Christ Life In Us Romans 6:15-16 Shall We Sin Under Grace?

Interesting verses I've had. I've had an interesting week putting these verses together. And the reason I had Jim read Romans 5.20 and 21 is, let's get them up here.

In 5.20, it talked about the law came in, or just law came in. There's no definite article there.

And the reason was is so that the transgression would increase. But where it increased, grace increased even the more. And so we find from 21 that sin reigned in death. Now I know that's one of those verses from the Bible that you just sort of say, okay, sin reigned in death, but it really for for from the time of the fall of Adam to the cross of Christ, the reigning principle in the earth was sin and death.

That was it. And so the reason then you find out God has a purpose here. He's got a goal. What's the goal? That grace might reign. grace might reign. It would be the reigning principle, and it reigns through righteousness to eternal life, and it's through Jesus Christ, our Lord. And so the reason I put that, had him read, Jim read verse 20 and 21, I think it's important when you study God's word, well, what's the goal here? What does God want to do?

What he wants to do is have grace be the reigning principle where for thousands of years, the reigning principle was sin. So as we study Romans 6, it's the first, the first thing he goes after is sin. And he says, are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? In other words, it's okay that sin continues because the more I sin, the more grace it produces.

You know, well, that's like saying the more gasoline I put on the fire, the greater the fire is going to get. But I really want it out. Or maybe put it this way. I have a campfire and I want to put it out before I leave. And I throw a bucket of gasoline on it rather than water. What happens? It explodes. That's what that's what law does. It causes sin to explode.

Yet grace is greater than that. So from actually back in Romans 3 all the way through Revelation is a discussion about grace being the reigning principle. We all live under this new principle of grace whether we realize it or not. And Romans 6.15 comes right back after we, the reason that we, sin isn't gonna reign is because we died. When Christ died, was made sin, we were in him, we died to sin, we were buried and resurrected. So sin doesn't have to reign anymore in us personally. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God as those that who, have been risen from the dead.

Is that true? Yeah, it's true. But then in 15, it's kind of interesting, same person, I don't know if he's a believer or not believer, asks the question, well, shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace? In other words, should I just continue sinning in verse one? But now there's a new principle here that I'm not under law anymore, I'm under grace. So I can keep sinning with immunity.

I kind of, from my Catholic background, you know, with the sacrament of confession on Saturday and go to church on Sunday, that's kind of the thinking. I can do whatever I want as long as I get to that confession box on Saturday before I get to church on Sunday. But the answer to both of those is never may it be. In other words, it isn't even logical to think that way.

So these verses that we're gonna talk about today, his answer is, well, what then? Shall we sin because we're not under law but under grace? And then he gives a reason. Don't you know? that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either sin resulting in death or obedience resulting in righteousness. So that's what we're gonna talk about today. I'm gonna start with the issue of law. The word law is used in the Bible 200 times or more And it really has to do with one issue, and that is it regulates human conduct. That's what it's all about.

And it's divided up, according to Chafer, it's divided up into six categories. The first one is natural, inherent, intrinsic law. What's interesting about that is it's what God requires of every one of his creatures because of his own character, be holy as I am holy."

Leviticus 11.44. So in the middle of a sin reigning environment in Israel, in Leviticus, God says, be holy as I am holy.

Or 1 Peter 1.16. So God has principles that he puts in play to control human conduct.

Those of you ladies who are studying and others that have studied the conference on human institutions, God's institutions will understand So the law was binding upon all from Adam, this type of law was binding on all from Adam to Moses, and you can, Genesis 26.5, Romans 2.14, et cetera. So God has never sort of let man free will it.

It's like Miles said to me a couple of weeks ago, he said, I find it interesting that everything's fine in the garden until God gives him a law. And once he gives them the law, things don't go well after that. The second part is prescribed by man. Man institutes legal systems into that which human government requires of its subjects.

You can't drive in front of Holly Hills Bible Church at 140 miles an hour. Well, maybe you can, but you might only do it once. So man puts restrictions in and then in the Mosaic system, the Jewish system, they got a rule directly from God or a set of rules. It was given to Moses and it covered over 600 do's and don'ts to govern Israel in the land of promise.

It was entrusted to them because they were a covenant people. The people who lived down the block who were Gentiles weren't under this. It defined the manner of their daily life, and it itself was a covenant of works. It was all about how they should behave themselves.

