Indeed, you have sung well tonight. Now let's open our Bibles together for our study to Romans chapter 6 as we look at the last half of this significant chapter. I'll begin reading in verse 14 where it says, You are not under law, but under grace. What then? While we sin because we are not under law, but under grace, may it never be.
Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.
For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derived your benefit resulting in sanctification and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The question that we examine in this paragraph is this, are we free to sin? Or have we been freed from the law, now being under grace, in order that we might be free to sin? The very question causes Paul to recoil in reprehension.
He says, may it never be, God forbid it should never be so, that we have been freed in order that we might sin. What we have done is that we have been set free from slavery to one master, we have become enslaved to another master. Paul doesn't particularly like that analogy of slavery to God and to righteousness. In fact, you find in verse 19, the first part of the verse even apologizes for using that human kind of an analogy.
But he says, in the weakness of their flesh he's speaking in a way which they will clearly understand. Joseph Ton has spoken at our church at least a couple of times in our missions festivals. He reminds us of the privileges of political and religious liberty that we so often take for granted.
You will recall he is a pastor who for a number of years served the Lord in Romania, his homeland, but he was exiled because he courageously preached the gospel, even under the severe restrictions of that communist government. Now he is free. Now he lives in the United States. He is free. He is removed from the restrictive laws of Romania. But on the other hand, he is not free to live any way that he wants to. He is now under another set of laws, the laws of the United States of America.
There were some people in Paul's day who tried to understand what it meant to be free from the law. They got confused. They thought that it meant that they could live any way they wanted to live. Paul is explaining here that indeed we have been set free from the law of God, but that freedom from the law does not mean freedom to sin. It means that we have been set under a new principle, the principle of grace, and we have been enslaved to righteousness and to God.
My main theme tonight as we look at this paragraph is this, that we should present ourselves to God as his servants. There are two compelling reasons that we should do that. Hopefully you received an outline as you came in, did you? If you did, wave them at me so I know that they're out there. Well, isn't that pretty? You'd think it's Palm Sunday already. That's good. Okay, you've got the outlines. You will notice that is the main thesis, that we should present ourselves to God as his servants.
There are two reasons that we should do that. First, because the one whom we serve is our master. Secondly, because of the benefit that we receive from serving God. Now as we think of the first reason, there are five key words I want you to jot down in your outline. This will help you follow my thoughts. They all start with P. There's going to be a little pea patch here tonight that we're planting. It's spring, isn't it? Possibilities. Keyword number one. Principle. Past. And practice.
If you'll keep those five words before you, I think you can follow me as we work through the text before us this evening. We need to present ourselves to God as his servants for this reason, because the one whom we serve is our master. He makes that clear in verse 16. He says actually there are only two possibilities, only two masters. Either disobedience or obedience. Or to put it a different way, either sin or God.
Notice he says in the middle of verse 16, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, resulting in death, or of obedience, resulting in righteousness. So there are only two possibilities. We are either enslaved to sin or we are enslaved to righteousness. That is, to sin or to God. Another way of saying it. Now all unsafe people are enslaved to sin. All are under sin. Paul has already told us that in the book of Romans. There is no choice about that.
Every person outside of faith in Jesus Christ is enslaved to sin. Maybe a nice person, maybe a religious person, maybe do some good things, relatively speaking. But all who are outside of Jesus Christ are enslaved to sin. What about believers? Well, believers have been released from that slavery to be enslaved to God. But when it comes down to the practice of life, there are some believers who are still serving sin, though they are not enslaved to sin anymore.
They don't have to serve sin, but that is a choice they make. And from time to time we all make that decision. That's why the Apostle is impressing upon us here, be enslaved to God. Serve Him. Because He is now your Master. Present yourselves to God and the members of your body as instruments of righteousness to God. Now we can do that, and we should do that, because of our position. And what is that position? A couple of phrases describe it. He says, you are not under law, but under grace.
What He means here is that we are not related to God on the basis, because of the principle of law, that is keeping rules and regulations telling us to do this or not to do that. We are not related to God on the basis of law keeping. But He says that we are related to God on the basis of grace, that is God's unmerited favor toward us. We have been freed from the demands and the penalty that come with the law.
The law indeed did make demands of us, which we could not fulfill, because we were sinners. As one poem says, quoted by Kenneth Wiest, do this and live, the law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands. A better word the gospel brings, it bids me fly and gives me wings. We have been freed, praise God, from the law with its demands and its penalty for those who fail to keep the demands.
