No Middle Ground

Transcript

GR 1432
05/23/10
No Middle Ground
Romans 6:19-23
Gil Rugh

We're studying the book of Romans together and we are at the end of Romans 6, so if you want to turn there and mark it, we're going to look at a couple of other passages. We come to this closing section of chapter 6, Paul really not only ties into what he has been saying but in many ways ties together what he has said in the book of Romans up to this point. Remember the book of Romans is about the gospel which “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,” as Paul wrote in Romans 1:16. His passion and desire was to come to Rome (Paul had not been to Rome yet), for one purpose—to preach the gospel there also. So in anticipation of being able to go to Rome he writes this extensive letter and in it he unfolds the details of the gospel. As it is always true for us as God's people, we must come to the word of God if we are to grasp and understand what God is like, what He would have us do, what He says about our condition, what is His salvation. It is very simple. The message of the word of God is that we are sinners under condemnation. Jesus Christ the Son of God came to this earth to suffer and die to pay the penalty for our sin so that through faith in Him God could bestow upon us the gift of life.

Turn back to John 8, a passage we have been to a number of times. Jesus is speaking to the religious people of his day, the Jews. He says in verse 31: “Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, [they had professed faith in Him as their Messiah], 'If you continue in My word then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.'” They don't understand this concept of freedom. The Jews prided themselves in they were free, even though they were under the domination of the Romans they saw themselves as the people of God and ultimately free people. But they didn't understand. They said: “We are Abraham's descendants and never been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, 'You will become free'?” Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” Verse 36: “If the Son will make you free, you will be free indeed.” The message there is very simple. You are enslaved to sin, but Jesus Christ has come to set you free, and if He sets you free you will have true freedom. Verse 43, they didn't understand what He was talking about and they weren't able to hear that word, hear it in a sense of understanding and obeying it. Why? Verse 44: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.” Now you'll note, they are enslaved to sin and the devil and they want to serve the devil and do his will. You always want to do his desires.

I'm stressing this because as we come over to Romans this is the very subject Paul is picking up—the reality of sin and slavery to sin, the power of sin and ultimately the punishment for sin that will come. Stop in Romans 3. Paul spent the first part of Romans talking about the reality that all of us are sinners. We are sinners by birth, we are sinners by choice. That's God's evaluation, summarized in verse 23: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” That's a complete, total indictment of all of us. Back up just a few verses to verse 10: “There is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless. There is none who does good, there is not even one.” You see how completely and absolutely God speaks. All of us, every single person is indicted here as guilty before God, sinners. God's evaluation is the only one that matters and we have just read it.

So when we come to chapter 6 Paul has spent time in chapters 4-5 especially, and the end of chapter 3, showing how God provided righteousness in Christ Jesus for all who would believe in Christ. So if you believe in Christ you can be cleansed from your sin, made new, forgiven. What he is developing beginning in chapter 6 is showing that how those who have been declared righteous in Christ are now to live their lives. And what we have to understand clearly is the condition and situation of those who have not believed in Christ and those who have, and thus what we were like before we believed in Christ, and what we are now as believers in Jesus Christ. And the facts of the gospel are to shape and control the way we live. This chapter is built around two questions. The first one in verse 1: “Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be!” The first question – Is it all right to continue on sinning because we now live in the realm of God's grace and forgiveness; and the more we sin the more He forgives, the more His grace is evident? Such a though is inconceivable. Why? Well, you understand what the gospel is. When you believe in Jesus Christ, trust in Him as your Savior, you are identified with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection to new life. So verse 7, “For he who has died is freed from sin,” from slavery and bondage to sin. When we believed in Christ we died with Christ, we are free from sin. So how can you talk about living in sin when you've been set free from sin?

