in seven verses in John chapter 15 that we our responsibility on this side of eternity is to remain. It's to abide. It's to stay”
From the transcript
“And then I remember when I read Romans chapter six, that part of my responsibility is to remain”
From the transcript
“He says that we know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin”
From the transcript
“He says, so therefore, do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in to those sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin”

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

7-day devotional

A personal reading plan from this message — scripture, reflection, and prayer for each day.

Sign in to track your progress through this devotional.

Day 1

Before Paul gets to the hard question in Romans 6, he sets up why the question even needs to be asked. In Romans 5:20-21, he writes that where sin increased, grace increased all the more — so that just as sin reigned in death, grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life. That is an astonishing claim. Grace is bigger than sin. Always. But Pastor Daniel pointed out that this very greatness of grace is what tempts people to treat it carelessly, as if its abundance means our choices don't matter. Here at the start of the week, it's worth sitting with that tension honestly. Grace is not a small thing you might accidentally use up. It is vast, freely given, and it covers real sin. But Paul's point — and the sermon's — is that grace was never meant to be a ceiling you bump against and then bounce back down from. It was meant to be the ground you stand on as you walk forward. Today, simply let the size of grace land on you. You are not holding yourself up by your own effort. Grace already did something permanent when Jesus rose from the dead, and that same grace is still at work in you right now.

For reflection

When you think about God's grace toward you, does it feel more like a relief or more like an invitation — and what might that reveal about where you are with Him right now?

Pray

Pray for a fresh, honest sense of how big God's grace really is — and what it cost.

Day 2

Pastor Daniel described the opening verses of Romans 6 as Paul essentially interrupting himself to answer a question he knew was coming: 'Should we keep on sinning so that grace can show off even more?' And Paul's answer is immediate — of course not. The Greek word he uses carries something closer to 'absolutely not' or 'may it never be.' It is not a mild correction; it is a firm, almost startled refusal. Why? Because the question itself misunderstands what grace is. Grace is not a policy that manages sin from a distance. It is a power that entered your life and changed you from the inside. To keep deliberately sinning and then shrug toward grace is to treat the most costly gift in history as a convenience. Pastor Daniel was careful here not to pile guilt on anyone — because if you're honest, most of us have rationalized something. That's human. But today's passage invites you to ask whether there is any area of your life where you've quietly been treating grace as a loophole rather than as the transforming force it actually is. The invitation is not condemnation — it's clarity.

For reflection

Is there a habit, a pattern, or an attitude you've been excusing with the thought that 'God will forgive me anyway'? What would it look like to take that to Him honestly today?

Pray

Pray for honesty — the courage to name what you've been rationalizing, without shame but without excuses.

Day 3

The imagery Paul uses in these verses is striking and physical. Baptism is a burial. You go under the water as someone who has died, and you come up as someone who has been raised. Pastor Daniel pressed on this: the old self — the person you were before Christ — was not put on pause. It was buried. You don't dig it back up. You don't let it ride in the passenger seat. That version of you died with Jesus, and that is not a metaphor to be softened. It's one of the most freeing things the Bible says. The things that used to define you, the sin that used to own you, the identity you used to carry — none of that has a legitimate claim on you anymore. Now, you may feel like that old self is very much still alive and loud. That's a real experience, and the rest of Romans 6 is written for exactly that tension. But the starting point is to believe what Paul says is true: your old self went into the grave with Christ, and the life you are living now is a resurrection life. Today, let that sink in not as a demand to feel differently, but as a fact to build on.

For reflection

What would change about how you see yourself if you truly believed your old self was buried and not just on hold?

Pray

Pray for a settled belief in what God says is already true about who you are in Christ.

Day 4

There's a word in Romans 6:5 that is easy to skip past: 'united.' Paul says that if we have been united with Christ in His death, we will also be united with Him in His resurrection. This is not a transaction where Jesus takes your sin and hands you a clean record and then steps back. This is a union — a living, ongoing connection between you and the risen Christ. And that changes everything about how you approach the struggle with sin. Pastor Daniel made this plain: the power to overcome sin does not come from trying harder. It comes from staying connected to the One who already overcame it. The same resurrection power that raised a dead man from a sealed tomb is not sitting idle. It is actively at work inside every believer. That means when you face a temptation that feels bigger than you, you are not facing it alone, and you are not facing it with only your own willpower as a resource. You are facing it as someone joined to resurrection life. Today's reflection is less about effort and more about trust — trusting that the power is real, that the union is real, and that staying close to Jesus is not a spiritual nicety but your actual source of strength.

For reflection

In your daily life, do you tend to approach sin and struggle as a willpower problem or as a connection problem? What difference might that distinction make?

Pray

Pray for a deeper trust that resurrection power is genuinely available to you — not just someday, but today.

