Romans 6:15-23 "You're Not Who You Were"

1:13Father, if you do not speak through your word by your spirit, we will leave unchanged. And so we ask now, Holy Spirit, once again, as Pastor Marty has already prayed that you would fill me with your spirit, that you would. Quicken the hearts of those who are dead in sin, that you would revive the hearts of those who are alive in Christ, and that you would minister to us this morning. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

1:48Back in 2010, I almost died in Guatemala. I went there on a mission trip with my friend Nathan and six other people from a partner church of ours, and we were in Guatemala City. If you don't know much about Guatemala City, it's in the mountains. It's 5,000 feet in elevation. And the roads there are all really sketchy. They're narrow, they're not well maintained, and there is a steep cliff on both sides of most of those roads. Well, we were traveling in this old 15-passenger van. I was sitting in the back in the first bench seat in the middle with no seatbelt because there were no seatbelts.

2:30Our driver was not very careful, and I was certain that we were going to go careening off either side of this road at any moment. And so at this one point in our journey, we're going down a very steep incline. We round this corner, and at the bottom of this hill, a bus is trying to turn onto our road. But it's stuck. It's stuck perpendicular to us across the entire road. So the driver can't do anything. You can't go right. You can't go left, or you'll go off the narrow road into the ravine on either side. And so she does what the only thing she could do, which is slam on the brakes.

3:09And so we skidded down that hill and slammed into that bus at about 40 miles an hour. When I opened my eyes, my face was about two inches from the windshield. The driver and the passenger were stopped by their seat belts and the airbags. Everybody else was stopped by the person or the seat in front of them. I was stopped by God. I thought for sure that the greatest danger to us was the steep cliffs on either side. Never did I imagine that I might die running into a bus, but that is what happened.

3:49And so, friends, over the past couple of weeks, we've been walking through Romans chapter 6, and Paul's been trying to answer this question: Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? And his answer to that question is a resounding no. And that is because through faith, we have been united with Christ in his death and his resurrection, symbolized in our baptism. When we go under the water, it symbolizes our death to sin, our burial with Christ. When we come out of the water, it represents our resurrection with him to a new life. And so we have to consider ourselves dead to sin instead of presenting the Members of our body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, we are to present the members of our body to God as instruments of righteousness. So we should not continue in sin so that God can show us more grace.

4:46So now we come to verse 15, the middle of the chapter, and Paul's going to address a second question about the grace of God and what it means for the Christian life. And here's what he asks in verse 15: Are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace? In other words, does obedience really matter? If we're saved by grace, do we really need to concern ourselves with obeying God's commands, with living righteously, with making progress in our holiness, or what the Bible calls sanctification? Does that really matter?

5:30Well, you remember those roads in Guatemala that I was describing to you, those narrow roads that have a steep cliff on either side. That is a great picture of the Christian life. Because you see, Jesus describes the Christian life as a hard and narrow road. He says there are not many people who find it. But if you do find that hard, narrow road and you get on it, there is a steep cliff on either side of that hard road. Narrow road. That's what Jesus is implying.

6:03And so I want you to think about that hard, narrow road and those two steep cliffs and what that has to do with Paul's passage today. On the right side of that narrow road is a steep cliff that we will call legalism. And on the left side of that narrow road is another steep cliff that we will call license. For 2,000 years, Christians have been falling off of the narrow road into either legalism or license. Legalism, where we come up with these man-made rules and say, if you follow God, if you want to please him, you've got to do these things.

6:42And license, saying, if you follow God, if you're a follower of Christ, it doesn't matter how you live. Christians have been falling off the narrow road onto either side for nearly 2,000 years. And so if you're my age or older, you may remember this time in American history where, like, growing up, a lot of believers in the U.S. seemed to have fallen off of the narrow road on the right side into legalism. So growing up, you know, Christians were not allowed to watch secular movies or listen to secular music.

7:17You weren't allowed to play card games. I don't know why. Men had to take off their hats when they prayed in some kind of an inconsistent application of 1 Corinthians 11, whereby. We do not then hand them to women. You could not drink alcohol under any circumstances, even in moderation. And dancing was out of the question, even if you were married and even if you still left room for the Holy Spirit. Now, none of those things are commanded in Scripture.

