Transcription
[Music] This morning, in our study of Romans, and Romans 6 in particular, we come to the start of the second section in the chapter. So, the chapter Romans 6 falls fairly neatly into two sections, and we're going to be starting section 2 of this chapter. Both sections start with Paul anticipating somebody asking a question. Then, maybe even as we've been talking about grace, that question has arisen in your mind. Because having talked about justification, having talked about the fact that when we got saved, our sins were forgiven, past, present, and future, all gone. Before you ever committed any more sins, they're already forgiven. And that you've been clothed in righteousness, not yours, the righteousness of Christ. So when God sees you, he sees you clothed in Christ's righteousness. And that it happens as he works faith in your heart, gives you the faith to believe. All of God doing all that he can to work for our salvation. Paul imagines that, well, if God is doing all that, and especially if all my sins are not only forgiven, the ones I've already committed, but all the sins I ever will commit. And Paul said in Romans chapter 5 and verse 20, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound. So if all of that is true, then why not just keep on sinning? I mean, what does it matter? Why do I have to worry about whether I sin or not? If my sins already forgiven, and God already views me as righteous, why not just keep on sinning? Paul asks that question and answers it in Romans chapter 6. And we see the question posed twice. Romans chapter 6 and verse 1, "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" In other words, if where sin abounds, grace, Paul says, much more abounded, exponentially more. If sin only allows God to show His grace even more, why not just sin? And then, um, verse 15, he asks a question in a slightly different way. He says, "Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" And Paul gives the answer to both of those questions. Gives a short answer, then a, a more full explanation. He gives the answer in verse 2 and verse 15. "By no means." And then in verse 15, "By no means." Same answer, essentially. You could translate it this way: What's the answer to that question? No, no, and double no. You shouldn't keep on sinning that grace might abound. And then, as we saw last time, he explains why that's true. And his explanation of why it's true really becomes for us as believers a strategy for battling sin. And we looked at that last time, six strategies for battling sin. Now, if you're a Christian, all that God has done in you, and all that God has explained regarding not only Christ died for our sin, not only that sin results in eternal death, not only that sin, if you give it an inch, you've died to sin, but sin is not dead, and it desires to control you. And if you, if you give it an inch, that's going to take a mile. It's going to try to rule and reign in your body. If all of that is true, then it should make the Christian hate sin all the more. So Paul is saying, the big picture of Romans 6 is that justification doesn't produce Christians who are careless about sin. In fact, just the opposite. It creates Christians who are dead set against sin. I mean, if a person is looking for a way they can keep on sinning after coming to Christ, then it's doubtful they ever really came to Christ. The person says, "Well, now I understand what Christ has done, so now it doesn't matter how I sin." That tells you that all the principles of justification have only resided in their head and never really made its way to their heart. That being the case, then let's look at Romans chapter 6, and we're going to begin in verse 15 and make our way down through verse 19 and verse 20, somewhere in there. "What then," Paul writes, "are we to sin because we're not under law, but under grace?" What Paul does in these next few verses, on to the end of the chapter, he's going to answer that question. Should we sin? He says, he says no, we shouldn't. But then he explains why we shouldn't. And he does it by using a series of contrasts. He gives us three contrasts. The first contrast is under law versus under grace. We should keep on sinning when we understand the difference between being under law and being under grace. The second contrast is we shouldn't keep on sinning when we understand what it means to be a slave to sin versus a slave to righteousness. The third contrast, and we'll look at it next week, we shouldn't keep on sinning when we understand the wages of sin versus the gift of God. So those are the three contrasts. So as we look at it, the first thing I want you to notice is a Christian will seek to avoid sin because they're under grace. I mean, being under grace doesn't make a person want to sin. Being under grace makes a person not want to sin. It makes them want to avoid sin. Now, look at it in verse 15. "What then are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" The phrase "under grace" is only used here in 15 and in the preceding verse, verse 14, in all the New