İ2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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2/27/00
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Then Why Does It Matter Pt. 2
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Romans 6:16
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2/27/00 Then Why Does It Matter Pt. 2
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law but under
grace.
Rom. 6:15 ¶ What then? Shall we sin
because we are not under law but under
grace? May it never be!
We are studying the last half of the 6th chapter of the
book of Romans.
The passage we are studying
was written by Paul
to guide us through an understanding
of what it means for us to be free in
Christ.
As we have worked our way through these verses
we have heard Paul talk to us
first of all about our new identity,
our new recreated spirit given to us by
Christ when we come to Him.
Then we heard him talk to us
about our freedom from the law,
sharing with us the understanding
that in Christ our union with God
and our acceptance by Him
now rests 100% upon the death
of Christ for our sins.
Our performance can never again separate us from
our God,
because our union with Him
no longer rests upon our performance
as measured by the moral law of God,
it now rests upon the perfect performance of
Christ for us.
Then, after talking with us about our freedom from
the law,
Paul moves on to talk to us
about the freedom from sin offered to us by
our Lord Jesus Christ.
In Romans 6:14 we heard Paul say,
For sin shall not be master over you, for
you are not under law but under grace.
And then last week we moved on to verse 6:15 in
which Paul begins to address
the question that will surface
whenever the true nature of the grace of
God is taught and understood.
We heard Paul raise the question,
Rom. 6:15 ¶ What then? Shall we sin
because we are not under law but under
grace?
Whenever a person hears the truth of the gospel,
hearing that, in fact, our salvation,
our eternal love union with God Himself,
now rests totally upon the death of Christ for us,
and not upon our ability achieve
and maintain a certain level of performance,
or goodness,
or moral purity,
somewhere in that discovery process
our flesh will ask the question,
Rom. 6:15 ¶ What then? Shall we sin
because we are not under law but under
grace?
If my performance really is not the deciding factor
that determines my acceptance by God,
if Paul is really telling us the truth
when he proclaims that (Rom. 5:9)
...having now been justified by His blood,
we shall be saved from the wrath of God
through Him...
if, through Christ, the threat and fear of the wrath
and judgement of God for my sins
has been removed from me forever,
as far as the east is from the west,
because all of the judgment
and all of the wrath of God
that should have been directed toward me
for my sins
was literally poured out on Christ in my place,
then what difference does it make
whether or not I continue to sin?
If my sin is no longer a barrier between me and my
God,
then is it an issue at all?
We spent part of our time last week
talking about the way in which
the religious world is so comfortable
continuing to use the wrath of God as a
threat against the Christian
because it appears to be such a helpful deterrent
in keeping Christians from sinning.
Some of you may remember a line
from one of the old Cosby shows
in which Bill Cosby is talking with his TV
son, Theo.
Theo was in trouble for something he'd done,
and in the heat of the exchange
between Cosby and Theo
Cosby says,
"I brought you into this world,
and I can take you out!"
In parenting there are times
when that seems to make perfect sense,
and when it comes to our relationship with our
Creator,
we just naturally assume He operates on the
same logic.
In our minds we can hear Him saying to us,
"I brought you into My family,
and if you don't measure up to My standard,
I can take you out!"
And yet, when we pry ourselves out of our twisted
religious assumptions
long enough to listen
to what our God is actually saying to us,
that is not what we hear.
We hear Him saying,
Rom. 5:1 Therefore, having been justified
by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ...
and we hear Him calling us His "Holy Ones", His
"Saints",
and we hear Him telling us repeatedly
that now in Christ,
God is for us so then who can be against us?
and that God is the one who has justified
us,
so then who would dare condemn us?
and that now in Christ
nothing can ever again separate us
from the love of our God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:31-39)
And yet...
and yet there are obviously
a lot of things said to us throughout the
Bible
about sin,
and about its offensiveness to God.
And last week we ended
by hearing Paul bring up the question
that must always be answered
whenever the true nature of the grace of
God is taught,
What then? Shall we sin because we are
not under law but under grace?
And then we heard Him move on to the affirmation,
May it never be!
And in the rest of this 6th chapter of Romans
we will hear Paul present for us
the truth we need to know about sin
and about our relationship to it,
given the understanding
that in Christ
the threat of God's wrath
has been removed from us forever.
And before I read for us Paul's next statement,
I want to emphasis one more time
what I hope is already clear
through what we've looked at the past
two weeks.
At the heart of what our God is doing for us
through Christ
is His creating for us a safe place with Him.
Here we are, coming to our God,
carrying with us an unbearable load
of guilt,
and shame,
and anxiety,
and fear,
all growing out of our sins against God.
No matter how much we attempt
to focus on the good in ourselves,
and tell ourselves that I'm OK and you're
OK,
in those rare moments of honesty with
ourselves
we know there are some hideous things
inside us that are anything but OK.
And a big part of what our Lord is doing,
when He talks to us about coming to Him
through faith in Christ,
is His creating for us
a safe place with Him,
a place in which we can stop running from those
painful,
or frightening,
or shameful areas within ourselves,
a place where we can risk bringing them out into the
light
of His love,
and His forgiveness,
and His healing,
and His cleansing,
and His ability to bring us into freedom.
Through Christ
God has provided us with an invitation
into a safe place with God Himself.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom. 8:1)
... for you are not under law but under
grace. (Rom. 6:14)
and ... we have obtained our introduction
by faith into this grace in which we stand...
(Rom. 5:2)
And I emphasis this because
everything that happens
in the remaining verses of this 6th chapter
rests upon our understanding of that safe place the
Christian now has with God.
And the very next phrase we hear Paul saying
will show you what I mean.
Now, the last thing we heard Paul say was this:
Rom. 6:15 ¶ What then? Shall we sin
because we are not under law but under
grace? May it never be!
