Another Good Question
Romans 6:15-16 · Mike Doyle · Oct 15, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 045
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193308039

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We've been working through Romans 6, which is one of the great chapters in God's Word. So today we're going to talk about two verses, verse 15 and 16. Verse 15 says, what then? It's a question. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law, but under grace? And the answer is far be the thought. Jim said, absolutely not.

And then verse 16, do you not know that when you present yourself someone as slaves for obedience, you're slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness. So those are the two verses we're going to look at today. And there are two questions, big questions in Romans 6. The first one is actually the first verse.

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? And we've talked a lot about that. And the answer is the same, absolutely not. And then when we get to verse 15, we find out that, well, somebody else raised their hand in the audience and said, Are we to sin because we're not under law but under grace?

But they're not really distinct differences in questions. They're both asking, can I sin? Each considers the same lawlessness, the same independence of the creature, which is ever the creature's great temptation to be independent. The fact that these two questions are written down here is proof enough that they are not really different. They're pretty much the same.

So, if you look back at verses 2 through 14, Paul had answered his listener's question in verse 1 regarding the proposed habitual, and that's the key word, habitual yieldedness of the believer to every to the sin nature. And he did it by showing that it was a mechanical, and I love this word, mechanical impossibility, considering the way the believer's inner mechanical setup was arranged by God through co-crucifixion. I was crucified. So were you. Where the power of the indwelling sin had been broken.

I don't have to do this anymore. and the divine nature was imparted to me. So because of that, I really am free. The answer to the first question in verse 1 is we're in the risen Christ and we shared His death, His burial, His resurrection. Our relationship to Sid is broken forever and we're to walk in newness of life.

Now that's either true or it's not. It is true. And the answer to the second question is, God has set believers free to serve Him. Verse 16 says, of obedience unto righteousness. We only really have two masters as human beings. We either have sin that we're abject totally under, or we have Christ. We have God. So whatever you Yield yourself too. They're your master. The whole idea that I'm going to conduct and rule my own life based on my own principles is a fallacy. You're either under sin or under righteousness. One of those two things. So, the strength of sin is just as real as the guilt of sin. And so, no creature can free himself from the bondage of his sin. You can't do it. You can't do it by yourself. Sin brought into the fallen man his inability to do anything else but sin.

In Galatians 6, I'm sorry, Genesis 6.15, 6.5, then the Lord said or saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."

So here's God the Creator, and He looks at His creation, and this is what He sees. Every intent of the thoughts of His creature's hearts was only evil continually. So to the contrary, man's consciousness and his reaction and his desire for liberty, he's under evil. And despite these, despite the terror that God has told man about, and there's lots and lots of examples in the Old Testament, despite the awful warnings and the expectation of personal impending ruin, Man continues in sin and in bondage.

He won't have it another way. Is it just because he's fooled? Or is he intentionally understand, well, I remember before I was saved, I used to have this thought in my mind, well, before I die, I'll get a chance to repent. Really? Was that while the plane was going down or when it hit the wall? Paul listens to this man who says, well, let me get this straight, Paul.

Well then, since grace makes it impossible for the believer to sin habitually, to do it all the time, like he did before he was saved. May we Christians live a life of planned, occasional sin? Since we're not under the uncompromising rule of law, but under the lenient scepter of grace. So we can sin a little bit.

That's what he's saying. Can't we do that? So the verb in verse 6-1 is, shall we? What shall we say? Are we to continue, continually be in sin that grace may abound? We're not to continue. It's the present subjunctive speaking of habitual, continuous sin, something that before we were saved, we all did. This verb says, what then, shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace? Shall we sin is air subjunctive, meaning a single act. Can I sin only one time? How about two? How about five? You get six a week. The answer to both is no way. No way.

And what's interesting about that is that God's intent by co-crucifying Christ is to really put sin out of business. That's really what he's doing. read this question really correctly when he speaks of an uncompromising rule of law and a lenient rod of grace. The man simply did not know grace. Law is totally uncompromising, but grace is never lenient. It's far stricter than the law ever could be. It is far It's a far greater deterrent of evil than the law ever was.

