SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be in Romans chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to turn your Bibles over there, Romans chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: I want to welcome everyone here.
SPEAKER_00: If you're visiting, so glad you get to be here with us.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to, of course, welcome everyone into God's Word, and we're going to study God's Word together.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be the main idea of our lesson this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you present yourself to every day?
SPEAKER_00: What do you give your time and attention to?
SPEAKER_00: Answering these questions helps determine our allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: It helps determine where our faith is.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul is essentially getting at here in the end of Romans chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at verses 15 through 23.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to break them down.
SPEAKER_00: Really, one of the best ways to do that is to simply just go verse by verse.
SPEAKER_00: And so we zoom in on verse 15 and he opens up here with grace.
SPEAKER_00: Romans 6, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: What then are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace?
SPEAKER_00: By no means, he says.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that is almost the exact way he opens up the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 6 and verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_00: Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
SPEAKER_00: Paul here is saying right away, reminding us that when we are in Christ, we are under grace.
SPEAKER_00: But either way, when you look at these two verses, the main idea is the same.
SPEAKER_00: Are we to keep on sinning even though we're under grace?
SPEAKER_00: Actually, no, he says.
SPEAKER_00: And contrary to what many might expect, grace does not leave room for a sinful life.
SPEAKER_00: At least not a proper understanding of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, grace in our culture has sometimes become synonymous with this idea of anarchy.
SPEAKER_00: Anything goes.
SPEAKER_00: God's forgiveness can be abused.
SPEAKER_00: His love for us can be abused.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need faith.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: But when we're looking at the scriptures, we realize that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: God loves us, but he demands that we have faith in him.
SPEAKER_00: To help us kind of understand grace a little bit better, we'll pause here in Romans 6.
SPEAKER_00: Turn over to Isaiah chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second as you turn over there that you are Isaiah and you find yourself in God's throne room.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think there's sin in God's throne room?
SPEAKER_00: Active sin?
SPEAKER_00: Paul would probably say, by no means.
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: What do we see the seraphim saying in verse 3 of Isaiah chapter 6?
SPEAKER_00: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: The whole earth is full of his glory.
SPEAKER_00: And if there's any sin, it's coming from Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: And what does Isaiah say?
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah in verse 5 says, he opens it up and he says, Woe is me.
SPEAKER_00: Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips.
SPEAKER_00: And I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to hear from Paul that lawlessness leads to more lawlessness.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For my eyes have seen the king, the Messiah of Christ Jesus, the Lord of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: You think Isaiah here deserves to be standing before God?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Does he deserve to be standing in God's throne room as great as it is?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The sin that comes from Isaiah comes from his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, the seraphim comes and he takes a burning coal from the altar and he places it on Isaiah's lips.
SPEAKER_00: And notice what the seraphim says in verse 7.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Behold, this has touched your lips.
SPEAKER_00: Your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, God has favor on Isaiah.
SPEAKER_00: That's grace.
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful picture of grace.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to see themes that are in this chapter that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 6, things like holiness and so forth.
SPEAKER_00: After this moment, in fact, Isaiah goes and essentially does what Paul calls us to be: a slave to God.
SPEAKER_00: And so who are we a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: When we have a proper view of grace, you could say the free gift of being in God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: There should be no active sin.
SPEAKER_00: We have God with us, and as Christians, we are in the presence of God, and there is no room for sin.
SPEAKER_00: People who think that they can continuously just live in sin without any respect to change or any respect to transformation is not really living in the presence of God at all.
SPEAKER_00: And so to answer Paul's question in verse 15, are we to keep on sinning even though we are under grace?
SPEAKER_00: The answer is no.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is going to point out, though, like Isaiah, is that grace is really about who you present yourself to.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we see.
SPEAKER_00: If we turn back over to Romans chapter 6, look at verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Isaiah presented himself to God.
SPEAKER_00: Are you willing to do the same?
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah 6, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: So this is where Paul begins an analogy on slavery.
SPEAKER_00: And by that he means, I want your complete life to belong to me.
SPEAKER_00: And he continues this analogy of slavery all the way to the end of the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: The slavery analogy that Paul is playing in here shows that there are forces that have real power.
SPEAKER_00: And if we don't have Christ, we are helpless.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a constant state of slavery.
SPEAKER_00: Now, many will take this analogy too far and say this is why we don't have free will.
SPEAKER_00: But when you read this text, you can clearly see that no, Paul says we have a choice.
SPEAKER_00: We do.
SPEAKER_00: We need to present ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We need to present ourselves to either, we're going to present ourselves to either sin, but we need to present ourselves to obedience.