We are related to God on the basis of grace, and because of that, we now are able to present ourselves to God as His servants. There's another phrase that He uses here to describe our position. Not only are we related to God on the basis of grace, but He says furthermore that we are freed from sin. We see that in verse 7. He who has died, that is with Christ, is freed from sin. We see the very same phrase used in verse 18 in our text. Having been freed from sin.
And again in verse 22, but now having been freed from sin. And in verse 11, a similar thought. Consider yourselves dead to sin. Our freedom came through death with Christ, that's the point. I can now present myself as a servant to the Lord because I have been freed from my old master. Sin no longer has dominion over me. I have died to sin. I have been resurrected. Free, so that now I can give myself freely to the Lord. That brings us to our third key word, principle.
There's a certain principle that's involved in the reasoning that Paul uses, that principle's in verse 16. It is that we become slaves of the one that we obey. And he makes it clear that we obey either sin or obedience. That is sin or God, one or the other. Not both, not both at the same time, but one or the other. Just as Jesus said, you cannot serve God and mammon or money. He said you cannot serve two masters.
So Paul is saying, when it comes right down to it, you and I cannot serve sin and God at the same time. We cannot have our arm around both of them and claim both as our sweethearts. One or the other is the one that we're serving. That's the principle. Now the past, verses 17 and 18, he points back to an event that took place. He says, thanks be to God. Paul loves that phrase and he uses it here because God is the one who makes all of this possible he's going to talk about.
Thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart. Paul is saying that sometime at one point in our past, we became obedient, not superficially but from deep within us. From the heart, there was a heart obedience that went forth from us. You became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching. What's that mean? The gospel? That body of truth about Jesus Christ? That doctrine of him?
He says you became heart obedient to the gospel truth to which you were committed. Of course he does not say to which you committed yourself. But he says to which you were committed. It's passive. I think that's significant. Literally he says to which you were handed over. The idea is here a total commitment took place at that point. To which he says you were handed over having been freed from sin. That's passive also, not active. You didn't free yourself. He says you were freed.
Someone, something acted upon you and accomplished this. And you became slaves of righteousness or you were enslaved to righteousness. Again it's passive. I believe that what Paul is emphasizing here is the sovereign work of God in his grace saving us. He's pointing back to salvation. That moment when we often say we found the Lord or we accepted Christ. Now there may not be anything wrong with those phrases but what Paul is saying here is that the emphasis is on what God did.
And someone has said the emphasis is on the wrong syllable in the way that we often say it. Let's get it on the right syllable and that is that God is the one who saved us. He is the one who totally handed us over, freed us from sin, and enslaved us to himself. And so he is pointing to the past when we became obedient, not merely compliant. We didn't simply allow ourselves to be molded into some shape as though we were a piece of metal being beaten down and we were compliant to this mold.
But he says that there was a radical thing that took place. We became obedient from the heart. And here I return to that phrase that something profound happened to us that moment that we trusted Christ. Something profound happened. We from the inside were made new people. We are what we were not. We've been freed from sin and we have become slaves of righteousness. Donald Gray Barnhouse used to tell the story of a fisherman named Old John. Let me share it with you.
He said, years ago in Scotland there was a fisherman called Old John who was bound by strong drink. He took the money earned from his catch and spent it on liquor while his wife and children suffered. They lived in a hovel at the end of a fishing village and eked out an existence in extreme poverty. But Old John came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior. After that he brought all his money home and gave it to his wife.
He worked steadily and soon there were new clothes, plenty of food and coal for the fire. After a few weeks of this transformed existence, the wife said, John, if you're going to keep on like this, we should move into a better house. Right, said John, I shall go and see the landlord at once. Made his way through the town to the landlord and asked to rent a certain house. The landlord said, I would never rent a good house to you, Old John.
How do you say that, asked John, you don't know me at all. Of course I know you, said the landlord. You're drunken, Old John, the fisherman. You're mistaken, said John, you have never seen me before. Old John is dead. I am New John, a new creature in Christ Jesus. And he poured out a handful of coins before the astonished landlord and soon New John was living in a new house.
That's what Paul is pointing back to, when that transformation took place, when we no longer were the old creatures we were, but all things became new in Jesus Christ. And what we were before, that old man was put to death. It was crucified with Christ. We were buried and then raised again as a new man with a new identity, a transformed inner being, able now to present ourselves to God as his servants.
And so in verse 19 he says, after his initial apology for using these kinds of terms regarding our serving God, he says, for just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness. He's pointing again to the past. He's saying before you presented your abilities, the members of your body, you presented your potential, all about you, you presented as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness. And it only led to degeneration, more lawlessness.
