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with me to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 6. Will the Lord willing finish Romans chapter 6 today? If you're looking in the provided New King James Pew Bibles, you'll find that on page 1003. Romans chapter 6. We'll start the reading at verse 17 and read through the end of the chapter.
But God bethinked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Prayer for Illumination
Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for giving it to us, and we thank you for blessing us with it in a language we can understand. Lord, I pray for the preaching of your word this morning, that it might not be a distraction from the true words on the page, which are infallible and inerrant. Lord, the words that never fail.
Sermon
The words accompanied by your spirit that pierce even to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow. Lord, I pray that you would wield your sword, your word in our hearts even this morning. Father, I pray that you would please help my fallible and sometimes errant preaching to build up your people and to give them the sense of what these words mean. Lord, I pray that your Spirit would be working in their hearts, your people's hearts, Lord, to ask whether these things are truly so, to go to the Scriptures themselves and find out. Lord, we pray that you would please encourage us, help us, teach us, correct us, rebuke us, train us, Lord, that we might live our lives to enjoy you and to bring you glory. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
My goal in Romans chapter 6 has been to not divorce Romans 6 from the grace that has surrounded all the book of Romans. There are many people who come to Romans 6 and it becomes a book about law and perfectionism and you're not doing enough and you just need to be more righteous, but I think that is does this horrible disservice to what Paul has shown us. The foundation of the Book of Romans is God's grace to sinners.
1 through 3, chapters 1 through 3 is just, you're a bunch of sinners, I'm a sinner, we're all equal opportunity sinners, all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. There's judgment because of that, and God is the righteous judge, and our only hope is Jesus. And by the way, that's how much God loves you. that while you were yet a sinner, Christ died for you. That's how God demonstrated His love for us.
So we must not come to Romans chapter 6 and then take Romans chapter 6 and turn it into, well now we're a bunch of legalists. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's why Paul has had to ask the question multiple times. Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not.
The foundation is grace, the grace that you have been shown by God in Jesus Christ. So how do you live your life? What motivates you to live a godly life? If it's just the law, you're just gonna get kicked in the teeth by judge. But if it's by grace, you have true motivation to walk in the joy of Jesus Christ. And so when we come here to Romans chapter six, what I want you, I'm praying that you'll walk out of the door here with is, God is so gracious to me as sinner. that I get to live my life for His glory. God is so gracious to me as sinner that I get to live my life to His glory. And when I say live your life, I mean forever, eternal life with God.
So I gave you a little bit of a spreadsheet this morning. A little bit different format in your bulletins for how we're going to follow along, and you can fill that out. But we're going to go through the spreadsheet, but it's really going to be going through the verses.
And on one side is wages, and on the other side is gift. And one of the things that has been established is that you only get to serve one or two masters. One of two masters, right? Either you're going to serve sin, or you'll serve God. That's what Paul has established already. He's speaking in human terms here. Right? You were slaves of sin. And now what? You became slaves of righteousness, of God. You can only serve one master, one or the other. Sin or God. But when we come to our Lord, it's this beautiful thing. Because sin pays wages. Sin as a master pays wages. For the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is death. But that is not how God deals with his children. How does God deal with his children?
Do you remember? Is it according to wages? No. No, what did he say in Romans chapter 4? Romans chapter 4, verse 5. But to him who does not work, but believes on Him, who justifies the ungodly, by the way, the ungodly there is us, but unjustifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted as righteousness. But how does sin operate? Sin operates according to verse 4. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. Debt. You got to work for it. You have to work for it. Sin never lets you go, always demands its wages, always pays its wages, and its wages end in death.
But God is not like that. God is gracious. He gives gifts even to sinful people like we spent a long time looking at Abraham in Romans chapter 4. So what's that got to do with our passage today? Well, look with me at verse 20. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What in the world does that mean? You are free in regards to righteousness. I mean, you weren't restrained to obey God. Before you were regenerate, before God made you born again, before He poured out His Spirit in your heart, before He took out your heart of stone and gave you a heart of flesh, before He called you one of His children and made you cry out, Abba, Father, you weren't a slave to Him. You could serve the Master you willingly wanted to serve. And what does that Master, that unregenerate people, willingly want to serve? Sin. Sin. The devil. Death. Lustful desires of the flesh.
For you, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But freedom from righteousness means you have shackles on your wrist for sin. Freedom from righteousness just means that you are shackled to sin. And this is always the illusion of freedom that sin gives. There are people who believe that they are free from all the things of the Scriptures, free from all the things of God's law. They're free to do whatever they want. And yet, what does sin do with its illusion of freedom? It always enslaves.
