©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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12/5/99
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Freedom From Sin
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Romans 6:11-14
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12/5/99 Free From Sin
It has not been a good week in the world of sermon
writing.
Or at least, it has not been an easy week.
I attempted to write this talk
at least 4 times since we were last together.
I spent one full day on one of those talks,
and nearly finished a completed set of notes
before I risked rereading what I'd written
and ended up throwing the whole thing
away in disgust.
You see, I ran into a problem
as I attempted to prepare for our time
together.
The problem I ran into
was my perception of what I thought your
expectations might be at this point in our study.
We are into our third month
on a study of the freedom offered to the
Christian through faith in Christ.
We have spent no small time defining freedom from
God's point of view.
We have seen our Lord making it clear
that He is not in the business
of performing the kind of slight of hand
we've grown so accustomed to
in the society in which we live.
Our society makes a huge noise about freedom,
proclaiming ourselves as being
among the most freed of all societies in
human history.
But then, when all the parades are over,
and all the speeches are finished,
in the small print at the bottom of the page,
we discover that our society's "freedom"
has nothing to do with actually freeing us
from those areas of bondage
that shred our spirits
and destroy our lives.
All our society offers us
is the "freedom" to live out our bondage without
those around us
being permitted to interfere.
Not so with our God.
When He talks about freedom
He talks about breaking the power
of those destructive forces within us.
And when I made that distinction early in our study
I believe it struck a powerful chord
deep within many of you here,
because I put into words
something God has already spoken
to your spirit.
When you came to Him,
you came longing for forgiveness,
but you also came longing for a better life, a
different life, a changed life.
And you already know
without me saying anything
that God is actively involved in the process
of making practical changes in your life.
Then, once we defined freedom from God's point
of view,
we then moved on to an examination
of the first of two major areas of freedom
offered to us by our Lord -
freedom from the law.
And now, after wrestling with what that means for
several weeks,
we are at the point where we should logically
move on
to a discussion of the second major area of
freedom,
freedom from sin.
And right here is where my mental perceptions of
your expectations
began to get me into trouble.
If I heard a preacher
announce that he was going to teach on
the freedom from sin offered to us by
Christ,
if he was a man I trusted,
I would go eagerly,
expecting him to provide me
with some clear,
strong,
effective Biblical principles
that would equip me to more effectively
break the power of stubborn sin patterns in my own
life.
I mean, that's what the guy said he was going to talk
about,
so I certainly should have every right
to expect him to deliver the goods.
And with that expectation in mind,
my first few attempts
in my preparation for today
were written with the hope of offering
you
a neat little list
of those sin-bashing Biblical principles.
But each time I would go back and re-read what I'd
written
I knew all I was doing
was skillfully hiding from the real issue
that has to be addressed at this point in
our study,
the issue that I know forms the heart
of everything else our God has to say to us
about the freedom He offers us,
but the issue that,
when I bring it up and share it with you,
I know will leave many
if not most of you feeling frustrated
and disappointed.
But in the end
I decided that the only way for me to handle this
is for me share with you
what I know to be the truth.
So, with that as a little background
on what's been going on inside me this past
week,
I now want to take us to the key passage in
Scripture
dealing with how freedom from sin
becomes a growing reality in our lives.
It is found in the sixth chapter of the book of
Romans.
And actually, the theme of freedom from sin through
Christ
is carried throughout most of the sixth chapter,
but the heart of what is being presented
is summed up in Paul's statements
in Rom. 6:11-14.
Now, he starts out with an affirmation,
a call for us to do something.
He says,
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
Now, the truth is, for most of us
that statement doesn't seem to make a whole lot
of sense.
What in the world does it mean
for me to "consider myself to be dead to sin"?
And then it gets even more frustrating
when he follows it with this statement:
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.
You see, we agree with the goal wholeheartedly.