SPEAKER_00: And so the choice is yours.
SPEAKER_00: You are slaves to the one you obey.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that's either sin or it's obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Notice here, Paul in this verse doesn't say slave to God in verse 16, like he's going to say at the end of the chapter in verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: He says obedience.
SPEAKER_00: I love that he does that because it's almost like obedience there is personified to be God, personified to be Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And when I think of that, I think of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think of his life and his life of obedience that led to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: You have one that leads to death, though, the other that leads to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Another thing to notice as well is he says, righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Not sanctification or eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Like he's going to say in verse 19, verse 22, later on in the chapter.
SPEAKER_00: You can see that on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: And what we notice when you look at this passage, it's almost like Paul is building a cake here.
SPEAKER_00: And he's layering things on top of one another.
SPEAKER_00: This leads to this, and that leads to that.
SPEAKER_00: You start at verse 15, you realize grace opens the door, and Paul's going to go on to say to obedience and obedience to righteousness, righteousness to sanctification, and sanctification to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's not denying, though, and I think this is important, the reality that look, even though we're living for God, we're living for Christ, we're trying to follow Him, that we're not going to make mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: We will.
SPEAKER_00: You make mistakes, I make mistakes, we will sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's just a fact of living in this world that is broken.
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is, sin should not be our master.
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're seeing in the text.
SPEAKER_00: The problem comes when we choose to obey sin and become slaves to sin.
SPEAKER_00: And we are without Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that Paul is getting at is that he's going to say here in a second that more righteousness is going to lead to more righteousness, but more sin is going to lead to more sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to end up in death.
SPEAKER_00: That's why he says what he says in verse 17, if we follow the logic.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 through verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.
SPEAKER_00: And having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: There's another layer there.
SPEAKER_00: Slaves of obedience, slaves of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: This is just what's wonderful about God's grace is that it doesn't leave us wondering about what we are to look like and how we are to be obedient.
SPEAKER_00: There's actually a standard of teaching that we are committed to.
SPEAKER_00: Now, depending on your translation, your that phrase might be form of doctrine if it's an older translation.
SPEAKER_00: It might be form of teaching or pattern of teaching.
SPEAKER_00: But either way, that word for standard or form there invokes an image of being imprinted, if you will, a mold.
SPEAKER_00: You can see the definition up on the screen for that word, to mark of a stroke or a blow, a figure formed or impression.
SPEAKER_00: When Paul's talking about this, the idea that they have in their ancient minds is that you can imagine this metaphor, a cast or a frame, and you have what this molted material and it's poured into this frame, and then what happens, right?
SPEAKER_00: It becomes hardened, and the frame impresses upon that.
SPEAKER_00: And then you take the frame out and you have this image.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea here.
SPEAKER_00: That's the metaphor.
SPEAKER_00: That's the idea of what is happening to our hearts when we are obeying the standard, this teaching.
SPEAKER_00: The form of teaching, then, is the gospel itself.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel itself, the mold, the norm by which believers are to be impressed and to pattern their conduct and following Christ.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the Romans did.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they did.
SPEAKER_00: They left being slaves to this sin and were delivered to the standard of teaching to which they need to be obedient to, and that is here the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What they have, what happened is they changed masters.
SPEAKER_00: And so the form of doctrine is the whole gospel as a shaping and controlling power over the believer's life.
SPEAKER_00: It's even how Paul starts off the book of Romans in Romans chapter 1, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Not going to be ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of salvation of believers.
SPEAKER_00: And Romans chapter 6, verse 4, where it says buried for with him by baptism, and in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, who are you a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing things that are in accordance with your newness in life?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
SPEAKER_00: We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.
SPEAKER_00: So that we are no longer, notice how similar this is to verses 17 and 18.
SPEAKER_00: No longer to be enslaved to sin.
SPEAKER_00: For one who has died has been set free from sin.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel in its entirety functions as a shaping mold.
SPEAKER_00: And that obeying it from the heart means means I'm going to have a total transfer of allegiance from sin to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is the standard of teaching that sets us free from sin.
SPEAKER_00: Again, Romans 1, verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: Which is what Paul is talking about, why he ends with what he ends his thought in verse 18, when he says, very similar to verse 7, and having been set free from sin, having become slaves of righteousness, no longer slaves of sin, but instead slaves of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Having been liberated, or as he says, set free.
SPEAKER_00: Set free.
SPEAKER_00: As a slave to be set free from a master.