And not only that, verse 8: “If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.” We not only die with Him, we are resurrected with Him. So verse 11: “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” There's a command, the first command given to us in the book of Romans. “Consider yourself, reckon it to be true.” You look at the facts of the gospel and what happened to you when you believed in Christ, consider yourself dead to sin because you died with Christ, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. You have a new life now lived for God in Christ Jesus. Verse 12:“Do not let sin reign in your mortal body, ...do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God.” Life has radically changed. I've been set free from the bondage and servitude of sin to serve God.

So the second question – Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! And just a different facet, really. I've been set free. “If the Son shall set you free, you will be free indeed,” Jesus said, remember in John 8. And verse 7 told us: “He who has died is freed from sin.” So I'm free. That means if I choose to sin on occasion God's forgiveness covers that. But you understand the whole realm of sin is now out of bounds for me. I used to be a slave of sin and serve sin, but now I've been set free to serve God. So verses 16, really to the end of the chapter, have been talking about the fact of we were set free from slavery to sin to be slaves of God. And we manifest the one to whom we owe allegiance by our obedience. So verse 16, if you are sinning you show that sin is your master; if you are functioning righteously you show that God is your master. Now this is in the context here of having been set free in Christ.

What Paul is doing is showing there is an unbridgeable chasm between the two positions. On one side you have sin as the master and the result of that will be death. On the other side you have God, or righteousness, as the master and life will be the result. And there is no middle ground, there are no gray areas in this subject. There is a great deal of confusion among even professing believers today, we'll say more about that in a moment, over this subject. Verse 17: “Thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.” You came to obey, believe the gospel and the truth of God now in “that form of teaching which He has committed you to.” That is to shape your life in all areas and all ways. The gospel is not something you just believe to be saved and now you get on with your life. The gospel is something you believe, you experience the power of God's salvation and now that truth of God is what molds, shapes and directs your life from here on.

Having been freed from sin you became slaves of righteousness. That's the two divisions—there are those who are slaves of sin, there are those who are slaves of righteousness. You have those two realms of slavery fixed in your minds—those who are slaves of sin, those who are slaves of righteousness. There is no middle ground. We like to think that there is a difference. We look at people externally and say, some people look like they are good people, others obviously are bad people, evil people. But you understand, God is looking at the heart. When He looks at the heart of the individual, He sees a heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked above all things, as we are told in Jeremiah 17:9. That was the indictment of the opening chapters of Romans:“There is none righteous, there is none who does good.” For God's perspective we have all become useless, worthless to Him. There is no one seeking after God. If we have this fixed in our minds it will keep us from confusion.

So what he is going to do is pull this all together and talk about the realities of what this all means. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. In other words, I am using this human analogy of slavery so that you can understand it better. We sometimes have difficulty grasping on to a truth, but here the analogy of slavery is something clearly understood, even us down to this day. And of course in Paul's day in the Roman Empire with so much of the city of Rome, for example, being comprised of slaves, it was a clear analogy. So he is picturing the analogy of slavery to show the power, authority and control that is there, and the obedience and allegiance that is owed by the slave to his master. So he says: “For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness.” He states a fact here. Before our salvation we served sin. It is stated as a simple fact. You presented your members, the parts of your body, your body in its entirety as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness. Two words here just describing the corrupted, vile condition we were in as rebels against God. The word translated “impurity,” some translate that “uncleanness,” used most often by Paul in a context of moral impurity. But the idea of the corruption of sin and sinful practices, and lawlessness, 1 John tells us that sin is lawlessness, by its very character it is an act of rebellion against God. Sinners are those in rebellion against God. So we gave ourselves as slaves to uncleanness, to lawlessness. You say, “that wasn't me, I was a pretty good person and never did anything really evil.” Well God is describing our true condition as He saw it. We never did anything honoring to Him, we never did anything in true obedience to Him. All of our allegiance, all of our servitude was to sin. Some of us were what we would call “good” sinners, some of us were “bad” sinners. From God's perspective we are all sinners and that just resulted in more lawlessness, he says. What happens? Sin just leads on to further sin. This is the realm in which we live, we never left that realm, we never did one thing. Now we need to follow this: we never did one thing pleasing to God before our salvation. It's what he's saying. You presented your members, the parts of your body as slaves to impurity and lawlessness. And all that led to was further lawlessness. That's the realm in which we function. That's why God says, “There is none righteous, there is none who does good, there is none who seeks after Me.” We were all in that condition.

