Lesson 23b

We are on Lesson 23. We are looking at Romans 6, 18-23. It was our hope that we would wrap up, get through Chapter 6 and start on Chapter 7 before we got some of the new faces in, but as you'll find out if you haven't been with us, it's all Courtney's fault. I think some of you have joined Mike, myself, and Courtney for classes in the past.

You know that it may be a little bit different in the sense that we invite participation by way of question and answer. We sure appreciate the thoughts that we have. Does it lead to rabbit trails? Sometimes it does, but those rabbit trails we believe are things that are on folks' hearts and we want to be open enough to let the spirit lead in terms of how we might talk about those things and explore them with you. This is very much a question and answer type approach, so please do feel free to engage with us and participate in that way.

So, let's look at chapter 6. If you have your Bibles, let's open up to chapter 6, verse 18 through 23. We've covered the first two questions in this last class, but what I'll do is I'll just review what's on the board here with you, and we'll try to catch one another up in that respect. So, I just want to go ahead and read again chapter 6, 18 through 23. In fact, if someone wants to read it, that'd be great. A little long, but it's your chance to dive in.

And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and a slave to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So, the first couple of questions there, does being set free from sin mean that the sin nature no longer exists? And so what we've been doing is kind of building what it means to be a slave prior to salvation and what it means to be a slave after salvation. And we brought up this question, and it's actually number three, and I'll use this question to basically review the first two.

But who are those who are actually walking in freedom? Do we walk in freedom as Americans? We're American, right? We're America. We're free. Home of the free. Right? Are you free? To choose. To choose? Free to choose what? Whether to drive today or not. Okay. What does it mean to be free? Who are those that are walking in freedom? Because we talked about the word bondservant. How do we define bondservant last week? Remember that term? Adi, I think you actually answered it. What did you say? A servant who chooses to serve only their master. Okay. Someone who chooses to serve their master, and I think the key word would be willingly, right? Willingly. So we brought up this idea of the will. Is your will ever truly free? Completely and totally free of any master whatsoever?

It's not. We use the term free will to help contrast the idea that God is going to control you and tell you what to do, and you're going to do that. So the term free will has been brought up in Christianity, Evangelicalism, in order to contrast this idea that we are robots, right? And that's not a bad thing. We're not actually robots. We do have a will. We are able to make decisions, but are we able to make decisions free from a master? No. And that's where the term free actually has to be defined biblically. What does it mean to have a free will as an unbeliever? What is your will controlled by?

Who does it serve? The sin nature. 100% of the time. You are controlled and you serve Satan via the sin nature. So we talked about the idea that that those that are unbelievers are slaves to sin because of the sin nature. Their will is 100% controlled by that. And it leads to one thing. What does it always lead to?

Sin. What's that? Sin. Sin. What's the consequences of sin? Death. So it leads to death. And what does death mean? Separation. And where are you separated from here? God. You're separated from God. That's right. We talked about death and its three-part meaning. that you are separated from God in the sense that you will die physically, right? You'll be separated from this body physically. You're separated from God spiritually, right? And you also, in this state, will be separated from Him eternally. So, your will is a slave to sin, because of the sin nature, you're bound to Satan, death reigns, you have all of Adam's history, which is true of you, and you are under the operating system of what? Law. This is all for the unbeliever. That's right.

We also talked about the idea that there are those that say, well, I'm thinking about it. I'm not that bad. I'm not sure yet. I hear what you're saying about this gospel message, this good news, but I just need to think about it. Is there this person that is in a neutral place where their will is not controlled by the sin nature resulting in death because they're thinking about it? Is there that in-between ground, the middle road? Is there neutrality? of the will. We said no. We looked back at Romans 1.

We said that God has revealed himself and that they understood it. And they are without excuse. He revealed his divine nature and his invisible attributes. His eternal power. Those were revealed to every human being. That was the place that you stand as your will is controlled by the sin nature, yet you have known God to a degree.

