Dealing With Sin In Pursuit of Holiness

Transcript

GRM 1127
9/28/14
Dealing with Sin in Pursuit of Holiness
Romans 6:1-23
Gil Rugh

I want to follow-up on some things we talked about last week, we talked about the peace that God brings to a life. I want to talk a little bit further about related area. The world, when it is dealing with sin, has two basic ways to deal with it—#1, just say it is not sin, make it acceptable; and #2, say it is a disease, something is mentally wrong, they are having some kind of mental breakdown.

In the papers yesterday, both the Omaha paper and the Lincoln paper, they had articles on sin, showing how it is just to be accepted as normal. In the Lincoln paper the title of this little article is “Transgender TV Star Talks about Her Journey.” This person stood before a packed Centennial Room in the Nebraska Union Friday night and declared loudly that she was a proud African American transgendered woman. And there were 700 or so students and faculty members packed in there. And she is promoting the idea of be yourself, do what you want to do, be what you want to be. And that's one way to look at it.

The Omaha paper had a much more extensive article, “His Voice Couldn't Be Silenced,” about a transgendered boy and what he went through. Now he is a 19-year-old college student. We just promote it as normal. That's not sin, that's just normal practice, that's the way you are born, that's what you are. So if it's not a mental illness . . . There would have been a time when certain of these practices would have been viewed as mental illnesses, now they are just made acceptable. There still are some things that people think are mental illness. There is just something in this article (it's a long article, you have the picture and the article and then all across the back) Wayne State College hosted the lesbian/gay /bisexual/transgendered/rural pride summit, a day-long conference on lesbian/bisexual. The Nebraska summit was the third of its kind in the nation. Now listen to this, it was organized by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Now does anybody see, what does the U.S. Department of Agriculture have to do with promoting transgender/homosexual practices? Makes sense to somebody, guess it's your tax dollars at work. Don't need any help in agriculture, we'll put on conferences for the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgendered. To the world this is what? Nobody will think anything of it. That the university is having this person speak, well, we have to promote this, everybody has to have their say. If you oppose it you are a bad person. How could you be so unloving? So unkind?

I mentioned about depression last week. You don't have to agree with me on everything, you just have to agree on everything the Bible says, and if I'm not saying what the Bible says, you can disagree. It just happened after that message, this week I picked up one of the psycho-heresy awareness letters we have, the most recent one from July/August. I hadn't looked at it and there was an article on depression and this whole area. “Chemical Imbalance?” Much of the general public seems to have accepted the chemical imbalance hypothesis uncritically. For example a survey was done of 262 undergraduates (he gives the place and the university). Eighty-five percent of the participants found that likely chemical imbalances cause depression. In reality, however, depression cannot be boiled down to an excess of deficit of any particular chemical or even a suite of chemicals. Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It is much more complicated than neuroscientist Joseph Cole of Harvard Medical School was quoted as saying. So you just realize how things go on. Later, if antidepressants correct a chemical imbalance that underlies depression, all or most depressed people should get better after taking them. That they do not suggests that we have only begun to understand the issues here.

That was out of the Scientific American.

Now let me clarify, when I talk about the gender issue, I'm not saying there are not variations within being a boy and being a girl. Not every boy has to be a football player. I realize in Nebraska that may be questionable, but there are variations. Not every girl has to be the frilly, just like sewing and cooking or whatever. But a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. And we ought to be clear on that. In the Bible we have Jacob and Esau. Esau was a hunter, a man's man, his dad liked him best. He went out into the fields, he hunted, he brought back the game that his father liked. But his brother Jacob, his mother liked him. We would call him a “Mommy's boy.” And who had cooked the soup when Esau came back from hunting? Jacob. Did that mean Jacob was effeminate? No, just means there are variations. So be careful when we are talking about that, doesn't mean every boy has to be just like this, every girl has to be like this. But every boy is a boy, every man is a man, every girl is a girl, every woman is a woman. And God have mercy on the confusion that people can't even tell the difference now on that.

