Romans so far.
Romans 1-3:
God’s righteousness is revealed in The Gospel through his wrath at unrighteousnesses and ungodliness of every single individual of mankind. And through His free gift of grace and mercy offered in Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice, which leads to eternal life.
Romans 4:
This promised eternal life comes only through faith in Jesus’s work for us, and not through any work of our own.
Romans 5
All those with faith in Christ’s work are now at peace with God and have access to more mercy and grace than any sin we could ever commit needs in order to be forgiven.
In fact, this grace isn’t simply an un-deserved gift. God’s grace is actually the opposite of what we deserve. It isn’t that we were simply given something we didn’t earn, but rather that we earned wrath, and what we got instead is righteousness!
So Paul picks up the argument with a question that he’s received before. The question is: “So are we good then? We can just go on sinning?”
Romans 6
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 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?
Paul’s response is something along the lines of “why are you even asking that question?” That is not how a freed slave talks! A slave that has been freed from a harsh slave master and purchased by a kind and generous slave master does not want to go back to serve the old master! Right? Who in their right mind would do that?
But Paul realizes that we are not yet fully in our right mind, are we? This is why he wrote Romans: to help us understand what our right mind should be! That is what Dave spoke about last week: “consider yourself..”
Paul is writing to help us “renew our minds” (as he finally says in chapter 12), which is why he writes what he does, in the way he does. I’ve always found it interesting, that even in a very tightly structured logical argument like Romans, that Paul doesn’t merely give us data, lists, and logical proofs, but he writes with so much emotion, as well! He’s helping not only understand truth, but he’s helping us interpret what our proper response should be as well!
17 But thanks be to God,
(Notice who Paul thanks here… )
that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations.
Paul uses the analogy of slaves and masters to help us understand our relationship with our fallen selves. I think it’s important to clarify here that when he says “slaves to sin”, he is not speaking of some external force. But rather of internal desire. “Slavery to sin” is an analogy that explains our massive unwillingness and inability to obey God, prior to our being set free.
And how are we set free? Well, this is why Paul thanks GOD. He works in our hearts to release us from our unwillingness to obey God’s commands. In what the Bible calls “the new birth” or “regeneration”, God works through His Holy Spirit to free us from our “slavery to sin”, by enabling us to desire to do what is right. That’s what he means by “obedient from the heart”. He goes into all of this in greater depth in Chapter 8, but he touches on it here.
So we are now freed from our old harsh slave master Sin, and are purchased by God through Christ’s work on the cross. By the Holy Spirit who lives in us, righteousness is now our master: meaning we are finally free to obey and please God. So the Holy Spirit, through Paul, commands us to obey God, and tells us of the reward we will get for doing so:
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.
He goes on, reminding us of what our situation used to be:
FREE IN REGARD TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
What does this mean? The way that God works through His Holy Spirit to free us, is by causing us to see the beauty of His work through Jesus clearly, so that we are enthralled with Him as our highest treasure, and our greatest desire. You may not know the fullness of His beauty, or the extent of His work, or even be aware of His whole character completely. But God’s Holy Spirit compels you to see the radical depravity of your condition, and by sharp contrast, the glory of Christ’s person and work.
And by the way, if this does not characterize your Christian experience, and enthrallment with who God is, and borderline obsession with getting to know Him better, keep pressing on. Go after that.
Before the Holy Spirit did this in us, our sin did not bother us. Pleasing God did not concern us. We were concerned only with our personal comfort, well-being, relief from our problems, our reputation, prestige, health, wealth, pleasure, you name it, anything except a single-minded devotion to Christ and His mission in this world.
That is what it is to be free from righteousness.
And there are times when each and every one of us in this room forgets this desire. There are times when the temptation to give in to sin is heavy enough to cause us to want to betray our new master, and dabble in the muck and mire and abuse that we lived in under our old master.
Sin is deceitful, and we forget the consequences. It entices us with the memory of momentary thrills, but neglects to mention the shame and death that comes along with it.
So Paul gives us what, for me, is one of the most powerful “fighter verses” in the Bible in the war against sin.
BUT WHAT FRUIT WERE YOU GETTING?
21 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.
There are times that I have considered tattooing this verse to my forearm. Nancy doesn’t want me to get a tattoo. She says I already look scary enough without them. But this one might be worth it.
If we were capable of keeping a memory book of all the feeling of shame and disgust that comes from giving in to our sin. Lust, anger, arrogance, greed, gluttony, you name it, if we could bottle that feeling that we get after we give in and come to our senses again, and pull it out each time we were tempted, we would never fail. This is why this verse exists in the Bible.
Paul warns us against sin by reminding us of the consequences. But he also encourages us toward righteousness, by reminding us of the consequences!
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
The fruit of justification is sanctification and eternal life!
Notice the definitiveness of this statement: “you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.” Paul is going to continue with this definitiveness for all those with faith in Christ, you will make it. You will be sanctified, and you will ultimately have eternal life! Amazing encouragement.
And here is the summary of Chapter 6.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We often use this verse when sharing The Gospel message of salvation with someone. But notice that here Paul uses it to encourage believing Christians to pursue obedience to God’s commands.
Romans 8:13 restates it:
“If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”
Paul’s encouragement in Chapter 6 is to walk in our newfound freedom from slavery to our sinful desire. To lean hard into the newfound desire to obey God.