Do you know the gospel? Maybe not. But you are without excuse, because He has revealed Himself to you. So we said, there is no such thing, and we just marked this out. And we said, hey, but there is this work of the Spirit to the unbeliever. And so we drew this dotted line, because something can break this. What is it that can break the bondage that you have underneath the control of this in nature? What breaks that?

Christ. Okay. What's that? Faith. Okay. Go on. Preaching Christ. Resurrection. Preaching Christ. What happens before that? Death. Death. That's right. A waiting period. Three days. You're right, it is death. It is the death of Christ, but is it just the death of Christ? Our death. Your death. That's right. The thing that breaks this bondage to sin, and to the sin nature, is death.

That co-crucifixion with Christ on the cross. And that comes through one preaching Christ, which is what? The free gift. I want to talk a little bit about free gift a little bit later here and what that is. But it is through this death that we are then made alive. Yeah, Mike.

I have thought, you know, in the Garden of Eden that God gave them the command not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the tree of good and evil, which side of that equation does it belong on? I think it belongs on the boss side and I think one of the pitfalls to coming to Christ is that it's presented as a good and evil question and that's not the question. That I need to stop doing evil so that I can be good or I can move from the evil branches to the good ones. But there was this other tree in the garden called the tree of life and so the issue was not to stop being evil and start being good. The issue was what treaty you live in. And so a lot of times the gospel is presented in a manner of, well, you're going to cease being evil and now start being good and good is not... good isn't freedom and good isn't life.

Why? Because it's from the wrong source. Okay. Yeah, I think that's fair. Absolutely. And it was gracious of God to do what with Adam and Eve? After they ate? That, for sure. But what did he also do? Kicked them out. Kicked them out. Why? So they wouldn't eat of the tree of life.

That's right. So now we have this free gift. Without that, you know, that wouldn't exist. And so, when we say, who are those that are actually walking in freedom? We haven't talked about this side. Let's talk about this side. Who are these guys? Believers in Christ. What's interesting is that they are, in this illustration, we said that they're sealed. There's nothing that breaks this. Through death, this bondage can be broken. But now, all of a sudden, you're free! You're free to do whatever you want, right? May it never be. You're free to do whatever you want.

No, you are actually, what we have referred to in this Roman 6 passage, you are bond servants, or bond slaves of what? Of righteousness. Your will, as a believer, is literally, to define bond servants, swallowed up in God's will. You're not interested in defining yourself. You're not interested in carrying out your will as a believer.

Now you say, hey, wait a minute, I am. I know I am. At times, right? And that's what we got over here. Right? We use the term deposed monarch. What does that mean? For the sin nature. The sin nature, is it present? Or when we became believers, did it get eradicated? No. Still there. Now, if you were to tell me it wasn't, I might believe you, but if Mike said that... This is not eradicated.

We used the illustration of a ship captain who has been taken out of duty taken to the bowels of the boat and chained up, but he does not want to stop running command of that ship. And so while there's an entirely new command of the ship, he yells and screams constantly those exact commands that he's yelled to you all of his life. And the difference is He has no control over you. He's not running the ship anymore. He's a deposed monarch. Meaning, he's no longer in control, but he doesn't stop yelling, and screaming, and barking. He's trying to get you to take the bait.

That's right. Actually, in the book of James it says that very thing. We're going to review that verse here in a few minutes. And so, that's right. We are swallowed up in God's will, and it is the nature of the believer to want to do the very things that God is doing. You are in agreeance with what God's will is, that's what your will is. At the end of the day, your motivation is love and you want to see God glorified.

That's where the believer is. He wants to see the Lord glorified. And how does he do that? How does God glorify himself? We glorify God by doing His will. Did you guys hear that? You agree with it? We glorify God by doing His will? Yeah. So we can add glorify over here. I think that's a clear result. So how do we walk in freedom here? What does that look like?