Depression, let's make a distinction here. Just because you feel down, that can be a normal part of your Christian life as well as other things that go on. Every day is not necessarily a happy, “up” day. I've shared with you a number of times, Charles Spurgeon said he lived his life in a dark cloud. Maybe there were some physical problems, he had gout. He had a kidney disease. And 63 volumes of Charles Haddon Spurgeon's sermons are still available in print today, and he is not self-absorbed with his problems. In fact they just don't come up. Very rarely he might talk about a problem he is having, he left England for health reasons for a few months a year. But part of the problem, we become absorbed with ourselves. So I didn't feel up this week and I didn't feel like getting a sermon ready; I didn't feel like getting out of bed so I won't preach today. Don't get your hopes up, that's just an example. You don't feel like getting up and going to work. There is not a problem unless you begin to focus on your feelings and pretty soon decide you can't do it because you don't feel like it. Even feeling down, Lord, I just feel down today but it doesn't matter. You are still on the throne, you still have a plan for me today and I still have to get about what I have to do, whether I feel like it or not. Isn't that what you tell your kids? They tell you they don't feel like going to school today. You tell them, you will feel a lot worse if you don't get out the door pretty quick. But somehow we get to be adults and now it is a major issue and poor me.

Let's talk about sin, how we deal with sin. Romans 6, we have to go here regularly. I read certain literature just to keep me worked up, that's why I stay up until all hours of the night. Once you start reading this you can't sleep. This is a book published a few years ago, 2007, by a professor who graduated from an evangelical seminary, who is now a professor in another evangelical seminary. And he writes a book that gets glowing reviews from people like Chuck Colson, Ravi Zacharias, professor from Dallas Seminary. How this book will help you. Tells you something where the man is where in the preface to the book he tells you where he did his studies and so on. Then he tells you, I have been in Christian therapy for three years. Sort of like a Hollywood star, they talk about their counselors just to show you how much into life they are. Here is a professor of a Christian seminary telling you, I have been in Christian therapy for three years.

And then later on if you want to grow and mature in your Christian life, he gives you some steps. And one of the major steps is we must bring to center stage two sorts of trained individuals who can help us in this area of our growing and the developing of our soul. There is first no substitute for solid Christian therapists and counselors. In other words every Christian who is going to grow and mature needs a therapist. In the last two decades we have witnessed the maturation of Christian therapy and there is a growing number of skilled practitioners who have integrated good psychology with biblical teaching. You see where we are—good psychology. In other words the Bible is good but it's not enough, you need somebody who is going to integrate it, bring it in and mix it with the Bible. And you ought to have one of these men, how are you going to grow if you are not going to this person. You're not going to grow if you just have the Bible. I mean, this can be recommended?

The second thing that is important. You need training in Christian formation, and for this you may have to go to the Roman Catholic mystics. Now this man is a professor at Talbot Seminary in Los Angeles. One of the men recommending it and he is a graduate, and this man is a graduate of Dallas Seminary. There were only three schools recommended when I was in Bible school, looking to go to seminary—it was Talbot, Dallas and Grace. Those three schools I would never recommend to someone who wanted to be prepared for the ministry to go to. What has happened? You want to go now to the Roman Catholic mystics? Since evangelicals don't have people who can train you in this, evangelicals interested in this area frequently seek training in various Catholic programs. They go to the Roman Catholic mystics. Well, they're like the monks back ages ago where they would retreat to the desert and develop these ideas of focusing on themselves. Here, I'm going to give you some help so pay attention. Here is what you need to do. And this is what we talk about with spiritual formation, these techniques that help you. #1, focus the center of your attention on your physical heart muscle. Attend to the center of your chest where you heart is and stay there for about 30 seconds. The goal is to feel the area around your heart. There are two ways to help you in this, first pretend you are breathing in and out of your heart muscle; second try to “feel” and attend to the front surface of your physical heart, then the back surface, followed by the right, then the left side of the heart. When you first learn to practice this meditative activity and form it as a habit, you should take as long as necessary to focus on the heart area. At this point you may feel little emotion there, or you may get in touch with a feeling of embarrassment, fear, grief, sadness, loneliness, helplessness, hurt or some other anxiety. You know, we are into mysticism. I mean, where do you get focus on your physical heart? Can you feel that physical heart in your chest? Can you sense the back of it? What about the front? What about the left? What about the right? Now pretend you are breathing through it. This is the instruction from a seminary professor on how we are going to grow and develop spiritually?