And then, the very next words he writes are these:
Rom. 6:16 Do you not know that when you
present yourselves to someone as slaves for
obedience, you are slaves of the one whom
you obey, either of sin resulting in death,
or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
And the first thing I want us to focus on
is the first four words of that 16th verse, "Do
you not know...".
For us to understand
the importance of those words
we need to keep in mind
what it is Paul is talking about.
He is not talking about some interesting piece of
Biblical doctrine
that has no direct bearing on our daily lives,
he is talking about our sin.
He is talking about the most emotionally charged
issues of our very existence.
He is talking about
those areas of moral failure
that have the power to generate
so many powerful,
negative feelings within us.
He is talking about those things
that cause us to feel guilt,
to feel shame,
to feel fear,
those things that,
as long as they remain untouched by the healing
hand of our God,
leave within us wounds that will not heal.
And it is to those areas of our lives
that Paul begins his comments in this 16th verse
by saying, "Do you not know..."
And with those words
he is inviting us to do the one thing
we could never have done prior to our union
with Christ -
he is inviting us to begin being logical
about the most emotionally charged issues
of our existence - our sins.
Up to this point in our lives
we have invested tremendous emotional energy
into avoiding an honest look at our sins.
We may have attempted to bury them
deep under a frantic schedule of activities
that never leaves a free moment
to reflect or examine our lives.
We may have skillfully created
elaborate mental rationalizations for our actions,
justifying, rationalizing, defending,
explaining to ourselves
why we did what we did,
and why it doesn't really matter.
We may have taken refuge in the belief
that our actions were justified
because of what others had done to us.
We may have worked fervently to convince
ourselves
that what we did really wasn't wrong,
or that it really wasn't all that harmful to
ourselves or to others.
We may have simply attempted to block the pain
through drugs,
or through alcohol,
or through an endless series of emotional
highs from co-dependant relationships.
We may have tried so hard
to focus on all the good things we've done,
believing that they somehow had the power
to neutralize the bad.
But the one thing we could never do,
never even consider doing,
was to risk being logical about our sins.
And we certainly couldn't risk
bringing them out into the light
and examining them honestly.
And yet this is exactly what Paul is calling us to do
when he says to us, "Do you not know...?"
And maybe now we can understand a little better
why, long before Paul reached this point in his
writing,
he first invested so much effort
into assuring the Christian
that, no matter what,
we are now and forever SAFE with our God through
Christ.
Nothing ever can or ever will separate us from His
love.
And I know there is a risk in dealing with a topic
like this
in an academic setting.
I can give you the facts,
the truth about the way in which our God picks
us up in His arms
and cradles us in His love,
and assures us that He will never leave
us, and never forsake us,
no matter what issues surface
in our walk with Him.
I can teach our minds the truth,
but only the Spirit of God
can teach our spirits the truth,
and in my experience
that process usually takes time.
It takes time for Him to bring us to the place
where He can finally coax us out of whatever
hiding place we may have selected.
It takes time for Him to show us
that our choosing to hide behind our bitterness
against that person who hurt us
is hurting us more than it is hurting
them.
It takes time before He can bring us to the place
where we can recognize that our bitterness is
sin,
and it is poisoning our life.
Or it may be some other hiding place
we have worked so hard to create,
a hiding place we do not quickly or easily
crawl out from.
But one thing is certain -
if we continue to believe
that what we will encounter
when we crawl out from that hiding
place,
carrying our sin in our hands,
is a God still holding a bowl filled with
wrath
to be poured out on us,
we will never come out at all.
And the freedom from sin we so desperately need,
that freedom that only God Himself
can build into our lives,
can only begin to be ours
when we first understand
that we are already free from the law
and from the power of condemnation that
comes with it.
So, then, the first thing Paul does
when he begins his comments
about the Christian's relationship to sin
is to ask us, "Do you not know...?"
And then letıs go ahead and take one more step in
Paul's reasoning process here
before we quit for the morning
and letıs look at what it is
we can now risk knowing about our sin.
Paul's says:
Rom. 6:16 Do you not know that when you
present yourselves to someone as slaves for
obedience, you are slaves of the one whom
you obey, either of sin resulting in death,
or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
And here is his first logical argument
against sin in the life of the Christian -
to continue to commit sin
is to volunteer for slavery.
And now we'll put this together
with the statement that comes before it:
Rom. 6:15 ¶ What then? Shall we sin
because we are not under law but under
grace? May it never be!
Rom. 6:16 Do you not know that when you
present yourselves to someone as slaves for
obedience, you are slaves of the one whom
you obey, either of sin resulting in death,
or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
In other words,
If we think our freedom from the law
has made us free to sin,
we have not yet allowed ourselves to be
honest about our sin.
There is no freedom in sin.
Sin is slavery.
And continuing to give ourselves over to sin
is nothing more than choosing to
volunteer for slavery.
Now that is not all Paul has to say about it,
and that in itself may not break the power of sin
in our lives,
but it is the beginning.
When we will allow our God
to bring us to the point
where we can say honestly to ourselves,
"I am enslaved to my bitterness -
it is the master in my life,
the driving force that dictates my values, my
priorities, my daily goals.",
or "I am enslaved to my anger,
or to my lust,
or to my fear,
or to my greed,
or to my alcohol,
or to my life style..."
when we will allow our God
to bring us to the point
where we can honestly admit our slavery,
we have taken the first huge step toward freedom.
In Alcoholics Anonymous
what is the first step every member of that
program must take in their pilgrimage back to
wholeness?
"Hi! My name is.... I'm an alcoholic."
Open admission of the slavery.
That is exactly what Paul is doing for us in this 16th
verse.
He is saying openly admit the master/slave union
that exists between you and your sin.