Transcription
[Music]
Well, this morning, we turn again to Romans chapter 7. Romans chapter 7. As we really come to what is part 2 of a message from last time, "The Christian and a Rules Dominated Life." The Christian in a Rules Dominated Life.
Romans 7 is, as we said last time, one of the most powerful and profound analyses of sin that you will find anywhere in the Bible. It tells us how sin works. It tells us what sin does, especially as it relates to the law of God. Romans 7, as well, provides us the most complete statement in the Word of God on both the function of the law and its relation to the believer.
When we're talking about law, and we're just gonna jump right in, when we're talking about the law, we're not just talking about the Ten Commandments. We're talking about God's moral law, all of God's law, the law written on our hearts, the law written in the Bible. And it's important that you and I understand, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, how we are to regard the law, how we are to view the law, and how we understand God's working in us, Christ likeness, holiness, godliness of character.
Because, as a pastor, what I have noticed is, through the years, many people resort to the law as their means of motivation to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. In other words, what they do is they organize their law around doing certain things and avoiding certain other things, and they're motivated, their lists by their commitments. And while that may work for the most disciplined among us, for most believers, that approach to Christianity is a train wreck. Romans 7 helps us understand why.
Now, remember, in Romans 6, we learned about a relationship to sin. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? We died to sin, but sin did not die. We died to sin. It no longer dominates us. We're not under the reign or rule of sin. We're under the reign of grace. And yet, there is still an ongoing battle that we face with sin. We're going to see that as we come to Romans 7. And Romans 7, we're learning about our relationship to the law. That we are not under law, but we are under grace.
Now, just by way of review, so we kind of get the general line of thinking, remember we had, over and over again, talked about justification. That moment that a person comes to Christ, that moment they are saved. A better word is they are justified. At that moment, three things happen. First of all, God energizes in their heart the faith to believe. You and I don't come up with the faith. You and I don't produce the faith. When somebody tells me, "Well, you know, I just don't know that I have the faith." That's okay. The faith isn't from you. It's from God. "To every man hath God dealt the measure of faith." "It is by grace you have been saved through faith." "And this not of yourselves," Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 2.
So, we're given faith to believe. We are instantly, in that moment, given forgiveness of our sins, past, present, and future. All of it forgiven. All of it put under the blood of Christ. All of it gone. Finally, we are given right standing. As we're clothed with the righteousness of Christ. God credits to us, he assigns to us, not our own righteousness, because none of us would ever be righteous enough. But he assigns to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ, who was totally, perfectly, completely righteous. He lived a righteous life 33 years that you and I might be clothed in that righteousness. There's nothing you and I can do that would make us more righteous in God's sight than what we received the moment we were saved.
Consequently, now we are not under the law. In other words, trying to do things to gain right standing with God. But we are under grace. Under the law, we saw, means this: keeping rules so you can be righteous in God's sight. As a Christian, we don't do that. If you view, if you view your keeping of God's law as a means of giving you right standing with God, in other words, you know, you do certain things, you didn't do certain things, that determines how God feels about you, how God views you. If that's how you view your life, you're not living under grace. You're living under law, which is tragic. That's problematic.
There are a lot of Christians who get saved, they're under grace, but they go back to living under law. On the other hand, under grace means I understand that all my righteousness, all of it, not part of it, not just the part Jesus gives me, all my righteousness comes as a gift from Christ. Here's what happens, and I'm reviewing a bit, because you have to understand what it means to be in a works-righteous approach to Christianity, what it means to be under law, in order to understand what Paul's talking about here. And I think it will really help make sense on why you don't ever want to live that way.
Because honestly, there are some today, and you're saying, "You know, John, I get it. I, hey, you finally have convinced me that all my sins are forgiven. But I still think the believer has a responsibility to the law." I think you have to be very, very careful with where you go with that. It's not that we completely disregard the law, but I think we have to hold the law in the proper perspective.