So you put this practice together with a good Christian therapist and you are on the way. I tell you, you are on the road to at best confusion, at worst destruction.

Let me come to Romans 6 with you and just review with you again what the Bible says about God's plan for our sanctification. There is no doctrine of sanctification in the evangelical church today. We have just given it over to counselors. Name a Christian school where you could send your young people to go that doesn't have a counseling program. I mean, they do. And supposedly we are going to integrate. Do you know what the Bible closes with? A warning of destruction to anyone who adds to the Word of God or takes away from the Word of God. As far as spiritual issues, our salvation, our sanctification, there is only one source. And anybody who integrates anything with this is a false teacher, no matter what he says. Where do we get this, you can declare the Bible is not enough. I downloaded articles by this professor from the internet, a series of articles he did and posted on the internet, and how evangelicals became over-committed to the Bible. Do you think that is the problem in the evangelical world today? They are too committed to the Bible? That's his view and you heard that—you need somebody to take you out of these things, go to the mystics, turn yourself inward to focus on your physical heart. Get a good Christian therapist who will bring the world's psychology in and use Bible verses with it. God's plan is simple.

Romans 1 opens up talking about the sin of man. And the opening part of Romans, we've studied Romans, talks about man's sin. That's where you must begin. And you understand man knows he is a sinner, that's why he has that sense of guilt. People talk about being depressed when they are practicing this stuff, they had to get over that, they had to stifle their conscience. Because we are created in the image of God and even though sin has marred that image, it is still there. So Romans 1:18 says, “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” He says it's not that they don't know the truth, they suppress it. Do you think they don't know this is wrong? They do, but they are determined they will suppress it. Then he goes on and talks about all forms of sin. In their inner being they know they are guilty before God.

Down in Romans 1:32, “though they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same but give hearty approval to those who practice them.” That's why we bring the Gospel to lost people, not because they don't know they are sinners, but because they refuse to acknowledge their sin. It's not, we have to go down there and make clear this is sin. No we don't, they know it. They need to be confronted with the reality, they are sinners guilty before God, in rebellion against God. And the only hope is Romans 1:16, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” That's what Romans is about, as you are aware.

So over to Romans 3:21, he talks about sin. In verse 21 he begins to talk about God's provision of righteousness in Christ, we call it justification, where God has made a provision for us to be declared righteous, absolved of guilt before Him. That comes with the work of Christ, His sacrifice on the cross to pay the penalty for sin, to satisfy the requirements of a holy God, that the penalty for sin which is death would be paid. You place your faith, and some of you have your Bibles marked from when we studied this all the times and various forms of faith or believe are used from Romans 3:21 through Romans 4 and into Romans 5. God's provision of righteousness.

When you come to Romans 6-8, he talks about sanctification. How shall we now live as those who have been the recipients of the righteousness of Christ, been absolved of guilt, been cleansed? The danger is, it's not we begin to think we are chosen in Christ, that takes care of my eternal destiny. Now I don't have to be afraid of going to hell, now I can do whatever I want. So Romans 6 opens up, verse 1, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase?” The idea! Our sin magnified how great God's grace is. As overwhelmingly corrupt and sinful as we are, God intervened with a greater grace, grace greater than our sin. Well, if our sin demonstrated how great God's grace is, maybe sin is not so bad. Because when I sin and God forgives me, that just magnifies His grace. You see Paul's response to that, the beginning of verse 2, “may it never be.” King James says, God forbid. The word God does not appear there, may it never be gives you the idea. It's an expression, magnoito, to convey the idea, such a thought is an impossibility, it's abhorrent, that is, cannot even be considered. Do we continue in sin? It's impossible.

Then the question, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” If you understand the power of the Gospel for salvation and how God brings His salvation to us in the Gospel and what happens we believe it, how could you think you could continue in sin? The whole things that happens, the heart of the Gospel is when you place your faith in Christ, you die. Dead people don't respond. I used to use the example, but it wouldn't be fitting in these days, if someone comes in to see me for counseling and says they can't stop their sin and I pull out a gun and shoot them, do you know what? They stop, they are dead, they don't function anymore in this realm. They don't do that anymore. That's the point.