Go talk to the drunkard. I've sat in rooms with people who have had to be put into medical comas because they thought that when they were young that they could drink and they could enjoy that drink and they could drunk and there would be no repercussions for that. And then I remember sitting with a man going through the Gospel of John with him as his hands were shaking with tremors because of what he had done to his central nervous system. And the freedom that the alcohol had thought it was going to provide and all the fun had ruined his family and destroyed his health. I'm thinking about my own family with their slavery as previous generations to tobacco. I'm thinking, oh, this will be so fun. Don't hear me as I'm sitting here thinking just, oh, there goes Brian on his teeth. This is an RPT toddler type guy here. Know what I'm saying, right? No. Sin does this. If you think, well, maybe we'll just get off of that.
Let's talk about pornography or sex addictions. We talk about people who have addictions to, well, they just have to keep ordering stuff from Amazon. If they just get one more package, then they'll finally have what they need, and then it will be enough. Or maybe it's the sugar or the salty stuff we put into our mouths, and if I just eat enough desserts, finally I'll have that fulfillment in my heart that I want.
Or maybe it's not so evident. Maybe the illusion of the freedom you may have, freedom from righteousness, that you could say whatever you want, you live in a free country, and yet the morsels of gossip never fill. You can talk on the phone, you could text message, you could chat, you could talk about everybody else you want, and yet there's always more news. There's always more tales to spin. Sin is a cruel taskmaster with the illusion of freedom, but its shackles and its end is death."
And that's what we really get at in verses 21 and 22. It's the fruit of these types of things. Look at me at verses 21 and 22. What fruit did you have, then, in these things which you are now ashamed?" By the way, this is because it's past tense, right?
Paul is writing to Christians. He's called them saints in the first chapter. He believes that they are in Christ, and so they have changed lives, changed hearts. And he said, just think back about your former life. When you think back about those former things, how do you feel? Ashamed.
Right now, this is writing to a church, a real church in real Rome with first-generation Christians. These are not people who were raised in the church. These are not people who were baptized as babies in the church. These are new Christians. They came out of paganism. They came out of their Judaism. They come to Christ and He's saying, you remember what your past life was like? Just close your eyes and go back there for a moment. And how do you feel about that previous life? Man, that, there are parts of that life I don't even want to talk to my wife about. Feelings of shame of I knew better.
So what do you do with that? For the end of those things, as we have learned as Christians, this is the last part of verse 21, for the end of those things is death. That freedom from sin? To do whatever you wanted? At the end of that's death. Spiritual and physical death. I think one of my favorite words or favorite phrases in all the New Testament, but now. All right, you felt that shame, you know those things were bad, but guess what?
You don't live there. But now, Christian, but now what? Having been set free from sin, you have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus with something more precious than silver or gold. God has bought your freedom out of sin, and he's brought you into his kingdom of marvelous light. And you have become, and having become slaves of God, What do you do now? Right?
But now, is there shame in following Christ? But now, is there shame in going after the Lord? But now, is there shame in walking in the light as He is in the light? No. Look what it says. But now, having become slaves of God, you have your fruit of holiness. as you reflect honestly about your sin. This is a man I love when the catechism question in the week directly starts mirroring what we're talking about in the passage, right? What is repentance unto life? It's a saving grace. Where we have a true sense of the lawlessness of what we've done. And out of a grief and a hatred of that sin, By the way, grief and hatred of the sin itself, not just of the consequences of that sin, but really that the sin itself is like skunk in our nose.
Like visceral reaction. I don't want this. What do you do? You turn from it. You turn from that old slave master. And what do you do? You turn unto God with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience. You get to turn. You don't have to stay the same person.
This is the thing, right? You may be ashamed of those things in your past before you were a Christian. You may be ashamed of those things that you want to look behind and you don't... I don't want to remember those things that lie behind. I want to press ahead. That's the whole point. You don't have to live in that place of shame. The Lord is gracious. And He gives us a path forward. He gives us a place to go.
You can look back on the love of God, and the grace that He has shown you in Christ, and you can be honest about who you were. You can be serious about what your sin is. You can confess it unto God, and you can know that if you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins, and to cleanse you of all of your unrighteousness, because that's how gracious our God is. And you can walk in holiness now. You don't have to have your legs. with ball and shackle tied to the past, you can walk and endeavor after new obedience. You can see the grace that has been shown you in Jesus Christ, and you can walk as Christ. You can grow in holiness.
You can see the way that leads to death, and you can turn from it. Our life is being hidden in Christ. And as our life is hidden in Christ, There's things that change, and I don't want to just make this nice and easy for you. I wish I could stand up here with a magic wand and say, well, if you believe in Jesus, bippity-boppity-boo, bloop, you're holy.
