STUDY THEME: ENTERING INTO A COVENANT OF GRACE WITH GOD. 11-24-01
"SALVATION BEGINS A LIFE OF OBEDIENCE." ROMANS 6: 12-23.
ROMANS 6: 12-14, 15-16, 17-19, 20-23
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO ROMANS 6.
The lesson this Sunday brings to a close our series of four lessons under the general theme "Entering Into a Covenant of Grace with God." It also brings to a close our lessons for the Fall of 2002. The next quarter’s lessons will begin with a series on Christmas.
Some professing Christians throughout history have seemed to think that because we are saved by grace and not by works we can therefore do anything we want and that even includes committing sins. But this is clearly not the thinking of the Apostle Paul! Paul was convinced that because we were under grace and not under law, we ought to therefore seek all the more diligently to live in such a way as to obey and honor God. Because God’s gracious mercy had freely forgiven us by faith in Christ, we should feel all the more the desire to glorify Him by living as obediently as we know how to live.
Jerry Rankin, President of our International Mission Board, wrote in the November Commission; We will be motivated to obedience only when we come into such a relationship with God that we know His heart and share His passion."
The suggested "Biblical Truth" for this lesson is that people who receive salvation are freed from sin to obey God. And the suggested "Life Impact" is that we learn to live in obedience to God.
Thus far in Romans we have seen that justification by faith is a gift of God’s grace. Thus it is not the product of law or good works. However, even though we are not saved by good works, we are saved unto good works, a Paul showed in Eph. 2:8-10,
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boat. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." And this is the theme of Romans 6. In a sense Paul said that while grace is a gift of God, it also makes its demands.Romans 1-4 dealt primarily with God’s righteousness or justification.
Chapters 6-7 treat of sanctification. Chapter 8 deals more with glorification, which grows out of the other two phases of salvation. But here in Romans 6 Paul dealt with the matter of mastery in one’s life as a Christians.
An insurance adjuster once showed a copy of a letter he received from a client. It read: "I filed a claim with the agent for $25.00 for towing and labor. This file was a false claim, which shouldn’t have been made. Since I’m trying to get right with God, I feel I should make this right with the insurance company by sending a $25.00 money order that is enclosed. I trust the company will forgive me of this false claim, and I hope the Lord will bless you all."
I can’t prove it of course, but I wonder if the client had become a Christian and wanted to begin this new life by demonstrating obedience to Christ. If so, this person recognized that part of that obedience involved making amends for past wrongs.
In Vs. 12-14 Paul pointed out that life under God’s grace produces righteous living. In the cloak and dagger world there are people classified as Double Agents. This denotes people who spy for two nations with conflicting interests. They are, in fact, not loyal to either. They fit the saying that, "a dog that brings a bone will occasionally take one."
In the Christian life there is no place for such. We should be loyal to Christ and to Him only. You cannot change uniforms to suit your convenience in the warfare between God and Satan. Neither can you honestly swear allegiance to the flag of the kingdom of evil and that of the kingdom of God.
In Matt. 6:24 Jesus said that no person can be a slave to two owners: God and mammon. Each demands absolute loyalty. And you cannot give it to both. The central theme of this lesson is that believers have been freed from their slavery to sin and are called to be obedient to Jesus Christ.
You will notice that in Ch. 5 Paul tells us how to become free from the wrath of God. In Ch. 6 he is telling us how to be free from sin. In Ch. 7 Paul tells us how to be free from the Law and in Ch. 8 he tells us how to be free from death. Truly, for Paul to live was for Christ to live in him. The old man was crucified, but we, as Paul, have been raised to live and walk in newness of life. The life we not live is lived by faith in the Son of God.
In the first eleven verses of Romans 6 Paul deals with the problem of grace and sin. In Vs. 12-13 Paul contrasted two regal powers, the "Prince of this world," who rules in the kingdom of evil or sin, and God, who rules in righteousness. In our unredeemed state our allegiance was to the former. As Christians our allegiance is to God. In V. 12 Paul said, "stop letting sin reign." In Col. 1:13 the Apostle said that God the Father
When we became a Christian, we renounced allegiance to Satan and avowed allegiance to God. When an alien becomes a citizen of our country, he swears allegiance to it. But if in that status he continues to serve his former nation to the detriment of his new nation, he is a traitor. The same is true of one who swears allegiance to God, but continues to serve the devil.