And in case you don't know, verse 3, “do you not know?” If we come to this point in working through sin, in working through justification and the provision of righteousness and you still don't understand this? “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death.” We're not going to go, he's talking about Spirit baptism here, as you'll see as we move on, not water baptism. Water baptism is the picture in a physical realm, but that's not what saves you. Spirit baptism, baptism that is an identification, and the Spirit of God identifies us spiritually with Christ when we place our faith in Him.

“Do you not know that those who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death so that.” There is purpose, do you have that circled or marked? “So that.” We just didn't die because the penalty for sin is death so now I don't have to worry about going to hell, now I get on. We have been buried with Him through baptism into death “so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we, too, might walk in newness of life.” The only cure for sin is death. The wages of sin is death. You cannot escape it. Death has its multifaceted dimensions—physical, spiritual and eternal. The point he is making here is the identification we have had with Christ, and Christ paid in full the penalty for sin. He died, He was buried, then He was raised to newness of life. Never have to deal with sin again. The penalty was paid in full. So we have been identified with Christ by the Spirit in His death. So God views me as having died when Christ died, was buried when Christ was buried. And when He was raised, I was raised, and in that, a spiritual transformation takes place within me. I am made a new person.

That's why I emphasize, our goal in talking about this is not to try to get the university to see that this kind of activity is wrong. That doesn't cure anything. The problem is much deeper than that. As Jeremiah the prophet said, “the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things.” We are defiled and corrupted at the center of our being. A drunk quits drinking, that probably makes his physical life easier, but it doesn't make him anymore acceptable or pleasing to God. The Pharisees who were self-righteous that they didn't commit certain immoral acts or do other things weren't any more righteous than the prostitutes and tax-gatherers that they wouldn't even eat with. So we need to be careful. We're not saying these people are worse sinners. Just an example of how the world refuses to acknowledge sin, but the solution is if you will see this as wrong and change your behavior, then what? Then you'll be a sinner in rebellion against God, on your way to an eternal hell, just like you were before. Because we all need the power of God's saving grace to intervene in our lives.

So what happens when you place your faith in Christ? All that emphasis from Romans 3:21 through Romans 4 and into Romans 5, Romans 5 began, “therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” It's all by faith, I come to believe, place my faith in what Christ did for me.

So Romans 6:5 says, “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.” No one places his faith in Christ and is identified with Him in His death and burial and left in the grave. It is certain we will be identified with Him in His resurrection and have new life. “Knowing this, that our old self,” our old man literally as you have in the margin, anthropos, “our old man was crucified with Him in order that our body of sin might be done away with.” Which means “so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” Our body of sin being done away with, the next expression phrase clarifies it—our body controlled by sin. The problem is we are sinners. Why do people practice these things? They are sinners. The other sins enumerated in Romans 1—unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossips. How about that one put in there? Gossips, the tongue is a tough one. Slanderers. James says this is the hardest of all sins to deal with. Insolent, arrogant, boastful, disobedient to parents. I mean all these things come from the same source. Jesus said it is out of the heart that all sinful activity and practice comes. So until you have dealt with the heart, you haven't fixed anything.

It's like you go to the doctor and you are diagnosed with a very serious disease and the doctor may say, I can make you feel better but there is no cure. This will kill you. We can alleviate the pain, we can make life bearable but we can't cure you. That's the condition we are in. This church can't fix you, baptism won't fix you, whatever you would try. Only God can solve it. That heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked, it has to be killed, the old man has to die so his power can be broken. So our old man was crucified with Him, identified with Him in His death and burial so that the power of sin to control us might be done away with, rendered inoperative, rendered powerless to control us. So we would no longer be slaves to sin.

We just studied the book of Hebrews together, come back to Hebrews 2. In verse 14 we are told, “Therefore since the children share in flesh and blood.” Those who were to be the objects of God's redeeming grace were human beings, flesh and blood. “He Himself,” referring to Christ, “likewise partook of the same.” The eternal Son of God was born into the human race “that through death He might render powerless Him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and might free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” I want you to note there, that verb translated render powerless in verse 14, that He might render powerless the devil.

