Trending
In John 8:34 Jesus said, "Whoever commits sin is the slave of sin". That is true of every person who comes into this world. Every person is born under the tyranny of sin. Sin dominates and controls our thoughts, our words, our motives, and our actions. In Romans 6, Paul said there is none righteous, no not one. Romans 6:17 says we were slaves to sin. V.20 says we were slaves to sin, V.14 says sin was our master, v.21 says the outcome of that is death and V.23 says the wages of sin is death. That is the definition of every human being before salvation. We were slaves to sin with the outcome being both spiritual and eternal death. Sin is that internal force that corrupts us. Sin is that rampant cancer in every organ of our body. It is incurable and it is terminal. Even death provides no relief for it will cast a sinful soul into an eternal punishment for that sin.
When someone is ravaged by a disease and they finally die I have heard people say, "Well at least their suffering is over". Apart from Christ their suffering has only just begun. Those who understand all that about sin and desire to be rescued, desire to be delivered, want to have sin's bondage broken, should be drawn to our text today like metal filings to a magnet. In Romans 6:18 and 22 it talks about being freed from sin. That is the promise of this passage. This is God's promise to those who are in Christ, to those who have come to faith in Him. The greatest gift, the gift that has no equal is freedom from sin and its consequences. So Romans 6:15-23 is about being freed from sin and I have attempted to break it down into 5 sections for our understanding.
First, The antagonist in v.15. I say that because someone is about to ask a question and it comes from an antagonist, that is, someone who opposes the idea that we are all sinners who are controlled by sin. The question has to do with my relationship to sin as a believer. I know I have died to sin and have risen to a new Lord and master. I know I have been saved by grace and not of law. So does the idea that I am saved by grace alone give me the freedom to sin in an unrestrained way? I mean, where sin abounds grace abounds, so why not sin and give grace an opportunity to abound more. Hasn't God forgiven all my past, present and future sins? Doesn't God forgive my sin based on grace? I am not under the law but under grace so can't I do whatever I want and pay no attention to the law. The law can no longer punish me because in Christ the punishment has already been paid. Since the law can no longer punish me, shall I just go on living any way I want to live? Doesn't grace free me to do that? The answer is in v.15b-16. By no means. May it never be. God forbid, absolutely not, it is absurd, it is utterly unacceptable, and it is to be wholly rejected. Do you not know that when you present yourself to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey?
The principle is that when you give yourself to any master you then become a slave to that master. Once you have chosen your master then you become slaves to that master. If your master is sin, then you will obey sin. If your master is righteousness, then you are going to obey righteousness. Everyone lives with a master. That leads to an axiom. What is an axiom? It is a self-evident or universally accepted truth, and here is that truth. There are two families in the human race, the sin family and the righteous family. People are either in Adam or in Christ. They are either under the reign of sin and death or under the reign of righteousness and life. There is no middle ground. So when you present yourself to someone and say, "I am going to be your slave and obey you", then you will obey the one to whom you made that commitment. The entire human race is slaves to sin so they obey sin as their master. But when you come to Christ, that old self died and now you have a new master who is the Lord of righteousness. It is now in the fabric of your being to do what once you could not do. You came into the world fit to only obey sin but now you have been recreated to obey righteousness. That is a fact. We know as Christians, we live in this unredeemed flesh. We know our holiness is imperfect, but now we have this desire to obey righteousness. That is the axiom, the universal truth which leads to The argument in v.17-19. God be thanked. Why, because He is the author and finisher of our faith and because he is the only one that can break into our slavery to sin. We used to be slaves, an imperfect verb meaning continually in past time. It is what we were by nature and what we have always been. But all that changed when we became obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching that changed our allegiance. This was not some superficial thing, this is not some religiosity, this was a heart obedience. We had a heart change, a change in nature by the miracle of regeneration, the miracle of conversion. We responded to the truth when we heard the truth. We heard the true doctrine. The word used there means a mold; we were poured into a mold of saving truth. You have seen pictures of hot metal being poured into a mold and lifted out in the shape of that mold. That is what happened to us when we responded to the truth; we were poured into this mold and came out in the image of Christ. Another way of saying it is we have been stamped with his image.
Donald Barnhouse writes, "Scriptural teaching is a definite body of teaching, a hard mold of truth into which the Christian is to be melted and poured until he takes on the shape which is the Lord Jesus Christ living in him and controlling him. We are to be shaped by sound doctrine." We went into that mold one way and came out totally different. We are new, we have been changed. That is the new casting of a Christian. It is a firm cast.
Once we were slaves of sin and now we are freed from sin. Now that does not mean we are free from temptation. We are free from being a slave to sin and we no longer have to sin. But we still sin, right? The difference now is that when we do sin we can't blame Adam or Eve, or anyone else. Who is to blame then? Ourselves because we did not have to sin, we are no longer involuntary forced to sin. We voluntarily choose to succumb to temptation and sin. But does that mean we will continue in sin? No, because our new master and our new mold will not let us do that. We are now free to do what pleases Christ. It is a slave master human analogy to convey a profound truth. v.17 says as you used to present your members to impurity now present them to righteousness. Then comes the application in v.20-23. At one time we had no choice as to how we would live because we were vile on the inside and our desire was to pursue sin. Even our philanthropy was good/bad because we did it to honor self not God. But just as we yielded 100 % of ourselves to sin before we were saved we can now yield 100% of ourselves to righteousness which will result in a progression of more righteousness. Sinners go lower and lower in levels of sinfulness, we can go higher and higher into levels of righteousness.
Christians still sin, but we do not have to do that and when we do we have no one to blame but ourselves. And I know it is hard and so does Paul. In chapter 7, he says I am the one who wishes to do good, I am the one who hungers for righteousness, but there is an evil still in me, my unredeemed flesh which is an operative power that wages war with me. Oh wretched man that I am and he was a very mature believer. Now when I sin, I feel worse because now I have this deeper love for righteousness and a greater animosity toward sin. Let me put it another way. The mark of a Christian is that he or she will sin less but feel worse. Unredeemed sinners go from bad to worse. Redeemed sinners go from pure to purer, holy to holier, clean to cleaner because of the operative power of the Holy Spirit in us. What did we benefit from our prior lives of sin – shame.
John Calvin commenting on these verses wrote, "As soon as the godly begin to be enlightened by the Spirit of Christ and the preaching of the truth, they acknowledge that the whole of their past life is worthy of condemnation. Far from trying to excuse themselves, they are ashamed of themselves. They continually bear their disgrace in mind so that the shame of it may make them more truly and willingly humble before God." Our old life only produced shame and death, both physical and eternal in an utterly hopeless and everlasting hell. But now we have been freed to bear righteous fruit and the end of that will be eternal life. If our position before God is different, then our practice before God should be different. Salvation is the making of a believer into a holy people and then calling them to live up to that holiness as they yield their members as instruments of holiness. Most of you have heard of the Benedictine monks. They had a policy that if you wanted to join the monastery you could come on probation for one year. During that time you were given a little cell and the clothes you wore when you came were hung in that cell. Anytime during that first year you could put on those clothes and walk out. Only at the end of that first year were those clothes thrown away. Jesus is not looking for people who just want to add him to their lives. He is calling people who want to step apart from the world and progress on the path of holiness all their lives. Grace covers sin. Grace does not condone sin. Grace transforms the sinner.
•••
The Rev. Dr. James Barnes is currently the pastor of White Memorial Church in Milroy.