Testament. But the phrase "under law," Paul uses repeatedly in his writings in the New Testament. How you see yourself before God, and how you live out your Christian life, is determined on whether you are under law or under grace. How you live out life, I should say, it's determined by whether you're under law or under grace. Now, what does "under law" mean? And, and this is going to be important because if you don't understand how law functions, what happens is people can find themselves, even though they've received grace, they can find themselves living with works righteousness, where they do certain things to be acceptable to God. And we're going to look at that. What does it mean "under law"? To answer that, what I'm going to do is we're going to go to Galatians, and we're going to look at some scriptures in Galatians because five times Paul uses that phrase "under law," and it gives us a sense of what he's talking about. So let's look at it. Galatians chapter 4 and verse 4. It's a very familiar scripture. You probably hear it quoted a lot at Christmas time about the coming of Christ, the birth of Christ. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, that's Jesus, born of a woman, that's Mary, born under the law. Let me say this, when you see "under the law," and "under the law" in the original, it doesn't have the word "be." So it's just like Romans chapter 6, verses 14, 15, "under law," same phrase. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those who were under law, so that we might receive adoption as sons, so that we might become God's children. Christ was born under law to redeem those who were under law. Now, those verses give us some very, very important information. The first thing is this: if you are under law, you're in big trouble. Because whatever being under law is, is big enough, bad enough, that it required the Son of God to leave the glory of heaven to come down and rescue you. So being under law is a big, bad deal. You don't want to be there. Second, it tells us this: Jesus could handle being under law because it wasn't a problem for Him. He didn't need to be redeemed. It wasn't a problem for Him to come and to be under law. He said, "Well, what are we talking about when we're talking about under law?" Let me give it to you here, a little definition. Under law means this: keeping rules so you can be righteous in God's sight. If we view God's law as a means of giving us right standing with God, then we are under law. If you view keeping rules so you know the way, the way that you get right standing, the way you're pleasing with God, is you keep the rules. If that's how you view, if you say, "You know what? Yes, I've been saved. Yes, I'm a Christian. Yes, I love God. But, but I also, I just want you to know I do this, and I do this, and I do this, and that means it's good between me and God." And then if I don't do it, then I feel like I can't. It's not good. I had a bad week because I didn't do this, this, this. If you view God's law as a means of giving us right standing, then you're under law. And that is true whether you're asking God to help you keep the law, or whether you're trying to do it yourself. Being born under the law was not a problem for Jesus because He was able to perfectly keep the law. And through keeping the law perfectly, He never broke one law of God, not in His heart, not with His mouth, not with His life. He perfectly kept the law, which was that was His righteous life. His righteous life. He was righteous and He never violated that righteousness because He perfectly kept every single law of God for His entire 33 years. Totally righteous. So being under the law was not a problem with Him. He maintained perfect standing with God the whole time. We can't do that. There's no one righteous, not even one. There's nobody who can keep all of the law. Now, now go to Galatians chapter 5, and I want to give you just a little background so you can understand what Paul's talking about here. What was happening was, Paul goes into the region of Galatia. It's a region of several churches, and he tells the people, he gives them the gospel, and they're like, "Yeah, the gospel, it's awesome." After Paul leaves, some teachers come in, and they say, "You know, Paul's a great guy, and, you know, hey, praise God, Paul shared with you the gospel, but there's some things Paul didn't tell you." Well, Paul didn't tell you was, yes, Jesus saved you, but, you know, if you want to be right with God, and you want to have right standing with God, then there's a few things you need to do. And one of the big things you need to do to identify with God's people is, if you're male, you need to be circumcised, because that's part of how people will know, and that's part of a sign, and that's a law that that identifies you with God's people. Now, we don't make a deal out of that. But what people would do today, Christians could do this, and I'm going to compare circumcision to this. People could say, "You know what, Jesus saved you, and, and that's awesome, it isn't that great? But if