Now turn back to Romans 6:6. When it says that our body of sin might be done away with, that verb translated done away with is the same verb rendered powerless, katargeo, rendered inoperative. So the power of the devil over us was broken, the power of sin over us was broken when we placed our faith in Christ. And we could look at other expressions—the world was crucified to me and I to the world in Galatians and so on. This is God's plan, you have to die to be set free. You no longer be slaves to sin. And everyone apart from God's redemption is a slave to sin. Jesus said the one who sins is a slave of sin. The Bible also tells us, all have sinned. So if all have sinned and the one who sins is a slave of sin, all are sinners who are slaves to sin.

The solution is, verse 7, “he who has died is freed from sin,” justified from sin. That work of God bringing His righteousness to us when we died with Christ sets us free. Sin now no longer has authority over us, power over us. The unbeliever thinks he is free, unbelievers like to think of themselves as free and we are not free, we are constrained by our beliefs and so on. The Bible says that you are not free. Jesus said, if the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed. Concerning very religious “morally upstanding people,” the religious leaders of Judaism, He told them, “you are of your father the devil and you always do his will” in John 8. It means they always sin, they always do the will of the father. He is a liar from the beginning, and He said, you are liars. He is a murderer, you are murderers. You are offended by the truths because you are of your father the devil. So here you have to be free from sin, set free from slavery.

Verse 8, “if we died with Christ, we believe we shall also live with Him.” If we died with Christ, we believe we will live with Him, here’s that point again. If you have placed your faith in Christ, died with Christ, you will live with Him. No one is identified with Christ in His crucifixion and burial who is not also raised a new man, raised to new life, “knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to die again. Death is no longer master over him.” He came to pay the penalty for sin, He came to be God in the flesh, the God/man so that He could deal with sin. I mean, He willingly submitted Himself to the penalty of sin which is death, not because He had any of His own sin, as we saw in our study in Hebrews, but because He was “bearing our sin in His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness,” as Peter wrote in his epistle. That's God's plan.

“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe we will live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death is no longer master over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all.” He doesn't have to come back and die again to pay the penalty for sin, it's been done once for all. It is finished. “The death that He died, He died to sin once for all; the life that He lives, He lives to God.” He came, He dealt with the issue of sin, and He died on the cross to pay the penalty for sin. Now His life is lived not having to deal with sin again. He lives just for His Father.

Now he is going to apply it. There are four commands here. If you don't have them marked in your Bible, you should. Let me mention them to you and then we'll come back and look at them. The first command is translated with our word in verse 11, “consider.” That's a command, present imperative. The second command is in verse 12, “do not let sin reign;” third command is in verse 13, “do not go on presenting;” and the fourth command is in the middle of verse 13, “present.” Just that word present, a verb there. Those four commands, talk about our response.

The question, “shall we continue in sin that grace may increase?” How can this be possible? If you have truly placed your faith in Christ, you died to sin. How can you continue to live in sin if you died to sin? Someone dies, they don't function any longer, that's one of the pains of having a loved one die. They are not there doing the things. You remember the things they did when they were living, but they are not doing it anymore. People say, I remember when they would walk into the room. But they are not walking into the room, they are not functioning there anymore. That's the point, do we get it? We died to sin, we are not functioning there anymore. So we have a responsibility and these commands give that.

“Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ.” That word consider, logizomai, a word to give careful reckoning. Could be used in an accounting kind of situation where you look through the numbers and you come to a conclusion based on a careful evaluation. In light of these truths, in light of these facts here is how I will think. I will, having considered everything, recognize I have died to sin, I am alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's the operation of our mind. You have a responsibility as a believer for how you think, what you think, what the focus of your thinking is. We get over to Romans 12:2 he'll talk about “not being conformed to this world, but being transformed by the making new of your mind.” We've been made a new man in Christ, now we are to think differently, taking into consideration, I died with Christ. I have been raised as a new creature. “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, a new creation. Old things have passed away, new things have come,” 2 Corinthians 5 tells us. Do we believe that? Is that how you think?

