©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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2/13/00
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Final Freedom Foundations Pt. 3
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Romans 6:14
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2/13/00 Final Freedom Foundations Pt. 3
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
Rom. 6:12 ¶ Therefore do not let sin reign
in your mortal body that you should obey
its lusts,
Rom. 6:13 and do not go on presenting the
members of your body to sin as instruments
of unrighteousness; but present yourselves
to God as those alive from the dead, and
your members as instruments of
righteousness to God.
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
Our study of these four verses
has brought us this morning
to the last verse in this passage,
Romans 6:14.
It has also brought us to our final morning
in this series on the freedom
our Lord Jesus Christ offers every person
who comes to Him.
For most of the past four months
we have been looking at what true freedom is
and how our Lord goes about
bringing that freedom into our lives.
We started this series by recognizing
that in Christ there is no slight of hand
in His offer of freedom.
He does not do what our society does.
Our society claims to offer us freedom,
but when all the speeches are finished
and all the legislation is completed,
and all the politicians
have finally closed their mouths
and taken their seats,
in the small print,
way down at the bottom of the page
we discover that the "freedom"
offered to us by our society
is nothing more than the legal right
to live out those areas of inner bondage
that control and dominate our lives.
We are simply declared to be"free"
to live out our own personal inner slaveries.
But when our Lord offers us freedom,
He does not offer us the right to live out our
bondage,
He offers us the ability
to break the power of that bondage in
our lives.
Then, from there we went on to see
that our Lord's freeing process
involves His bringing two major areas of
freedom into our lives -
freedom from the law,
and freedom from sin.
And most of the time we've spent in this series
has been invested in understanding
what those two areas of freedom involve
and how our Lord brings them into our
lives.
Then, to help pull together
the major principles we've studied,
we are ending our study
by taking three weeks
to take one last look at the four
verses in Romans 6
that have provided our home
base for most of this study.
Two weeks ago we looked at Romans 6:11 in
which we find the foundation
upon which God's entire freeing process in our
lives is based.
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to
sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Our freedom in Christ
begins with our understanding
that through Christ we now have
recreated hearts,
recreated inner spirits,
spirits that love God perfectly
and long to live lives pleasing to Him.
I invest a great deal of my teaching efforts
into trying to help us understand
how godly living can become
an increasing part of our lives.
I invest none of my teaching effort
into attempting to instill into you
a hunger for godly living
because, if you are a child of God,
God Himself has already placed that hunger deep
within you,
and if you are not a child of God
nothing I could ever say or do
could accomplish that purifying
and recreative work with you.
Only God Himself can perform such a work,
and then only within those
who have turned to Him
through faith in Christ.
Then, last week,
we moved on to verses 6:12-13
and saw in those verses
the reason why
even though our spirits long for godly living
our lives so often don't reflect that longing.
In those verses we heard Paul
turn our eyes onto what he called
"our mortal bodies",
preparing us for the way in which
these physical bodies will war against
the life and leadership of our new,
righteous inner spirits.
We saw that this battle within us
comes from the fact that our bodies,
including all of our reasoning processes,
and our emotional responses,
and our learned need-meeting
techniques,
and all of our memories prior to
our submission to Christ
were established within us
under the leadership and control
of an inner spirit that was in open
rebellion against God.
And now, for just a few brief years in all of eternity,
during the time between when we come to
Christ,
and the time when we leave this physical
body,
we find ourselves living with a spirit that
longs to please God
and a physical plant that strongly resists the
leadership of that spirit.
Under the leadership of God's Spirit within us
these bodies can and will become
reasonably serviceable tools
for the work our God seeks to do both
in us and through us while we are on this earth.
But He wants us to have no illusions about the
source of our ultimate victory.
Paul talks honestly about this ongoing tension
between our spirits
and our mortal bodes in Romans 8:23
when he says,
Rom. 8:23 And not only this, but also we
ourselves, having the first fruits of the
Spirit, even we ourselves groan within
ourselves, waiting eagerly for our
adoption as sons, the redemption of our
body.
In a very real and practical sense
we experience our salvation through Christ
in progressive stages.
We have already received what Paul calls
"the first fruits of the Spirit".
He is talking about the Holy Spirit's recreative
work
of that new inner control center within us.
But then when we look at these totally mistrained
physical bodies
in which that new spirit now lives
Paul says, "we groan within ourselves,
longing for the redemption of our body" as well.
And that redemption will come,
not by our finally being able to bring
this physical body into total submission to
our spirit,
but rather by our Lord
freeing us from this body at death,
or at His return,
and His then giving us a brand new body,
one that has never been mistrained,
and one that will then provide our already
perfect, holy, inner spirit
with a perfect means of expressing itself
throughout the rest of all eternity.