you want to be right with God, now what you need to do is you need to realize that you got to have your devotions. And the way that role says you need to read your Bible, and you need to, you need to pray. And, and then, you know, you need to go to church. And, you know, like the Ten Commandments, ever heard the Ten Commandments? Like, you know, don't be breaking those because you want to be, you know, because you're a Christian now, you've been saved, but you, you want to be right with God. Part of what would give them that, the teachers are saying, standing with God is if they kept certain laws. There's a lot of Christians today, and that's what makes you feel if it's good between you and God or not. If you look back over this week, and you say, "You know what, man, I, I checked. Well, I, I've made my list. I did this, I did this, I did this, I did this. Wow, got him here. Good. Bring it on, Randall. I'm ready to worship." Right? Or if you come in here and you're like, "Man, you know, we got into it in the car on the way here, and, you know, I, I disciplined, anger with my kids, and, and I told somebody off at work, and, and somebody told an unclean joke, and I laughed, and then I told it, and, you know, I mean, you know, so you like, and I, and I made him pray. I just, I'm such a spiritual loser." And you're like, "Man, I just, I just felt like I can't ever get it." Do you see the difference, sir? Your standing is based on that. Galatians chapter 5. "Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision," so if you, if you accept that I got to do certain things to have right standing with God, that said, "Yeah, Christ will be of no advantage to you." If you accept, if you reason, "I've got to do certain things to have right standing with God," Christ's death is of no advantage to you. Say, "How can I be?" Paul says, "I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision, that he is obligated to keep the whole law." You say, "Why is that?" Explain it in just a moment. "You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace." Now, a couple of observations here. The first one is this: if you're going to make keeping certain laws part of what gives you right standing with God, Paul says you're obligated to keep the whole law. If you're providing, put it this way, if you're providing any part of your righteousness before God, you have to provide it all. That's that's what he's saying there. Second, if you are trying to provide any or all of your righteousness before God, Christ is of no advantage to you. Because Christ came to do what? To not only forgive our sins, but give us His righteousness. But if you're like, "No, wait. Hey, thank you, Jesus. I appreciate that. But I think I got this." When you say, "Now, what gives me right standing with God is what Jesus did. Yeah, he forgave my sin, but what gives you a right standing is if I do this, this, this." Then Christ is of no advantage. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 2. "Look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you." It put it to you this way: Jesus Christ is either all of your righteousness, or He is none of your righteousness. You either get all your righteousness from Him, or you don't get any. Because you're saying, "I think all I think I can do it," which means you don't understand, which means you've missed the whole point entirely. If you try to supplement Christ's righteousness with some of your own, what Paul is saying is, you negate His righteousness. And Paul will actually say that in Galatians chapter 2 in verse 21. "I do not nullify the grace of God," she says, "I don't negate it. For if justification were through the law," in other words, if justification, if my standing with God, mine, my forgiveness, my righteousness, my faith, if all of that comes through rules, then Christ died for no purpose. Now, let's go back to our "under law," "under grace." "Under law," keeping rules so you can be righteous in God's sight. That's what "under law" is. I saw it. Yeah. When a person's under law, they keep rules so they can be righteous in God's sight. You ask a person, let me just explain history. Yes, person, are you going to heaven? And if they say, if they say, "Yeah," and you say, "Well, how do you know you are?" And they say, "Well, you know, I go to church, even go to youth group sometimes. You know, I'm a nice person. I try to be a good moral person. I, I protested with this group. I give a little money. I sent some money to a water company. You know, I mean, that kind of stuff." You get those kind of answers, you're under law. Under grace, all my righteousness comes as a gift from Christ. All of it. I don't add anything to His righteousness. Now back to Romans chapter 6 and verse 15. "What then are we to sin?" So if God's forgiving, if Christ forgiving all my sin, clothing righteousness, are we to sin because we're not under law but under grace? So if I'm not under law, and I'm not relying on any part of my own rule-keeping to be righteous before God, and all I'm relying on is Jesus' righteousness, then