Romans 6:15-23 – Romans

Today's reading is from Romans chapter six, verse fifteen to twenty-three.

And while you look that up, the question for today is what is God's free gift?

Okay.

What then?

Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?

By no means.

Do you not 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.

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, and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

I'm speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so n so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and it's end eternal life.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so reads God's word.

Welcome to you if you joined us while we were singing.

Uh, you're very welcome.

My name is Mark.

I'm one of the leaders here at the church, and you're welcome if you're new or visiting with us.

So, Romans 6.

Uh, to the to the important stuff.

Um, if you have a Bible, please open up Romans 6 in front of you.

If you have a Bible that's switch onable, you can look it up.

Uh, we're in the English standard version uh of uh of the Bible if you're going through Bible Gateway wondering uh what to what to look at.

And last week, just to bring you up to speed, if you um weren't there, last week we were kind of considering this question of how does Christianity change people?

How does Christianity change people?

We noted that most religions try to change people with a uh with a system of rules, whether it's an eightfold path or five pillars or 613 laws, and they they form kind of moral stabilizers or like the walls of a maze in order to kind of guide somebody's life towards virtue.

And so the rules are necessary.

And uh and in addition to the rules, most religions go with uh incentives, so the the hope of something uh good to be attained, whether that's heaven or nirvana or uh or whatever it is, and then disincentives, the the threats of threats of judgment, uh that actually you'll be uh judged eternally or even just ostracized from the community now.

The problem with describing uh religion like that is that Christianity doesn't really fit into that mold.

Christianity isn't like that, it's quite a bad religion, really, in that sense, because it it recognizes that the rules actually just provoke more rule breaking.

That if you just give people rules, uh they will be very tempted to just flaunt the rules uh because there's something in there.

You know this, don't you?

That if something says, you know, do not touch, what's the first thing that you really want to do?

You want to touch it.

It says, Don't walk on the grass.

Ha ha, watch me, right?

So the rules tend to provoke more rule breaking.

And Christianity Paul's been talking about this, that that the law only tends to provoke more sin.

And what's more, the disincentive, the big disincentive, is gone because Jesus, when he died on the cross, uh took our punishment, took the judgment of God into himself.

And so why on earth uh would we follow the rules uh if indeed uh they don't really do any good?

And breaking them seems to have no consequence.

And Paul in the first half of chapter six uh would say, well, should we just live however we please?

And his answer is an emphatic one.

He says, Well, no, you shouldn't just live however you please.

And then he gives us the first part of his rationale, which is that the way that Christianity changes you, the way that Christianity makes you a different person is by killing you.

You die.

You die with Christ.

That Christians believe that there is a beautiful, mysterious union between the believer and Jesus, such that when he died, you died, if indeed you are trusting in him.

But that we're also united to him in his resurrection.

That not only did we die when he died, but we were raised when he was raised.

And he rose to a life that would no longer have the dominion of sin over him.

And so Paul is saying, well, it's the same for you.

The power of sin has been broken over the life of the believer.

That's how you begin to live differently.

You're no longer under the control, under the dominion, under the reign of sin.

Its power is broken.

You no longer have to sin.

You now have a choice, as it were.

However, Paul, being a human being, uh for about for more than five minutes, realizes that while the power of sin has been broken over the believer's life, sin still exerts a kind of influence.

The presence of sin remains with us.

We we feel its uh its draw, we feel its temptations in different ways day by day.

And so he wants us to kind of he wants to drill deeper into how it is that the message of Jesus changes us.

And so in this half of the chapter, he kind of restates the question again.

Have a look at it with me in verse 15.

He's asking a similar sort of question to the one in verse one.

He says, What then?

Are we to sin because we're no longer under law, but under grace?

Are we to sin because we're no longer under law but under grace?

Let me just very briefly explain what he means by under law, under grace.

To be under law, to be a person that's under law, is simply to be a person who's trying to justify their own existence.

Is that you?

You try to justify your place in the world by what you do, how you relate, the things you achieve, that that's what gives you a sense of identity and place in the world.

Paul says that if you're living like that, you're living under law.

That I need to achieve things in order to become the person that I want to be, that is admirable, is seen as successful, or is acceptable to God.

That's what it is to be under law.

But he's saying of the Christian that you're no longer under law, you no longer need to work, do moral good things in order to be accepted by God, in order to sure up the basis for your standing before him, but rather you are under grace.

That is, that our identity and our standing before God is not something achieved, but something received as a gift from God.