What he is calling us to do
is exactly what the Spirit of Christ within us
gives us a longing to do:
at the deepest level of our being
we do not want to continue presenting
the members of our body to sin,
as instruments of unrighteousness,
and we would love to present ourselves
to our God,
and our bodies as instruments of
righteousness to Him.
We are right with you, Paul!
You are saying beautifully
what we long for in our spirits.
But the problem is that
there are some areas in our lives
where we seem powerless to do so,
places where the master/slave relationship
between us and sin
still seems to be rigidly in place.
It's not that we don't want the freedom,
it's that we don't know how to get it.
And in those situations
I'll tell you the first thing
most sincere Christians will try to do.
Here we are, with this hunger and thirst for
righteousness within us.
And before I go any farther,
I need to clarify something.
If there is no hunger and thirst for righteousness
within you,
if your spirit does not cry out within you for a
life that glorifies and honors your God,
then nothing I have to say this morning
or throughout this series
will be of any value to you.
I don't know if you noticed it or not,
but nowhere in this study
have I ever addressed the issue
of how to create within a person
a heart longing for freedom from sin.
I won't do that
because I can't to that.
Only God can give us a love for righteousness
and a longing for moral purity.
And if that hunger is not in you,
nothing I say or do
can bring it about.
I might be able to make you feel guilty
for your sinful behavior,
but that is not the same thing
as a hunger for righteousness.
I might be able to make you feel fearful
of the consequences of your sin,
but that is not the same thing
as a hunger for righteousness.
I received an e-mail a short while ago
from a wonderful young Christian
who was terribly afraid that he might be one
of those luke-warm believers
that Christ talks about in the book of
Revelation,
one of those believers
that He says He will spit out of His
mouth.
My e-mail friend looked at his own life
and saw himself at times falling so far short of
the kind of Christian he really wanted to be.
I wrote him back and told him
that the very fact that he finds himself
troubled by his fluctuating performance
proves he is not a luke-warm Christian.
You see, the luke-warm believer
lives in his own self-contented fog.
He doesn't look at his own life
and hunger and thirst for more.
He says to himself,
Rev. 3:17 "I am rich, and have become
wealthy, and have need of nothing," and
he does not know that he is wretched and
miserable and poor and blind and naked...
A hunger and a thirst
to be more than we are,
born not out of guilt,
or fear,
but out of a love for our Lord,
is one of the most powerful evidences of spiritual
health and vitality.
And if it is not present in a person's life,
if what you've got is all you want,
if your own battle with lust,
or with greed,
or with indifference doesnąt trouble you,
or if there is no restlessness within you
that cries out for more of your God,
then the answers to those issues
do not rest with me,
they are rooted in unresolved issues
between yourself and your Creator.
I'm a Bible teacher.
That is the assignment God has given me in
life.
As such, God's Spirit equips me
to feed those who are hungry.
But I learned a long time ago
that I can do nothing
to create a hunger in those who have none.
Only God can do that,
and then only in the lives
of those who will let Him.
But let me get back on track.
Here we are, with this hunger and thirst for
righteousness within us.
And the first thing most of us will try to do
is to create our own freedom from sin
through the power of the flesh.
We'll listen to motivational speakers,
and we'll read motivational books,
and we'll commit
and recommit
and recommit again ourselves to our
God.
We'll try to keep ourselves all psyched up for
change,
while all the time inside we know
that we're just like that little kitten
in that "Hang In There" poster,
hanging by two paws from that branch,
our back feet frantically probing empty space,
while our front claws keep slipping farther
and farther down.
Our motives are great.
Our goal is superb.
But our means is disastrous,
and in the end
the flesh will fail us miserably.
And then we come back to this passage
and read the next verse,
and at first it causes more problems than it
solves.
Paul says,
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.
But then Paul goes on to give
what he obviously believes is the solution
to that sticky ongoing master/slave
relationship between us and our sin.
He says:
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
Now, we're right with him up through the first half
of that verse.
