Greetings and welcome to the Beacon Broadcast from Beacon Baptist Church on Kirkpatrick Road in Burlington, North Carolina. The Beacon Broadcast is supported in part by the gifts of faithful listeners. If you'd like to correspond with Pastor Barkman and The Beacon Broadcast, or if you wish to support this radio ministry, write to The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. The Beacon Broadcast, Post Office Box 159, Alamance, NC 27201. Now with today's message from God's Word, here is Pastor Greg Barkman. And so we continue the discussion in Romans chapter 6 of the believer and his relationship to sin. What about sin in the life of those who have trusted Jesus Christ? That is a difficult and challenging question and it is very important that we do understand what the Bible teaches about this so that we do not revert on the one hand to legalism, some notion that our works, our earned righteousness, our refraining from sin is what saves us or keeps us saved, and on the other hand descend into antinomianism, to license, to an abuse of Christian liberty in which we believe that once we have been justified by faith in Christ that it really doesn't matter how we live after that, it certainly doesn't affect our eternal destiny, and it really is not of any great consequence to God. And that is the way that some people think. And so Paul is correcting these false notions in chapter six, and probably even more than correcting the false notions of people, is correcting the criticisms of the enemies of the gospel who are raising these questions, particularly the ones regarding liberty, license, antinomianism, who are leveling these charges as their way to defeat the gospel. The gospel cannot be true because it allows people to live in sin, and that of course is not so. It is absolutely not so. It is a complete misunderstanding and distortion of the gospel of grace, and that is what Paul is teaching us in Romans chapter 6. And so he says in verse 17, 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." It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who had a lot to say about what he called cheap grace, and I do not endorse everything that was included in his concept of cheap grace, but he did say a lot of good things, and one statement he made was, is that cheap grace is grace we bestow upon ourselves. You think that over? Cheap grace is grace that we bestow upon ourselves, but of course, grace that is of any value comes from God. We can't bestow it upon ourselves. So what was he saying? He was saying we take our concepts of grace and we apply those to our lives in disregard of what God has actually taught us in His Word, in disregard of what God actually does in the lives of His children. God's grace, as I've said several times over the last few days and weeks now, I think, God's grace not only brings us justification, but it also brings us sanctification. And those who are justified will always be sanctified. And it is the same grace of God that does one that does the other, and He never does the one without doing the other. So if there is no obvious sanctification going on in your life, if there is no desire for sanctification in your life, if there is no effort toward sanctification, that is growing in righteousness in your life, then the only conclusion that can be drawn is you must not be a recipient of God's grace. You may have graced yourself. You may have appropriated the claims of salvation through the gospel for yourself without true saving faith. You may have claimed these things without any work of regeneration in your heart, without ever having experienced the grace of God. But the grace of God, which justifies, always sanctifies. It sanctifies every sinner whom it justifies. Now, it is important that we have a proper biblical understanding of sanctification, and I've tried to give that to you. as we have moved along in Romans chapter 6. And sanctification is not entire sanctification in this life. There's no such thing as sinless perfection. And there are many other misunderstandings of sanctification which have to be corrected. But nevertheless, sanctification is a reality. It is a process. It is the working of the power of omnipotent God within us It is successful. God is omnipotent, and therefore the work that he does is always successful. We are confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in us will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. That much we know. And so we can be certain that those who are not involved in the process of sanctification have not been justified. For, as Paul puts it here in Romans 6.18, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And he's talking to us here about the purpose of freedom. We are freed from sin. Why? To serve righteousness. That's why. That's why we were freed from sin. We were not freed from sin that is, the power and the penalty of sin, in order to have license to continue in sin, but we were freed from sin to serve righteousness. It is a change of masters, as we have tried to point out. How were you rescued from the realm of sin? Well, in one manner of speaking, you were rescued from the realm of sin by having been purchased away from your former master that you might belong to a new master That's one way of looking at it, what God has done. And when you look at it that way, you were somewhat passive in that process, weren't you? In fact, you were completely passive in that process. There's a slave on the auction block, and somebody comes along and buys him. He really has nothing to say about who he presently belongs to. He has really nothing to say about whether or not his present master will sell him. And he really has nothing to say about choosing his new owner, does he? It is something that is done to him and for him by another. That's the very nature of slavery. And that's the analogy that Paul is using here, the analogy of slavery. Having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. But of course, there is another way of looking at this, and it's a perfectly biblical way as well. And we could say just as accurately, how were you rescued from the realm of sin, listen to me now, by giving yourself to another master. Because actually, the way that God works in our lives to free us from sin and to attach us to a new owner is to work in our hearts and give us a desire that this shall be done willingly. It is done as our choice. We make choices. Now what we need to understand and what a lot of people have difficulty understanding is that we don't make unaided choices because frankly we can't make those kinds of choices. We can't make choices to righteousness, to godliness, to Christ without the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We are not capable of that because of our fallen condition in Adam. That's what depravity teaches us, or what the Bible teaches us about depravity. We are not able to do these things apart from the work of the Holy Spirit, the prior work of the Holy Spirit, the prevenient work of the Holy Spirit, and that's a proper understanding of the term prevenient grace. It means the grace that must precede our choices, but nevertheless, in our experience, this is what we have experienced, namely that we gave ourselves to a new master. That's the way we got freed from our own master, our old master. We came to see our lost and helpless condition. We came to realize, by the work of the Holy Spirit of course, that we were enslaved to sin, and there are a lot of people who are enslaved to sin who don't recognize that. Nobody does, apart from the work of the Holy Spirit. The average person doesn't think of himself as being a slave to anyone or anything. He thinks of himself as being free. He doesn't even recognize how enslaved he is to sin. But by the work of the Holy Spirit, we came to realize that. And we came to desire something different. Some people even have some sense of their bondage to sin, but they don't seem to have any desire for it to change. But by God's grace and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, We recognized our bondage to sin and we were desperate to be freed. We were desperate for a change. So again, how were we rescued from the realm of sin? It was by giving ourselves to another master. Okay, that's what you did. That was your choice, right? And there are only two choices, not three. You can't make the choice to be freed from sin but decline to attach yourself to Christ. That's the only way to be freed from sin is to attach yourself to Christ. So the choice is either remain in bondage to sin or be freed from sin by bringing yourself under a new master. And what a master. And that's why Christ said, come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart, and you shall find rest for your souls." And so it is true on the one hand that belonging to Christ is a very freeing thing, and there's a great sense of freedom, and he's not a cruel taskmaster, and he doesn't whip us, and he doesn't doesn't put a heavy yoke upon us. He is very kind, but nevertheless He is our Master. And there is a yoke, the yoke of Christ, the yoke of righteousness. And though He deals with us very gently, He deals with us very persistently. And we will, if we are His children, we will bear His yoke We will serve His cause. We will serve our new master. And that's why it is impossible for us to live as we did before. Because of this change of ownership. That's exactly what has taken place. We have been freed from sin in order to fulfill our creation potential. We were created to glorify God. We were created to serve God. We were created to have fellowship and communion with God. And now having been freed from sin in order to fulfill the purpose for which we are created, that is wonderful freedom, that is wonderful fulfillment, but it is freedom for certain things in certain directions. It's not freedom to just be free from the penalty and the power and the negative aspects of our bondage to sin without giving ourselves to Christ. Now we are our own master. So some people act and think, but it doesn't work that way. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Until tomorrow, Greg Barkman saying good day, may God give you His eternal peace.