I want to invite you to turn with me in your Bibles this afternoon to Romans chapter six. Romans chapter six. And. After you find your place here, I think that I will lead us in a word of prayer and we'll just kind of dive into this passage that the Lord is teaching us about the way of a holy life and his sanctifying grace in us. Let's pray. Dear Father, we count it a great privilege and honor to fellowship with the saints, to worship your holy name, to know Jesus Christ, who came forth from the grave, ascended to the right hand of your throne, and rules over this world and all the universe with sovereign power. We thank you that We have your word that we can receive and learn and know, and we recognize that we have a responsibility to receive it and to learn from it and to grow in it. We understand the challenges that we face in living a holy life in this world. And we all feel the pinch of sin and temptation. And we want to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and not allow the flesh to get the upper hand. We want to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and to be more like Christ as each day passes. And so we pray for your sanctifying grace and power. Teach us in such a way as to change our minds and hearts through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. So the first 14 verses of chapter 6 is a unit, a very important unit. Then verses 15 through 23 is another unit. They're closely related to each other, but they're somewhat different. Basically, in the first 14 verses, we have seen that we were in the kingdom of this world before conversion. We've been brought out of the kingdom of this world and are in the kingdom of God. The language that has been used is we were under the reign of sin and now we're under the reign of grace. And the 14th verse is the key verse. Not just the key verse in the first 14 verses, but in the whole chapter. The 14th verse is the key verse, which says, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. If we fail to understand the 14th verse, if we fail to appropriate the 14th verse, we'll still be saved. If we're saved, we're gonna be saved. But we're going to struggle in the living of the Christian life not knowing and appreciating the information that's given to us here. I emphasize to you in the first five verses that we are in union with Christ, we died with him, we were buried with him, we were raised to walk in newness of life with him, and that that has an ongoing impact, but it's a positional truth that took place Both at the time Christ actually died and was raised, as well as when we were converted and brought to trust that work of Christ, when we trusted the gospel and believed on the Lord Jesus for our salvation. What that means is we're no longer in slavery to sin. We're now in slavery to Christ. We're not our own. We have been bought with a price. The price that we have been bought with is the precious blood of Jesus Christ. So that transaction of what Christ has accomplished has ripped us out of this world system of spiritual blindness and sin, and it has placed us gently and wonderfully in the family of God and in communion with the Lord of glory and with one another. So the transfer from the reign of sin to the reign of grace, then when we move beyond verse 14, is a changed life. The transfer from the reign of sin to the reign of grace is manifested by a change of life. When I learned this many years ago, if you'd heard me preaching 35 years ago, practically in every third sermon, I would say, partly because of the audience that I was preaching to and lost people, I would say this all the time. My wife will testify to it. The only evidence of salvation is a changed life. The only evidence of salvation is a changed life because it captures the teaching that is given here. Now, we need to know these first 14 verses to appreciate that, but the information about a changed life comes in verses 15 and following. So it'll take us a couple of weeks to look at each of these verses. I can say also by way of introduction that such a transfer from the reign of sin to the reign of grace in a person's life requires, the transfer has been made, okay? That's something that God has done. You're not transferring yourself, you're not contributing to the transfer. God Almighty, you couldn't transfer yourself out of the reign of sin and death. and the law. You couldn't do it. You have been transferred by the grace and power of God. But once we're transferred into the kingdom of God's grace, we're not zapped with sinlessness. Sin continues. hence the questions that are raised in this chapter. And so once we've been transferred into the kingdom of God's grace, daily, diligent, devotional discipline is going to be required to live for God and not yield to sin. Okay? So there's a battle that has to be waged by the Christian in his life to deal with temptations and things that arise so that our lives might be found pleasing to God. So the question that I want us to think about today, in light of all of that, just as we get ready to go into verses 15 through 18, is this. Is Jesus or sin the master of your life? Who is the controlling influence in your life? Is it temptations and sins that crop up? or just your weaknesses that are the driving force in your life, or is Jesus and his word the driving force within your life? That's really what we have to some degree in the rest of the chapter, but especially in verses 15 through 18. Who is your master, Christ or sin? So in making application of that, okay, First of all, I want you to see with me the defining question that's in verse 15. Now, before I even read verse 15, if you just look at the, if this whole chapter is on the face of your Bible, you can see that verse one has an important question, verse 15 has an important question. We can see that these are the questions that Paul is answering that were issues in his day. And incidentally, these continue to be