Now as you did in your prior life as an unbeliever, you lived totally for sin and your body was used for those purposes. “So now,” and here is a command: “present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.” You have a new master. You served the old master completely and totally in all ways in everything you did. So now you serve the new master with that same complete allegiance. You present your body and all of its parts to be used for Him. So I've moved from one realm of slavery to the other—from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness. But slavery to righteousness is true freedom because God created me in His image to bring honor to Him and to serve Him. So now I am fulfilling my very reason for being created in that sense. That's true freedom, I can function as I was created to function. But not free to do my own thing. Christians get this idea, “no one can tell me what to do, there are not commands governing me.” We're not set free to do what we want, we are set free to do what God wants. And you see the fixed line that is drawn.

This is the same thing that was said in verse 13: “Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members [your bodies and all their parts], as instruments of righteousness to God.” So in verse 19, you “present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.” Remember that group of words—saint, sanctify, holy—all come from the same basic root Greek word, a word that means “to be separated, set apart.” God is holy because He is set apart from all sin. So God says to us, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” As those who have been set free from sin, we are now to honor Him and live lives that manifest His character, so we present our bodies as slaves of righteousness to do righteousness. We were justified, or declared righteous, we saw in the previous section in Romans. Now righteousness is to be the characteristic of our lives. And we noted justification is distinct from sanctification, but it is not separated from it. And those who have been declared righteous by God, now by the grace of God, live lives manifesting God's righteous character in their lives, and that results in sanctification. Slavery to sin led to further lawlessness, but slavery to righteousness and serving righteousness leads to further holiness, to becoming more conformed to the character of God. It is a simple, clear picture. When Paul says in verse 19, “I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh,” we ought to understand this and see it clearly.

So he says in verse 20: “when you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness.” When you were slaves of sin, that's before your conversion, you were free in regard to righteousness. You know what that is saying? When you were a slave to sin you didn't do anything righteous. Now, we sometimes have a hard time with this because we know unbelievers and we say, “They are good people, they are nice people, they are kind people.” And we do see a distinction in the manifestation of sin, for some people are evil and vile and you'd be afraid to be alone with them. And others seem so nice and kind. But God says, “in heart you are all of the same nature, you are in rebellion against Me, you live a life of rebellion, lawlessness.” That's the condition of your heart. If they were such good people, such truth-loving people, they would bow before the God of heaven, bow before His Son, and place their faith in Him as their Savior. But there is no one good, no one righteous. When we were slaves of sin we were free in regard to righteousness.

Now this fixed division is important for every area of life for our lives. In the context here he is talking about our devotion in service now to God and to righteousness in contrast to what we served before. And when we were slaves to sin we didn't do anything to please God. Now that we are slaves of righteousness, how can we talk about “is it all right to go back to the old realms of slavery for some enjoyment?” I mean, “absolutely not,” is the point.

Now understanding this fixed gap, if I can diverge a little bit, we ought to keep things in perspective. And when we begin to get confused on the gospel that confusion begins to muddle things all along the way. You'll note here, there are no points of agreement between the slaves of sin and the slaves of righteousness. Any agreement that seems to be present between believers and unbelievers is superficial, at best, because those enslaved to sin are free regarding righteousness in the sense they never do anything righteous, pleasing to God. And those who are enslaved to God in righteousness are never to do anything in the service of sin. We have two separate realms and categories here divided by this huge chasm. And there is no gray area. It's not like, well some of those enslaved to sin have made their way across the chasm and they are not saved yet, but they aren't so bad. They're close. I realize the Spirit of God draws us and works in ways to bring people to salvation, but the basic condition is fixed. You are a slave of sin in every way and in every area of life until you are set free in Jesus Christ. There is no one who has some of the shackles of the slavery of sin off and almost free. You are either totally enslaved to sin or totally enslaved to righteousness. Those are the only two categories. Jesus put it this way: “He who is not with Me is against Me.”