Because what happens to people, to Christians especially, is they, they get saved, they come to Christ, and then they're told by, by well-meaning Christians, and I don't disagree with this approach, "Hey, here are some tools that can help you grow in your walk with God." That's good. You know, it's good to pray. Let the, you know, spend time with the Lord. Learn to talk to God and learn to listen to them. That's what prayer is, a conversation. So that's a tool. And, and be a church. I'm gonna tell you what, you might be a new believer. Being in church is absolutely critically important. It's not that you're putting in your time. It's a place where you're strengthened. It's a place where you're building relationships with other people, where you're hearing the Word of God. And, and I would say, most of all, where you're in the presence of the God, worshiping Him, which transforms you. So go to church. Read your Bible. Learn about God and about what God did for you and how much God loves you.
And then there are some other things that, that's not helpful for you to do. That there are things that if you do them, they diminish life. If you, if you gossip, if you, if you sow strife and dissension, if you're jealous, all these different things, hey, avoid those things and do these other things. But what happens over time, if we're not careful, is we can find ourselves in a mess. We're gonna see in Romans 7, it's the power of sin. Sin corrupts everything God intended for good. And what sin does, and what, what we end up, if we're not, if we don't understand the gospel, if we don't understand how to walk in grace, or we have people around us who don't understand, and they do Christianity as a works righteousness, "I do things, and that's what gives me good standing with God."
What happens is, over time, the tools of discipleship, prayer, church, Bible reading, not doing certain things, over time, inadvertently become the rules of discipleship. "Did you pray? Did you read your Bible? Did you attend? Have you been going to church? Or did you do these certain things? Did you not do these other things?" And all of a sudden, what happens is Christians find themselves coming into church, and they find it difficult to worship because they feel like, "You know what, I, I had a pretty poor week. It wasn't a very good week. I didn't do this. I didn't do this. I did do this. I did that." And all of a sudden, you find yourself only like you're not in good standing with God. You don't have a good relationship with God because you were less than perfect last week.
And so, all of a sudden, you're not feeling like you can lift your hands because you feel like you're a hypocrite. Because if you think you can't lift your hand because you and your wife got in an argument on the way to church, then that does it. Then what happens is, all of a sudden, your, your, your work, you got a works righteousness going on because you forgot that your right standing with God has nothing to do with what you did or didn't do. Has everything to do with what Christ did on the cross for us and what happened when you put your faith in Him. And you put yourself back under law, and you've created a works righteousness Christianity, which makes you fail, condemned, if you can't live up to either your rules or somebody else's rules.
So, there are a number of people who can barely go through a season where they, they lose heart. They become less interested in church because, honestly, they just feel guilty every time they go to church. They just feel like, "Man, I can't do it." And some of you have said, "You know what, the rules thing, it's just gotten to me." And some churches are even more prolific in promoting a works/righteousness Christianity, and it just disheartens people who can't do it. And they say, "You know what, I'm tired of feeling like a failure. I feel like God's always mad at me. Who needs that?" When none of that was in the gospel, and none of that has to do with the reign of grace. And, and that's not what God intended at all.
People, works righteousness Christianity not only struggles with personal condemnation at times, but judgmentalism towards others. Because, honestly, you begin to evaluate yourself by what you see in other people's lives, how they're doing or not doing. And all of that is addressed, really, in Romans chapter 7.
Last time, you remember that we saw in Romans chapter 7 and verses 1 through 6 that we died to the law. That Jesus was born under the law to deliver those who are under the law, and we saw that from Galatians chapter 4. That when Christ died, to be in Christ means that when he died, we died. What happened to him happened to us. He died to the law. Therefore, we died to the law. So now, all of a sudden, rather than being under the law, I am set free from the law. In other words, the law no longer judges me. The law no longer evaluates me. The law is no longer my, my guardian, in the words of Paul. It's no longer my parent. It's no longer my, my spouse in this example. The law doesn't judge us. It doesn't make us right with God. And listen to this: the law cannot produce holiness. It's a really important statement for every believer to understand. It is not the law's role in a Christian to produce holiness. And when people move into that, they, they veer off from the one thing that would, that would help them, and that is, it's our relationship with Christ that produces holiness.