We talk about depression, maybe you feel down on certain days, maybe you go through an extended time of feeling down. So what? I'm not going to focus my thinking there. This is what I think—I died with Christ, my faith is in Him, I was given new life in Him. He is alive, I'm alive. I belong to the living God, He is my Father. Sin does not rule over me. This is the way we think. The consideration of our minds. “Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, alive to God in Christ.” Why would I be thinking about, indulging in sin? Why would I think about pursuing sin? I died to that, I give it no place in my mind, that's not part of my life.

Second command, you see responsibility here, present imperative—be considering yourselves. This is the way I think, this is my reckoning. I'm not thinking . . . An aside, you are not what you were. People talk about I'm an alcoholic. I've been saved but I have to realize I'm an alcoholic. I'm a homosexual. I'm saved but I realize I'm a homosexual. Well, I'm a liar. I'm saved but I'm a liar. Why? Because I lied before I was saved, lots, so that means I'm a liar. Well, wait a minute, I'm not what I used to be.

Before we go on, come over to 1 Corinthians 6. I want to say something here. We all have sins that attract us and that's true in life. The Pharisees were proud. Remember the Pharisee who prayed, I thank you, Lord, that I am not a sinner like other men, like this tax gatherer. I do all these good and moral things. He was proud and arrogant. It's easy for us to become self-righteous. Even when I read an article like this, we don't do that. I certainly was never that dirty of a sinner. Don't even like to talk about it. What do you mean? What am I? What was I?

Look at 1 Corinthians 6:9, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” You note this, that righteousness is connected to practice. You don't become righteous by your practice, but when you have received the righteousness of Christ, your practice will become righteous. So he talks about practice. “Do not be deceived, neither fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers, none of them will inherit the kingdom of God.” You note there is a mixture here, and it's just a sampling. None of them are going to spend eternity in the glory of God's presence. “Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of our God.” I may have been the world's worst liar, but that's not what I am now. I am a new man in Christ. I may have been the most immoral person walking around, but that's not what I am now. I am the son of the living God. I have been washed, I have been cleansed, that's what I was. I am not an alcoholic, I'm not a drunk. Now it's true even as believers, we all have sins that are still attractive to us. I've shared with you, the Puritans like to call them bosom sins. They are sins we like to keep close to our heart. Not that we plan on practicing them, but in case we would want to we like to keep an avenue open. We all know our weaknesses, we all know what appeals to us that should not. We all know we are going to be in trouble if we begin to think about it. That's reality. I need to understand the power of sin to control me is over.

One thing I remember when I started Bible college many years ago, I remember the professor saying you never have to sin as a believer. Your sin is always because you decided you wanted to. I can never say, I couldn't help myself. I've been set free. I didn't say I never sin, once in a while, more often than we would like to confess. James says if you take into consideration the tongue, we're all more guilty than we like to admit. But that's not what I am. So we want to be careful here. The world identifies us this way and says, this is what you are. You'll never be over that so you have to function like this. There are things, sins I ought to be careful of; they would appeal to me, other sins wouldn't. So I'm going to do everything I can to not provide opportunity for that sin. Other sins have no appeal. I want to be careful. but certain sins are more appealing than others. And we can be glad. Because even an unredeemed person doesn't have time to do everything sinful. A person who is into drugs may not be into everything else. So you get the point.

Come back to Romans 6. If I died to that, that's not what I am; that's what I was as an old man, an unredeemed man, but I want you to know I have been made new in Christ. That's not what I am any longer. “Don't let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,” verse 12. Another command. That is something now I am responsible for. He'll go on later in Romans to talk about the indwelling presence of the Spirit and His empowering, but that takes my responsibility. I am accountable for my decisions, I can choose not to let sin reign in my body which means obeying its lusts. “Do not go on presenting the members of your body as instruments or weapons of unrighteousness.” That's what I used to do—I lived enslaved to sin, I always did the will of my father the devil, even when I was being proud about what I didn't do. “But present yourselves to God,” the aorist imperative, a sharp command. There is nothing in it that indicates a non-repeated action of a presenting once for all, but it is a sharp command. We are to present our bodies, the members of our bodies. What we do with our brain in our thinking, what we do—I present this to the Lord. You are not your own, you have been bought with a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. Sin shall not be master over you, you are not under law but under grace. Law didn't make provision, grace does. The Law could tell me what had to be done and what must not be done, but I was a slave to sin. That's the point. The Law, the Mosaic Law, religious laws, they are no help. Only the grace of God can bring deliverance.