the issues to this very day. These are the things that normal human beings are going to struggle with. These are going to be the things that... Paul hadn't been to the church at Rome. He hadn't interviewed anybody. But he knew from all the other churches and the opposition to the gospel and so forth that these are the questions that needed to be addressed if you believe that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. And if you believe in salvation by works, these questions don't matter. Think about it. These questions are really meaningless if you're saved by grace and works, faith and works. If you're saved by faith and works, these questions make no sense. But if you're saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, then these questions are important. We won't go back over the first question, but this is what verse 15 says. What then? Now that we've settled how you've been transferred out from under the reign of sin into the reign of grace, what then? Shall we sin? Because we are not under law, but under grace. Certainly not. So we have here a defining question, an extremely important question at this juncture in his arguments. And basically what he's telling us is that we are not under the law as a covenant, but we are under grace as a covenant. Now, we don't have the word covenant here. You've got to start back in Genesis chapter 1. You've got to read the Bible all the way through to this point. This is why God ordains pastors and elders. Full-time individuals devoting their lives to the study of God's Word. The Bible is not just a hodgepodge, as it were, of random statements by different prophets and people. There is a body of truth, a body of divinity that is given in Holy Scripture, and interpreting it requires thought and investigation. And furthermore, we need not only elders of this particular church, but we also need all the elders that we've had from the time of Jesus Christ and the apostles to the present, because It's not impossible to understand, but there is a lot here. There is a lot here, and piecing it all together really requires... a lot of study and thought. And so we're standing on the shoulders of the saints of God for many ages to this point to understand. If we misunderstand verse 15 to be saying, shall we sin because we're not under the moral law, but we've had all of our sins washed away and God's grace has taken it away, then the answer to that question would not be certainly not, it would just be live in sin. because the moral law has been abolished and done away with. And yet, there are multitudes of Christians, and some really good Christians, who read this as being the moral law. Now, most of them don't take it to the full extent of antinomianism, but it's very easily It can be very easily taken that way by people, and some have done so through the ages. In fact, Spurgeon, in his ministry, some of his biggest opponents were antinomians who did this. They may not have been personal antinomians, but they were theological antinomians thinking and understanding this concept in this way. We've got to be careful that we understand what these categories are. If we misunderstand this, we're going to get way off track. So the defining question very simply stated is, shall we sin because we are not under law as a covenant? Which would mean the old, the Mosaic law, the old covenant that had all kinds of legal ramifications and stipulations attached to it. There was moral law within it, which moral law continues. And if you need a passage of scripture to confirm that the moral law continues, just look at Matthew chapter 5. Actually the whole chapter, but especially where Jesus says, I did not come to abolish the law. but to fulfill it, the law. I came to fulfill it. And when you read the whole chapter, you see him applying and teaching the moral law to his hearers with great agility and with a way that people were like, wow, we have never heard the law of God talk to us like this before. So a man is guilty of breaking the commandment, don't commit adultery, not just when the act has been committed, but when he thinks so in his heart. So yeah, the moral law, of course, is still in effect. And so obviously what we're seeing and understanding is the law as a covenant. We're not under that, but we are under grace as a covenant, which means there are stipulations to the covenant of grace, to the new covenant. If you read in Jeremiah chapter 31 or in Ezekiel that prophesies about the new covenant, what you'll read is his law will be rewritten in our hearts. And we will see the value of the law and we will desire to live in accordance with the law. We will exalt the law because in exalting the law, we're exalting the creator and the giver of the law who is God Almighty himself. But Paul's answer to the question is equally important. The defining question comes with this answer, certainly not. And the idea is that a professed believer who would encourage either himself or others to sin is absolutely repulsive to Paul. It's repulsive. It's unacceptable. And of course, the implications of that are found not only here, but all throughout the scriptures. And that's why people can be theological antinomians, but will not most of the time become practical antinomians because they see that it's so contrary to the teaching of scripture. The idea that because we are under grace, we can sin is a perversion of grace, either as a covenant or as just the saving power of God. So, continuing in sin is impossible basically for the saint of God for the person that has been saved to continue in sin in the way that he or she did before conversion is just an impossibility for us. So we'll move beyond verse 15 then to verse 16 where we see secondly the basic proposition. We have seen here the defining question. Now we want to consider the basic proposition found in this verse. And let me read this verse. It says, Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are