I'm not married to the law. And they acknowledge, and we looked at the thirdly last time, I'm not married to law. I'm married to Jesus. And now Jesus is working in me. And His power, my relationship with Him, has a procreative capacity, just like in a general sense, marriage has a procreative capacity to produce offspring. My, my being married to Christ, the believer's marriage to Christ, has a procreative capacity to produce holiness, to produce a righteous lifestyle.
So, let's pick it up. Romans chapter 7. All that, just simply to get us on the same page. Romans 7, verse 7. "What then shall we say?" Because Paul has explained, we died to the law, we're now married to Jesus, and He produces righteousness and/or holiness in us. "What should we say? That the law is sin?" Paul says, "By no means." No way. No, no, double no. Just like we saw, "Should we go on sinning that grace might abound?" In chapter 6, "No, by no means." In the same way, "Is the law bad?" No.
Fact, let me give me a few facts about the law. Number one, the law is good. Romans chapter 7 and verse 12 says, "So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and it's righteous and it's good." There's nothing wrong with the law. The law is a very good thing. It's how you and I approach it. It's how you and I view it. It's how you and I use it. It's how you and I process the law in relationship to our walk with God that makes it good or bad.
Second, the law cannot save you. The law cannot save you. "For by works of the law no human being will be justified in God's sight." The law can't save you. Keeping the law can't save you. Here's the reason why: the only way the law can save you is if you can perfectly keep the law. And no one could do that except Jesus. So the law cannot save you.
Fact: the law cannot sanctify you either. "For God has done what the law, we weak by the flesh, couldn't do." Would you notice the problem isn't with the law? It's with our flesh. But the law cannot make you holy. It can't do it. Listen, the law is good. The law tells us what a righteous life looks like. The law shows us when the Bible says, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." The law gives us an idea of how we've sinned, where we've sinned. In fact, I would say this: without an understanding of the law, people cannot understand the depth of their sin or the depth of God's grace. And understanding the depth of God's grace is absolutely critical for motivation to love God and follow God.
Fact, to that end, let me just say this: people need to hear the law. They need to hear what God's standard is. That's a good thing. Because gospel without law produces faith without repentance, which is not salvation. Gospel without law produces faith without repentance, and that's not salvation.
Now, all that having been said, the problem with the law isn't with the law itself. It's with our sinful nature. And what sin tries, and not only our sinful nature, but what happens. Remember in chapter 5, we saw that sin is an active force. Chapter 6, sin's trying to dominate you. It's trying to master you, trying to control you. You've been delivered from it, but it hasn't quit battling you. That's why you can say, "I died to sin," but sin's still trying to attack. Sin's still trying to dominate. It can't, but it's trying.
And in Romans chapter 7, what you see is that Paul's going to show us how sin tries to use the law against us. This is fascinating. I doubt that you've ever thought of the law that way. That's something God intended for good. Sin tries to use against us. But that's what sin does on everything. It tries to warp everything that God gives us for our good. Sin tries to twist, corrupt, warp. For example, let's take a sexual relationship. God created sex within the bonds of marriage for enjoyment, fulfillment, procreation, all these different things that are part of God's plan. But sin tries to corrupt and pervert that by taking a sexual relationship, a sexual union, saying, "Ah, you don't need marriage. Oh, you know, you can do..." and totally perverts and diminishes what God gave as a gift.