So for those of us who have trusted Christ and experienced the power of His saving grace, sin shall not be master over you. It won't lord it over you. That is a relief. Sometimes it is a disappointment when I sin. There is no excuse for that, you did it because you wanted to, you did it because it seemed pleasurable for the time, gave satisfaction. I shouldn't have said that, but I just wanted to do it. There is something in sin that is appealing, all kinds of sin, otherwise we wouldn't do it. Sin shall not be master over you.

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under Law but under grace?” Sometimes people accuse dispensationalists, which we are, of being antinomian—we don't believe in law. We don't believe we are under the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was brought to it fulfillment with the coming of Christ. But we are not lawless, I just read you a series of four commands—consider, do not let reign, do not go on presenting, present yourself. We are not without law, we're just not under the Mosaic Law. And the Law never was a way of righteousness.

Look as it goes on, verse 16, “May it never be” was the answer to that again. “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death or obedience resulting in righteousness.” There are only two kinds of people in the world, both are slaves—slaves of the devil and sin, and slaves of God and righteousness. That's why I don't like the expression free will. We are set free in Christ. And if the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed. But that's not free to do whatever you want. True freedom is the ability to function as you were created to function. We use the example, you don't take a fish out of the water and put him on the land so he can now be free because when I walk around the land, I'm free. No, he is free when he can function as he was created to function. And so it is. I was created to function as a slave of the living God, to honor Him with my life, to find fullness and fulfillment and endless joy in pleasing Him. Sin ruined that, God's grace restores it.

Look at verse 17, “Thanks be to God though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching which you were committed.” You believed the Gospel. If you've been studying Romans to this point, you realize that's what he is saying. That's why he asks the questions again in verse 16—“do you not know?” This is something you should understand. Then you come, you believed the Gospel, verse 18, “having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” Do you have underlined in verse 17 “though you were slaves of sin you became slaves of righteousness?” When did that happen? When you were freed from sin, when you believed the Gospel, the truth of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ as the full and final payment for your sin.

So you note there are not truly free people in the sense of no obligation. You either are serving sin or you are serving righteousness, you are either serving the devil or you are serving God. And that change, we “all are sinners and come short of the glory of God; there is none righteous, no not one.” Romans 3 made that clear. So to be set free from the slavery to sin and Satan you must place your faith in the Gospel, God's provision, so you can be set free from slavery to sin and in verse 18, become a slave of righteousness. So we are all slaves, the world likes to look at us and think they are blind with their narrow beliefs. Well, you are controlled by your sin, they are blind to the reality of it.

“I'm speaking in human terms,” verse 19, “because of the weakness of your flesh.” In other words he is saying I'm using a human analogy because we have a hard time grasping these spiritual realities. So I've drawn these physical comparisons to help you understand. The point, “just as you presented your members,” the parts of your physical body, “as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness.” And that just leads to further lawlessness, further rebelliousness against God. “So now present your members as slaves to righteousness” and that leads to further sanctification. The word sanctification, holiness same basic word. Sanctification, saint, holy—root idea to be set apart, set apart from sin to God. God is perfectly holy because He is perfectly set apart from all sin. This work of sanctification is going on, it is a process. As I present my body, what I think about, what I do, I want it only to be pleasing to the Lord, I want it only to be consistent with the righteousness that is His that has been bestowed upon me. You “present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification. When you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness.” The unsaved person never does anything pleasing to God because as God looks at the motive of his heart, the motive of the heart is never ultimately I'm doing this in submission to the living God, desirous of pleasing and honoring Him. Never happens.