7:54But like the Pharisees, many well-meaning believers added to the Word of God and turned potentially wise practices into rules that you had to obey if you were going to please God. So they drove off the narrow road into legalism. But, friends, in my experience, and according to my observation, that is hardly the problem today. It's as if our generation saw the car veering to the right, and we grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it as hard as we could back to the left and went careening off the road into license.

8:32These days, Christians who have not watched the latest Netflix or Apple TV series are seen to be strange and out of touch. Many believers only listen to Christian music in worship services. Social drinking is assumed. Dancing is a regular pastime for both college students and adults. None of those things are forbidden in Scripture. None of them. But believers today seem to think that because we have the freedom to do those things, that we should, even if they lead us into sin.

9:20So this morning, Paul is going to encourage us to pull the car out of the ditch of license, back onto the narrow road, without falling into the ditch of legalism on the other side. And he's going to do that by reminding us that we are not who we were. We are not who we were. In verses 15 through 23, Paul is going to remind us: we were slaves of sin, headed for hell. But now, we are slaves of righteousness, headed for heaven.

9:56So join me now in verse 15, where we're going to see that we were slaves of sin, headed for hell. Paul asks, what then? Are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace? By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? Here, Paul gives us a great definition of slavery. You are a slave to whomever you obey. You might obey sin, or you might obey God, but whomever you obey, that is your master.

10:47And sinning makes us slaves to sin. That is the consistent teaching of Scripture. Look on the screen at John chapter 8. Jesus answered them, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Look at 2 Peter chapter 2. Peter says, For whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved. So everyone serves a master. Your master might be God, or it might be sin, but everyone serves a master. You are enslaved to whatever overcomes you, and if you are overcome by sin, sin is your master. So look down now at verse 19 of Romans chapter 6.

11:42Paul's talking about how we all used to present our members as what? Look at verse 19. You once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness. So, what Paul is saying is, we did not use our eyes, our mouths, our hands, our feet as instruments of righteousness for righteous causes, to love God and to love other people. No, we use the members of our body for unrighteousness, to rebel against God, and to use other people for our personal gain at their expense. That is how we lived. Look what Titus chapter 3 says. This captures it so well.

12:33For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. You know, when I think back to who I was before God saved me in college, this is a perfect description. This passage hits me so hard. I was a fool, doing dumb things that put myself and other people in harm's way. I was disobedient to God and my parents and other authority figures in my life. I was led astray by friends and teammates and classmates. I was a slave to various passions and pleasures, living to gratify my flesh. I hated my enemies. And my enemies hated me.

13:33I was a slave of sin, a slave to impurity. And when it comes to sin, one of the greatest deceptions that is out there is that you can kind of dabble in sin. You can kind of sin a little bit here and there in your life, kind of picking and choosing just in little ways. You can break God's commands without going too far, without it causing too much damage or too many consequences in your life. But, friends, that's all a lie. And it's a lie that Satan wants us to believe. He is a liar and the father of lies. Jesus says he's been lying from the very beginning. He lied to our first parents in the Garden of Eden, saying if they sinned, they would not die.

14:23But, friends, here is the truth about sin. You cannot dabble in it. You can't just experiment with it from time to time and try it on with no consequences, no repercussions, no lasting impact in your life or the lives of others. You cannot keep it a secret and hide it forever. You cannot escape the consequences of sin. See, the truth about sin is that it sweeps you up and it takes you farther than you ever wanted to go.

15:00Sin sweeps you up and takes you further than you ever wanted to go. And last week we looked at the story of David and Bathsheba. And we saw how King David was not serving the Lord, and so he served sin. You may recall, David decided not to go out with his army, but to stay back at the palace. And what you need to understand is that David did not make that decision so that he could wreck a family's life and nearly wreck his own in the process.

15:35He was probably just tired, tired of decades of fighting enemies all around him, and he just wanted a rest, wanted a break. But as we noted, he was not actively serving God, and so he served sin instead. So he goes on the rooftop. He sees this beautiful woman bathing, Bathsheba, and he could have stopped everything right there. He could have thought to himself, this is not my wife. I need to get out of here before I am tempted or before I give in to temptation.

16:11But he doesn't do that. He lingers on the roof. And then he inquires about her. He learns that she is a married woman. Could have stopped it there. He said, She's married. This is not right. But no, he brings her to the palace. Palace. And he could have stopped it there. He could have said, What am I doing? This is not my wife. This is another man's wife. This is the wife of one of my most loyal soldiers.