We don't like black and white categories like that today, we like to blur things. And this blurring creates real problems, if I can diverge a little bit. There are some areas that churches are getting involved in that we ought to understand bring us into conflict with the clarity of what God is saying here in Romans 6. Some churches are being drawn into the idea that we are in some kind of cultural war that is unique and it necessitates a joining together with all people like minded on certain issues of social justice and cultural reform as though those areas are important enough that the differences we would have over the issue of salvation can be set aside so we can be joined together in such a battle.

I got a call on the phone last night, somebody who said we ought to turn on a television program, so we did, and watched part of a program with a popular, well-known kind of commentator. He was interviewing two evangelical Christians, one of them would be very well-known, but let's just leave it that they are two evangelical Christians. Some of you may have seen the program. And they are talking about this head of a program who was part of a very unbiblical, anti-biblical cult. But they are talking about all their points of agreement on social justice and the cultural situation. And they are talking as though they are on the same page. You understand these are people of different realms. I'm thinking it is appalling, it is (I don't know the word to use), that you have two evangelicals sitting here talking with this man and no one brought up the gospel about his lost condition, he's on the way... They kept talking about ... Students in our university, evangelical, we do this many hours of social service a year. I mean, is that what is going on? Wait a minute. What is the gospel here? What is being blurred?

I brought an article, these are evangelical Christians. This is what is being said. Think about what we have said in Romans 6 to this point. And this is Southern Baptist, this particular statement, from this evangelical. Their statement calls Christians “to make Christ supreme in both society and their individual lives.” Now how do you make Christ supreme in society? We'll say more about that in a moment. Here is another man, leading evangelical, many of you would know his name. He agrees with this man and said, “There will be disagreements over the best ways to achieve social justice, but there should not be a debate over social justice as a goal.” Now social justice has become a goal of believers. Another evangelical, “we support social justice. Social justice is life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a transcendent understanding of all human life is sacred, that our liberty is granted by God, that happiness is ours to pursue.” Here is a definition given by another evangelical. “Social injustice consists of misuses of power to create distortions of human community in which greed, domination, violence and exclusion come to dominate human life. Social justice consists of human acts to resist social injustice by repairing such distortions of human community. We work today for social justice when we seek to create religious and political communities characterized by more economic justice, less domination, less violence, more inclusive community.”

Does that sound anything like the Apostle Paul to you? Does that sound like what he was writing to the Romans, “I can't wait to get to Rome and we can work together on social injustice, dealing with the unfair domination of some over others, working to create political communities, getting economic justice for people?” Paul says, “I want to come to Rome and preach the gospel.”

And of course there is another evangelical organization that is joining together with other to advocate for immigration reform. Now don't misunderstand, I'm not saying that any of these things are bad or wrong in and of themselves, we have to come back to—what is the church about as the pillar and support of the truth, as Paul wrote to Timothy, and what is the only answer to man's problems? You know the whole world lies in the evil one. Satan is the god, (small “g”), of this world. We think we can change the corruption of this world by social action, political action, economic motivations? You understand what we are dealing with, we are dealing with those who are enslaved to sin. Now we have evangelicals that say the cultural wars are such that we can join together with those we don't agree on salvation about because the cultural wars are so important. One evangelical leader here said, “I try to stay on the sidelines, but when it came to abortion and marriage issues with the battles going on, it just became too important to stay on the sidelines.” Why are we so surprised that those who are enslaved to sin, who are enslaved to impurity and lawlessness commit acts of impurity and lawlessness against God? And is it not a denial of the gospel to imply that they can be set free from slavery to sin by some kind of social action? Now that liberal churches and those who do not believe the Bible and the gospel get involved in this does not surprise me at all, but it embarrasses me and infuriates me to see two men who claim to believe in Jesus Christ, believe in the gospel, sit there with a Mormon and act like we have anything in agreement on social action and economic action and health care reform and all the rest of the ills of society. That is a denial of the gospel. It is every bit as serious as a person walking around claiming to believe in Jesus Christ and living a life of immorality. It's an embarrassment to Christianity, it is a denial. The book of Romans is about there are only two kinds of people in the world—those who are enslaved totally and completely and absolutely to sin and those who have been set free in Jesus Christ. And there is no other solution to sin but Jesus Christ.