Paul says, For sin shall not be master over
you...
and we say "Yes! Tell me how!"
But then he gives his answer.
He says, for you are not under law, but
under grace.
And we respond by saying, "HUH?"
How in the world does that solve our problem?
How does a little piece of Christian doctrine
break the master/slave relationship
between us and sin?
We won't get to most of the answer to that question
until next week,
but this morning I do want to plant
one additional major thought into our
thinking.
In this statement Paul tells us
that freedom from sin
comes from knowing that we are not under
the law, but under grace.
What that means is this:
in those areas of our lives
where we continue to battle unresolved sin
issues,
we do so not because we don't have enough
POWER,
or because we don't have enough of the
SPIRIT,
or because we haven't yet fully committed
ourselves to our God.
Rather, we continue to remain under the mastery of
sin
because we have not yet correctly
or fully understood
what it means to live in a grace-based
union with our Creator.
So, if we have areas in our lives
where sin continues to be our master,
then one thing we know for sure -
that we have not yet understood
what it means to be under grace.
Paul says that breaking the power of sin
grows out of understanding the true nature of a
grace-based walk with God.
So, if I continue to live in bondage to sin,
that bondage provides clear evidence
that I have not yet understood
what it means to be under grace.
And the truth is
it shouldn't surprise us to see Paul making this
connection
between how we act
and what we believe.
Do you remember where we started this whole
series?
John 8:32 and you shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free. "
What was Christ doing in that statement?
He was uniting how we think
with how we live.
He was telling us that knowing His truth
would result in our experiencing freedom in our
lives.
When Paul talks about
the means by which
practical change takes place in our lives in
Romans 12:2,
where does he say it comes from?
Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing
of your mind, that you may prove what the
will of God is, that which is good and
acceptable and perfect.
We are transformed by the renewing of our minds.
To the degree our thinking patterns
are brought into conformity with the truth,
to that degree we will find our actions,
our behavior conforming to the image of
Christ Himself.
So, all we've said so far today
is that our entrance into freedom from sin
is inseparably linked
to the degree to which our minds
correctly understand our freedom from the law
and our union with Christ
that provides us with the grace-based walk
with God.
And perhaps now you can better appreciate my
apprehension at reaching this point in our study.
You see, there is a part of me
that longs for the magic bullet too.
There have been times in my life
when this single phrase in Scripture,
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace...
has caused raging battles between me and my
God,
times when I have pointed out to Him
that the statement makes no sense
whatsoever,
times when I have informed Him
that there must be a page missing in the text.
As I have grown some
in my understanding of what it means to be
under grace
I have found greater peace with the passage.
But I want to end this morning
by offering you both a promise
and a warning.
The promise is this:
The more we grow in our understanding of the
grace of God,
the more we will find the power of sin
being broken in our lives.
And when I say that
I need to emphasize that understanding God's
grace
is not a concept we learn,
but rather it is a reshaping of our entire
outlook on every aspect of our lives.
It involves reshaping the way I view my God,
and the way I think He views me.
It involves reshaping the way I view myself,
and the way I view my needs,
and the way I view every relationship in my
life.
It involves reshaping the way I view
my purpose in life,
and my priorities,
and my possessions,
and on and on.
You see,
when Paul says,
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace,
he is telling us the absolute and exact truth.
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.
And then one final word of warning:
Beware of those who rewrite that verse for you.
There is a place where you can find
lots of voices offering you the magic bullet.
That place is in the world of Religion.
In the world of religion
you will find many people who will gladly reveal
to you the secret truths
that are guaranteed to bring instant victory
over sin.
Some will offer you an experience.
Some will offer you a list of duties for you to fulfill.
For your own protection I would encourage you to
give yourself a gift:
memorize this one verse -
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under
grace.
Then wrestle with it,
let it make you angry,
let it cause you frustration,
but let it also protect you from all those
who would like to scratch off the last half
and rewrite it for God.