the one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness? So the basic proposition, let me break this 16th verse down this way. First of all, the proposition is self-evident. You do not have to be a theologian to understand that basically what this verse is saying is you are the slave of the one you obey. Think about it. Slaves are given orders. They have to obey orders. They're going to be you know, disciplined if they don't obey the orders that have been given to them. Paul's basically taking an institution that was very prominent in the Roman Empire and he's using it to show a proposition, a truth that we need to understand. This is a self-evident proposition. You are the slave to the one that you obey. And he's turning it in to us, toward us spiritually. This proposition is literally designed to force us into introspection, to inspect our own lives. We need to ask ourselves, am I a slave to sin or am I a slave to righteousness? That's the question here that he wants us to ask ourselves. Jesus said in John chapter 8 and verse 34, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. So if you want to know where Paul got this idea, he got it from Jesus. Jesus has clearly explained to us that the one who commits sin that lives under the domination of sin is a slave to it. A similar presentation of this principle is given in Luke chapter 16 and verse 13 where Jesus says, no servant can serve two masters for either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." And we can put it here, you cannot serve God and any particular sin, not just mammon, any sin, all sin. If you're serving Jesus, you're not living for wealth, you're not living for popularity, you're not living for acceptance from others. You're living to please honor the Lord who's washed you in his blood and made you his own child. Someone might disagree with me and might deny the teaching of Scripture at this point. But I'm going to draw this illustration from Dr. Hendrickson. He says this, a person that would be raised, let's say, within the church community and is taught the law of God and the gospel of Christ growing up, then becomes, let's say, a teenager, something of that nature, and they really just you know, consciously tell a lie to save face or to get out of some trouble that they've gotten themselves into, may immediately feel within their own heart horrified at what they have just done. But after they have sinned by lying five times in a short period of time, they cease to be as shaken. They may be shaken some, but not horrified as they were in the first occasion. And then by the tenth time of lying, it becomes second nature, becomes easy, and there's no pangs of conscience. Now, obviously, that's becoming very dense because we come forth from the womb speaking lies, the Bible tells us. But the illustration makes the point, and I think all of us can understand this. We can think about our own experience as young people growing up where our parents taught us truths based upon the Bible and told us you don't do this, you don't, and so forth. And these are the things you should do, you must do. And we can think about how we grew in disagreement, we might say, with those instructions as we committed offenses and it became easier and easier to the point that we didn't think anything about it. That's very clearly the teaching of this proposition. The self-evident teaching of this proposition is you become a slave to sin as you commit sin. It enslaves you. It's going to enslave you, okay? Secondly, the proposition gives instructions. It's not only self-evident, but it gives us some instructions. And the instructions really are pretty simple. There's two verbs, present and obey. They mean basically the same thing. Present means to allow or to give way to or to yield to something, whereas the word obey means to comply with or to submit to something and to do what you've been instructed to do. And both of them in this In this verse of scripture could be described as the instruction would be narrowed down to pursue something. To present, to obey in one direction or the other could be described as pursuing something. So if I take a verse from 1 John 3 verses 9 and 10 and just make the application of these instructions It would go, and I'm kind of paraphrasing the verse and I'm sort of giving the teaching of it. I'm not quoting it word for word, but basically those two verses say, whoever has been born of God does not sin. And John is clearly not saying does not ever commit a sin, because he's just said in chapter one, if you say that you have no sin, you're lying, the truth is not in you. Truth being the gospel, the way of salvation. So here he's not reverting on that or contradicting himself. What he means is, because it's in the present tense, he's saying here, he who does not continue in sin, the one who has been born of God does not continue in sin. He does not live as a slave to sin. He's feeling, when he does sin, the conviction, and he's feeling grief because of his sin. He's mourning over that sin. He's repenting of that sin. For his seed, the seed of God, remains within him. He has the Holy Spirit living within his heart and life, and he cannot continue to live a life of devotion to sin because he has been born of God. In this, the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. So he's taking out, because his theme there happens to be the main point, has to do with loving our brother. But the whole practice of righteousness is the practice of the saved. Not that we are perfect, but that we are not slaves of sin, doing its bidding whenever it appeals to us. Thirdly, the proposition offers results to each possibility. So we got some instructions and basically the instruction if we take present and obey is pursuing. So the proposition offers results. If you pursue sin, it leads to death. If you pursue obedience, it leads to righteousness. That's what the verse is telling us. Now, let's