Go to 2 Corinthians 6. You know sometimes believers will study a passage of scripture, then they go out and live like it doesn't exist. If I'd ask one of these men on the program I'm talking about, “do you believe the gospel?,” and I've read some of what one of them has written and he would believe the gospel and say, “Yes, absolutely.” And then you join with members of the cults and those who do not believe in salvation by faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone, because the culture wars are so important? Who ever gave the idea that there was another solution to the problem of sin but the death of Jesus Christ? This is not new problems. Paul has talked about his ministry in writing to the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians 2:14, “Thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.” Paul says we are giving off the knowledge of Jesus Christ everywhere we go, that's what we are about. I did not hear the gospel one time, watching these men sit with a man who is lost and on his way to hell. But all they could do was fall over themselves to talk about their agreements on opposing certain governmental actions. Paul says everywhere we go we give off the fragrance of the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Verse 15: “For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one the aroma of life to life, to another the aroma of death to death.” We tell them about Jesus Christ. If they do not believe they are just further confirmed in their lost condition. But for some they believe and it's an aroma of life. Verse 17: “We are not like the many, peddling the word of God,” acting as hucksters with the word, adulterating the word by mixing it with men's ideas. No matter what they say, when we move into social justice and cultural reform and all of this, we have corrupted the word of God. And the fact we can join with unbelievers in it indicates we have become hucksters, we have become like they are, only worse because we claim to believe that the gospel is the only thing that will change a life and yet we join with those who do not believe that and pretend we are accomplishing something.

Turn over to 2 Corinthians 6:14: “Do not be bound together with unbelievers.” Do we get that? Do not be bound together with unbelievers, unequally yoked. We often take this for marriage, it would apply there but he's not talking about marriage particularly in the context, you realize. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, “for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?” You see how this fits what Paul has been talking about in Romans? Those enslaved to sin, those enslaved to righteousness. Now what fellowship do they have together? None. So we cannot partner together in ministries. “What harmony has Christ with Belial? What has a believer in common with an unbeliever?” Believers have blurred it. We have a lot in common with you, the real ills of society, the real problems of injustice in a world, we share those convictions with you. We do not! Those who believe the Bible believe that Jesus Christ is the only answer and only God can change a heart, and society will never be changed until Jesus Christ returns. So we present the gospel of Jesus Christ so the Spirit of God may carry it to a heart. But has the god of this world gone away? Has it changed that “all that is in the world, [is] the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life”? We act like our culture has gotten so bad.

You understand that Rome was ruled by Nero when part of the New Testament was written? You talk about vile and corrupt. Things we wouldn't even talk about done by him in open, public ways. All we find when we read the New Testament is “submit to the governing authorities, obey the king, pray for him, get on with it.” Today we say, “look at the decisions the President has made, we have to reform our culture, we have to . . .” This is getting too serious to just limit ourselves to the gospel, we have to . . . And all of a sudden we Christians say we believe the gospel and we quickly abandon it and jump on the bandwagon with Mormons and Catholics, and you name it. To do what? Can you change the world, change the injustices, the immorality, the lawlessness? Absolutely not. We have nothing in common. That doesn't mean we are not nice to unbelievers, doesn't mean they are not welcome to come here. But you understand we are in two different realms and we don't want to give the idea. . . We mentioned this in our previous studies, we quit calling them sinners, we call them seekers as though they are coming across that chasm little by little. No one comes across it little by little. I realize the Spirit of God works in gracious ways, but that is a life-changing event when you die with Christ. You don't work your way partly across the chasm between slavery to sin, and slavery to righteousness. You are totally, completely, absolutely enslaved to sin until you are set free through faith in Christ. Do you believe that? Then we put it into practice, right?