He introduces a little fear of death. Paul has no comfort for someone who calls themselves Christian yet goes on flaunting their unrepentant sin. Yet he has every consolation for weak and weary sinners who hate their sin, and are clinging to that hope of the promise of forgiveness. Christ is your righteousness, and your guarantee of eternal life springs from His work.
But he also introduces hope and confidence in the security of our reward: True faith will bear fruit in sanctification, increasing hatred of sin, increasing battling of it, repentance from it, rejection of it, refusal to do it. Increasing reliance on self-strength, and increasing reliance on Christ’s strength.
THERE IS NO BOASTING HERE.
Notice the attitude that comes along with this. Paul does not call us the masters now. He calls us submitted slaves. Submitted to God, and submitted to righteousness. There is a humility, a lack of confidence in self that comes with this. There is no boasting that a slave gets to do, except perhaps when they are proud to be the slave of their master. Rather a grateful slave boasts about their master!
So, be careful, when you start having some success in conquering your sin, of saying “look what I did!”, but rather follow Paul’s words here: “I thank GOD that you became obedient from the heart.” He is the one that enabled it in the first place by breaking our chains to sin. He is the one that empowers our obedience, by dwelling inside of us in the Holy Spirit, enabling us to cry out to God. Philippians says “work out your salvation with fear and trembling for it is GOD who works in you, to will and to work for His good pleasure!”
Praise God for His mercy on us!
ALREADY, NOT YET.
There is another part about Romans which has always intrigued me. I wonder if you see it, too. Why does Paul need to exhort us to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ”, why does he need to exhort us to resist sin, and fight for holiness, if it is such a sure thing?
God has decided that in order to best reveal Himself, that we should live in a time that some have called the “already, but not yet” portion of history. Christ’s work on the cross has decisively conquered sin and death, the war is won, but there are still battles raging.
God has decided that His victory be worked out over a span of time in history, known as “the last days”, (which have been going on for about 2000 years now.) And He has also decided that He is going to work with each one of us, in a process of making us holy, over the course of our entire lives. It does not happen all at once.
This “already, but not yet” concept is really important. You won’t understand the Christian life, or much of the Bible, without it.
And this is why Romans (and the rest of the new testament) is written the way it is, why the Apostles taught the things they taught, in the way they taught them.
Christ came 2000 years ago, to live a perfect life that none of us could live, and to die on the cross in payment for all of our sin. And He is coming again to right every wrong, destroy sin and death, and restore all things to righteousness.
And we live between those two comings. We experience the benefits of His first coming. And we wait eagerly for His second coming. And that is what this season of Advent, the season of waiting, is all about.
So this Advent season, make sure you are taking adequate time out of the insanity of holiday preparations and falling all over ourselves to get the gift-giving, and decorating, and nostalgia collecting for Christmas just right, and take time to bask in Advent. Take time out from being Martha, and be Mary, waiting at Christ’s feet.
ADVENT APPLICATION: MAKE WAR
Advent shapes our application today:
- Guilt of sin: Forgiven. (Romans 3-4)
- Reign of sin: Conquered. (Romans 5-6)
- Presence of sin (in the flesh): Still here. (Romans 7)
- Activity of sin: Still experienced. (Romans 8)
- Destruction of sin: Assured in the future.
SO MAKE WAR.
We must follow through on Paul’s exhortation to not submit ourselves as slaves to unrighteousness, but rather submit ourselves as slaves to righteousness!
The answer to the question: “Shall I go on sinning?” is an emphatic NO! DO NOT GO ON SINNING!
I’m going to be a little honest here and just say that I’m a bit jaded with sermons that always end with some form of “try harder! do more! be more committed! resist sin! you can do it!” Because I know I can’t. At least not for long. Inevitably I fall off the bandwagon of whatever new commitment to a spiritual discipline I make in response to these kind of sermons. I think this is why Romans 7 exists.
The effect of a teaching (like Romans 6!) that says “do not sin!” always ends up sooner or later with Romans 7:18. “I have the desire to do what is right. But not the ability to carry it out. (In my flesh!)” I need extra help.
“So what will keep us from becoming discouraged as we see further sin in our lives? What will motivate us to persevere in our battle with remaining sin, even those days when we don’t seem to make any progress? It is the realization that in Christ we already stand holy and blameless before God.” – Jerry Bridges
This is humiliating, isn’t it? I think our flesh doesn’t like this solution. Our flesh doesn’t like being dependent on God’s work in The Holy Spirit for this progress. We want to be able to do it on our own. You may also be frustrated with the pace at which God is allowing you to make progress. You may want to speed it up, by more spiritual push-ups. Why can’t we just be all done with sin now, and live much more effective and pleasing lives before God?
But that’s just the point. Take heart in the waiting. The Father is pleased with you because He is pleased with The Son. And if you are in the son, then God has you exactly where He wants you, for His pleasure, for His purpose and to His Praise.
We get to follow Christ in this waiting, as frustrating and painful as the waiting me be, because, as Hebrews 5:8 says even Jesus had to learn obedience through His suffering here.
So make war on sin. Present yourself as an obedient slave to righteousness. Wielding the sword of truth that in Christ, because of what He did, you are already holy and blameless before God.