And when you come to the law, it's the same thing. Sin tries to use the law to dominate the Christian, to attack the Christian. That sin tries to use the law against you. Look at it in Romans 7 and verse 7: "What then shall we say? That the law is sin?" "By no means!" "Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin." "I would not have known what sin it were or what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'"
Now, the law reveals sin to us. I would not have known sin. I wouldn't have known what sin was without the law. Paul says, "Without the law, you wouldn't know what sin is." And, and what happens is the law reveals sin to us in two ways. One, by defining it for us. It says, "When you do this, that's a sin." So the law reveals to us what it means to miss God's mark. But I want you to notice in this first, it says, "I would not have known sin," and "I would not have known what it is to covet." And those words, "known," are two different words. Very interesting. The one is to know a fact. You know, for example, we know the fact, two plus two equals four. Or you should know it. If you don't, you just learned something. Or we know, let me give you an illustration like this: we know that if you, that if a burner is put on, is turned on on the stove, it's hot. If you touch it, it will burn you. We know that. Now, it's one thing to know that factually. It's another thing to know that, to know it experientially, to have been burned, to have experienced a burn. That you were told the burner was hot. You were told it would cause pain. You were told, "Don't ever touch it." You were told, "Really be careful." But then all of a sudden, you touched it, and now the sudden your knowledge, you went from known to known, right? That's what Paul is saying. I, I would not have known sin. I, I mean, sin defined. But here it is, sin, the power of sin, personally experienced. What Paul is saying is, he's saying that sin utilized the law. And, and the law showed me the power of sin, the driving force of sin. That sin is more than just, "Hey, I missed the mark." Sin is a powerful force that attacks the believer.
Look at it, verse 7: "If it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'" So now, the law defines covetousness. "Thou shalt not desire your neighbor's house, or his lands, or his animals, or the blessing on his life, or his wife, or, or don't desire what your neighbor has. Desire and lust after it. Have a strong desire for it." But "sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness." All of a sudden, I not only know that something is wrong, but now sin takes the commandment, activates it, and all of a sudden I've got this compulsion, this desire to do things that are not only, no, are wrong, but now I'm personally experiencing the power of sin trying to entice me to do wrong. Everybody, everybody with me on that?
Once a person hears the law, sin comes to our human nature. And, and this is as old as Genesis chapter 3. "Did God really say to you, 'Candy'?" I mean, come on. What's wrong? What's wrong? That look, how, look, how good it looks. And, you know what? I think God's trying to, I think God's got, God's got a problem. I mean, he just didn't want you to have fun. He just don't want you to be like him. He just doesn't want you to know what he... I mean, all of these things. That's sin at work. You know, you hear something's wrong, and all of a sudden, you know, "Don't do this." There's a prohibition. All of a sudden, "Well, why can't I do that? How do I know I shouldn't do that?" Or you hear something, and you hear the, this is where I think we have to be careful about, as we parent kids, how much we tell kids informationally. Because I think we can give kids information that sin, being what sin does, actually activates desire. I mean, when you understand the psychology of sin, it makes you think through what you're gonna say and how you're gonna say it. Because honestly, what happens is, you know, when you hear, "You're not supposed to do this," all of a sudden, if you're a sinful, it's like, "Well, I had never thought of that before." She, why? I've said many times, you know, when the first day of school, worst thing the teacher could have ever done is post the rules and go over them. Because the more definition she gave, the more desire I had. Yeah, I mean, that's true. Yeah.
There was a, there was a hotel on, in Padre Island, and, and they put on their balconies, because it was so close to the water, "No fishing off the balcony." And what did everybody do? They fished off the balcony. So they were, they decided what they needed to do was get rid of the signs. And when they got rid of the signs, what do you think happened? People quit fishing off the balcony. That's the power of sin.
Now, look at it in verse 8: "But sin, seizing the opportunity..." That's a very interesting word. Literally, it's the idea of sin setting up a base camp of operations. It's like a military term for a base of operations. What happens is, when you have a rules-oriented Christianity, you are empowering sin to attack you. When you begin to reduce Christianity to "do this, through this, through this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this," what you're doing is you are, you are unknowingly, and the fact you don't know doesn't, doesn't make any difference, but Paul is giving us this insight. This is why I say it's one of the greatest analyses of sin in all the Bible, because it tells us the psychology, it tells us the, the work of sin in a person, not just a believer, but if anybody. But when you give somebody a law and you say, "Don't do this," what you've done is you've just empowered sin in their life relative to that thing. Because sin now has seized the opportunity. Sin has set up a base camp of operations in the person's life. "But sin, seizing the opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness." Never thought about it. Never, never gave it any. But all of a sudden, now I'm like, "Whoa, look at all that." Human nature apart from the law, sin lies dead. It's very, very interesting. You could paraphrase it this way: "But sin, creating that base of operations, produced in that, in me." And this is why I would say this: a rules-based approach to godliness will fail every time. We give you a principle you need to consider and think about this week. A rules-based approach to godliness will result in ungodliness.