why not sin? I mean, if He's the one, if He's forgiven all my sin, and I'm clothed in His righteousness, then why does it matter how I live? And Paul gives us an answer. It matters because you're under grace. Watch this. Verse 6, chapter 6. You're under grace. Chapter 6, verse 14. We're gonna go back. "Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but you are under grace." Now, you remember last time we said that's not a command, that's a promise. It's a promise of what must be and what will be for all who are under grace. This is a promise. It is a, it is not a command. It is saying this is what will be and what must be for all who are in Christ. Sin will have no dominion over you. Now, watch this, because this is very, very interesting. Romans chapter 6 and verse 12. Paul said, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies." And then he says, "Sin shall not have dominion or shall not reign over you." It's interesting. It seems kind of a paradox, doesn't it? "Don't let sin reign over you," and then two verses later, Paul says, "Sin is never going to reign over you." What, what in the world is going on there? Here's what it's saying: Don't let sin rule you, because sin is not going to rule you. Now, here's what it is. This is grace. You say, "How is it grace?" God gives the command, and then He gives you power to carry it out. God gives the command, and then He makes it a reality. God tells us what to do, and then He empowers us to do it. That is what it means to be under grace. No longer our effort, but His effort. No longer what we're doing, but what He's doing in us, through us, empowering us to do what He's asked us to do. Why wouldn't I sin? Because I'm not under sin. I don't want to be dominated by sin. I don't want to be ruled by sin. I don't want to be controlled by sin. I'm dead to sin, but sin is not dead to me, and sin desires, as we saw last time, to rule me. But if I give it an inch, it will take a mile. If I don't check it, it will rule over me. And I don't want any of that. I'm not going to say I'm under grace because God, in His grace, empowers me to do His will. Do you follow me? Now, that's what He's saying here. So when you're faced with the opportunity to sin, you refuse to sin on this basis: I won't let sin rule me because God's grace and God's power is at work in me. I'm not saying no to sin to become righteous. I'm saying no to sin because I am righteous and God's grace is working in me. You say, "How is it working in me?" Let me put it to you this way. Prior to coming to Christ, remember we said back in the early part of Romans, there are two categories of people. We've explained it several ways. There are those that are under law and under grace. There are those that are in Adam and in Christ. There are those who are under wrath and those who are under grace. If you don't, if you've not come to Christ, you're under wrath. You're facing the righteous, just wrath of God. Say, "Wow." And here's what you need to realize: not only are you facing that at the end of your life, when you face eternal judgment, hell, which is the exercise righteously of God's wrath on the punishment of sin because you would not receive the free gift of grace of forgiveness. But Jesus said this, because invariably people on sale, "You know, I just don't know. Jesus loved people." Well, He loved people, so He warned people. He loved people, so He called people to be born again. He loved people, so He came to die for people so that if they put their faith in Him, they might be saved. Jesus said this: "He who does not believe is condemned already, and the wrath of God remains on him." So when, when a person says, "You know, I'm sure I want to become a Christian today." You know what you're saying? "I like living under wrath. I'm okay with God's wrath." Which is unimaginable to me. But when you come to Christ, what happens is instantly God's wrath is gone because Jesus bore God's wrath for your sin on the cross. So God has exhausted His wrath on your sin on Christ. So now the only expression and the only expenditure of His power, the only action of of His power and energy towards you is His love and His grace to complete and you the work He's begun. So that now God is not in any way thinking of judgment. God is not any any in any way thinking of punishment. He's thinking of lovingly, graciously working to the advancement. So grace reigns, grace rules, grace is at work when you're asleep. Grace is at work when you get up. Grace is at work when you get your car. Grace is at work when you go to work. Grace is at work when you come home. Grace is at work when you come into the house. Grace is at work when you're mowing your grass. Grace is at work. Grace is at work as God constantly is conforming you and changing you and working in you both to will and to do His good pleasure and to bring about the image of Christ in you. This is really the whole point of Romans chapter, the crescendo of Romans chapter 8 when we get to the end of part of this section as Paul just celebrates what God is doing. Look at