16:43But he doesn't. He commits adultery with her and gets her pregnant. David could have stopped it there. He could have called her husband, Uriah, off the battlefield to confess his sin, to ask for forgiveness for such a terrible betrayal. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he tries to cover up his sin. He tries to manipulate Uriah into going home and sleeping with his wife so that he will think that that's his child instead of David's child. That fails because Uriah has too much integrity and he won't go sleep with his wife while the rest of his soldiers are sleeping on the ground on the battlefield. David could have stopped it there, but he doesn't. He has Uriah placed on the front lines of the battle where the fiercest fighting is, and he orders the army to withdraw from him. Uriah dies on the battlefield like a man in an effort to serve a king who betrayed him by committing adultery with his wife.

17:55You see, when David went up on that rooftop, he was deceived by sin. And sin kept on deceiving him. He didn't think to himself, if I give into lust, I may commit adultery. And if I commit adultery, I may try to cover it up. And if I try to cover it up, I may resort to having someone killed. He didn't think through all of that when he was standing there on the roof. He was deceived by sin. Sin told him, a little lust never hurt anybody.

18:36Sin told him, you're the king. You can do whatever you want. Sin told him, what will people think? You can't let them know what you've done. Sin told him, the ends justify the means. If this gets out, it will destabilize and potentially destroy the kingdom. Sin swept David up and took him further than he ever wanted to go. It led to death, like all sin does. Look at verse 21 in Romans 6. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

19:30Fruit did David get from all of this sin? Death. Uriah dies on the battlefield. Bathsheba's child dies. All sin leads to physical death eventually, one way or another. That is part of the curse. But friends, sin also leads to spiritual death. Look at verse 23. Paul says, For the wages of sin is death. And that death that Paul is talking about there is an eternal death. In Matthew 25, Jesus says that the unrighteous will go away into eternal punishment. Not punishment that lasts for a moment, but punishment that lasts for eternity.

20:20Look on the screen at Revelation 21:8. This is what John saw in his vision after the great judgment. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death. Friends, for all of us who are Christians, who are following Jesus Christ, we were slaves of sin, headed for hell. We, like all people, believe the lie that we could just dabble in sin, just enjoy it without any of the consequences in this life or the next. We were deceived. We got swept up and taken further than we ever wanted to go.

21:18And if you're not a follower of Jesus this morning, that is still true of you. You are a slave of sin. And if you're a slave of sin, you are a slave of impurity, of lawlessness that will inevitably lead to more and more lawlessness. You will get swept up into sin until it will take you further than you ever want to go, ultimately to death, to eternal punishment in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur.

21:55Now, some of you may be sitting here thinking, I don't like that hellfire preaching. Well, I can tell you that I don't like talking about it any more than you like hearing it. But my friends, life is full of scary warnings. The reason that they make you watch those driver's ed videos of people getting maimed and paralyzed and killed by reckless or drunk driving is to scare you into never doing those things. Fear has a legitimate place. In our lives, the reason that the Bible has lots of warnings and vivid descriptions of hell is to wake you up to the scary reality that if you do not repent, you will perish, not just once, but eternally.

22:52You will suffer eternal punishment for your sin against God and against other people. But, friends, God brought you here today, not to condemn you, but to save you. That is why you are here. You are here because God wants you to be saved. He wants you to hear the good news that Jesus Christ lived the perfect life of obedience to God's commands that you are supposed to live. He offered himself in your place on the cross for your sins. He suffered the wrath of God so that you would never have to taste it. He suffered for you, he died for you, he rose again for you.

23:41And so, if you know yourself to be a slave of sin this morning, a slave of unrighteousness, if you have seen and experienced that your lawlessness has just led to more and more lawlessness, you don't have to keep going down that road. God has provided the way out. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And so we implore you to receive him today as we have received him. Be delivered from slavery to sin and become a slave of righteousness.