You know, we've talked about grace is the thing that was introduced in verse 14 so that we would stop sinning. That's after we find out what's the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is for sin to abound. So law makes us, well I'm going to put myself under a law system, which means sin is going to abound. But if I go under a grace system, then sin is going to be put out of business. It doesn't make any human logical sense.

So I went to Titus 2.11 to talk about grace, because I think that's really where we are. is to talk about grace today. Maybe a good example is this.

If we go outside a church today, if we go down Holly Street, you know about every block or so there's a sign that says speed limit 25 miles an hour or 30 or whatever it is, right? How many of you go above that? Yeah. But if you go outside after church and there's a cop on every corner, How fast are you going to go? You're going to go over the speed limit or less. Why?

Because grace has shown up. The Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the believer by the Holy Spirit takes notice of the slightest sin and convicts us of it. Whereas the law could act only generally and then only when the conscience of the individual cooperated with it. But grace, vis-à-vis the Holy Spirit, He's there all the time.

So, if we take a look at Titus 2.11, which will be studied in Sunday School a couple of weeks from now. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for Himself a people of His own possession, zealous for good works. That's what grace came to do. So just because a believer is now totally free from the law, it doesn't mean that he can sin with impunity. There's a new driving and compelling deterrent to sin, and it's divine love. That's the new driving force.

So last week we talked about the grace circle. This week I got the same circle, only we're going to change the name of it. and we're going to call it the love circle. And we find out at the top that God loved us, that this is God who loves us. 1 John 4, 7 through 9. And as you go down clockwise, there's a result of God's grace and the result of God's love towards me. What's the result?

I love him back. Why? Because He first loved me. That step in and of itself changes the game. I know that God loves me and I love Him back. And then I find out at the bottom of the circle that because I'm a believer and because He loves me and I love Him back, I'll obey Him. I'll do whatever He wants. As a result of His loving me, And not only that, He supplies the means for me to do it.

The life of the resurrected Christ. And then as you go out to the other side of the circle, you find out, oh my goodness, He's going to reward me for obeying Him, because I loved Him, because He first loved me. So it all redounds to Him. And it all shows why love is such a great motivator. I love because I am loved. I respond to what He wants because I know He loves me.

And He's demonstrated it. He's proved it without the shadow of a doubt. And He rewards me for it. And I didn't do anything but receive it. Let's talk a little bit about this word grace. For the grace of God has appeared. It showed up. It became visible. It becomes clearly known. And we have to be taught it, as we learned last week. And it brought salvation. It brought the qualifying adjective of salvation, of grace.

God saves by grace alone. He doesn't expect anything from us except to believe Him, which is a non-meritorious act. And then we find out that, like this man Trent said, it's hardly too much to say that the Greek mind has in no word uttered itself and all that was in the heart of more distinctly than in this word grace. Kenneth Weiss says it is hardly too much to say that the mind of the mind of God has no other word uttered itself and in that his heart more distinctly than this word grace. This is the one word that describes God the most.

Now, pagans might think, well, we understand what grace is and we'll confer favors on our friends, people we really care about. But when you take a look at this word from Christ's standpoint, what Christ did for us, he did as we were enemies. We're not friends. When he died for us, we were his enemies. We were not his friends. So in the New Testament, this Greek word charis, it refers to an act that is beyond the ordinary course of what might be expected and is therefore praiseworthy.

It's like I'm before the judge and the judge, the prosecutor has presented his case and the judge looks at me and he steps down off of his judgment throne and he takes up my guilt and he takes my penalty of my sin and he pays the price. The judge does that. And by doing so, He satisfies His own justice and making it possible to bestow mercy on the basis of justice being satisfied upon a hell-deserving sinner who puts his faith in the Savior who died for him.