Your entire life, you've got no more problems. You're never going to struggle with sin anymore. You're going to have a big fat bank account. Your wife is going to love you. Your husband's going to be nice to you. You're never going to have physical problems. Life is good. That's not what Paul's saying here. It's definitely not the life Paul lived. But we have the blessing now.
We have the blessing of having the spirit indwelling in us that you, Christian, get to learn sacrificial love. You get to learn what it means to rejoice in the Lord always. You get to, through the trials and the pains of putting to death sin, to have peace. and patience. You get to love people in the church that you naturally would not want to love or would find lovely. You get to love people in your family that some days you may not actually like.
He fills us with his spirit to teach us kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control. Guess what? There's not a single law against those things. You get to live your life in Christ going a different direction. Living your life with the fruit of holiness and the end of that is everlasting life.
Do you think that gentleness is going to end in the kingdom of heaven? Do you think that grace is going to stop when Jesus comes back? Do you think that self-control is just going to evaporate when Jesus appears in glory? No, we will get to live in these things perfectly forever, showing true biblical love to one another, and basking in the glory and the love of God that He has shown us in Christ Jesus.
And that's where I want us to go next. The culmination of these things and end of them is eternal life, and you must have a new head. A new representative. We saw this all throughout Romans chapter 5. By nature, we are children of Adam. But now you have a new head, don't you? You have a new representative. Jesus Christ, our Lord.
And this is where I want us to look at verse 23. For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Verse 23 is like the conclusion of this entire section, but also the conclusion of all of Romans chapter 6. What does it mean for us to have grace? It means that even though sin would want to pay us the wages, which is death, there's a gift of God. That gift is eternal life. Well, you must be in Christ Jesus. He must be your Lord.
Again, I'm gonna just press on this. I'm gonna hound on this. You might think, Brian, you just keep saying the same thing every week. Great, I hope you don't forget it. This is a gift. It is a gift. If I was the type of person to tell you to get tattoos, I would say tattoo Roman 623 on your forehead. So every time you're brushing your teeth, you would see.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. That is God's promise to you. What you deserved, but what he gave. What we earned with the grave, and what he is gracious to give in Jesus. God gives an unearned gift. Sin demands its wages. Sin is tyrannical. Sin is full of false hopes, lies, and deceit. Sin gives promises of pleasure and only brings with it pain and punishment.
That's who we are in Adam by nature. And yet, but now, God has shown us grace. God is gracious to us. He has demonstrated his own love for us in that while we were still sinners. Christ died for us. That is the foundation upon which our life must be built. That is how we must, we must not take Romans chapter six and turn it into a chapter about here's the righteousness, here's how we do it, so we just need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and try a little bit harder and then we'll be righteous.
Rejoice in Jesus. Rejoice in Jesus fix your eyes upon the author and perfecter of your faith and then follow after him Because there's something important here Notice notice the way the phrase is in verse 23 Right, but the gift of God is life eternal a life into the ages But notice it's in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Why didn't he just say, in Jesus? Why didn't he say, in Jesus Christ, our Lord? Why does he start with Jesus' messianic title, Christ, and then say his name, and then tack on our Lord? I don't think Paul is just doing this by a flowing tongue. I think he's purposeful in his theology here.
Because both the idea of Jesus being Christ and Jesus being Lord comes with the kingdom ideas. He is our anointed prophet, priest, and king. That's what Christ means. Christ means anointed. Christos is the Greek word for Messiah. Jesus is our anointed Messiah. He is our king that God himself chose. And we are brought underneath Jesus' realm. We are brought into His Kingdom. We are filled with the Spirit of Christ. And He is our Lord. He's our Master. We follow after Him.
My question is, do you love Jesus? Do you desire to be like Jesus? When you think of Heaven, Do you think of Jesus because He is the glory of heaven? Do you long to glorify Jesus forever, to sing His praises, to bask in the light of His glory, to be with the myriads and myriads of angels who are singing, worthy is a lamb who is slain? Do you long to be in that choir? Do you wish to see your Savior face to face? Is he your Lord? Is he your hope? Is he your joy? Then rest in Christ Jesus, your Lord, and walk in the freedom that he has purchased for you.
Follow after him. You get to live your life glorifying God forever and ever. You get the blessing of starting that now. Brothers and sisters, if you have Christ, if you are in Christ, you are not a slave to sin, but you are a slave under righteousness. So follow after Christ. Enjoy him forever.
Closing Prayer
Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you that you do not condemn us under the law, but you have shown us the grace, your grace, in sending us your son, Jesus. Lord, we pray that we might not use our freedom or your grace for lawlessness, for we know that that lawlessness produces death. Lord, may we not sin so that grace abounds. Oh, Lord, thank you that you have given us true freedom and we get to serve you now forever. You are so gracious. Thank you, God. In Jesus' name we pray.