SPEAKER_00: We, like the Romans, need to be enslaved to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is important for the context of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom here is not the freedom to do whatever I please.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that idea of anarchy.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it's liberation.
SPEAKER_00: Liberation from sin's grip and hold on our life, which leads directly to death.
SPEAKER_00: If we live in that sin, but if we're free from that sin, what should lead to a willing, ironically, a willing bondage of moral uprightness, of righteousness?
SPEAKER_00: They changed.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're not in Christ, we should change as well.
SPEAKER_00: Now you might be thinking, why is Paul talking about all this slavery here?
SPEAKER_00: In fact, we had a great class this morning where Paul later says we're sons and we're heirs and we have an inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: What is Paul talking about here?
SPEAKER_00: And this is where Paul admits look, this analogy, this metaphor is not the best.
SPEAKER_00: He understands that.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 19, he even says that.
SPEAKER_00: But he wants us to get this idea that our complete lives belong to him.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking in a way that relates to the Romans in their everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking in human terms, he says, because of your natural limitations.
SPEAKER_00: For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this is where I want to slow down because there's a lot to unpack just in this one verse.
SPEAKER_00: You look at that word members, for example.
SPEAKER_00: Melos in the Greek originally refers to this idea of a limb or a body part.
SPEAKER_00: But in the broader sense, it means really the whole body or all the parts of the body in which one works in this life.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you go up and you just look at verse 13, you look at verse 13, and Paul elaborates a little more on what he means by members and what they should do in their function.
SPEAKER_00: That they are instruments, he says.
SPEAKER_00: That includes how you spend those and use those in your time and your attention.
SPEAKER_00: Those things aren't neutral.
SPEAKER_00: They're instruments, they're weapons, and they're always being deployed for somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Before Christ, you handed those weapons over to sin.
SPEAKER_00: And what did sin do with them, right?
SPEAKER_00: It produces just more and more and more of the same.
SPEAKER_00: He says there, Paul says, lawlessness leading to more lawlessness.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is never satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: It always wants more.
SPEAKER_00: You give it an inch, it's gonna take a mile.
SPEAKER_00: It leaves your life in just chaos, destruction, hollow.
SPEAKER_00: More enslaved than when you started.
SPEAKER_00: But the beauty of what Paul's talking about, what's wonderful is that the flip is also true.
SPEAKER_00: You can flip that.
SPEAKER_00: And the same is true in the other direction.
SPEAKER_00: When you take those weapons or those instruments, those parts of us, our lives, the powers that you have in this life to the disposal of righteousness, the outcome, she says, is sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: And that's another word I want us to zoom in on this idea of sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: It means consecration, it means being set apart for God.
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, this is where I want to kind of push it back against a common misunderstanding.
SPEAKER_00: Sanctification is not just this one-time event that happened at your baptism and then it's over and that's it, and that's the end.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not what we see here from this analogy.
SPEAKER_00: The outcome of righteous behavior is and leads to sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: It's notice the text saying, leading to sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: The result is ongoing, it's habitual obedience.
SPEAKER_00: Every day that you put your members, your weapons, and instruments at the disposal of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: The mold we talked about in verse 17, the gospel mold is shaping you to be more and more into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So the point is, what are you doing with your weapons, your instruments right now?
SPEAKER_00: Are you abusing someone?
SPEAKER_00: Hitting them?
SPEAKER_00: Is there a substance that maybe you're abusing?
SPEAKER_00: Are you sleeping with someone you shouldn't be?
SPEAKER_00: What we should be doing is handing over those things to obedience and righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Because as he tells us, as Paul tells us, sin just leads to more sin.
SPEAKER_00: Righteousness leads to more righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a process of daily yielding.
SPEAKER_00: That's a part of the sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members, your weapons to God as instruments for righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You've been brought from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: You've been sanctified.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, will you continue to live like it?
SPEAKER_00: Will you hand those weapons, the weapons, over to God, the one who will set you free?
SPEAKER_00: I love Hebrews 12.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 12, verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: Pursue, it says, some might say holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Pursue sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes sanctification is translated holiness.
SPEAKER_00: But you look at that idea of pursuing, and that's not passive.
SPEAKER_00: What are you pursuing in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you striving to please?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you giving your time and your attention?
SPEAKER_00: Because sanctification doesn't happen when we're just sitting down doing nothing.
SPEAKER_00: It's an active, daily, sometimes costly choice to present your bodies, your time, your habits, your relationships, even, as weapons or instruments of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: To put on the armor of God.
SPEAKER_00: And over time, that makes you look more and more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I want to see the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to serve the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But I get it, you take a step back, and being slaves to sin sometimes seems great.