I think it's interesting, Vern in the sermon last week or a couple weeks ago he was talking about Paul being on that ship and the fact that the ship captain was no longer in charge because there was a centurion there. And I think that's really kind of cool because the captain had to give up his mastery and his authority and his position because the centurion was there and so he was the new master of the ship. So it's very similar. It absolutely is. So who's running the ship here? The owner. The Lord Jesus Christ, right? So we have a new nature. We're bond slaves, meaning we willingly serve. Does that sound like freedom to you? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Because it's a willful choice. It's a willful choice. Okay.

There's a freedom from and a freedom too. I could be, you know, doing 40 years to life. I'm incarcerated, I have no physical freedom, but then I'm released, and now I'm free from that. To do what? To enter out into society again. Well, I'm now free from the entire sin. What am I free to do? Well, if I'm coming out of jail and going into society, I'm free to submit myself to the rules and regulations of society. Otherwise, I'm going to go back. I'm free now to walk away from sin and to submit myself to the Lord Jesus so that I can live in his freedom moment by moment. And from all of that, the freedom to tune into.

The only person who has ultimate Absolute freedom is God himself. Is he free to act outside of his own character? No. And that's him, right? That's the consistency, that's the holy, holiness of God, right? It's all those things, the justice, the righteousness, the sovereignty. I think the freedom that we have, you can define it as God recreated us in Christ to be a certain kind of a being.

And we are free to do that. We weren't before. We weren't. There's another freedom here. How does that relate? You're what? Free from the sin nature. You're free from the sin nature. It could sit here and bark back at you. We wrote that up there. And in your condition, you can do what? You can say no. Say what? You can say yes. You can.

And we call that what? We call it spiritual insanity. Because it has nothing to do with who you are. You're serving an opposed monarch at that point. Could you say that in Adam, your source being in Adam, you love sin. That's what you want to do. I mean, it's not like we have to sin. We just do automatically. But then the source in our new life is Christ, which loves righteousness. Yeah, absolutely. The unbeliever doesn't necessarily walk around feeling like he's controlled by sin. He's in love with sin. Sin is what he does, right? That's who he serves. He doesn't have to think about that, because that's his nature. That's Adam's nature, right?

You come over here, and now you've still got the sin nature, but it says that now you've become slaves of righteousness, and you're freed from sin. It's a game changer, right? It truly is a game changer. Now you're bound to Christ. Life reigns. You have Christ's history, and you operate in this environment of grace.

That's our last question for this lesson. How do we get freedom from the sin nature? That's a trick question. I'm like, Mike, I'll tell you that. We die. We die. When we're crucified with Christ, the connection between us and the sin nature is broken in a sense that we can't ignore his foolings. So the key word in this question is, when are you freed from the sin nature? When you physically die. When it's a rapture. Are you talking about being freed from sin nature per se, or are you talking about the mastery of the sin nature?

Same thing. Yeah. Let's say mastery. So, we know that this nature is no longer master on this side, but where are you free from it? Conditionally, walking around, freedom. Okay. When you hear that captain scream. That means you're not free? That means you are free.

So, when we physically separate and walk off this planet, we're separated. From a conditional standpoint, I think it's back to what Paul has already said. Reckon yourself dead and alive unto God. You reckon yourself dead. That's the separation from the old man. You reckon yourself dead and what? You're alive to God.

So what we're saying is, you have freedom from the sin nature right now. Positionally. Freedom from its authority. Absolutely. And you get conditional freedom via the physical death of the flesh or the rapture. So it was a trick question in the sense of, are you talking position or are you talking condition? The cool thing is, position, we are free from it. And that can lead to a conditional freedom from it as well. Position never changes. Condition is led by position. And eventually, we'll be ultimately free once the flesh has no longer authority over, well, our body no longer has a presence.

We are spiritual beings and this flesh is the bounding box, right? Could we say that each one of these circles is a state of being? What do you think? State of being? Position? Absolutely. It is. Can you be in this state again? No. Why? You've already died. You've been made new. You can't go through that again. That's one of the things about this idea of switching states. What do we call that?