You know the lie that sin tells is that if you serve it, it will satisfy you. Sin says if you will do this, you will be happy. It says if you will do what I tell you to do, you will be fulfilled in life. Don't you believe it for a moment. You present yourself to sin, it would only bring forth more lawlessness and degeneration in your life. Sin never satisfies. Young people, write that in your heart.
You may be tempted to serve sin and sin says to you, do this, follow the crowd, get involved in this, and you will be accepted. You will be a part of the group. You will be happy. You will have the things you want. Don't believe it for a moment. Sin lies, it deceives. But he says just as we once presented ourselves to sin, so now, now the things are different because of what's happened. Now, present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
That's the practice of our lives. That's what he wants. Presenting ourselves as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. Not degeneration, not decay, not wasting away, but rather God setting us apart, God building us, God making us. That's what sanctification is. It's God putting together. It's God building up. It's God growing. It's God transforming.
And he says that when you and I present all that we have and all that we are to God, that that's the result when we're slaves to righteousness. Does it pay to serve God? Does it pay to serve righteousness in your life? Yes, there may be those who will think you're a little out of touch with the culture around you. There may be those who will think that you're not quite with it, but in the end, you are going to be the benefactor.
Now that really brings us to the second reason that we ought to present ourselves to God. It's the benefit we receive. Verses 20 through 23. He speaks first about the benefit of service to sin. And the answer really is implied here. It's none. He says, when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness, therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
He says there was no benefit, there was no advantage, there was no fruit in your life when you serve sin. Indeed, the situation of one who's enslaved to sin is described by three phrases here. First of all, freed from righteousness, in verse 20. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. There was no righteousness in your life or in your standing before God. Righteousness just was not a term that could be applied to you.
You were free from that, sad freedom, but that was the case. Verse 21, he says the benefit of sin might be described in terms like this, ashamed. Things of which you are now ashamed. Guilt, shame. That's what we get from sin. Guilt and shame that clouds the life, depresses the life, that darkens. All of us can testify to the truthfulness of what Paul says here. We can look back in our lives when we serve sin. Those are the things of which we're now ashamed.
And he says finally, the outcome of those things is death. Again, he says in verse 23, the wages of sin is death. What does sin pay? It pays death. That's the outcome of it. No benefit, no benefit, no advantage. But it does give death. The word wage that Paul uses here was a word that was used of a Roman soldier's pay. Now Roman soldiers were not paid regular wages like our soldiers today. But they lived for the most part on booty from their warfare and from selling prisoners to slave merchants.
That's basically how they supported themselves. But soldiers did receive solarium from the Roman government. That was salt money. It was called solarium. It was enough to buy the salt that they needed. And obssonium, literally fish rations. It was just what they needed to eke out a living, to be able to exist. If they wanted something more than that, they had to take the booty from their warfare or sell prisoners as slaves. The Roman government was committed only to those two things.
Now Paul uses the word here for fish ration. He says if you make sin your king, your sovereign, remember he talked about that earlier in this chapter, verse 12, do not let sin reign. That is to exercise its kingly power in your mortal body. He says if we choose to serve sin, the result of that is going to be sin will pay us a wage. That wage is death. Now for the one who is enslaved to sin, the unsaved person, that death certainly includes hell.
It is separation from God in a permanent state or condition forever. Just as this life is lived separated from God, so when one dies separated from God, that separation becomes a permanent condition of the soul forever. One must suffer in the fires of hell. The wages of sin is death. But not just that kind of death. There's also death in one's present experience. What one experiences in life, no benefit, but only decay, only degeneration.
Someone might foolishly say, oh sure, yeah I know a person who's not a Christian, and you ought to see all that he has. He has a nice home, he has a fancy car, he has vacations that he can take, he has a lot of things. But if he says sin doesn't pay, hey, he hasn't gotten to the final payday. You see that's part of the deceitfulness of sin. It kind of strings a person along until bam, it's too late. It's too late.
I got word this morning, just after, this afternoon rather, just after we got home from church that an uncle of mine, a brother to my mother, died this morning. He was a man who was a good man in many ways. He was in military service, retired as a military officer years ago, was in charge of the industries and the state prison system in Kansas later, retired from that, able to travel, enjoyed that, had a lot of what this life can offer, but he didn't have Christ.
When the pastor of the church in Kansas where I grew up went to visit him a few weeks ago to talk to him about his soul, his wife would hardly let a word get in edgewise. She would not let the subject come close to spiritual things. You've seen people like that. My uncle knew he had cancer and he knew he was dying. He was scared. He was scared. At one point the pastor asked my uncle if he could pray with him before he left. Just, can I have prayer with you? He said no. I don't want prayer.