So here comes grace. It appears. We see it. It brings us salvation. The next thing it does is that it instructs us. It teaches us. Grace is a great, great teacher. And if you look at this word instruction, it has to do with denying ungodliness. It teaches us that. It teaches us to deny worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly. This word teaching is really the word for a pedagogue. A pedagogue is a tutor, a teacher that you have.

And it's interesting. What does grace teach us about ungodliness? What is ungodliness? How would you define it? I would say it's anything that isn't like God. Anything that isn't like God is ungodliness. I could say it's a lack of respect or reverence toward God, but it just means it's not like God.

And it also deals with these incredibly strong worldly desires that we all have, because it's built in to our system. Worldly means worldly having the character of this present evil age. Sensibility means to have a sound mind. But I want to talk for a minute about this age that we live in. One of the commenters I found said this. This is really interesting. He said, this present evil age is a floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, and speculations and hopes and impulses and aims and aspirations at any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize or accurately define, but which constitutes a mind real and effective power, I'm sorry, constitutes a most real and effective power, bringing the moral and immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale again inevitably to exhale. That's quite a definition of the world system, isn't it?

It's going on all the time, and we're sucking it in and blowing it out. So Christians live in this atmosphere, but we can change it. We breathe it. It confronts us wherever we go. It seeks our destruction. It's insidious. It surrounds us like the air we breathe. We take it in unconsciously, like every breath of air we breathe. Really interesting environment we're in, huh?

We all think we can control all that. So we must therefore be well supplied with an inner antidote, which will counteract the evil tendencies and the fullness of, who is the fullness of the Holy Spirit without Him, We go merrily along. We don't even know. The Word of God is the tool that the Holy Spirit uses to teach us about grace and about, oh, there is that system that I crucified you from.

Here's what it's really like. Stay away from it because you don't have to go there. You know, a nonbeliever doesn't have that option. He's in it up to here, and He's going to stay in it until He comes to Christ. The godly life that we've been called to live is an upward look from coming out of that to the Lord Jesus Himself.

Why do you think that Paul says to the Colossians, since you be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Those things above are not the things that are here. They're different. They're of the Lord. So, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our God and Savior Christ Jesus. So we, looking is to receive oneself, to admit and to give access to oneself, to receive and to intercourse and companionship and to expect and look and wait for the coming of Christ. If we're studying on Wednesday night Thessalonians, we're waiting.

You wake up this week or last weekend and here's all this gymnastics, best way to term it, going on in Israel. Are you wrapped up in that or are you still looking for the coming of our precious Lord? because he's in charge of all of that. You know, I had several calls this week from people really nervous about that kind of thing. And I said to him, well, if you're looking for the Lord to come, then that's just another event that takes up ink in a newspaper or airtime on television. The Lord has that well in hand.

We're not looking for that. That doesn't tell us anything about who we are. We're focused on the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord Jesus, the glorious appearing of Christ in glory. to be two different things, whereas the Greek text requires that we construe as one. What I meant to say here is that if I'm looking for the blessed hope in appearing, in Greek, that's all one word. Blessed hope in appearing. of the glory of God is just a single word. That's what I'm looking for. And the same thing of great God and Savior Christ Jesus, that's also one word.

So all of those, we're waiting for that to happen. We're waiting for us to be taken up to be with Him there. Now maybe Maybe it's soon. Maybe it's not. Now take a look at the word our. Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

If you lived in Rome, who is your Savior? Roman Emperor was. And He termed Himself the Great Savior. And when you belong to the Romans religion, that's how you would refer to Nero or whoever happened to be emperor. He thought He was a God and you had to look at Him as though He was your Savior.

Now, appearing, it means the appearing of the glory of the Great God and Savior Jesus Christ. When He comes to take us with Him, we're not going to see a resurrected Christ. We're going to see a glorified Christ. Think about what that's like. David's got sunglasses on. They won't help him then. The glorified Christ is the one that we'll see, and we will be glorified with him. It's just amazing what God has, under grace, intended for us.