So, Romans 6:11 - Paul presents our new identity in
Christ.
Then, in verses 12 and 13
he presents the battleground
in which we fight for the expression of that
new identity.
And then, in verse 14 he takes the two major areas of
freedom
offered to us through Christ -
freedom from the law,
and freedom from sin,
and unites them in one final powerful
statement.
He says,
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
We spent part of a morning with this verse
early in our study.
At that time
we established one major principle
from what Paul says here.
We saw that our freedom from sin
is directly and inseparably linked
to the degree to which we understand
the true nature of a grace-based union
with God.
If sin continues to be our master
than one thing is certain -
we have not yet understood
what it means to live with God under
grace.
This also means, of course,
that the more we correctly understand grace,
the more practical righteous living
will result in our lives.
But we can't stop there
in our relationship to this verse.
There is something remarkable happening in this
verse
that I don't want us to miss
before we leave this study.
Throughout the course of this study
you have heard me mention numerous times
that the freedom offered to us by our Lord
falls into two major areas -
freedom from the law,
and freedom from sin.
Well, in this 14th verse
Paul takes both of those freedoms
and places them into relationship with one
another.
He says, "For sin shall not be master over
you..."
That is freedom from sin.
When sin is no longer master over us,
we are free from sin.
That does not mean
we do not at times
continue to fight against it.
But it does mean that sin's power
to control,
and dominate,
and dictate our behavior is ended.
It can attack us,
but it can never again own us
and possess our lives.
For sin shall not be master over you...
That is freedom from sin.
And then comes Paul's next phrase:
...for you are not under law, but under
grace.
That is freedom from the law.
In the terms we have been using throughout this
freedom study,
Paul is saying:
For you shall be free from sin
because you are already free from the
law.
And the first two things I want us to see in this 14th
verse are these:
1. There is a clear order in our learning relationship
to those two truths.
Our freedom from sin
results from our freedom from the law.
Do you know what that means?
It means if we are currently fighting unsuccessful
battles with sin in our lives,
the solution to that defeat
will not come from fighting harder against
the sin,
but rather from fighting harder for a correct
understanding of grace.
2. And then the second thing I want us to see in this
14th verse of in Romans 6 is this:
Our entrance into one of these freedoms is in the past
tense,
and the other is in the present.
Because our freedom from the law has already taken
place,
therefore, our freedom from sin
can be a daily, living reality in our lives.
Now, I know that right now with many of you this
still just sounds like meaningless theology.
For four months we have been talking about our
freedom from the law
and our freedom from sin.
And yet, if you had to state simply
how all of this stuff related
to the battles you're fighting in your own life
right now,
you probably wouldn't have a clue.
You know that
because you are no longer under the law
therefore sin is not suppose to be master over
you,
but somewhere along the way
the living reality of whatever that means just
isn't there.
So I want to see if I can put all of this together for
us
in our remaining few minutes this morning
in a way that may help bring it to life.
You see, one of Satan's most powerful strategies
in his ongoing efforts to defeat the Christian
is found in his attempts to get us
to invest our lives into continuing to
fight battles we no longer have to fight.
And nowhere is this more true
than right here with these concepts we're
wrestling with right now.
And perhaps I can explain this best by contrast.
Before we came to Christ,
and before His death was credited to our sin,
and before His righteousness was granted to
us in response to our faith,
before we were His,
our battle for God's acceptance
and our battle against sin were the same battle.
That is what being under the law meant.
Now look at this -
if you were to ask any non-Christian this
question:
"How can a person be accepted by God?"
far and away the most common answer you
would get
would be something like this.
"Well, if you do good,
and if you avoid sin,
and if you keep the Ten Commandments,
you certainly will have a better chance of being
accepted by God."
In other words,
our battle against sin in our lives,
and our battle for God's acceptance
are viewed as one in the same battle.
God will accept me
if I avoid sin.
The more successful I am at avoiding sin
the more acceptable I become to God.
Now, of course, the fact that prior to our submission
to Christ
we don't even have a heart for God
or for righteousness
complicates this whole thing,
but the fundamentals are clear -
our battle for God's acceptance
and our battle against sin in our lives are
viewed as the same battle.
Now listen -
if Satan can convince us
that the same principle continues to apply to
us after we come to Christ,
he has succeeded in wining the only
battle he has to win in our lives.
Let me show it to you in a question.
I want you to think for a moment
about that chronic sin battle in your life right
now.
We all have them.