But if that's true, again we come to this question of well, what motivates Christian obedience?

If it's all just a gift, why fight against sin's influence at all?

And Paul's answer in this half of the chapter is that you have a new master.

Is that the old master of sin is gone, and that you have a new master, Christ.

If the first half was kind of the first half, the illustration was really around the idea of kind of dominion.

What country do you live in?

Do you live in the under the reign of sin, in that, in that dominion, or under the reign and dominion of Christ?

And now he's kind of playing with it a little bit more and saying, think of it like slaves.

You're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to Jesus.

Now, I know that as soon as I start using the word slave, that some of you are beginning to bristle.

This doesn't sound very attractive at all.

Why have I come to church on a Sunday morning to be told that I should be a slave of Jesus?

The idea of God being my master is not something that I find particularly attractive.

And it's worth pointing out just right at the start that Paul himself recognizes something of the limitations of this analogy.

Have a look at verse 19.

He's been talking about slaves of sin, slaves of righteousness in verse 18.

And he says, I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

He's illustrating a point, albeit imperfectly, because as we'll see as we go through, the slavery that he's contrasting is really not the same.

You saw that from the very last verse.

The wages of sin is death.

The free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Sin is a master, a slave master, that always pays out, always gives what you deserve.

But God is a master who gives us better than we deserve.

This is one of the contrasts that we'll look at a little bit later.

So I want us to help, I want to help us understand the goodness of this image that Paul is using.

That we are called to be slaves of God, slaves of righteousness.

And the first way that I think Paul helps us to see the goodness of it is by pointing out that everyone serves.

That's point one.

Everyone serves, or, put it differently, everyone's a slave.

Everyone serves.

Everyone is a slave.

Paul uses this image of a slave here in order to show us that we're all slaves of something.

Three times he draws out this uh this binary distinction between being a slave of sin or a slave to God.

Have a look at verse 16.

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness.

No third way.

No morally neutral ground, either a slave of sin or a slave of righteousness.

Verses 17 and 18, he brings it out again that you're either, verse 17, a slave of sin, or you're a slave to righteousness, verse 18.

Or again, he restates it a third time, verse 20, that you were a slave of sin, and then down in verse 22, but now you are slave of God.

This is something that we all need to reckon with.

That we all serve something, we all follow a master.

We all give our allegiance, our obedience to something.

If you want more than anything else, the approval of others, then you are a slave to the opinion of others.

If you give your time for the advancement of your career at the expense of your relationships, at the expense of your spiritual vitality, then you are a slave to your work.

That is what controls you.

Controls your actions, your decision making, it occupies your thoughts.

The person who seeks power is controlled by power.

The person who longs for comfort is controlled by comfort.

The person who is driven by wealth is mastered by money.

Do you see?

We are not as free as we think we are.

We all give ourselves to something, and that thing that you give yourself to is your master.

So then the question is, well, how do I know what's mastering me?

Well, what do you sacrifice for?

Where does my time, my attention, my money go in service of?

What thing or person do I sacrifice everything for, including possibly my my integrity?

The commitments that I say I have spiritually, do they fly out the window when it comes to this thing, this person, because I have to have it.

That thing is mastering you.

What do you say is a non-negotiable in your life?

Imagine you're you're sitting in the in the boardroom across uh and across the table is is God and you're negotiating how much of his how much of your life you're willing to surrender to him.

Where's your red lines?

What's the things you've boxed off?

You can have you can have all of this of me here, but this stuff here, you can't have that.

That's mine.

I need that.

Nothing's mastering you.

That thing is exerting an influence over you that is keeping you from following the master, that is Christ.

Or what thing at the thought of losing it makes you most scared.

It makes you most sad.

It makes you most angry.

So it's not the case that Paul is calling free people to become slaves of Jesus.

You mustn't think of it that way.

That you're sitting here and you're free as a bird.

Why would I why would I give that up in order to be a slave?

You know, Paul's saying, you're a slave anyway.

You're giving your time and attention, your your talent, your treasure to something, to someone.

The question then is, well, actually, does that something or someone lead to life or not?

We're all slaves.

Whatever we offer our bodies to is our master.

But Paul goes on to say that we have been set free from the power of sin in order to offer ourselves to God, to voluntarily count ourselves as slaves to him.

And that's the second point.

That if everybody is a slave, if everybody serves, then secondly, you've been set free to serve.

You've been set free to be a slave.

Service of God comes as a result of being set free.