The reason Paul put this phrase in here was a protest against the Roman thought of the Savior, of the Emperor. And the last word appearing, we just took. Now, who gave himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for himself a people of his own possession, zealous for good works. This word for is huper, we talk about it a lot here. It means for the sake of, or in behalf of, or instead of. to redeem us. And there are three words for redemption. And this word is the one, lutro, or lutro-o. It means to be set free by a payment of a ransom. And it includes the other two, never to be up for sale again, and you never have to go back into the redemption hole ever. You're free. You're done.

And the word iniquity is lawlessness. It means made up of nomos law, and it means you've totally been redeemed out of lawlessness, anything that's not like God. And by the way, there aren't a lot of, what am I going to say, signs that the Lord is coming soon, except for one. One of the things that's talked about in Timothy and in 2 Peter is look out for lawlessness.

And we're seeing it. So I'm one of those people that think, boy, any time now, any time now, the Lord could take us all. It would be really cool. It would be really cool. And then He terms us, we are a people of His possession. You think we're precious to Him? You think we are different? We are His people. And being a people of precious like-mindedness from the Lord puts us in a selective group. We're His own. The Jews today love to talk about being God's people. They're not anything like this. were his by life, by resurrected life.

So verse 16 says, don't you know that when you present yourself to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether either of sin resulting in death, separation, or of obedience resulting in righteousness. So verses Galatians 5 13 tells us that we are called to freedom brethren only don't turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh But through love serve one another and John 14 21 is really kind of cool to see if I can cut it down The Lord Jesus says he who has my commandments and Keeps them is the one who loves me Back to the love circle What's the deal? Keep His commandments as the one who loves Him.

Well, who loved me first? He loved us first. We start around that circle and we find, oh, I can see why He's saying this, because we respond to love. We respond to the Father and the Son both loving us. And so He repeats it again in 23. He said, if anyone loved me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love Him and will come to Him and will make our abode with Him if we love Him.

Well, you know, it's cool that we do. We do love Him. Now, what do we know? Things we know. Although we can't free ourselves or change our own spiritual condition, the great fact of human responsibility is plainly written here. God, who would have all men be saved, is always ready to have them present themselves to Him. So any of us, we presented ourselves to the Savior for salvation. But what we've been learning in the last few weeks is there's a presentation of ourselves as those that are alive from the dead. To God. For what? For His use. Whatever it might be. And it is by means of the Gospel that we do so.

Whether to take our place as sinners when we're saved or after we have believed. When we present ourselves to Him as alive from the dead and our members as instruments of righteousness. You know, we've got to get out of our mind that we were saved to be independent. We're a servant of somebody, and it's either sin or Him, one or the other. All of the theological training any of us have ever had, whether it's sound or not, included this principle. We all know that we're doing wrong if we don't obey the gospel of God. You don't have to tell me that. I already know that. So, how do I know it? How do I know that? Well, the Lord said in John 16, when he, the spirit of truth has come, he will convict the world in respect of sin. Why? Because they don't believe on me. So we walk around. Who was I talking to?

A guy called me last week and said, boy, there's this guy that I really like this man. God's great qualities goes on and on and on. He said, until I mentioned the word Jesus Christ to him. And then he got all foamed up and said, I don't want to hear that name because I can't understand why the whole world would worship a man. And my friend said, it really made me angry to hear that. I said, well, It's interesting.

He knows who Christ is because the Spirit of God has convicted him about who Jesus is. Now you can go back and tell him. Maybe it'll change his mind. I don't know. But don't be surprised by that reaction to the name of the Lord Jesus. We must remember then that obedience that we're talking about here unto righteousness In verse 16 is the obedience of faith. It's always that.