think for just a minute about the pursuit of sin leading to death. We learned earlier in this book that there are three kinds of death in the Bible. There's physical death, where the soul, the spirit, ceases to be in the body, the separation of the body and soul. That's physical death. There's spiritual death that happened in the Garden of Eden when we were separated from God, spiritually dead. And there's eternal death that comes at the Great White Throne Judgment spoken of in Revelation chapter 20. And I think that while all three can apply here, and all three can apply in chapter 6 verse 23, where it says the wages of sin is death, because in each one of those we can find scripture that shows the wages of sin brought physical death, spiritual death, and also eternal death. I think eternal death is really what is the main point in view in both verse 16 and in verse 23. He's saying that if you're the slave of sin, it is going to result in ultimate separation from God. If a person is a slave to sin, that person is not under the reign of grace. So the evidence, all of us that are saved, we do sin, but we're not under the reign of sin, we're under the reign of grace, and we're seeking to live what is pleasing to God, and we are going to be pursuing obedience, leading to righteousness. That obedience includes confession of sin, and repentance, and includes continuing to trust the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But furthermore, Pursuing obedience leads to righteousness. Now righteousness there is not the righteousness of Christ. This righteousness in verse 16 is the righteousness of right living. We already have the righteousness of Christ. applied to our hearts and souls, but through obedience we become more like Christ. We live more closely to the standards which He set forth for us in His Word. It refers to the character or quality of being right or just in the sight of God. And so, each of these three really bring out for us very clearly the basic proposition. So we've seen the defining question, the basic proposition, and we have to keep the basic proposition in mind as we continue to go to the end of the chapter in future messages. But now we come to verse 17 and 18, and let's read them. But God be thanked. that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So thirdly, we see this evening the amazing deliverance. The amazing deliverance. Something amazing has happened to us. It really accounts for everything. Paul is being redundant. He's using different metaphors, different word pictures to communicate the same great truth. And for us to just say, okay, this has already been said to us in other ways previously, let's jump on down to verse 19, would just not really be very fulfilling to us since God the Holy Spirit gave this to us right here and now. So that we don't misunderstand this, notice that what he says in verse 17 is, but God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, past tense. I have read commentators writing on this verse that fail to see the tense of the verb and think that he's talking about what he had been saying in verse 16 even. You and I are not now slaves of sin. Verse 16 doesn't mean to be teaching that we are slaves of sin, but that we should not be and we will not be slaves of sin. We are slaves of God and slaves of righteousness. Past tense in verse 17, we were slaves of sin and we're thankful to God that we're not slaves of sin any longer. But as the last of the verse says, to which you were delivered. Now the word delivered means to hand over with a sense of close personal involvement. To hand over something with a sense of close personal involvement. Or it also means to give into the hands of another. Now this word that is translated delivered is a word which has a broad linguistic usage within the scriptures. But there's two basic concepts and translators, if you're looking at different translations at this moment, different translations are going to emphasize one or the other of these two emphases that this word is used, its usage within the New Testament. one of the main ideas is something that is taken away from and the other usage that is something that is given to. So you can see how translators are going to look and try to decide which of these two. But what I want to say to you without a doubt, okay, very clearly is that Each, that both of these concepts, I think, need to be brought into the text. So you notice even the New King James, they have a footnote related to the word delivered. So in the margin or at the foot of your page, it says, entrusted. Delivered or entrusted. So something is delivered or something is entrusted or given. You've been delivered from something, you've been given, or something has been entrusted to you. You can see both of these concepts. So the translators here are saying, you know, how do we choose between these two? But I'm saying as a preacher of the Word of God, being able to read just a little bit of the original language and see both of these and how they're used, I'm gonna say that Paul probably has both in his mind. And we need to appreciate both. So I want us to be thinking in terms both of what we've been delivered from, but also what we have been entrusted with and what we have been given in some way through this amazing deliverance. And with that in mind, I want to point out that there are four truths Paul gives us about this deliverance. First one is that this deliverance was by God. Obviously, we did not deliver ourselves. God delivered us. And He says that we should be thankful for that. And what a wonderful thing to see here on the week of Thanksgiving in our culture to recognize that We should be giving thanks for what God has done to deliver us from slavery to sin. We should speak words of gratitude every time that we pray. We should acknowledge this gift as being a free gift that God has given to us. We should acknowledge that we did not generate it by our own wisdom, but that God brought it to us of his free grace. We should not be like the Pharisee who stood in the court of the Gentiles and lifted his eyes to heaven and says, God, I thank you that I'm not like that tax collector over there who has sided with the Romans to collect taxes from your people. We should be like the tax collector who's down on his knees and he will not look up. He's looking down and he smotes his breast and says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. There's the difference between the lost and the saved if you want to know slavery to sin. See, slavery to sin can be very religious. as the Pharisee was very religious. But obviously, even the crowd agreed that the one who went down from the temple that day declared righteous was the tax collector and not the Pharisee. It was the collective understanding that people had. 