As you look at the Mosaic Law, it really sets up a three-part system. The first one, the commandments embrace the moral government of Israel. They are condensed and summarized. They're fulfilled by love and they're provided by, to be a law, proved to be a law in character. So let's look at that. That was the first one, the commandments.

The second one was the judgments. and it embraced all this social requirements that a Jew had. He could, if you were to come and just spend a week in my neighborhood, I live in a neighborhood of us, there's a big population of Hasidic Jewish people there, and they're the ones that if you don't know about them, they wear the black suits and the fedoras, and some of them have these curl things, men in their hair, and they have all these rules.

And the social requirements for them today is I can't hold my hand out to shake the hand of one of their women. Because the only person that can shake hands with a woman is her husband. It's the same thing with Donna. Donna can't shake hands with a Jewish man. They have to walk on Saturday. They can't take the car. So they walk through snowstorms, pushing these carts with five kids in them, and they're working themselves to death, but they're not supposed to work on Saturday, up to the synagogue.

And you kind of think, wait a minute. But that's the system. And this ascetic group operates on the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. That's their whole Bible, just those books. And the last part were ordinances which regulated their worship. How did they do that? What did God want them to do? So here they have this system of 600 plus rules that has to do with the moral government, it has to do with the judgments, requirements, and it had to do with how they're to worship God.

Then you have four, I would call, and Schaeffer called it this, the revealed will of God in any form, that which has been disclosed, in addition to law codes. And they would be, the law is the will of God includes all revealed orders for any people at any time. And you can see this in the Old Testament where sometimes people were, God told even a non-Jew about to do something or not do something, and they were supposed to do it.

Ananias is a good example of that. Fifth is the messianic rule that's coming in the future, which will be the rule which governs the millennial kingdom. You can spend as much or as little time as that. Sometimes I think the rule for living under grace, people think it's the rules for the messianic kingdom, and it's not. And the last one is probably the most difficult one. We would call it the law or the principle of Christ. And it now governs the Christian. The Lord said, observe the terms of my commandments, my commandments, which was used by Christ only in the upper room, John 14, 15. So it's important to distinguish Law as a statute and law as a principle. Understand what I mean? A statute is do this. A principle is like gravity. It's a law. It's a principle. It works the same way every time. Every time.

If you live under grace, there are principles under grace in which we live by, and we're gonna spend some more time discussing them. So this form of life direction includes all the teachings of grace addressed to the Christian who is not himself under law since grace has provided all of the merit that ever could be required. You have to keep that in mind. All the merit that God requires of you, he has supplied. He does not expect you to do what I call spiritual pushups, to be in a position to have greater favor with him than you already have. And the reason is, is because we're positioned in Christ Jesus. When the Lord looks at you, he sees you in Christ alone. He sees you that way.

So, so the question is, What then? Shall we commit occasional acts of sin? That's really what verse 15 is about. Can I plan to sin on Thursday? How about Monday night? As opposed to a habitual life of sin in 6.1, because I'm not under law, I'm under grace. I'm only under grace six days a week, but there's a seventh day where I can do what I want. Answer is, there's no definite article in front of the word, before the word law in the original. So what is he saying? Romans 6, this thing says, look, here's the answer.

Don't you know that when you present yourself someone as slaves to obedience, when you do that, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey. And here's the choice. either of sin, which results in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness. So let's separate this a little bit and see really what is he after.

So the answer to the question is, don't you know? He says, yeah, you should know. The word know here, you should be aware of, or are you not aware of the fact that really what we're talking about here is who you present yourself to? You know what that says to us?

Even though the Constitution of the United States says that you're free, you're not free. You're either a slave to sin or you're a slave to righteousness. You get to pick which one. If you're not in Christ, you don't get to pick. you're a slave to sin all the time.

To understand that a man who's not in Christ cannot act righteously in any sense is a really big step because you realize how dependent we are for God's righteousness. We're totally dependent on him. We never were built by God to be a free agent. We're not like that, but that's what the world system teaches and hounds us about all day long.

And present means to be beside, to be ready at hand. It's a military term. Those of you who were in the military really understand that you do these cool little things like go outside and get in formation. And then when they give you a command, you don't get to raise your hand and say, well, I'm not so sure about that one. You know, we're going to go over here. We're all going over here. Nobody gets to argue about it.