I'm talking about that ongoing area of weakness
that started in your life long before you came
to Christ,
and continues to harass you now.
Now, let me ask you a question:
"If this instant
you suddenly and permanently achieved total and
complete and absolute victory over that sin,
would you view yourself as being
on a little more solid footing with God
because of that victory?
Would you be more pleasing to Him,
more acceptable to Him?
Would you have a greater measure of peace in your
relationship with Him?
Would you relax more
in your relationship with Him?"
If you answer "yes" to any of those questions,
then you are still believing
that your battle against sin
and your battle for God's acceptance
are the same battle,
and have not yet understood Romans 6:14,
nor have you understood what it means to be under
grace, and not under law.
When Paul says,
For sin shall not be master over you, for
you are not under law, but under grace...
he is telling us that when we came to Christ
the two great battles in our lives
have been severed for ever.
Through Christ
our battle for God's absolute and total
acceptance
and our battle against sin
become two separate
and completely distinct battles.
One of them, our battle for God's total, eternal
acceptance and love
has already been won forever.
Paul says simply,
Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ,
Rom. 5:2 through whom also we have
obtained our introduction by faith into this
grace in which we stand; ...
And the other, our battle against sin,
now becomes a winnable war
because we are now fighting it with our
God within us,
and beside us,
daily aware of His love for us.
We are no longer fighting for His acceptance,
we are fighting with His acceptance and His
love
as our strong foundation.
Let me see if I can give it to you in an illustration
that may help.
Our house boarders a large section of heavily
wooded land.
When my daughter, Joni was in grade school,
she never went into those woods by herself.
They were too big,
and too dark,
and too far from home to be safe.
I do remember one time
when she and a friend of hers
decided they would pretend
they were lost in the woods.
They got mommy to pack them
a really good snack before they left for their
adventure.
Then they got a ball of string
and tied one end to the house
and then unraveled it as they went out into
the woods.
That strings, of course, was just to make sure they
could find their way home.
I can still remember them standing
at the end of their string
about fifty or sixty feet from the house,
realizing that maybe they needed a little
longer string.
But I want you to imagine for a minute
what it would have been like
if my little girl has somehow
really become lost in those woods.
She was playing in the yard
when all of the sudden
her little puppy sees a rabbit
and bolts into the woods.
She's afraid the little dog will get lost
so she runs as fast as she can
into the woods after him.
But then, in a matter of minutes,
she's lost sight of the dog,
lost sight of the house,
and has no idea how to find her way
home.
She cannot see the house,
and doesn't even know what direction the house
is.
To make matters worse,
it's getting dark,
and she finds it harder and harder to see.
Their are no trails to follow,
the bushes and shrubs push and scrape against
her face as she wanders first this way,
and then that way.
Strange, unfriendly noises come from every
direction.
And then, through the deepening shadows around
her,
in the distance through the trees
she hers a crashing, breaking sound,
and suddenly realizes there is a man in
the woods with her.
She was frightened before,
but now she's terrified.
She's old enough to know that
big men in dark woods
are not altogether safe things.
She tries to fight her way quietly through the
bushes,
doing her best to keep low and out of sight of
this stranger,
but she doesn't even know what direction to
go.
The only thing she knows
is that if she can get through the woods
and back to the house
she'll be safe from both the woods
and from that man.
I think that's a little bit the way it is
in our battle with sin and God
before we come to Christ.
Those woods are like our futile battles for
righteousness before we come to Christ.
Half the time we don't even know what direction to
go,
and we certainly don't know how to get where
we need to be.
And that man is like God.
We can see him just a little,
just enough to know we don't feel safe with
Him.
We're certainly not going to run up to Him and ask
Him for help.
It's best if we just thrash away on our own,
and try to keep out of His sight.
But now imagine once again my daughter
suddenly realizing that the man in the woods has
turned her direction
and is now walking straight at her.
She can hear his boots crunching the branches under
foot as he moves closer.
She tries to crawl under a tiny bush to hide,
but she knows the dark figure
in the dim light will be able to see her
in another step or two.
And then, when he is just a few steps away,
she suddenly looks up into his face
and sees that the man in the woods is me,
her Papa,
her daddy.
I reach down, pick her up,
and together we fight our way
back through the woods
and to our home.
That is what Paul is saying
when he says,
For sin shall not be master over you, for
you are not under law, but under grace.
Because through Christ
we now live in a grace union with our Creator
for ever,
the God we once hid from
is now the One who holds us in His
arms.
It's true, we still have to fight our way through the
woods,
through the sin battles that surround us,
but now we fight those battles with our God
forever with us,
fighting for us,
and showing us the way.