24:19Because thanks be to God, for every one of us who has trusted in Christ, that is who we have become. No longer slaves of sin, but now slaves of righteousness by faith. Let's look at that concept now. Let's back up to verse 17. Verse 17. But thanks be to God that you, who were once slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

25:04Paul has reminded us of who we were. We were slaves of sin headed for hell. And for some people, their disobedience is obvious. My sin was fairly obvious to myself and to those around me. But for others, their sin that has put them on the road to hell is much less. Obvious because it's internal primarily and not external. So many people look great on the outside, do all of the right things, say all of the right things, go to all of the right places, and avoid all of the wrong places. So many people do that, but they don't do those things for the right reasons. They don't do those things from the heart.

25:54And in Isaiah 29, God lamented that his people honored him with their lips while their hearts were far from him. They honored him with their lips while their hearts were far from him. They obeyed rules that were created by men, but they did not obey God's commands from the heart. And that was true of every one of us who has been delivered from death to life as well. So, what changed? What's different? How did we go from only honoring God with our lips to honoring him from our heart to obeying him with wholehearted obedience? The scriptures teach us that God acted on our behalf, just as he promised. That's why Paul says in verse 17, Thanks be to God. Not thanks be to me.

26:45I was a bad person, but I went to Barnes and Noble. I got some self-help books, and now I'm a good person. Not thanks be to me. Thanks be to God. Look at the promises that God made through the prophets. Jeremiah 31, look at this. He says, For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Look what he says in Ezekiel 36.

27:23And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. Now, obviously, God did not want us to disobey his commands. You don't give commands that you want to be disobeyed. But God wanted more than just external obedience. More than us just doing the right things on the outside. He wanted whole-hearted obedience, obedience that flowed out of the heart.

28:09But for that to happen, God was going to have to remove our cold, dead, hard hearts and replace them with hearts that were warm and soft and alive. He was going to have to write his law on our hearts if we were going to obey it, not just on our minds. He was going to have to put his spirit on our hearts. Spirit within us. And that is exactly what he did. You remember Titus 3 earlier? Look at the full passage in its context, and it shows us what God did.

28:43He writes, For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. Amen. Amen. Thanks be to God. We were once slaves of sin because our hearts were cold and hard and dead. But in his mercy, God took out that cold, dead heart, and he replaced it with a heart that was soft and alive, that had his law written on it. He put his spirit within us, allowing us to have the power, the ability to obey. His commands from the heart. Because of all of that, we are no longer slaves of sin. The Lord has made us into slaves of righteousness, or as he says here in the text, slaves of God in verse 22.

30:17Now, Paul does not want you to get tripped up by that language, slaves of obedience, slaves of righteousness, slaves of God. He understands that going from one slavery to another may not sound like a whim. But that's why he says in verse 19, take a look there again. He says, I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. Understanding the things of God can be hard. There are no contradictions in God, but there are mysteries. There are things that are hard to understand.

31:02And friends, our new birth, where we went from dead in sin to alive in Christ through faith, that is one of those things that's hard to understand and it's hard to explain. So Paul uses the analogy of slavery, not because it's perfect, but because we understand it. As we saw earlier, slaves have to obey their masters. When our hearts were dead in sin, we were enslaved to sin. Sin was the master. Master that we obeyed. But when God performed the miraculous work of conversion, of regeneration, of removing our hearts of stone and replacing them with hearts of flesh and putting His Spirit in us, we now have a new master, God.

31:48Sin is no longer our master, and slavery to God looks a lot different than slavery to sin. Look at how Jesus describes it in Matthew 11. Jesus invites us, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

32:26Now let me ask you this: What kind of a slave master says that to his slaves? Are you weary? Are you heavy laden? Come to me, I will give you rest. Only God says that. Only God is that kind of master. And now that we are slaves of righteousness, where are we headed? Look at verse 22. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. Friends, the fruit that we got from our slavery to sin was what? Death, shame, lawlessness that led to more and more lawlessness that we could not get out of.

33:29But what is the fruit that we get now that we are slaves of God? Righteousness, sanctification, and look at its end, verse 23. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. In our previous slavery, we were working for our master, sin. And because we worked for that master, we earned the wages that you get paid when you work. It was death. Eternal death. Physical death, spiritual death, eternal punishment. That is what we earned. Those were the wages working for sin.