it. It says, "As those whom He called, whom God called, He justified. And those whom He justified, He glorified." "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" The minute you come to Christ, God is for you. The minute you've come to Christ, wrath is gone. God's like, "That's my son. That's my daughter. That's the one my, my son Jesus died for. That's the one I've adopted. That's the one that I've justified. And that is the one I will glorify." This is very, very exciting, very interesting to watch all of this. So when a person realizes that grace is at work in them, and then when they realize what it means to be justified, that not only are all my sins forgiven, but I'm clothed with the righteousness of Christ. Remember that? We had this definition of justification: it's the act of God at salvation. The moment you believe, justification takes place. And what happens? It's the act of God whereby He forgives the unsaved person's sin, all of it, past, every sin you committed up to that point, present, every sin you've involved in right there, future, any sin you haven't even yet committed, gone, forgiven, washed. Why does it snow? And it credits to them the righteousness of Christ. So now the sudden, he, when he views you, it's as if you're righteousness, Christ. Christ gives you His righteousness because on the cross, He bore your unrighteousness. Martin Luther, the great reformer, called it the divine exchange. When through faith, they believed. Now, here's what happens when a person understands justification. What happens is, instantly, it gives them hope. Gives them courage in the battle of sin. Because right away, they understand, "Okay, God is not against me. God is for me." God, because of my sin, because here's what happens, once you get saved, you're still going to battle sin, and there's still going to be times you're going to sin. So many times you say things you shouldn't have said, you see things you shouldn't have seen, you do things you shouldn't have done. And that's, that is going to happen. But what happens is, when you understand justification, you instantly know, "Hey, you know what? That hasn't distanced me from God. That hasn't, God's not saying, 'Well, I just can't believe that, you know, crawl back to me and we'll talk about it, but this week you're in the doghouse, dude. You are so in the doghouse. I don't want anyone to talk to you. I don't want anything to do with you. You know, when Randall starts to sing, you'll see where I'm at. You see how you feel.'" You know, that's how people feel. They come into church, and they feel like because they felt God is distant, because they don't understand justification. But when you understand justification, you understand God's not moving away from you or turning His back on you. God is coming to you. That I mean, listen, if a parent parented like that, we would say that's abusive parenting. That's dysfunctional parenting. So why would we ascribe to God a dysfunctional style of parenting? That is nothing consistent with the heart of God or with grace. Listen, God, when you understand that, then you understand when you sin, that you run to God. It gives you confidence in battling sin. It sets you free from the paralyzing guilt and failure that can happen with sin. And it opens the door for continued fellowship with God, which is going to be critical in your battle with sin. Amen. You're under grace. And when you understand that, you're gonna say, "Why in the world would I keep on sinning?" Because just the way sin dominated me when I was under law, if I open the door, it's going to try to dominate me again. I've been delivered. Why would I want to go back to that? I don't want anything to do with it. I'm under grace, and grace is working in me, and God is helping me, and God is drawing close to me, and I just want to be as close as I can possibly be to Him. Why would I want to go back to sin? Do you see what He's saying? I don't want to be under law. I didn't want to try to earn my way. I don't want to try to have some kind of rule system that makes me feel like I'm okay. Listen, I'm under grace. It's the second contrast Paul brings out, and this is the contrast between being a slave to sin and being a slave to God, or a slave to righteousness. Here's the principle: A Christian will seek to avoid sin because they are a slave of righteousness. Now, as we move closer to the end of chapter 6, it becomes increasingly clear that even though we're justified as believers, we also battle sin, and we have a responsibility to resist its rule in our life. Now, as we walk through verses 16 through 19, I want to, I want to get perspective on these verses before we look at them, because Paul uses slavery as an analogy of both sin's mastery of us and of our own service to God. And when you hear that word, invariably, and I think especially in an American context, your mind goes back and you begin to make correlations between the slavery in America's past, which is one of the most tragic stains on our history as a country. And I think, I think a sensitivity