I would say this, just as a practical thing, I've done, not my notes, but as a parent, fewer rules are better. Some of you love the Lord with all your heart. You just have too many rules. And it's said, "You shouldn't have rules." Hey, we had rules. We had parameters. But not every hill is worth dying on. And I think when you, when you, especially, you're better off to teach your child a motivation to love the Lord that is independent of keeping rules. And have fewer rules so that as they come into the years where temptation multiplies, namely the teen years, that you're not empowering sin by having given your child a plethora of rules. And just threw that in for whatever reason.
As a Christian, you say, "Well, now, wait a minute, John. Man, you make it sound like no rules anywhere, anytime." I didn't say that. As a Christian, what we have to understand, though, is what is it that motivates us to follow God? And the issue is this: we don't do or not do things based on the law. What we do or don't do is based on the fact that we love the Lord. I'm not doing it because I'm trying to keep certain rules. I'm not doing it because I'm trying to win His favor. I already have His favor. I, I'm doing it because the more I know, and this is the key to a godly life, the more I know about how much He loves me and about where I'm headed, the more I just want to be in this closer relationship as I can possibly be.
I think of 1 John, have it for the stream. First John chapter 2: "Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." I mean, wow. The more I know about what God has done for me, the more I know about how much God loves me, the more I know about what God did for me. Oh, wow. Yes, seriously. He loves me that much. He did that for me. I mean, He loves me. He loves me before I ever loved Him. He loves me so much. I, I don't like, if I have a bad day, that's not the end of my relationship. He's not turning a cold shoulder. I mean, He loves me that much. "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God." It goes on and says, "It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." And then it says, "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." In other words, I, the more I know about God's love, the more I know about the place where I'm headed, the more I'm like, "Man, I just want to be, I just want to be me. He loves me that much. Seriously. I just, man, he loves me. I love him." Do you follow that? There's a whole different, "Do this, do this, don't do that. Oh, now he's mad at me. Okay, now I said I'm sorry." But I mean, the whole thing is is very burdensome if you have a works-oriented righteousness.
Verse 9: "I was once alive apart from the law: but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died." And we read that we have to be careful because Paul is talking about an unsaved person. He's not talking about how, you know, he was alive in Christ. He's talking about before he came to Christ. And we all know, according to Ephesians 2, we're dead in our trespasses and sins. What he's saying is, when, when he was not a Christian, he was alive in this sense: he was not conscious of his sin. He wasn't aware of sin. It was as if he was dead to sin. To me, if he did, if you didn't know the law and you didn't know it was a, a sin, and you did certain things, how many had that experience? You did things before you got saved, and you didn't know they were wrong. But then after you got saved, it's like somebody told you, you read the Bible, or the Spirit of God convicted you about, "Hey, don't do that. That's not good." And all of a sudden, you knew, "Hey, that's sin." So you, you instantly were made aware of something.
So what Paul is saying is, "I thought I was, I thought I was spiritually okay." You know, a person can think they're spiritually okay and be just as vile and nasty as can be. They can be super moral and be, and be full of dead men's bones inside. Look at this, and in Luke chapter 18, remember that the Pharisee goes up to pray, and he says, "He stood up and he prayed about himself: God, I thank you, I'm not like all these all other men, robbers, evildoers, adulterers, even like this tax collector. I fast. I give a tenth." I mean, is he spiritually alive? What's the answer? No. He is dead. He thinks he's alive, but he is spiritually dead.