Loss of salvation? Anybody ever been worried about that before? Ever worry about losing your salvation? There's a lot, a lot of believers out there that are bound up in that thing. It's spiritual insanity. It is spiritual insanity. What would have to happen for us to lose our salvation and go back to this? Christ would have to come back to the earth, go back up on the cross, dead, wake up, come back down into the earth, back to the nativity. Back to the nativity. That's interesting. We have to reverse the whole thing. That's right.

You ever seen that in scripture? No. No. So who are those that actually walk in freedom? We said that they are the believer whose will is swallowed up in God's will. We have freedom in the sense that we have the very desires that God desires. Our will is intrinsically tied to, or what cannot be differentiated from.

Isn't that interesting? Think about your will as tied up and swallowed up by God's will. Now I don't always feel that way. Do you? But you do know what it's like, and we're not talking about feelings per se, but we are talking about there are times, hopefully more often than not, where you Absolutely 100% understand this. We call it walking with God, right? The walk. And what does that look like? Is that pretty busy? Are you walking with God? You're sitting down right now. When your will is swallowed up in God's will, it looks very what? I'm thinking as you're talking, Where we are in Romans is that we have been crucified, buried and resurrected in Christ.

At this point, we don't know very much about walking in the newness of life, but there's a whole entire new life there that we must learn about and recognize that it's a paradigm shift. There's nothing that I learned in Adam that qualifies me to walk in the Spirit, not a single thing. Nothing that I learned. So you're saying you come over here and you've got no idea. I have no idea. All I know is that I've been saved. I'm free. I'm free from the power of the sin nature, but okay. Hopefully you know that.

What does that look like? What does it look like? In terms of shoe leather and walking around every day, that's why I think that in Romans 6, the first thing Paul has to do in terms of the power of the sin nature is show us that we're free from it, and once we recognize that we're free, then we begin to learn about what it is to walk in newness of life that he mentioned back ten verses ago. What is that newness of life? What is that?

He says, I can do it, but I'm not sure I understand what does that all mean? But as he goes on through seven and eight, he begins to show you, here's what it looks like. And it's totally different. The problem a lot of Christians have is they want to put holy water on the old life and think that that's Christianity.

How does will and desires work together? Is will the traffic cop for desires? How are they related? Because it's our desires that allow us to follow one direction or the other, correct? Not always. I don't understand where will and desire fit together.

Well, I can live by faith, and it may not necessarily be the desire that I have, but I know that what God has told me is true, and so I believe in Him. My desire may be to sin, but I willfully choose to believe God and what He has told me, and go against my own desire.

Yeah. I would agree with that. Yeah. And we talk about God's desires. versus his will as well. And it's the flip-flop of that. Because he can't sin. Right? So, would he desire that Adam eat of the tree? No. But he willingly allowed it. Yes, he did. Broke his heart. His desire is that Adam should perish.

That's right. So to Mike's point, I do think, because of the sin nature, our desires could be to sin. But when swallowed up in the will of God, we would rather see He be glorified through us, rather than sin. Right? That's Paul. I mean, he's not arguing for this idea that we could live a life of planned, occasional sin. Right?

That's not what he's saying. I like to take Mondays off because that's the worst day. No, no, no, no. All the unbeliever knows is sorrow and suffering. That's their life. And they may be perfectly fine with that because they don't know any different. That's where they are.

Where am I going? Why am I here? What's my purpose? How do you answer those big philosophical questions as an unbeliever? Well, I'm an accident. I'm not even supposed to be here. I have no idea where I'm going. And I have no idea why I'm here. Evolution. Yeah. Or, maybe you're not an evolutionist. Maybe you're a Hinduist. My purpose is to reach a place of nirvana. Where the drop of water falls into the endless ocean. And I become one with nothing. Sounds great. Get some purpose. To become nothing. It's awesome. Sorrow. Suffering.