to that issue is both appropriate and is necessary. In fact, that would suggest you that the imagery and the use of that analogy even unsettles Paul a little bit. In fact, after writing, watch this, "Having been set free from sin, you become slaves of righteousness," he writes that verse 18, and then right, right after that, he says, "I'm speaking in human terms." In other words, what he's doing is he's apologizing for the inadequacies of the illustration because he knows that there are aspects of slavery, even in his day, that he would not want to attribute to his relationship with God or anybody's relationship with God. Here's the problem: when you're, when you're trying, when you're trying to use an analogy, especially when it comes to the Christian life, but oftentimes in any area, and you're trying to liken something to something else, invariably that analogy at some point breaks down, right? So it doesn't, it doesn't quite hold true all the way through. And the problem for Paul here is he's trying to communicate this glorious, this complex, and somewhat abstract reality, and he really realizes that the analogy falls short, as do the words himself, as well. And I think this is important for us to understand. The slavery Paul is talking about here, when he talked about slaves of sin and slaves of righteousness, is not a slavery that would be like most slaveries we would think of. Most slaveries we would think of is where you are compelled to do something whether you want to or not, right? So you're compelled, yeah, maybe you want to do it, probably you don't, it's against your will, but you're gonna do this because you're the slave and you have to do that. This is a different kind of slavery. The slavery Paul's using here is not a slavery where you're forced to do something against your will. In fact, Paul's point in verses 16 through 22 is that we will serve, we will willingly serve whatever is most attractive to our heart. So it's, it's not against your will. I'm not talking about a slavery that, in this case, that is against your will. We're talking about a slavery that is willing on our part. We want to do it. Let's look at Romans chapter 6. "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?" Now, let's not make this too complicated. Let's not overthink this a bit. He's giving us a general principle. Here's what he's saying: If I come to you and I say, "I just want you to know, whatever you ask me to do, I'm gonna do it, even if I don't want to." Guess what? I'm a slave at that point. If I, if I say, "I'm gonna serve you, and no matter what you ask, no matter how I feel about it, I'm gonna do it." I'm a slave. That's what he's saying there. We all get that. You're slaves of the one you obey. Either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. I mean, it's a very straight, you're a slave to the one you obey. If you obey sinful desires, if you obey sin, if you say, "You know what? I'm attracted to what sin offers, and I think I want to do that." Then guess what? I've just made. If you say that, you say, "I'm attracted to sinful things. I want to do that thing. I want to think on that thing. I want to go to that thing. I want to watch that thing. I want to listen to that thing." I want to, because I want to, because it's attractive to me. You just made yourself a slave to sin. You willingly did that. On the other hand, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. If I say, "You know what? I want to obey God. I want to. It's more attractive being, being given what God has done for me. I just love Him so much. I just want to obey Him." I'm gonna, I'm gonna be a slave to obedience. I want to obey Him. I just want to obey Him. I'm gonna give myself to that, which leads to what? Righteousness. It demonstrates the righteousness. It's an actual picture of the righteousness already have in Christ. It doesn't give me right standing. It simply points to the right standing I already have. Everybody clear so far? Now, 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, willing servants of righteousness." I willingly serve the righteousness of God. I willingly serve God's purposes. I want to do that. Now, I want you to notice something there. When, when you were a Christian, something happened to you. Everybody understands that, right? You became a new person. This, this word, this phrase, "to which you were committed." The original, I mean, probably the word "committed" is okay, but not the best. It should read, some translations, "to which you were delivered." And the picture is in the original Greek, it's of, of melting down a metal and putting it in a mold, pouring it into a mold, so it comes out different than it was before it was melted down. Here's the illustration of that. So when you came to Christ, your, your life was, let's just say it's this candelabra. And if you like candelabra, sorry about this, but your, your life was kind of a, a deformed, dysfunctional, broken candelabra. Sin had warped you. Sin had damaged you. Sin had ruined you. Because that's what sin does. When you come