Now, back to Romans chapter 7. "I was once alive apart from the law: but when the commandment came, sin came alive, and I died." In other words, all of a sudden, I found out how weak I was. I found out how I couldn't keep God's law. Say, say, here's what happens: as soon as the commandment comes, sin starts working. And what sin does is, sin always tries to bring death. It always tries to diminish. So you have in Romans chapter 7 and verse 10, this word: "The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me." Why? Because now sin's using it against me. Look at it in verse 11: "Watch this, for sin, seizing an opportunity..." There it is again. Sin making a, a base camp. "...through the commandment deceived me and through it killed me." Now, he's talking about life before Christ. But for the Christian, what happens is the same principle. Sin takes the commandment and uses it against the person. I mean, sin is trying. Sin wants to try to deceive. Notice verse 11: "It says this, 'For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me.'"
Now, let me give you some ways sin deceives, and then we'll close. Sin deceives about righteousness. I mean, sin either makes people think they're really righteous when they're not, or it makes people think that they could never win, that they're worse than they are. Or it, here's what sin does with Christians: "You're not very righteous. You, you fought on the way to church. You think you're righteous? Yeah, you didn't read your Bible. You think you, you, you think God's gonna answer your prayer? You can't get involved in that ministry because to be in that ministry, who do you think you are? You're not, you're not like Kurt Parsley. Then you could, if you were like this person or that person, ever you want to name, you know, then." But do you see what sin does? It deceives people. It deceives people into thinking they're not good enough. Or it deceives people into thinking, "Hey, you know what? Yeah, man, lift your hand because this was a good week for you, man. You, you read your Bible. You, you slayed it this week. I mean, you got ten minutes every single day to thumbs up God's loving you." That's not the Holy Spirit saying that to you. That's sin deceiving you, making you think you're better, making you think that somehow God's pleased with you because of what you did, instead of what He did for you.
Sin deceives people by making people think the law is unreasonable. You know, like, "Who can keep the law?" Who can, who can keep it? And then, you know, we try to simplify it down, and we say, we say, "You know, Jesus says this is the greatest law: 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, all your mind. Love your neighbor as yourself.'" And then we're like, "Okay, that's, that's a little easier." But then we start to think about that, like, "Whoa, who could ever do that? I mean, come on. All your heart, 100%, all the time. Who can do that?" You follow what I'm saying? And sin comes along and says, "That's ridiculous. Who can ever do it 100% of the time? Are you serious? You could never do that." And so sin starts, starts twisting that on you. Or, "Or that's so narrow, that's so restrictive, that's no fun."
Sin deceives by making people think there are no consequences. Listen, there are some of you, and as you're listening to this, you, sin is twisting things to say, "Cause what you're hearing is, 'Well, the law doesn't matter.'" I didn't say that. What you're saying is, "You know what? I can do what I want because all my sins are forgiven." You know, at that point, sin has twisted you into somehow thinking there's absolutely no consequence. Are you saying, you know what? "Well, if He died for all my sin and He's for the punishment for all my sin." Listen, there, there's whom the Lord loves, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 6, "He disciplines." But, but sin says, "Hey, you know what? Pastor says you're just forgiven. So go ahead and sleep with your boyfriend. Go ahead and sleep with your girlfriend. Go ahead and, go ahead and party hearty because I hate your sins. He already forgave all your sin." Sin takes and deceives you.
Sin deceives people by making making them think God is against them. Some of you came in today, and you feel like God is against you. Forget that. The scripture says, "If God be for you, who can be against you?" Forget that. I mean, you know, there's all these scriptures say how much God loves you. But you've got, you've decided somehow God is against you. And you're a believer, but you feel like God's got it out for you. Because that's the deceptiveness of sin that Paul is talking about here.
Sin deceives by making sin look attractive. Oh, come on, it's so fun. It won't matter. You can just ask for forgiveness tomorrow. And listen to pastor, you don't even ask to have to ask for forgiveness, which we're going to deal with all that. We're going to sort the beans on all that a little later. But I can't say everything that needs to be said about everything. I'm preaching what is critical is that you understand and how sin uses the law against us, and that you understand you're not under law as a means of your righteousness.