34:17But now, all who believe in Jesus Christ have eternal life. Not because we worked for it, not because we earned it. As verse 23 says, the free gift. Of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Friends, all we had earned was death and eternal punishment. And so, if that was not going to be our final destination, God had to intervene in our lives. He had to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. He had to rescue us. That's why he sent Jesus. He sent Jesus to live a sinless life, to die in the place of sinners, to rise from the dead. The unrighteous people, you and me, were declared righteous because the righteous Son of God laid down his life for us.

35:14We now can become the righteousness of God. We are now slaves of righteousness, headed for heaven. Earlier, I mentioned Matthew chapter 7. I want you to look at these words that Jesus spoke. Jesus says, Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide, and the way is easy that leads to destruction. And those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow, and the way is hard that leads to life. And those who find it are few.

35:58Brothers and sisters, if you're a follower of. Jesus, it is very easy to fall off the narrow road that leads to life. You might fall off on the right side into legalism. You might fall off the left side into license, but it is very easy to fall off that road. And I think for many of us, we've done one of those things or the other. We've done both of those things at various times in our life. And so, if you are a believer this morning that has fallen into either legalism or license, repentance is the path forward. It is how you get the car back on the road from either side that you have fallen off into.

36:46Remember, friends, there is no life in man-made rules. The Pharisees demonstrate that. You know that from your own life trying on legalism as a way of life. And there is no life in sin. Sin promises so much and delivers so little. It delivers death. It delivers addiction. It delivers slavery. Repentance looks like running from both rules and sin back into the arms of Jesus, who is ready and Eager to receive you. Look at these words from 1 John chapter 4. This is such a beautiful passage.

37:38Remember, John is writing to Christians. He says, So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.

38:29Christian, God wants you to know and to believe the love that he has for you. He does not want you to spend any time worrying about what is going to happen to you on the day of judgment. He wants you to know that if you have turned from sin and put your faith in Jesus Christ, your eternity is secure. It is not secure because of your sincerity. It is not secure because of how well you. Are serving Christ right now? It is not secure because you have consistent quiet times in the morning. It is secure because the eternal Son of God shed His blood for you. He has drawn you to Himself. He has given you faith to trust in Him, and you have put your faith in Jesus. Your eternal security is not dependent on you, it is dependent on the great Savior in whom you trust.

39:31And so, John wants you to know, I want you to know the love that God has for you this morning. You are a slave of righteousness headed for heaven. If you are not yet following Jesus, you might be realizing this morning that the sin that promised you joy and life is leading you straight to the grave. Maybe, like David, you thought that you could sin without getting swept up and taken farther than you ever wanted to go.

40:08Like David, you thought that you could get out of it at any time that you wanted to. And yet, here you are, a slave of sin. My friend, if that's you, you do not have to despair. There is good news for you. Jesus says that if you come to him, he will give you rest. Rest from all of your striving. Rest from all of your searching for meaning and purpose and value and identity and everything you've been looking for. He will give you rest. He offers that to you as a free gift. There is nothing you have to do. You simply turn to him and you believe.

40:58So this morning, if that's you, if God is speaking to you through his word and his spirit, then we hope that you will pray to the Lord, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And he will. God promises through Jesus Christ, he will never cast out any who come to him. And so we hope that you will come to him this morning. That today would be the day of your salvation. That today would be the day that you go from being a slave of sin to becoming a slave of righteousness, headed for heaven.

41:35Let's pray. Father, we pray that your Spirit would meet us. It's not enough for us to hear and to agree with what your word says. You desire wholehearted obedience. And so we pray that we would give that to you. I pray for people who have not offered you wholehearted obedience because they've been so concerned with their external appearance, how things look, how things appear, what will people say, what will people think. I pray that you would draw those people to yourself this morning. God, we pray that you would draw others to yourself who are like the younger brother in the parable, who have run off into all forms of sin. They've been swept up in it. They've been taken farther than they ever wanted to go. They never imagined that they would be in the place that they're in today, and yet here they are.

43:12I pray, Lord, that you would meet them, that they would hear the words of Christ. Come to me. Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. God, for all of us who. Are seeking to follow you. Would you help us to stay on the narrow road that leads to life? Forgive us for the times that we have fallen off into legalism or to license and we have not honored you. We haven't obeyed you from the heart as we should.

43:53Thank you for this reminder that we are not who we were, that you have made us into new creations and you've given us new desires. That we no longer stand condemned, but we are accepted fully and freely into your family through faith. Thank you, Lord. We do not deserve that. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.