to Christ, it's as if God, by the warmth of His presence and the power of His Spirit, melts that dysfunctional, ruined, bent up, beat up, damaged candelabra. He melts it in the fire of His love. And then He has a mold. What is the mold? It is the image of His Son. And He pours it in. He takes that heart that was all deformed, He pours it in. And when He pops it out of the mold, all of a sudden, He sees an image that looks similar to His Son, but not quite. Because it still got some rough edges. It still got a little bit of the slag. It's still got, you know, how when you pull something out of a mold, maybe the edges aren't quite smooth. So He begins to polish it. And it begins to knock this rough edge off. And then He holds it up again. And He looks, the Spirit of God looks at Jesus, and He looks at the son, and the Spirit says, "Ah, the eyes look a little different." And so He polishes the eyes. And He holds all that. Looks a lot more. Do you follow what I'm saying? It's a picture of what happens. So you've got a new heart. Now, this is important. How can you know that you've been saved? How can you know? Here's the answer: Do you desire to obey God from the heart? If, if you have been saved, what happens is, you were, you were delivered to a standard of teaching. You were, you were poured into a mold. You were, you were melted down and poured into the mold, and that changes you. Remember, "If anyone's in Christ, our new creation. The old has passed away." The old candelabra is gone. There is a new person. And that new person looks a whole lot like the Son, Jesus Christ. And so God is working, and you should look like that. Do you seek to obey God from the heart? That's what it means to be saved. When you desire to obey God from the heart, you know you're under grace. On the other hand, what is sin? Sin at its core is what? Disobedience. I mean, you remember back at the, we looked in Romans 5 about Adam, and how did Adam become a sinner? What was his sin? He disobeyed God. Remember? He and Eve are in the garden, and God says to Adam, He says, "You know, Adam, you're the king of the whole earth. You rule this whole thing, and you can do absolutely anything you want. There's only one thing, because I'm God, and I've given you such power, such authority, such rules, such dominion, I'm just asking that in one little way, you acknowledge that I'm God, that you set your heart on acknowledging I'm above you, that you honor me." And all you have to do is one thing. See all the trees, eat any one you want, except don't eat fruit from one that's not. That's all you have to do. You can do anything else you want. And what did Adam do? Adam said, "I think I'm gonna disobey God." He disobeyed. That's the core of sin. When you're a slave to sin, you disobey God. You just may God. Listen, people who were a slave to sin, and nobody likes to be called bad, but it's true, they willingly have given themselves to disobedience. Here's how it works. There, they're a slave. They would say they disobey God in what they believe. They say, "Well, you know what? I don't think that's true. I don't think you have to do that to go to heaven." Your reason why? He says, "Because you're a slave to sin. You are disobeying God. You are willingly saying, 'I don't want to listen to what He says. I want to listen to what I think. I want to do what I want to do.'" "I think that if I'm a good person, I get to go to heaven. I think that I'm committed to that. I want to do that. I don't want to obey God's Word. I don't want to be the teaching of God's Word. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, where I want to do it." You're a slave to sin. You're willingly serving sin. On the other hand, when a person is a servant, a slave to God, what happens is the result is, as I walk with God, He's changed my heart. I'm beginning to look like Christ. I'm beginning to act like Christ. I'm beginning to think like Christ. My mind is being renewed. The Spirit of God is working, and He's shaping, and He's polishing, and He's working on me. And the result is, I become more like Jesus, which is a word called sanctification. Look at this. Sanctification, because we're gonna see the word in twice as we go through the last part of the chapter. Sanctification is the process whereby the believer becomes more and more like Jesus. Or we could say technically, he becomes holy, or she becomes holy. God says, "Be holy, for I am holy." So here's the cool thing here. You see the grace of God. God gives the command, "Be holy," and then what's He do? He makes us holy. This is like, this is like crazy. He's not like, "Let's see how holy you can be." He's not doing that. He's saying, "Be holy," and guess what? "I'm gonna make you holy." "Be like Jesus," and guess what? "I'm gonna make you like Jesus." "Love me," and guess what? "I'm gonna put a heart in you to love me." That's grace. That's the reign of grace. God not just giving the command, God empowering us and actively working in us to bring us into accordance with His will and good pleasure. Sanctification is the