Romans chapter 7, verse 12: "So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. Did that which is good then bring death to me? Did the law bring death to me?" "By no means!" "The law is not the problem. It was sin producing death in me through what is good." In other words, sin twisting what God gave, in order that sin might be shown to be sin. Say, we're, we're ripping the mask off sin right now. Some of you are getting a whole new understanding of how sin has, has been messing with you all your life, and no one had ever told you. But it's always been right here in Romans 7. Don't get caught up in a rules-oriented Christianity, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. In other words, the commandment, the commandment gives sin a base camp. And the commandment's not bad. It's just the nature of sin. The law is holy, righteous, and good. But sin, being sin, and desiring to dominate you, tries to dominate you by bringing you back under the law, by using the law to provoke your sinful nature to sin, by condemning you when you do, by confusing you. Which is why a Christian should altogether avoid a works righteousness mentality. You died to the law. Why would you go back to living under it?
Now, listen. We are not motivated by rules. If you're motivated by rules, if what gets you up in the morning is, "I got to get up so I can do this, this, this," that's missed. And I think all of us understand, yeah, you know, that's not what we want to be. But we want to please God, and we think keeping the rules is the way to please God. We're not motivated by rules. We're motivated by the love of Jesus. He loved us. We're motivated to love Him.
Master musicians, come here. Here's the way it works. You know, as a pastor, there's times that you, you see couples love one another exceptionally. I don't know if you ever seen. I'm sure you have. Maybe it was your parents, your grandparents. She, you know, in the last few years, I've seen it. I've seen husbands love their wives exceptionally. Which, you know, I don't mean to be sexist by this, but I think sometimes, especially guys that are from the former generation, a little more were there, there were the rules were defined differently, and, and typically, the wife might have been more of the nurturer or caregiver, if you follow what I'm saying. And the guy, he just went out and worked, then he came home, and she took care of the house and did everything and took care of him, essentially. But I've watched, I've watched some men in the last couple of years, and their devotion to their wife in illness has been absolutely stunning for me to watch. Guys who I knew either had physical issues themselves that made it difficult, but they're like, up at the hospital all night long, day after day, won't leave their wife's side. And you're like, "Oh my goodness, this is, this is stunning to watch." And you could tell them, "Hey, you know, you got to get some rest. You're gonna have to, when she comes home, you're gonna have to be at the top of your game." And they're like, "Listen, I'm here." Why are they there? Well, if you ask them why, and they said, "Well, I did it because, you know, I made a vow. And when I made the vow, you know, I keep my word." I mean, you'd say, "You would say, 'Well, I guess.'" But it wouldn't be very impressive, right? I mean, it wouldn't be. They're not there because some rules said they had to be there. They're there because they love their wife. They love their wife. No rule is making them be there. No law is making them be there. No, "Well, you know, when she gets out of this, I want it to be good between us." You know, if somebody said that, you'd be like, "What kind of marriage is that?" And they say, "You know what? I just love her. I just love her because I love her. I want to be as close to her as I can possibly be. To the good times, to the bad times, when it's easy, when it's hard, because I love her." We love one another. That is a picture of how you and I follow Christ.
And what happens is, then, as we're following Christ, He's changing us, and He's producing in us a holiness and a righteous lifestyle. And that's, and it's not that we don't care about that. But our motivation is, "I just don't want anything to interrupt my relationship." I'm not doing what I do because of law, because of command. Though the command tells me what I could do, that doesn't, that isn't what motivates me. What motivates me is, "I love Jesus because He did so much for me." Are you serious? He died for me. Gave me faith to believe when I had no faith. Forgave every one of my sins, even ones I hadn't yet committed. Are you, that's mind-blowing to me. And then said, "You know what? I want you to enjoy right standing with me. And you would never be able to have that on your own, even if you wanted to. So I'm just gonna give it to you up front so you always have it so you never have to doubt, you never have to wonder if it's good between you and me. You'll always know it is. You'll always know it's good." How could you not love somebody like that? And that's why a Christian follows the Lord. That's Christianity. The law had a purpose, but for the Christian today, it's not how we are made right with God. And we have to be careful we don't fall into a works righteousness. Amen.