So, question number four. Why was Paul forced to use human terms in verse 19? Let's look at 19. He says, I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Who's he talking to? And why is he talking in human terms? Isn't Paul supposed to be speaking in godly terms? What do you think that means? What do you think is going on there?

It's conditional. Okay. It's what you just said about the unbeliever. That's all they know. So, like it says in Hebrews, So he needs to be able to communicate with people that aren't going to understand spiritual things. That's a good point. You guys agree with that? Thoughts? I don't think Paul was talking to unbelievers in Romans 6. I think he was probably talking to immature believers. Absolutely.

They just didn't understand the spiritual deepness that Paul had. They hadn't got there yet, had they? Now, just to Mike's point, this is Romans 6. You've got to get to the rest of Romans before you're going to get further on than that. But what is the theme of 18 and 19?

This idea of slavery. Do you think the Romans would have understood this concept of slavery? They absolutely would have. Do we understand that concept as Americans? So how might Paul have spoken in human terms to us? Get off your phone! That's a slave! You ever feel like you're a slave to the digital device? Maybe you would have used the iPad.

And I think too that there were willing slaves which is part of this equation. There were people who were indentured slaves for whatever reason and they got their freedom but they They didn't want their freedom. They wanted to stay with whatever master it was. And so those are the doulos people that Paul here shows that these are people who willingly remain in servitude or now serve a new master and they do it willingly. I have to disagree with that. Doulos in the Bible is the lowest level of slave. There is a word for bond slave. But it is not Dulux. Dulux is just plain old, everyday ordinary slave.

And that's what he's talking about here. Let me just bring this up real quick. I don't think that's right. I don't think that's right either. We need some Greek. Yeah, I need my phone to work. There is a word, another word, called female slave, and I think it's used three times in the New Testament, called douloi. There's the female slave, but it's the same word, it's douloi, used in a feminine way. But it's just absolutely absolute. An ordinary slave has no rights, no benefits, no nothing.

They can be treated, they can be killed, they can be treated with distain, you know, whatever the word you want to use. This word is doulo. Is it? Yep. Doulo. Doulo. All right. Your phone's right there. So this is Bond Service. Is doulo different than doulos, I guess? enslave, make subservient, be under obligation, to gain control over, make a slave of, to cause someone to be subservient to, etc. etc. It's also used in 618, 1st Corinthians, under bondage. So the word is doulo. It is slave. And we need to probably look a little bit further if if we're talking about bond servant and the fullness of that. So to your point, let's sidebar that one and come back to it. At the end of the day, the servitude is to be slaves of righteousness.

Is this a negative thing that Paul's mentioning? No. To be subservient to righteousness? What about independence and free thinking for the believer? Huh? What about it? Don't we love our independence and our ability to think freely? What about the believer? Do you love your independence as a believer?

This is a trick question. You're not independent. You're actually not independent, you're united. That's a game changer for us. You're not on your own, and it's not a good thing to be on your own, which is what the Sinaita would tell us. Hey, free thinking, independent, totally capable and of yourself. To be a believer, to be dependent, to be united, that sounds hard. Is it hard?

Or is it a place of rest? and because we recognize as we grow in Christ which verse 19 is saying you have submitted, you have done iniquity, chosen iniquity, it doesn't use the word chosen but you have done these things, it's kind of like we don't know, we don't understand and then once we understand that we are free not just to do whatever but free from this horrible thing that the joy comes because we recognize that he is the one. We're free, and he is free to be righteous. Joy. We are righteous. We are.

Is joy the same thing as happy? No. Why not? Because happiness kind of comes and goes as your circumstances change. Do you hear that? You guys agree with it? No? So is joy the same as happiness? We said that happiness kind of comes and goes, right? I can be happy with something and the very next moment I can be unhappy with something. It's not the same as the joy you're talking about because of who we are in Christ. It's not the same. Joy is the fruit of the Spirit. Happiness isn't. And what is the fruit of the Spirit? Who is the fruit of the Spirit?