We live differently, not in order to achieve our freedom, that would be to be back under the law again, but because we have been set free, therefore we live differently.

This is what he says.

Look at verse 17 and 18.

But thanks be to God that you who are once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you are committed, and having been set free from what?

From sin have become slaves of righteousness.

You were not free.

Now you've been set free, and you've been called to be a slave of righteousness.

And I'll explain what that means in just a second.

But let's just explore this first implication of what Paul's saying here.

Again, he's saying that there was a time when you were not free.

You were not always free.

And Paul points this out in verse 20.

In verse 20, he says this, and it sounds odd to our ears, so it's worth explaining.

He says, For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

What he's simply saying is that when sin was your master, you had no hope of living righteously.

You had no hope of living as you were meant to live for God.

Righteousness could exert no influence over you.

It had no control over your life.

You, such was your captivity.

You had no choice but to follow sin's desires.

That is not to say that if you're here today and you're not a follower of Jesus, that you only live immorally all the time and you only do immoral things.

That's not what Paul is saying.

There are plenty of, sadly, there are plenty, or perhaps mercifully, it's more of an indictment on us, isn't it?

There are plenty of atheists who are way more moral than some Christians, right?

Um that's not what he's saying.

It's not about the individual acts of morality.

The thing that the atheists, if you want to use that as a uh as a cipher for somebody who isn't following Jesus or who doesn't believe in Jesus, is simply that they have no ability, no desire in themselves to turn and respond to God as they ought.

That's the good and righteous thing.

That actually you should, as a human being made in the image of God, should turn and follow Him.

And the atheist goes, well, no, why do they say no?

They say no, because they have no ability to do that.

Because they're slave of sin.

So one of the things that in in kind of discussion, especially in um university settings and things like that, or even in you say we were to have like a Q ⁇ A now after the sermon, one of the questions that uh that might come up would be would be something like, well, but what Mark, what about what about free will?

We've got free will, don't we?

Answer?

No.

Move on.

We have this notion in our in our heads that every human being has the freedom to choose to will however they they want.

That's what we we assume.

But that's not what Paul is saying, and that's not what the Bible is teaching.

Well, Paul is saying, what the Bible is teaching is that human beings by nature have a will that is bind.

We're not as free as we think we are.

We need to have our will set free, but by nature it's not.

Let me try and illustrate that.

I hate raw tomato.

I hate it.

I don't mind it cooked, I don't mind it in a sauce.

I could even pass myself with a sun-dried tomato, but I hate raw tomato.

If you invite me around for lunch and you put a salad, big bowl of salad in front of me, I will search through that salad to make sure that I'm just taking the leaves that, by the way, also just taste like the grind, but okay, let's move on.

Because I can pass.

Myself on that, and I'll leave the raw tomato because the raw tomato was designed and comes from the very pit of hell.

Um, Satan himself injected that seedy, gelatinous nonsense right in the middle, and it makes me gag.

It's horrible.

It's the worst thing ever.

I will never ever voluntarily choose raw tomato.

You put me at a salad bar, you put me in subway, and they say, lettuce, tomato, onion, lettuce and onion, no tomato, thank you.

I will never, ever choose it.

So then you ask the question, Mark, is your will free with regards to raw tomato?

No, it's not.

I will never choose it.

Why?

Because I hate it.

My will is bound with respect to raw tomato.

I am held captive by my opposition to raw tomato.

Before we become followers of Jesus, your will is bind.

It is held in opposition to God.

Yes, you might think that, well, on the on the buffet of world religions, Jesus is there as an option to be chosen.

But the non-Christian will never, ever choose him.

Why?

Because their will is bound.

Their will needs to be set free.

He's raw automatic to them.

Never voluntarily say, yes, that's what I want.

And if you never ever would say, yes, that's what I pick, then your will is bound.

You are not as free as you think you are.

You need to have your will set free before you can have free will.

You do not have it outside of Christ.

Our will is enslaved and must be set free.

But wonderfully, that's exactly what Paul is saying has happened.

The God comes and he acts in the life of those who are far from him, and he wonderfully, miraculously, imperceptibly sets free your will, that you might turn and respond to Jesus.

I know that I was one way and I I went and I went a different way.

I know that I knelt down by my bed and I asked Jesus into my heart, praise God for that.

But did you know that before you got down on your knees, he had already unbound your will by his spirit, that you might respond to him as you as you ought.

And that is what Paul is saying has happened to these Roman Christians.

God has acted to set them free.