Now I cannot say tonight where he is. I know that he heard the gospel. He has said in services where I've preached. He has heard it from my mother. But tonight I fear for his soul. And as much as I know, he slipped into a Christless eternity this morning. Now my friend, that is the true outcome of being enslaved to sin. And for that, there is no remedy ever. Thank God that those of us who have trusted Jesus Christ do not have to anticipate that outcome. We have already passed from death to life.
How foolish then, that having been freed from death and freed from the mastery of sin, that we should waste our lives continuing to serve sin. Why should we waste ourselves playing with sin when there's no advantage in serving sin? There's no benefit in it. You say is there a benefit in serving God? Oh yes, look at the text. What is our benefit of service to God? Well he's already said that it's righteousness, which means good works, it's virtue in the life.
He specifically mentions sanctification, verse 22, as he did back in verse 19. Holiness, the changing of the mind, the heart, by the transforming work of the Holy Spirit so that we become more and more like Jesus Christ. Is that something that's beneficial? To find yourself becoming more like Jesus? Of course it is. Then he says eternal life. He says the outcome, eternal life. The free gift of God is eternal life. Is he talking about heaven? Yes, yes, heaven's in view here.
With Christ forever, the glorious state of being with the Lord, eternal life, and to emphasize the fact that it's not the result of our serving God, he says it's the free gift of God. Don't get mixed up on this, it's not that we get eternal life because we choose to serve God instead of sin. The outcome of it all is eternal life, but it's a gift of grace. He says the free gift of God is eternal life. This word again, free gift, is the word charisma. It's the grace gift.
It's the word so frequently used in the New Testament. Interestingly it too was used of soldiers and the pay that was given to soldiers. Charisma was a bounty which was given to soldiers on special occasions and it had nothing to do at all with what they did in their military service. It was just a bounty given to them. It was a bonus, so to speak. Here Paul takes that term charisma, free gift, the grace gift, and he says it's eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Heaven is in view here, but also the present experience of walking with God. Eternal life is not just then, it's now. It's a quality of life that you and I can experience as we walk with God. Let me just quote from Barnhouse briefly again. He says putting the two parts of this text together, we see the contrast. As part of the rations of death, an unbeliever's mind is filled with unsatisfied questioning. The believer's mind with the quiet satisfaction of knowing.
The unbeliever continues to question his ultimate destiny, so he spends out theories of his origin. On the other hand, the believer, because he has received the grace gift of eternal life, rests in the fact that he was created by God for a purpose, and that in Christ he has come into the accomplishment of that purpose. The unbeliever is going he knows not where. The believer has arrived, and he knows where.
The unbeliever is ever learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth, and thus he's uneasy. Countless believers witness to the wonderful release which accompanies salvation and the inflow of eternal life. Why is it that we should serve God, present ourselves to him? First of all, it is because the one that we serve is our master. Our master is God, let's serve him. And secondly, because of the benefit that we have in serving Jesus Christ.
The benefit that is given to us is a free gift of grace. There are two reasons given to us that are strong, they are compelling, they are forceful, as to why we should no longer go on presenting our body and its members, its powers, its faculties, our potentials, all of that to sin. But why we should rather present ourselves to God. All of us can testify to the sad results of obeying sin as a Christian.
It works into our lives misery and frustration and guilt, and can ultimately bring the chastisement of God. Sin has only one goal in the Christian, it can't take us to hell, but it can destroy us here. It can absolutely wreck our lives here, and it will. So why serve it? Hey, we've been set free from sin. So let's not go on serving sin, but let's present ourselves to God and our members as weapons of righteousness for God. Let's pray. Father, thank you for setting us free from sin's mastery.
And tonight we would not go on subjecting our bodies to the miserable domination of sin. But wherein we have allowed sin to reign as a sovereign, forgive us. We repent of that. And all that we are and have we present to you tonight afresh. And Lord, may that be a heart's decision that we make every morning as we start the day.
And then as we go through the day, as we find that once more sin has usurped the throne and we have submitted ourselves to it, may we confess that and come back to present ourselves afresh to you. Lord, don't let us go on day after day serving sin. I pray that will be true of the junior hires here.
I pray that every senior hire will obey what this says, that every college student and career single with the particular pressures and temptation that come upon them, that all of us moms and dads and grandpas and grandpas and every one of us tonight who know Jesus Christ and who have been freed from slavery to sin, would now give ourselves freely and slavery to you. Thank you for the benefit you give us, for the promise, the assurance, the free gift of eternal life. In Jesus' name, amen.