God only expects me to believe Him. He wants me to trust Him, whatever He tells me. So Paul gives the whole answer to the question of this man by showing that the believer has changed masters. It's a pretty simple equation when you look at it. The believer was a slave to Satan before salvation. But since he has been saved, he's become a slave of the Lord Jesus. He has changed masters because he has a new nature. The divine nature and the evil nature, which compelled him to serve the devil, has had its power broken.

Broken. So Paul argues to the effect that it's an impossibility for the believer to live a life of planned occasional sin. It doesn't fit. The believer does sin at times, but God has provided in his life for those occasional acts. He has provided confession, and confession is to say the same thing that God says. What does he say? What does God say about every one of you?

You're my son. I redeemed you. I recreated you in Christ. You were crucified. And the power of sin is broken. If you agree with me, you may have lost fellowship and will restore that fellowship. But it isn't about whether your sins have been paid for. They have been. It's about fellowship. If I do commit an act of sin, he's the one. This is again how grace works. He's the one that says to me, He's the one that convicts me about this and restores me.

So in closing, I want to talk a little bit about the word doulos. Doulos is the word for slave. It's hard for us Americans to get our minds around the idea of being a slave. But it's interesting if you study the word. The word slave, as Dressman says, is a light from the agent. He says that the English word totally obscures Paul's argument here. The word douglas is the most horrible, groveling term for a slave in the Greek language. The believer was a slave to Satan before salvation. Totally. Had no choice. He's now a slave of the Lord Jesus by choice. He has changed his master. I now have a new master.

So, it refers to a condition that a human being is born into. How did you and me all become sinners? We were born into it. My mother conceived me. It's natural generation. I inherited total slavery from my mom and my dad, and it goes all the way back to Adam. I got a really wonderful depraved nature from them. From my parents, thank you. Nature made us love sin, and it compelled us to serve it habitually. Somebody comes up to me and says, oh man, I didn't like it, but I sinned. I said, there's something wrong with you. I loved every sin I ever committed.

But being born again by the regeneration through the agency of the Holy Spirit, I got a new nature. And this new nature gives me both the desire and the power to do God's will. With my liberty from the compelling power of the evil nature and acquisition of the divine nature, we have changed masters again from Satan to the Lord Jesus. He's now my master. If I'm a slave, a do-loss slave, I'm one who's swallowed up in the will of another. And that sounds awful when it's talking about Satan. It sounds really cool if it's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm swallowed up in his will.

So what Paul is arguing here is that he doesn't want to live a life of planned, occasional sin. And he does it for two reasons. One, he does not have to. Since the power of evil over him has been broken, he doesn't have to do that. And the second place, he doesn't want to do it. He doesn't want to do it. Since his new nature causes him to hate sin and to love righteousness. So we could say when a person does not have to do what he does not want to do, He simply does not do it.

The believer has changed masters. Again, this word doulos was a fascinating word to me. Because of our identification with the Lord Jesus Christ at His death, every relationship and band and control over me by Satan went away. It was broken. It doesn't mean He stops trying. This doesn't mean we don't live in his world. We do. But the bands have been broken. And now we're bound to the Lord Jesus. We are bond slaves. And you know, you know how we got free from Satan? We died. How would we ever get free from Christ? He's not going to die again. I'm not going to die. Why do you think Paul uses the term asleep when he talks about believers going to heaven? Because they already died. We've already been separated from this entire world system. So the believer with his own will and his own accord, he serves the Lord Jesus. And he does it with abandon.

Have you got to the point where in your heart you say nothing matters? about me just as long as the Lord Jesus is glorified. I don't care what my life is going to be as long as I'm doing what he wants me to do. It doesn't matter. He matters. So now Paul argues a person who does that with disregard to himself for the sake of the Lord Jesus He does not want to live a life of planned, occasional sin. He doesn't want to do that. He wants to live unto Christ in every aspect of his entire life.

So let's close. Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for what you've done, not only for us, but to us, and that we are free. to live for you, beginning right today, now, so that it's pleasing to you and it glorifies you, just like we will in all eternity. We're thankful for all that you have imparted to us in resurrected life, and we pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.