SPEAKER_00: There's no obligation to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: I get to, it seems like do whatever I want.
SPEAKER_00: There's no need or desire to want to do.
SPEAKER_00: Right, and that's the case when we don't have God in our life.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says in Romans chapter 6, verse 20 He says this very thing for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, this doesn't mean that life is just great.
SPEAKER_00: What we don't find in sin is a life abounding and meaning and joy.
SPEAKER_00: A life in sin doesn't produce good fruit.
SPEAKER_00: No matter how good of a person we might think we are, and that's another common misconception.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says in Romans chapter 6, the very next verse in verse 21, but what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?
SPEAKER_00: The end of those things is death.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to Genesis, Genesis 3, and think about Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_00: Was it worth it?
SPEAKER_00: Did that fruit that they took from the knowledge of the tree and good and evil, did it taste good?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
SPEAKER_00: And that supposedly it was supposed to make one wise as they were tempted and deceived into?
SPEAKER_00: Do you think it was worth disobeying God over?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: And that's sin in our life as well.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't.
SPEAKER_00: It immediately for them turned to shame.
SPEAKER_00: And here Paul's reminding them, reminding us that the fruit we once bore in sin is not worth.
SPEAKER_00: It's not worth it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't lead to a better life.
SPEAKER_00: If anything, we look back at our sin and who sin was molding us into.
SPEAKER_00: And it's something that we're ashamed of now, now ashamed of.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: we don't have to be stuck in that shame.
SPEAKER_00: God doesn't want to beat us over the head with shame.
SPEAKER_00: That's really the beautiful thing about grace.
SPEAKER_00: That in the presence of God, shame doesn't stay.
SPEAKER_00: What's ironic is that those who see grace as a license to sin often are usually the ones who claim they don't want to be shame.
SPEAKER_00: But God says, in Romans chapter 6, verse 22, but now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves to God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: I can tell you right now, I don't want to be a slave to my sin and my past mistakes and my shame.
SPEAKER_00: I would much rather be a slave to God who's greater than I am, who sets me free.
SPEAKER_00: Sets me free to produce fruit that leads to sanctification and ultimately eternal life, not shame.
SPEAKER_00: That's what grace does, it sets us free.
SPEAKER_00: What is unique about the scriptures though, and this idea of freedom, and freedom in the scriptures, is that freedom in that sense does not mean usually what we think it means.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom actually means slavery.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't seem like it fits in our mind.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom is not slavery to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Freedom is slavery to righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be free by going back into bondage, but back into bondage to God.
SPEAKER_00: And that just shows us we would rather choose the character of God than sin as our master.
SPEAKER_00: And that's how he ends this chapter in Romans chapter 6, verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: That as slaves we will face our master.
SPEAKER_00: He says, For the wages of death is sin.
SPEAKER_00: For the wages of sin is death, excuse me.
SPEAKER_00: But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We can read this verse and we can not read much depth into what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_00: We can look at verse 23 and think, okay, great.
SPEAKER_00: So sin equals death and God equals life.
SPEAKER_00: Got it.
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: Which is true, and that is great.
SPEAKER_00: But this verse, on a deeper level, is showing again the character of God and the masters that we serve.
SPEAKER_00: For the character of sin as a master and the character of God as our master.
SPEAKER_00: You look at that word wages, and it refers to a soldier's pay.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of this passage, Paul is basically saying, you get paid what you're owed.
SPEAKER_00: You get paid by your master.
SPEAKER_00: We get to the end of our life, but we need to realize where is our allegiance been.
SPEAKER_00: Because if so, then the salary that you're due, your earnings, your wage, he says, is death.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're a slave to God, Paul says, look, look at the character of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's so much different.
SPEAKER_00: It's so much better.
SPEAKER_00: You get a free gift, a free gift of God, eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: This is where grace that's mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, in the middle of the chapter, comes full circle at the end of Romans chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: That yes, you don't deserve a free gift on your own merit and your own ability, or because you think that you're the perfect person, you get the free gift because of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: Because of God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: And our God, our King, is much better, much better master than we ever deserve.
SPEAKER_00: Why would we not give our complete lives to him?
SPEAKER_00: And so I have to repeat what I said at the very beginning of the lesson.
SPEAKER_00: Who are you a slave to?
SPEAKER_00: Who do you present yourselves to every day?
SPEAKER_00: And where is your time and attention?
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that you enter into his grace.
SPEAKER_00: That if you are a slave to sin, you change masters, become a slave to obedience, a slave to righteousness, a slave to God, be baptized, buried with