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 57, Paul says, But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God who gives the victory, not who gives you something because you earned it. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Second truth, the deliverance was from slavery to sin. We don't need to elaborate on that. That's been the whole point of this passage and the emphasis. We're not under the reign of sin any longer. We're under the reign of grace. We're not under the law as a covenant. We're under grace as a covenant. We've been freed from that, delivered from that. Third truth, the deliverance came through obedience from the heart. Now here we need a little more explanation. Obeyed and and I don't know if you remember when I was preaching in Romans 1 verse 5 or not But we had a statement there about the obedience of faith And I said we're gonna meet this again a couple more times in this book you and I think of obedience Simply as something that we do but the Apostle Paul uses the word obeyed sometimes as a synonym for believing and Now, when you look at this verse here to say, but God be thanked that though we were slaves of sin, yet through our own obedience, we were delivered. That is completely contradictory to everything else that is said before this and after this in the book. Everything else here is about God's free and sovereign grace in saving sinners by his love and mercy to us. So he does not mean at all that this obeyed is something that we do. And just like Romans 1-5 and Romans 16-26, the phrase obedience to the faith means and refers to believing the gospel, receiving the gospel, accepting the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, or I would just say saving faith. To obey from the heart means to receive the message of the gospel or to experience saving faith. And to do so from the heart means to do so wholeheartedly or without any reservation, to do so genuinely. And the phrase form of doctrine, this is what stumped people. And a lot of people think, okay, if you believe the right form of doctrine, like a doctrinal statement, our confession, or maybe the Apostles' Creed or something like that, if you wanna, you know, mere Christianity, get down to the very essence and say, okay, if you receive that form of doctrine, then you're a Christian. I don't think Paul's saying that at all. I think the form of doctrine here is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The thing that you're to believe from your heart Because the Gospel, we believe it when we're converted, but we continue to believe it and we continue to obey it. I mean, really and truthfully, everything else in the Scripture, including the Law of God, is funneled through the framework of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the central focus of all of Holy Scripture. So as Robert Haldane said, nothing more convincingly proves the truth of the gospel than the power of God to change a man from a lover of sin to a lover of righteousness. And indeed we say a hearty amen. Our belief in the gospel is our means of deliverance from the power of sin. And that brings then our fourth truth, about this, and that is the deliverance makes us the slaves of righteousness. So what's taken away is slavery to sin. The one who gave it to us is God, and it came to us through receiving the gospel of Jesus Christ, but it also gave us something. It didn't just remove slavery to sin, but it added slavery to righteousness. This is, in some ways, this is the key to his arguments in this passage. Even though this would be a great passage to use as an evangelistic sermon. But clearly Paul is teaching believers and what he's saying here is that you were a slave to sin, but you're no longer a slave to sin, now you're a slave to righteousness. You haven't been released from sin and its bondage to be free to do whatever you please. You've been released from it in order to do what God has designed for us to do. So the saved have been set free, past tense, from sin, and they have been made slaves of righteousness, present tense, with continuing impact and influence. Titus 2 and verse 11 and 12 help us to conclude here this afternoon. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age. You can see basically what Paul is saying to Titus there in that passage. Same thing that has been said here, just in different language. The grace of God that brings salvation also teaches us to deny sin and ungodliness. That's what Paul is saying. So my question for you is this. Who is your master, sin or Jesus? That's really what he's teaching us here. And as we saw in Briar's lesson and message this morning, Jesus leads his sheep where? In the paths of righteousness. Right living, that which is pleasing to God. We're slaves to righteousness. He's leading us in this way. Let us pray. Dear Father, we thank you for your holy and precious word and for the, clear, unmistakable teaching and the wonderful application that it is for us as we seek to live for you in this world. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.