So you were free in regard to righteousness. “What benefit,” what fruit then “were you deriving from those things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things in death. Now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God.” There is that balance again—freed from sin, enslaved to God. You are not your own, you have been bought with a price. You must glorify God in your body. That's the point he is making here. He has to keep asking the question—do you not know? What's the problem here? What's the struggle? How does the evangelical church get to the point to think to deal with sin is going to take some counseling, this will take time, this is a tough area. You're just not going to work out of this . . . What do you mean? Have you trusted Christ? If you have not trusted Christ, you are a slave to sin, you always do the will of your father the devil, no matter how self-righteous you are, no matter how whatever. If you have placed your faith in Christ, if you are not living consistent with what He says, manifesting His righteousness, what's wrong with you? What about this don't you understand? I have to ask myself that question—Gil, just what don't you get here? Why would you sin? Why would you do that? What were you thinking? I mean, I don't want to cut myself any slack. We need to be careful here. That's what Paul is doing here.

“Having been freed from sin and enslaved to God you derive your fruit, your benefit resulting in sanctification, the outcome eternal life.” That's the process. We place our faith in Christ, we are declared righteous by Him, washed clean, made new. Now that righteousness that has been credited to us is to become the characteristic of our lives. No excuses. Well, do you know what they did? What he did? Do you know what she did? I couldn't help myself. Forget it. Now praise God there is forgiveness. All I can do when I have sinned is recognize it was sin and get on with correcting what needs to be corrected. Praise God He doesn't kick me out of the family when I sin, but I better be very careful about making excuses for my sin or getting the idea God doesn't view it so seriously. I mean, God brings good even out of sin. And He does, but He takes my sin very seriously and it will be dealt with.

You note how this chapter ends, verse 23, a verse we memorize but we ought to keep it in the context. You'll note the verse begins with the preposition, for, in light of what he has just been talking about. “For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” You see what he has demonstrated, that free gift of life in Christ is a life; it's eternal life; it begins the moment I believe in Christ. I am now living a new life, a new creature. Old things have passed away, there are things that want to hang on. It's sad I have to say there are things I turn to that I shouldn't, but the process of our life ought to be growing, maturing, dealing with these things. Not finding excuses. That's why my counseling sessions are brief. A person comes and says they have been practicing this sin, I want to know, are you a believer. Yes. Well then stop it. Well, I can't stop it. Well then quit lying, you are not a believer. Well I am a believer. Then stop it. I can't stop it. Then you are not a believer.

Nobody wants to come back for three or four hours. What's the point? If you are enslaved to sin and can't stop it, you're not a believer. And if you refuse to recognize the fact that you're not a believer, I can't help you. And if you are a believer, you can stop it, you just don't want to. Either way there is no point in our continuing this conversation as though it takes time. Somebody came and saw me and they were involved in a relationship, and it would take time. We don't have anything to talk about. If you don't want to stop your sin, God will have to deal with you.

We put ourselves in all this confusion. What am I going to do? I have to seek the Lord's will; I have to do this; I have to do that. Do what God says. It makes life so much clearer. God didn't give His Word to confuse us. It's those who say we're going to integrate psychology with the Bible, now we can confuse you and you'll need us to sort it out. What do you need? What don't you understand here? When you place your faith in Christ, the power of sin to control you is broken. You never have to sin again. If you do sin, recognize it, learn from it. Stop it. We go on. I like my life simple.

One of the students in a professor's class at a Christian school was from here and the professor told the student, Gil is too black and white in a complicated world. I just want to be as complicated as God is and is simple. I like the way the Spirit of God directed Paul—do you not know? Do you not know? Then what's the problem? Do it. Praise God for the freedom we have in Christ.

Let's pray together. Thank You, Lord, for the riches of Your grace. Lord, even we as believers can forget the overwhelming, awesome power of the Gospel that brought salvation to our sinful hearts and lives. Lord, power from You that set us free from slavery to sin, that identified us with Your Son in His death, His burial, His resurrection to new life. Lord, a spiritual transaction beyond human understanding, but it is real. We are really new creatures in Christ, we have really been set free to serve You with all of our thoughts, all of our actions. Lord, may we live the life that we have in Christ to honor You. I pray for any who are here who are wrestling and struggling with sin, fighting and battling, continuing to suppress the truth to avoid facing the reality. Lord, what joy, what peace, what freedom comes when we let go of all of our trust in ourselves and other things and place our faith in Christ and His death and resurrection as payment in full for our sin. We pray this might happen in lives today. In Christ's name, amen.