Paul declares Believers no longer Sin’s Slave but
Slaves to God
Romans
6:15-19 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?
Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to
obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to
death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 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. I speak in human terms because of the
weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves
of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,
so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for
holiness. NKJV
Paul again ask and answers the same question that he
did to begin this chapter in verse 1, but this time he says that just because
we have been delivered from the law and its requirements to keep the law
completely at all times and now Christ has placed us under grace’s authority
and rule but this still does not give us a license to sin willfully that grace
will cover our sins. Paul, as we can clearly see from his strong desire to
repudiate this abominable, abhorrent, and atrocious teaching that must have
permeated the land round about him and infiltrated the churches that he founded
wanted the truth of grace to be securely known by all of those he so dearly
loved and wanted them not to be deceived and says again “God Forbid” that we
should live in or continue in sin because of grace (1 Corinthians 15:33 & 2 Corinthians 4:2). Paul wants to bring
every one that would read this letter of his back to that moment when each one
of us received our Lord Jesus Christ by faith and this glorious and great grace
was applied to our dead in trespasses and sins spirit and Christ new life and
love and forgiveness flooded our hearts and we were born again. Paul wants us
to know with certainty that our Lord Jesus Christ has rescued us from our
slavery to sin and all of its corresponding corruption.
Paul also wants us to know surely that just as our
Lord did not force us to turn to Him or call upon His Name for salvation,
likewise He will not make us present our bodies and its members to Him as a
living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2). As
we showed by the illustration of alcohol and how its consumption takes control
of a person’s behavior and how Paul wrote that we (Christians) are not to be
drunk with wine or alcohol, but filled with the Holy Spirit that He make take
over and control our behavior for good and God’s Glory. We showed how we must
yield to the Power of God the Holy Spirit as He will not force us to yield.
Paul is continuing to drive this point home here in verse 16 by reminding us
that before Christ our bodies members were continually yielded over to sin’s
control (John 8:34) and that only
led to death (spiritual death and for some physical death, i.e. drug over dose,
car crash drunk behind the wheel, fighting brought on by alcohol intoxication,
etc.), but now that our Lord Jesus Christ has placed us under grace we now
desire (by the activation of grace) to yield our members unto righteousness as
slaves to God for His Glory.
It is Christ grace freely given to each one of us
that makes us desire to listen to Him and His Words attentively obeying with
all of our hearts out of love for our Lord Jesus Christ that we might be
pleasing to Him. Even in our best forms of obedience and conformity to His Word
we still know we fall far short of what He deserves from us as His children and
what He gave up to purchase us by His Blood. As hard as many of us ran in the
indulgence and gratifying of the flesh and spirit in all manner of evil and
wickedness now that we are free from sin’s enslaving power over us by grace we
should run even harder to be slaves of righteousness leading to holiness being
spiritually minded which always leads to life and peace (Romans 8:6). Because true obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ and
His Word of Truth always leads the obedient son or daughter into righteousness
and that always bears a clear, clean, and calm conscience knowing and in full
recognition that it is under grace and the control of the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords free from its former pollution.
Romans
6:20-23 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to
righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now
ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now having been set
free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to
holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. NKJV
Paul now reminds us that in our former life bound in
sin and enslaved by sin we were incapable of producing any fruits of
righteousness at all. Our entire life was the preoccupation with sin, planning
sin, purposing sin, preferring sin, and practicing sin every day all day year
after year after year. The desires of our hearts were evil continually and at
all times so that even when we desired to do some “noble” thing it was covered
in sin because the motivation was to bring attention, honor, and praise to
ourselves hoping to ease the burning conscience within but never succeeding. We
did not even so much as think about righteousness, because we did not even know
what righteousness meant. This is the description of the total and complete
depravity of man and it is born in the heart of every child from their mother’s
womb. Paul has spent much of this part of his letter refuting the abominable
lie perpetrated by many false teachers that grace gives the person permission
to live as they please gratifying the sinful nature or flesh living in sin and
indulging it with equal frequency and intensity as before becoming a follower
of Jesus Christ. In verse 21 of this chapter Paul throws cold water on top of
that false belief or understanding of God’s grace dousing its flames before
they can continue to burn. Paul shows that a true follower of our Lord Jesus
Christ recognizes what has been and is being worked out in his soul and that is
the hatred of the old lifestyle of sin that bore nothing good in it and only
brings shame to our hearts right now.
The life of enslavement to sin was one that wrought
spiritual death leading to physical death and finally would have led to eternal
death in hell but God (Ephesians 2:4-10).
Our Lord Jesus Christ has saved us from sin by washing us from it in His own
Blood (Revelation 1:5) and the
reality or fact that we are saved from hell is the icing on the eternal cake. Just
as we were worthless and incapable of living in righteousness (as the Word of
God defines it) when we were slaves of sin, now we have been freed from sin’s
enslavement by our Lord and we should be worthless and incapable of living our
lives to unrighteousness (also as the Word of God defines it), but we must
yield all of ourselves to God as His slave of holiness. What a glorious thought
that is far more than just a thought but by yielding to the Holy Spirit it can
always be a reality to be a slave to holiness for this is the will of God and
the effectual call of God to every one of us who have been born again of incorruptible
seed (1 Thessalonians 4:7). Everlasting
life lived with our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be enjoyed but by those of us who
have been made holy by our Lord Jesus and seek daily to walk or live in this
newness of life ordained for us before He founded the world, for as Paul said, Hebrews 12:14 “Pursue peace with all people,
and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.” NKJV
Ephesians
4:17-24 This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no
longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having
their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of
the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who,
being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all
uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you
have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you
put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and
that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true
righteousness and holiness. NKJV
“Conversion is, First, A freedom from the
service of sin; it is the shaking off of that yoke, resolving to have no more
to do with it. Secondly, A resignation of ourselves to the service of
God and righteousness, to God as our master, to righteousness as our work. When
we are made free from sin, it is not that we may live as we list, and be our
own masters; no: when we are delivered out of Egypt, we are, as Israel, led to
the holy mountain, to receive the law, and are there brought into the bond of
the covenant. Observe, We cannot be made the servants of God till we are freed
from the power and dominion of sin; we cannot serve two masters so directly
opposite one to another as God and sin are. We must, with the prodigal, quit
the drudgery of the citizen of the country, before we can come to our Father’s
house.” Matthew Henry
If you do not
know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your
heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus,
I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You
shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead
proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my
sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my
life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...
Sincerely
in Christ,
Clifford
D. Tate, Sr.
Author
of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and
Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into
Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s
Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod,
Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners,
Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…
No comments:
Post a Comment