And if you do, it's painful. If you're at Parris Island and you want to discuss it, trust me, it's going to get painful for you. So presenting in this sense means I'm ready to do whatever you tell me I'm supposed to do, either to sin or to God. Those are the only two choices. You don't get to say, well, let me think about it. No. So Romans 12, one says, present your bodies. The Lord says, give me your body. Ephesians 5, seven talks about presentation. You'll see it a lot. You'll see this word a lot. And it doesn't have to do with, well, am I gonna decide to sin or not? The decision we make, is who do I present myself to? Okay. Oops, that took longer than I thought. So it took me a while to find this guy doing this. Do you not know?

Aren't you aware of what? that when you keep on presenting yourself to someone as a slave for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey. It's a real simple equation. If you do this, then whoever you've presented yourself to, they own you. This indicative mood, which means it's a mood of reality, it's present tense, which means it's happening right now, ongoing, and it's active voice, you do it. Nobody's forcing you, you do it. But as a slave to sin, it forced you, but you agreed with it. You were all in.

Ephesians 5.27 says, that he might present to himself a church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless.

God has made a decision about a presentation and the decision he's made about it is his body, all of us. What's he gonna do with us? The first thing he's gonna do is present you to himself. Do you think that we are an ample gift if there's stain or any character missing or that we're not perfect or holy like he is holy? Remember back when he's, He said, be holy as I am holy. He's made us holy. So what can he do? He can be, he says, I'm gonna present you to me. I'm gonna do it.

And you aren't gonna have a spot or a wrinkle or anything like that. So that you should be holy and blameless. So no matter how, sinful your life is now in terms of the way you function, when it comes time to be presented, the Lord Jesus presents you to himself and the Father presents you as the bride, you're gonna be all of these things because you already are positionally. You already are.

So let's look at slavery a little bit. that when you keep presenting yourself to someone as slaves for obedience, various Greek works that refer to slaves. The first group are those that were captured in war. When a Roman general went out and conquered a country, he brought a bunch of slaves back and they became servants. Not willing, they were captives. Or another word that the Greeks use refers to a person born into slavery. And this latter word is the words for slavery used here.

The sinner by his first birth comes into the world with a depraved nature, which loves sin. Now, you're not gonna stand up in court and say, hey, listen, I came into this world with a sin nature and I love sin. You won't do that because you hide it. The thing is, we are, All those who are not in Christ are by birth bond slaves to Satan. And they're willingly bond slaves because the issue is good and evil. We think, well, we must be talking about the evil. No, the good part of the tree is just as much slavery as the bad part, as long as it's Satan.

So then Christ enters in the realm and he tells Nicodemus, you must be born again. And we know what the word born again means. When someone is born from above, through the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, in answer to his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, what does he get? He's given a divine nature that causes him to love the things of God, and thus he becomes a willing bond slave of Jesus Christ. That's what that new nature that we all have, that's what it's like, that's what it does.

It doesn't have to argue about it. I am a willing bond servant of the Lord Jesus. The believer has had his slavery transferred from one master to another. Understand, still a slave, but your master has been transferred. And he has been given a nature that causes him to forsake his former master, Satan, and cleave to his new master, the risen Lord Jesus. So to think that you are a free, independent person based on this scenario is an impossibility. You are a slave to one or the other. When it comes to, Roger talked about a few weeks ago, reckon yourselves indeed dead unto sin. Who does the reckoning? Or who does the presenting? Who did the presenting, who does it? Or who does the willful obeying? We do, the believers do.

But if you don't have the right information, your motive isn't right. I don't have any problem erecting myself dead unto sin and alive unto God if I know that that's true. I don't have no problem with that. If I know that I was crucified with Christ, I was buried and resurrected. If I know that and I believe it and I rest in that fact, And then God says, okay, based on that fact, here's what I want you to do.

Reckon yourself dead to sin. Oh, okay. I believe you. And then I want you to present yourself to me as one of those who arrive from the dead ones with a new nature. And oh, I don't have any trouble obeying you. I don't have any trouble listening to you. We all do it. But watch what God has done.

As slaves, it says, then you present yourself to someone as a slave for obedience. You are the slaves of the one you obey. So if I decide, I decide that I'm gonna sin on Thursdays, what have I really done? I've presented myself to sin to obey it. And sin says, okay, I got you on Thursday. You can sin all day long.