People look around and say, doesn't your church care about social justice and social injustices? Don't you care about the environment? Don't you care about what this health care plan is going to do to our freedom? Don't you care about . . .? Want to know the truth? Not really. Those are all superficial things. I care about what really matters – that men, women and young people are lost and on their way to hell. They are totally consumed and enslaved to sin. And you know what? They cannot understand and know biblical truth.

Back up to 1 Corinthians 2:9, we'll break in here: “Things which eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.” We use this as a funeral verse as though when you die then the things that you didn't know about concerning God. But you'll note the next verse: “For to us God revealed them through the Spirit.” In other words you can't know the things of God through just the natural means, it is a matter of revelation, revelation of the Spirit of God. “For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God.” Verse 12: “Now we, [talking about believers] have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us of God.” Verse 14: “But a natural man, [a soulish man, the man without the Spirit of God] does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised [or discerned].” But we who have the Spirit of God can understand them.

So, you see, we think we are partnering together in faith based activities for social justice, these kinds of things. And you are trying to mix those who are enslaved to sin with those who are enslaved to righteousness and God says, don't try to do it. You have nothing in common, and the unsaved man cannot understand and know biblical truth. Whatever he is doing for social justice, he is doing as one enslaved to Satan and sin. He is not doing it out of desire to bring honor and glory to God, and obedience to Him. That only happens when you believe in Jesus Christ. And then you recognize that man is so controlled by sin and dominated by sin, and this world is under control of the god of this world that he cannot be reformed. And we act like we can and it's a denial of the gospel that says that's the only solution to man's problems. And that is a one, one, one, one. This idea, they try to say the gospel is individual, but it also has its social dimension. As soon as you wed the gospel to something else you have corrupted the gospel and you begin to destroy its power.

Come back to Romans 6. What are we talking about in Romans 6? The unbeliever is enslaved to his sin. The believer has been set free from slavery to sin, and enslaved to righteousness. Just like the unbeliever enslaved to sin, in verse 20, never did anything righteous in the sight of God, so the believer now should not contemplate doing anything unrighteous. You gave total allegiance to sin in your former life, now you give total allegiance to God and righteousness.

Verse 21: “Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?” What benefit, what fruit, did you get out of those things that now shame you? Jeremiah 8 says people didn't have any shame, “they didn't know how to blush,” he said (v. 12). We look around and say, this is terrible. Well what do we expect? That's not new. Jeremiah, 500 years before Christ, said that was the condition of sinful people, they don't even know how to blush. They are not ashamed of their sin. We say, what's going on in our society, the culture is getting so bad? Nothing has changed. Since the fall of Adam this world has been under the control of Satan. The whole world lies in the evil one. Everyone in this world has been enslaved to sin and Satan unless set free by the salvation that is found only in the provision that God makes.

Where are we? What benefit were you getting out of those things? You are ashamed of them now. You look back, are you proud of the things you did, the immoral acts you did, the dishonest things you did, the arrogance that characterized the life? No, we're ashamed of those things. I'm embarrassed that I would function like that. I'm ashamed. Rebel against God like that? What was I thinking? Sin makes you stupid. You do things and now as a believer I look back . . . And I should think I want to go back and do those? It's alright for me to dabble in this, enjoy a little bit of the pleasures of sin there? Think about it. If they were going to stand up here and they were going to expose that, it would be a shameful thing. Yes, that would be so embarrassing. I don't want anyone to know. Those are the things that shame. That's what our life was like. What benefit did you get out of that?

“Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things which are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.” Sin leads to death. “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God.” Note that same thing as verse 18: “Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” Verse 22: “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God.” There is no middle ground. This auditorium has two kinds of slaves—those who are enslaved to sin, those who are enslaved to God. Period. No other kind of person. There is no other kind of person on the face of the earth. Two kinds of people—those enslaved to sin and enslaved to God.

“Now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God you derive your benefit resulting in sanctification, the outcome eternal life.” The same result, the end of verse 19: “Present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.” The end of verse 22: “You derive your benefit [your fruit as one enslaved to God], resulting in sanctification,” holiness, being set apart to God, growing into maturity, being more and more conformed to the character of God. The outcome of that is eternal life. So you say you have two masters, sin and righteousness; two kinds of slaves, a slave to sin and a slave to righteousness; and two results, death and life. Eternal death, called the second death, we'll be talking about that tonight in Revelation 20, and eternal life. That's it. Can't get any more simple, any more black and white than that. Not, “ well, I know some people that are this and that.” The Bible presents it here. That doesn't mean I can discern every person, but I can understand there are only two kinds of people in the world—those enslaved to sin and condemned to eternal death in hell, eternal condemnation in hell, and those enslaved to God and righteousness and destined for eternal life in the presence of a holy God.

Look at verse 23, one of the most familiar verses in all the book of Romans: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There is only one place to find life, only one place to find freedom, that's in Jesus Christ. Sin has its wages – it will pay out eternal death. But God gives a free gift. You'll note the contrast – wages, this is what you deserve, you earn as a sinner—eternity in hell. This is the just payment for that. But I'm going to get a free gift in Jesus Christ—eternal life. I don't work for it, I don't earn it – by God's grace I receive it. As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become sons of God, as John 1 tells us. That's the beauty of the plan.

You'll note through this there is responsibility placed on us. We have been set free in Christ, I make decisions with my will for which I am accountable. I presented the members of my body to sin. I was not only a sinner by birth, I was a sinner by choice. I chose to use my body for sin as one enslaved to sin. It's not, “I can't help it, it's not my fault.” Yes, I'm accountable and that truth that is there, I did it. Now as one who has been redeemed by God's grace, I am to exercise my will to serve and obey God and live for Him. What a privilege that one enslaved to sin, given over to impurity and lawlessness, has been set free. So now, by the grace of God I can serve Him, I can do what is pleasing to Him, I can honor Him with my life, because I have received the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. I have been set free. There is no other answer. If anyone wanted to talk to me about social justice, I'd say, “I appreciate your desire to help people. But you know that does nothing. We are all going to die. Where are you going to spend eternity?” The Bible says the real problem is there is sin in the world. There is social injustice, there is economic injustice, there are all kinds of unfair things, we might say. They are a result of sin. But the only solution to sin is the Savior. That's the message we have, that's the message we must live, live day-by-day in serving righteousness, live day-by-day in our testimony. The line is drawn. Is our church narrow? Yes, it is. Are we narrow as believers? Yes, we are. Is the word of God narrow? Yes, it is. What did Jesus Christ say? There is a broad gate and a broad way and it leads you to death. There is a narrow gate and a narrow way and it leads you to life. Jesus said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”

Let's pray together. Thank you, Lord, for Your truth. Thank you for the power of the gospel which when believed by one enslaved to sin, that one is set free, that one is identified with Jesus Christ in His death, burial and resurrection to new life. Lord, we are thrilled to be reminded by Your word of what You have done for us in Christ. We are thrilled to be reminded we have been set free to serve You. Lord, that we would take this to heart and live accordingly, that You might be honored, that we might grow in sanctification. We praise You in Christ's name. Amen.