You cannot say in your spirit you are loyal to God but in your body you serve His enemy. Your allegiance involves both spirit and body. In 1 Cor. 6: 20 Paul said
"You are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." Both God and Satan are looking for tools to use. And even believers in Christ must decide whose tools they will become. The Christian has been liberated from slavery to sin to become a slave to Christ. So it is out of keeping with his profession to allow his tools to be used to serve evil. If he would be true to his new master, he must use them in the Lord’s work. Barclay says that "Christianity is not an emotional experience, it is a way of life." Martin Luther expressed it thus: "Become what you are."There is a constant warfare between God and evil. Having sworn allegiance to God in Christ, the Christian should never be found fighting on the side of God’s enemy. And you cannot be neutral in the fray. The so-called neutral Christian actually serves the cause of the enemy of all good. Christianity can never be only an experience of the secret place; it must be a life in the market place. The inspiration of the Christian comes not from fear of what God will do to him, but from the inspiration of what God has done for him.
We often say that Satan tempts us in our lower nature. This is not true. He tempts us in our higher nature in an effort to get us to express God-given desires in a lower way. It is then that they become lusts. Robertson puts it tersely but truly: "The reign of sin is over with you. Self-indulgence is inconsistent with trust in the vicarious atonement," or what Jesus Christ has done for us in taking our sins upon Himself.
Paul completed this picture by saying in Vs. 14 that "sin shall not have dominion or lordship over you." We have but one Lord, and our full allegiance is due Him. Many first-century Christians died for their refusal to say, "Caesar is lord," instead, saying, "Jesus is Lord." In Satanism its adherents say, "Satan is Lord." When you give yourself to the Lordship of evil, in effect you are saying the same thing. Shocking! But true.
The Christian life is not to be a 50-50 proposition, it is to be a full l00% proposition. We are to be totally dependent upon God. We are also to be fully obedient to His will. God’s strength energizes the obedient human will. Sometimes the missing element in the receipt for spiritual growth is human effort. Paul emphasizes this as vital.
In these verses Paul changed his metaphor from kingship to slavery, as seen in the word "servant." Moody pointed out that people are the slaves of what ever they choose to obey. It is possible that Paul used this imagery because there were more slaves than free men in the church in Rome. A slave was the property of his owner. He was supposed to obey his owner’s will absolutely. He had no time that belonged to him self. In their unredeemed state Paul’s readers had been slaves to sin or to the sinful nature. As redeemed Christians they had become slaves to God through Jesus Christ. The former state resulted in death or eternal separation from God. The latter produced righteousness or the state of being justified or declared righteous before God. Slavery is the lot of every man—he is either a slave to sin or to God; there is not third possibility.
Paul now moved from a question in Vs.16 to thanksgiving in Vs. 17-18.
Though his readers had been enslaved by sin, in Vs. 17-18 Paul thanked God that they had responded favorably in their hearts to the teaching of the gospel. Though our wills are involved in the saving experience as seen in our response of faith, it is through God’s grace that this is made possible. This grace is available to all lost people. But each one must receive it, and act on it for him self. Paul thanks God that whereas before salvation we were slaves of the evil nature, we were in salvation delivered or handed over to the teachings of grace so that we become slaves of righteousness.
In Vs. 18 "being…made free" means to liberate, to set at liberty, to free from bondage. So that we exchanged one form of slavery for another—from slaver to sin or the tyrannical rule of Satan—into slavery to righteousness—or the benevolent service of God. Many slave owners were cruel to their slaves; others were benevolent toward theirs. So we should thank God that we have been liberated from tyranny to become slaves of a benevolent, loving God.
Near the end of WW II German troops wanted to surrender to the Allies rather than to the Russians. They did not want to go from one tyranny into another; they wanted to surrender to former foes they knew to be benevolent by nature. The contrast between East and West Berlin is a commentary on this difference. The Berlin Wall was not built to keep West Berliners out of East Berlin. It was to prevent East Berliners from slipping to West Berlin. Prior to that wall they were coming west in droves.
In Vs. 19 Paul explained why he used the terminology of slavery. "I am speaking in human terms." He apologized because he did not like to compare the Christian’s life to any kind of slavery. His readers understood Paul’s figure all too well. Had he spoken only in spiritual language they would have had difficulty getting the picture. This is one reason Jesus used so many parables. In a sense Paul’s figure is a parable.
A Christian is one who has given complete control of his life to Christ and who has held nothing back. He can have no master but God. With God it is all or nothing at all. The sum and substance of Paul’s figure was clear to his readers. As slaves of sin they dedicated their total selves to serving Satan. Now as slaves of righteousness they should with equal diligence give themselves to serving God. If Christians would serve the Lord as diligently as lost people serve the devil, what a difference there would be in the world!