But thanks be to God, because they couldn't do it themselves.

Thanks be to God.

That you who were once slaves of sin, will bound, have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, that is, to which you were entrusted.

What this means is what Paul is saying is that the way somebody becomes free is that they need to hear the standard of teaching.

That is simply Paul's way, odd though it is, in this chapter of talking about the message of Jesus.

That when we hear the gospel message of freedom from the tyranny of the law and the rule keeping that only provokes more sin, and the taking of judgment and shame from us into himself.

When we hear that message, that's what God uses to set people free, to unbind wills.

And how do we know that it has changed them?

Well, he says, he says that they became obedient from where from the heart.

If you just if you live under law, you're trying to justify your own existence.

You say, well, I should probably go to church.

Or I'm going out with somebody who's going to church, so I should probably go.

You say, well, is that obedience from the heart?

Or is that obedience because you feel like, well, it's the it's the thing that makes most sense and maintains most peace in my life right now.

No, no, obedience from the heart is a different thing.

That is the God gave these Roman Christians new desires, new desires to live for Him.

That is how they have been set free, set free from that old tyrannical master of sin.

And they have been given rather to a new master who is Christ.

And so he says that they have become slaves of righteousness.

When you were a slave of sin, you had no choice but to follow its desires.

But now that you're a slave of righteousness, we should consider ourselves that we have no choice but to follow Jesus.

A slave has no choice but to follow its master.

Paul is saying you were actually bound by sin, you had no choice but to follow its desires.

Now he set you free, and you are not Christ is now your master.

You should now live as though you have no choice but to follow him.

Paul is encouraging us, therefore, to think differently about ourselves as we face the temptations of each day in order that we might begin to live differently.

This is immensely practical.

Imagine for a second the temptation comes knocking at your door later on today.

You're tempted to speak in a way that you know you shouldn't, you're tempted to look at something that you know you shouldn't, you're tempted to act in a way that you know will be destructive to yourself and to those around you.

You're tempted to lie in order to look good in someone else's eyes.

How should you respond in that moment?

Well, Paul wants you to think, hold on.

I'm not a slave anymore.

I'm not certainly not a slave to sin.

I'm not a slave to sin anymore, and so I do not have to follow this temptation.

I don't have to do this.

And what's more, sin is not my master anymore.

Jesus is my master.

I have a new master, and he is good.

And I have no choice but to follow him, and so I'm going to say no to this thing.

So Paul says it elsewhere in Titus chapter 2 that the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation, teaching us to say no to ungodliness and to worldly passions.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

You think, how do I make progress in the Christian life?

God has unlocked your will, he has set you free.

You can say no.

And he's saying, operate as though you have no choice but to follow Jesus.

That he is your master.

Now, if you're sitting here, and I imagine that at least some of you are, and you're still struggling with the idea of being a slave, albeit a slave to righteousness.

Paul finally wants to compare and contrast these two slaveries in order to show the goodness of God's way.

And that's our final point.

Everyone's a slave.

You've been set free to be a slave.

And thirdly, and finally, who you're a slave to changes you, or who you serve changes you.

Whoever our master is will shape us.

It will shape our character, it will dictate our priorities, our values, our outlook, it will change and dictate how we relate to others.

And so Paul gives a warning that allowing sin to be our master and to control us will actually only in the end lead on to more sin.

Look at verse 19.

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

For just as you were one, 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, that there is always a progression in your character, in who you are, because of who you serve.

That if you give yourself over to sin's control, if you remain bound by sin, that will only lead to more and more lawlessness.

C.S.

Lewis illustrates this, um, I think really, really powerfully in mere Christianity.

He gives it, he says, Christians believe that human beings are gonna live forever, right?

Say we're gonna, excuse me, we're gonna live on into eternity.

If you think that you're only gonna live for 70 or 80 years, then there are aspects of your character that you might overlook.

Imagine you you've got you've got a problem with anger or impatience, and you're your fuse isn't as long as you would prefer it to be, and uh, and so you struggle not to not to fly off the handle.

But it's not a huge deal right now.

Over the course of 70 or 80 years, you might think, well, it's not going to get that bad.

What C.S.

Lewis says in mere Christianity, and wants what he wants you to do is no, no, you don't think of yourself in terms of 70 or 80 years.

Think of yourself in terms of a million years.

If it's just incrementally getting ever so slightly worse, over 70 years, that's not an awful lot, but over a million years, over an eternity, imagine the kind of hell that you would create in your own life.