Day 5

Pastor Daniel brought in John 15 to give the practical shape to what staying connected to Jesus actually looks like. Jesus uses a vine and branches to describe it — not because it's a nice picture, but because it's an accurate one. A branch doesn't produce fruit through effort. It produces fruit by staying attached to the vine and letting the vine's life flow through it. The moment it is cut off, it can do nothing. This is exactly Paul's point in Romans 6 made visible: the life is in the connection, not in the branch's own striving. For us, that connection is kept alive through time in the Word, through corporate worship alongside other believers, and through daily conversation with God in prayer. These aren't boxes to check — they are the actual channels through which resurrection life reaches you. You may have heard that before, but Pastor Daniel's challenge this week is to take it seriously as a question of power, not just discipline. What would it look like this week to be genuinely present in these practices — not performing them, but staying attached and letting the life come? The fruit of a transformed life follows from that kind of abiding.

For reflection

Which of the three — time in the Word, corporate worship, or daily prayer — feels most like a routine right now rather than a real connection point, and what might you do about that?

Pray

Pray for the desire to abide, not just to perform — and for the habit of connection to grow more natural and alive.

Day 6

These verses are the theological heart of the chapter and the backbone of Pastor Daniel's main point: Jesus did not only pay the penalty for sin on the cross — He broke sin's power. There is a difference between those two things, and it matters enormously. Paul writes that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power over our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. That word — slaves — is not incidental. Sin is not just a bad habit. In Paul's framing, it was a master that owned you and compelled your obedience. The cross ended that ownership. The resurrection sealed the verdict. And now Paul says: count yourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word 'count' is important — it means to reckon it as true, to operate as if this reality is real, because it is. This is not wishful thinking or positive self-talk. It is a decision to agree with what God says is already done. Today, wherever you feel like sin is still calling the shots in some corner of your life, you have permission — and a basis — to say: that is not who I am anymore. Not because you've earned it, but because Christ did.

For reflection

Is there a specific area of your life where you have been acting as if sin still has authority over you, even though you know what Christ did? What would it mean to 'count it dead' in that area?

Pray

Pray for the courage and conviction to reckon yourself truly dead to sin and alive to God — not just in feeling, but in daily decision.

Day 7

Pastor Daniel closed the sermon with these verses and a two-part challenge that brings the whole chapter into focus. First, an honest moment of reflection: is there a sin of commission — something you need to stop — or a sin of omission — something you need to start — that you've been dragging into your new life? Second, and more fundamentally, the way forward is not willpower. It is staying connected to Jesus through the Word, through worship, and through prayer — trusting that the same resurrection power that raised Christ is at work in you, able to change not just your behavior but your actual desires. Paul closes this section with a summary that holds both the warning and the hope together: 'Do not let sin control the way you live,' and 'Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace.' That last line is worth sitting with. Grace is not just forgiveness for the past — it is freedom and transforming power for right now. You are not a person trying to clean yourself up enough to be worthy. You are a person God has made new, called to live as His instrument in the world — with your time, your gifts, your resources, and the story of what He has done in you.

For reflection

Looking back over this week, what is one concrete next step — a sin to surrender, a habit to start, a connection to deepen — that you sense God is actually inviting you toward?

Pray

Pray for the willingness to take that one step — and for the ongoing trust that grace is not just where you started, but the power that carries you forward.

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

Small-group discussion guide

For leading a group conversation about this message.

Open

Paul opens Romans 6 with a question that is almost too uncomfortable to ask out loud: 'Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace?' Take a moment to sit with that — and consider why Paul even had to raise it.

Discussion questions

1
In Romans 6:1-2, Paul asks whether grace gives believers a reason to keep sinning — then immediately answers his own question with 'of course not.' What do you think made that question worth addressing in the first place, and what does Paul's sharp response tell us about how he understood grace?
2
Paul uses the imagery of baptism in Romans 6:3-4 to describe what happened to the old self — death, burial, and a new emergence. What do you think Paul is trying to communicate about the nature of the change that takes place when someone comes to faith in Jesus?
3
Romans 6:5 says that being united with Christ in His death means being united with Him in His resurrection. How does that connection — not just forgiveness, but resurrection power — change the way we might think about the struggle with sin?
4
In John 15, Jesus describes Himself as the vine and His followers as branches — fruitfulness depends entirely on staying connected to Him. Alongside Romans 6:6-11, how do those two passages together help explain why Paul says believers are no longer slaves to sin?
5
Romans 6:12-14 closes with Paul calling believers to become instruments of grace to the people around them. What might that look like practically in everyday relationships and ordinary settings?
6
Pastor Daniel challenged us to think about something we have been rationalizing — a sin of commission or omission — and then pointed us away from willpower and toward staying connected to Jesus through the Word, worship, and prayer. What does that distinction — willpower versus remaining connected — actually mean for how we pursue change?

Pray together

Gratitude for a grace that not only forgives but genuinely frees — and for the resurrection power that is already at work within us

Rewind AI contributed study material from the sermon transcript; church-authored wording and verified sermon quotes keep their own source. Always trust the sermon itself over anything here. How Rewind uses AI

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Topics

Baptism as New Life Breaking Sin's Power Dying and Rising with Christ Grace and Sin Transformation in Christ

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