"Now," contrasts the Christian’s new slavery to righteousness to their former slavery to sin. Williams translates this:
"For just as you formerly offered the parts of your bodies in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing lawlessness." "Impurity" refers to what the lost sinner does to himself.With regeneration we were sanctified or set apart for God’s service. Thus we do not grow into sanctification; but we are to develop and serve in the state of sanctification. Regeneration denotes the whole of the Christian life from regeneration and sanctification through glorification, the sum-total of glory and reward in heaven, which also includes our bodily resurrection. This is the goal before us. Each day should find us nearer to it than before. It will be reached fully in heaven. This is the state our benevolent owner wills for us. We will reach it only by His grace. But we must ever strive toward it. For grace makes it’s demands.
In Vs. 20-23 Paul treated the matter of two freedoms and the results they yield. The remind us of the experience of the prodigal son in Luke 15.
Those who serve their sinful nature do so out of the false desire to be free from restraint. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it. But doing so they find they have become slaves to sin. And the only freedom they have is freedom from righteousness. They do not possess the righteousness of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
In the serpent’s temptation of Eve, he accused God of holding out on her. God must not want her to be as He was, "knowing good and evil." When she and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit, they had this knowledge. But, it was the knowledge of the presence of evil and the absence of good.
"Fruit" in Vs. 21 is the yield of one’s life-style. Most of Paul’s original readers of Romans were saved out of paganism and its excesses in sin. All they had to show for a harvest of such was shame. And the end or outcome of such is death. Sin may contribute to an early physical death. But Paul’s thought is even worse—eternal separation from God. Phillips reads: "In the long run those things mean one thing only---death." Service to sin leads to death.
Lord Byron died at the age of thirty-seven. Looking back over a profligate life he wrote these words.
The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree
I planted;---they have torn me—and I bleed:
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.
On This Day I complete my Thirty-sixth Year.
Vs. 21 contrasts the non-Christian life and Christian life. They have been liberated from the bondage of the sinful nature and have become servants or slaves of God. The result of this is "holiness" in this life, the final goal being "everlasting (age-abiding) life. Believers receive this quality of life at the moment of regeneration. But in Vs. 22 Paul was thinking of its final consummation in heaven. Note the contrast between "death" in Vs.21 and "everlasting life" in Vs. 22.
Instead of going from iniquity to iniquity, Christians should develop in "holiness, and the end everlasting life." The Twentieth Century N.T. reads: "The fruit that you reap is an ever-increasing holiness, and the end Immortal Life." Williams translates it, "The immediate result is consecration of the final destiny is eternal life."
Paul points out that for the Christian there is more than joy and satisfaction in heaven. He knows the unlimited blessings of the here and now. According to John 10:10 Jesus gives not only eternal life beyond the grave, but the abundant or overflowing life here on earth. Even if there were no hereafter, the Christian life is the best life. But it’s "all this and heaven too! Heaven is not simply the goal toward which we plod. It is the bonus of priceless value after the joys of serving and loving Jesus on earth!
Vs. 23 sums up the entire matter. Every person has the option between sin and righteousness, Satan and God, death and life. This is certainly true of the ones who have not committed themselves to Christ that He might be their Savior. But in terms of eternal values, it applies also the Christian’s choice as to whom he will serve.
In concluding this portion of his letter, Paul in Vs. 23 returned to the military metaphor. "Wages" denotes a soldier’s pay. "Sin’s pay is death but God’s free gift is eternal life." Each of us has sinned enough to deserve death, but the death of Jesus Christ gave us the gift of life eternal. Someone said that God gives but never sells. Thus His gift is not something we earn; it is the gift of God’s grace. This eternal life is to all who are "in Christ Jesus our Lord." 1 Cor. 3: 11-15 points out that a Christian may be a carnal one—his soul is saved but his Christian life is lost--but the one who would be saved in both soul and Christian life should choose the mastery of God. Only thus may he have the abundant and overflowing life which Christ came to give. So we close with the principle that "believers have been freed from their slavery to sin and are called to be obedient to Jesus Christ
NEXT SUNDAY FROM LUKE 1 THE BIRTH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST IS FORETOLD, INTRODUCING THE SERIES "CHRISTMAS, GOD’S GRACE REVEALED."
A.V. DAUGHERTY 11-24-02
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