In fact, that's what he says, hell is.

And so the Christians should think similarly, in the opposite way, that I've been set free from the enslaving control of sin, that I'm bound to Christ.

He is my life, my master, my Lord.

One day I will be completely free from not just the power of sin, but its presence also, from its influence in my life.

And in the meantime, I am choosing incrementally, little by little, to follow him.

And as I choose little by little to follow him, like working a muscle, I get stronger at being able to do it.

It becomes more natural, though it is super.

It's like maybe there's a different way of thinking of it.

Imagine imagine the start of your Christian life.

You are uh you are standing at the corner of uh of a hay field.

And over the opposite diagonal corner of the hay field is uh is Christ.

I haven't written this down, I'm making it up as I go along.

Okay.

Um so bear with me.

Is is the goal, is heaven, is Jesus, is is eternal life, is is full and final freedom.

And you've got to get from one place to the other.

Well, as you walk, what do you do?

You begin to uh compress the hay in front of you.

And after the first walk, it kind of springs up a little bit again.

But as you continue to trod those paths, what happens?

Well, new paths of thinking, new paths of acting, new paths of directing your life, get worn into the field of your life.

And so it's like, oh, I know how to get to that destination.

I know how to turn away from this thing because I've worn in this new path.

That's what Paul's saying.

Paul's saying, act now to begin to wear in new paths, new ways of thinking, new ways of acting, because you've been set free from the power of sin and you've been called to follow Jesus.

Now, this is an ongoing lifelong process of sanctification, of looking at those besetting sins of pride and lust and greed and envy and cowardice and anger, and choosing in those individual moments to follow Jesus and not your old master.

There will be days where things do not go as well as you might have preferred.

There will be days of setback, seasons where it feels like you're very making very little progress at all.

But it's a little bit like looking at a stock graph.

Maybe that's just how boring I am.

You ever uh see uh on the internet or whatever the uh the NASDAQ or the Dow Jones Industrial Average, those, you know what a stock graph looks like.

You've you know you've watched cartoons before, right?

So you get the kind of wavy lines kind of up and down, but it's all trending in the same way.

So it is with the Christian life.

There will be times when you kind of hit a spiritual recession, as it were, and uh and you take a step backwards.

But yet you zoom out and you look at it over the course of your life, and actually it's all trending one way.

So you begin to wear in those new paths.

What you serve changes you.

And Paul is encouraging us, he's spurring us on by showing how those different masters offer different things.

First, each master sets us free from something.

Sin sets us free from righteousness.

We can't respond to God as we ought.

But God sets us free from sin.

Second, each master has a different effect on the present.

Have a look at verse 21.

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you have now ashamed?

Let me read it again.

Need to put my teeth back in.

But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

What's the effect of sin's mastery?

It's shame, friends.

Don't you feel that?

Don't you feel that when you when you followed sin's desires?

How does it leave you feeling?

It leaves you feeling ashamed.

Sin promises much and delivers little.

It promises a connection and leaves you utterly isolated.

When we follow sin, Paul's saying, what benefit is it to us?

It just leaves us in our shame.

But being a slave of righteousness, the present effect on us is not shame, but holiness.

Verse 22, but now you've been set free from sin and have become slaves to God.

The fruit you get leads to sanctification.

Ayla asked me uh when uh Kariani was doing the reading, what's sanctification?

So becoming more and more like Jesus.

The fruit of following God leaves leads you to become more like Jesus.

Real change is possible.

God has made it possible.

Your chains are gone, now I'm free.

God, my savior, has ransomed me.

And the result of each master is different.

The end of slavery is death, verse 21.

Death now, as our selfishness cuts us off from others, cuts us off from joy, cuts us off from meaning and death eternally in the end.

That's why he says that the wages of sin is death.

Sin is a master who always pays.

He always pays out what you deserve to be paid.

God, by contrast, doesn't pay according to what we deserve.

He gives us the gift of eternal life.

That is, he sets us free, called to live for him, and all those who are united to Christ are made more like him day by day.

So, friends, brothers and sisters, slavery to Jesus is not just true from this passage, can you see that it's good that in the realm of everybody serves to serve the Lord Jesus who loves us, who sets us free to follow Him, and who is working in our lives to make us more like Him, and in the end will bring us into His glory, that that is a better master to follow than the mastery of sin that leads to shame and to death.

This is how Christianity changes us.

Not with law, not with threats of judgment, not with shame, but by his grace as a gift.