process whereby the believer becomes more and more like Jesus as a result of God's work in them and their obedience to the Word. I willingly, I willingly submit myself to the Lord. Now, Romans 6:19. "I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented yourselves, your your members, as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness." That's the way sin works. You sin, and you get, you know, listen, you can watch, you give in to sin, and you give in to sin more, and one sin leads to another sin, and it gets worse. It's like the vortex of sin. Paul says, "You know, there was a time you willingly, you said, 'You know what? I want to go clubbing, and I want to sleep with people, and, you know what? I want to cheat on my taxes. I want to lie about my expenses because I'm gonna pay the government. Let the rich people pay me. I'm gonna get my own home.' You know, we give all, all the justifications people want. I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this, I want to do this." You willingly were a slave to sin. So now, just as you used to say, "Well, I want to do that," so now you've been saved, you say, "You know what? God is working in me, and I don't want to get in the way of what He's doing. I want to cooperate with what He's doing. He's making me like Jesus. That's just awesome." So now, "present your members as slaves to righteousness." Jesus, here I am. And here's my hands, and here's my feet, and here's my eyes, and my ears, and my mind, and my mouth, and I just, I willingly just want to be used for Your purposes. What does that do? That leads to sanctification. Why wouldn't we keep on sinning? Should we go on sinning since we're not under law, we're under grace? Absolutely not. Because I've been melted down. He's turned me into a different person. He's definitely making me like His Son. And if I don't cooperate, I'm gonna miss out on the good things He wants to do in me. Why would I ever want to do that? God is at work. He's shaping. He's polishing. He's molding. Let me give you one more verse, and then we'll close. Skip ahead to verse 22. "But now that you have been set free from sin." So we died with Christ. We died to sin. We've been set free from sin. The issue is, sin's still in our bodies, trying to dominate us. And don't give it an inch, because it will. If you, if you don't check it, it will try to rule you. But now that you've been set free from sin, and have become slaves to God, the fruit, the produce of that, the result of that, you get leads to sanctification. Makes me more and more like Jesus. And the end of sanctification, its end, is eternal life. Now, let me say something very, very serious. When a person has been set free from sin, has been justified, and they are now serving God willingly, "God, I willingly serve You. I'm not going to willingly serve sin." That will produce fruit. It will produce sanctification. The fruit of sanctification, it will, it will produce fruit. That means I, my life, gradually, I begin to look more and more like Jesus, a holy life. And the end of sanctification is what? Eternal life. If there is not a work of sanctification happening in you, if you are not producing the fruit of sanctification, you're not becoming, I'm not talking about perfection, and I'm not talking about sin, because people are going to sin. I'm talking about over time, you're becoming more and more like Jesus. If that is not happening in your life, and if, in fact, in your life, you would say this, "Well, I gave my heart to Christ. I'm so glad all my sins are forgiven." But in your life, there's no desire to love God. If in your life, there's no desire to willingly submit yourself to Him and to obey Him and to say, "Listen, I want to serve You, God." If there's no desire to be more like Him, then you will not inherit eternal life. And the reason why is because you are not saved. Doesn't matter how many aisles you've walked. If a person says, "I've given my life to Christ," but when you look at their life, there's absolutely no fruit of sanctification, zero. I'm not very much sound talking about fruit. If there's no fruit of righteousness, it's because there's no root of righteousness. And you have a faith, but it's a faith that won't save, which is what James talks about. "If a man says I have faith but does not have works, here's the question James asks, can such a faith save him?" And what's the answer? No. So, if we could just, nobody to leave for just a minute, because it's not the invitation, this is still the sermon. Can we just bow our heads for a moment? Am I close? In just a second, but I want you to close yourself in with the Lord to consider this. Have you been freed from sin? Have you been enslaved to God? Have you said, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna become a slave of righteousness, a slave of obedience, a slave of God. I'm gonna willingly submit to God." And have you begun to bear fruit that leads to greater Christlikeness? That leads to holiness, the fruit of sanctification? Listen, this is, this is not optional. It's essential.