It's the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus. That's right. Characteristics of who He is. Absolutely. Well, it's interesting. At the end of verse 19, Paul says, present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in what? Sanctification. What is sanctification? Set apart. Set apart to what? To do His will. Ah. You are now free to present your members as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification. Is that a definition? That's your freedom? Is to present yourself as slaves to righteousness resulting in sanctification.

That's what freedom is for a believer. And isn't that what the unbeliever over there, he's constantly suffering, he's frustrated all the time. All the time. Because he's trying to produce righteousness. And that's called what? Law. He really can't. He can't. And that's law. That's the system that he is under. He is under this idea of, it's condemnation. There's nothing that he can do to produce righteousness. And try as hard as he ever could, all he can ever do is operate based on the nature that he has, that masters over him. The sin nature. That's all he can do, is produce sin. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things which you are now ashamed? For the outcoming of those things is death.

That's what this all leads to. It all leads to it. Number five. Question number five. William Newell asks the following question. What saved one can say of his unsaved life? I can treasure this or that as fruit of any particular iniquity. I cherish good results from it. What is the highest award that a person can receive? A gold medal. A gold medal. As an unbeliever, I ran that race and I got myself a gold medal. Good for you. What fruit do you have? Let's reverse it. What's the fruit here?

There's nothing that can be produced here except shame. That's all there is. There's nothing to be gained. All you have is shame. Because what are you producing your entire life? Unrighteousness. So that really puts... a fuller meaning on Paul going through that whole list of his achievements in the flesh. A Pharisee, a Israelite, a Benjaminite. This whole list, he said, was worthless. Shame. Worthless. That's cool. That is. That's a good point. What did he boast in? Christ. Christ. Absolutely. Where do we boast? In the Lord Jesus Christ.

From an unbeliever's perspective, we might read James 1, 14-15, but when a man is tempted, it is his own passions that carry him away and serve as a bait. Then the passion conceives and becomes the parent of sin, and sin, when fully matured, gives birth to death.

What's the picture there? Where does his own passions that carry him away and serve as bait, where do those passions come from? Whispers don't count. What is the Sin Nature doing here? What's the picture? He carries him away. dangles, my own passions are dangling the bait for me. I have a desire for that. Guess what? I don't only have a desire for that dangling carrot, I'm willfully choosing.

And the moment I choose to sin, what does that passion do? It conceives itself, it becomes a parent of sin, and it gives birth to death. Separation. That is the entire life of the unbeliever. And guess what? Here's the sad thing. It can be a large amount of the life of a believer as well.

Because this thing still likes to dangle carrots. But guess what you have the freedom to do now? You don't have to take that carrot. Over here, it's your daily duty. That's where you are. And I think that this idea of hating sin comes to light in the concept of spiritual and saint. Why would I want to continue to operate by the passions that enslaved me constantly here, and yet I have freedom here, but I continue to want that dangling carrot more than I want the life of Christ. You possess the life of Christ. You don't lose it. But yet, we get mixed up in this whole sin nature.

And all of a sudden, we are calling it what it is, spiritual insanity. But the Lord is gracious, isn't he? He's gracious. Now, number six. What awaits each of us at the end of our path? Verse 22. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God. Oh my goodness, there we go again. Enslaved. But it's a good slavery, isn't it? You derive your benefit. Oh, not only are we slaves, we have a benefit to that slavery.

Resulting in sanctification and the outcome is the opposite of death. It's eternal life. Eternal life. I'm going to read But now having been freed from that fearful master sin and brought into a sweet willing bond service to God, there was not only the daily delightful fruit which was given over to sanctification wherever bearing, but there was the consciousness that every day brought nearer the full realization of that blessed eternal life which they already possessed, but the full enjoyment of which was the end of the path of God's saints. The end of our path is what? Eternal life.

Are we excited about that? I am. It's kind of interesting because when you think about it, the unbeliever has eternal life too. Oh yeah. Because his soul is going to go on forever. But the difference is, where? And who? We might call it eternal death. Yeah.

John 17 adds, to know me in the one who sent me. So eternal life is life that's unique to them and knowing them and you have to have their life to know them on their level and that's what eternal life is. Do you have eternal life right now? Yes, I do. Absolutely. Conditionally we'll get that eternal life once separated from the flesh but we already positionally possess eternal life.

Thoughts? So it boils down to intimacy, personal relationship with the God of the universe on his level, not mine. Say that last part again. On his level, not my level. On his level. Yeah. I'm able to, as I grow, and when I leave here and go at the end and I'm with him, I'm able to appreciate him as he appreciates himself. because I have his life. I think that ties into this next verse. You have his life. How about number seven?

How does a believer realize that he thinks like Psalm 48.8? I delight to do thy will, O my God. I wonder what David was thinking at this point. And how much more so, based on the truths of Romans 6, Do we delight to do the will of our God? What is the motive here? What's that? Controlled and swallowed up in God's will. What motivates us? Eternal love. Eternal life. I'm going to write love over here. We're motivated by love. What motivates you over here? Love.

Under law? Self. What happens if I break the law? Condemnation. Condemnation. What is that? Fear of condemnation? I'll write it. It's going to take me a minute. All I've got over here is fear. A fear of not getting that whooping for breaking the law. Under the system of grace, we'll further define that next week. Again, I'm motivated by love. It's a totally different world. We live in a totally different world. And it's not America.

So the answer to the question is a believer should realize that he delights to do God's will very, very soon after salvation. Because there's an immediate change in so many people that I've seen. The problem with that is that in Romans 7 Paul delighted to do the law of God but he couldn't do it. And so the issue is how is it done? How is it done? Well, it's the same way that you have love under that second one there.

That's not something that you can go out and just say, well, I'm going to love everybody today because I've tried that and it doesn't work. So if you do it positionally and the Holy Spirit is your motivation and your guiding light, and you are capable of doing that. The more that you're in your position, the more that you're able to do that, I think. Sure.

When a believer expresses love, what is... whose love is that? And who's doing the loving? It's a privilege as a bond-servant to experience God-loving through you. Isn't it? That's what we're talking about. The delighting in doing God's will is delighting in Him doing what He's going to do. And you get to participate by believing. That's what you get to do. You get to walk by faith.

Period. He's the love. Isn't He? Question number eight. It's the last one I think for today. Have you worked really hard to earn your wages this week? Verse 23. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now we use that for a lot of the gospel side of things, but what's going on here?

This word free actually has the idea of It has grace. It's a grace-based free. So we could call it a gracious gift. Not just free, it's graciously given. I have to stop. But that's the nature of this gift. It's not just a free gift. It's given and it's backed by the all-encompassing God of grace. And it's wrapped up in this idea of what we're going to talk about a little bit more next week as undeserved, unlimited, unmerited blessings of God based on the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross, right? That's a different kind of gift altogether.

Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for the truths of Romans 6, and we thank you for the privileges to be servants to you, to be slaves of righteousness, and to desire to do your will. Lord, we thank you that you are working with us individually, preparing those works beforehand, that we may walk in them. and we can literally experience your love as we walk by faith and you've produced that life through us. And so we're just so thankful for the opportunity to be sanctified, set apart for your good work and for the very love and the very grace that you've given to us, we can also offer to those that are bound in slavery to sin. We know that through the very free gift, there can be freedom for them as well. We pray that we would be open-minded about who those in our life that need that truth and that free gift and that we might be used to bring that to them and be just so privileged to be a vessel for that. We thank you for all the truth that we've learned here this morning and pray for a great rest of the day and a great gathering tonight. Just the joy it is to be with one another through the Christmas party for a lot of fun and enjoying that time. Lord, we thank you. It's in your name. Amen.