No problem. But then comes this obedience part. And obedience is hupo kuo, which is, we've talked about this word before, hupo means to be under, and kuo means to hear under, to listen under. I'm listening, and I'm listening, and I'm paying attention. It's used in general for the word obedience. Here the obedience is not personified as in the next part of the verse. I know that's a little complicated. Next part, servants of obedience, but it simply shows to be the effect of the presentation method. If I present myself to God to obey him, then I'm not presenting myself to sin. I'm not doing that. Give me an example.

Ephesians 2.1, this is who we were before we were saved.

You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formally walked according to the course of the world, okay, according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. All you have to do is watch Fox News or CNN, and there it is. Among them, we too, all formerly lived in the desires of our flesh. We wanted to live this way. Indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and we're by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. That's what we got saved out of.

And you have to go all the way to Ephesians 2 for it to be defined as clearly as that is. Now, so the word of God tells us that slaves are one whose will is swallowed up in the will of his master. It doesn't seem logical to us. that a worldly person who does not have Christ, that his will or her will is swallowed up in the will of his or her master, Satan. But it is, because how do we know that? The word of God says so. You see that? We think, well, he's a good guy. Well, no, he's not. He's got a will that is swallowed up in his master. On the other hand, a believer will is swallowed up in the will of his master.

Before salvation produces work in the believer, his will was swallowed up in the will of Satan. All this sinful first Adam life is closed to us now, positionally. both for the future and resurrection and for the present in part that we have with Christ. One thing that Romans 6 teaches us is that we don't have to sin. Before you were saved, you had to sin. It was your master. And sinning isn't, you know, felonies that you're gonna go to prison for. Sin is a real simple thing.

It's missing the mark. missing the mark. What's the mark? The righteousness of God. But what chance does a man who's a slave to sin have of achieving the mark of the righteousness of God? He has no chance in and of himself. So Christ died and risen is the pattern for faith. His death is the principle of present deliverance from the reign of sin. It's one thing for us to know and understand that he died for me, which took care of the penalty I deserve for the sins I committed. It's a whole nother thing to understand that I died with him to sin and to the principle of sin and to the master of sin. I died to that. I only know that because God said so in Romans 6. Otherwise we wouldn't know it. We wouldn't know it. So we would be ignorant and we could say, yeah, I didn't know. But once you do know, then you realize I'm free to do what? Change masters.

Many believers, I hope you can see this. Many believers who have been convicted of the guilt of sin and have relied on the shed blood of Christ as putting away that guilt, have not yet, however, seen a state of sin as abject slavery. I might be a believer, saved by grace, knowing my sins have been forgiven, and still be a slave to sin. The strength of sin is as just real as its guilt. Guilt leads me and wooing leads me to Christ, but I can still feel guilty. Guilt is a powerful thing.

Are your sins gone or aren't they? God says they are. No creature can free himself from the bondage of sin. You can't do it. I don't care how many times you go to confession, or as Bob would say, pour holy water on it. It's a side joke. Sin brought to a fallen man the inability to do anything else but sin. Genesis 6, 5. You ever thought about this? I don't have to practice to be a sinner. I know how to do it. Those of you who have grandchildren or young children, do you have to teach, do they have to send them to sinning academy? No, they know. They know right away how to sin.

Why? Because they're in slavery to sin. Although the contrary to the conscience to reason and to desire for liberty, in spite of the terror inspired by the tragic examples about them, despite awful warnings and expectations of personal impending ruin, men continue in sin and in bondage. I mean, I can tell a non-believer you're gonna go to hell and boy, that's not gonna be fun there. It's gonna be really hot. And all of the stuff that, you know, the gnashing of teeth and weeping and all that, that doesn't scare them enough to save them.

So if you think about what Paul has been teaching here, how unreasonable is it, Paul argues, to think that a Christian would want to sin, even occasionally, It doesn't make any sense, biblically, because the bonds have been broken. His total depraved nature, it's bent, his will always is in that direction, but since God in salvation broke the power of that sin nature, and consequently released the believer's will from the control of the evil nature, and gave the believer the divine nature which at once inclined that liberated will towards God, the Christian will is to be swallowed up in the sweet will of God. When I realize that God has determined he doesn't want me to sin, I don't have to sin, and he's taken all the steps necessary to keep me from sinning, what's my responsibility there? Sometimes we think, well, now that I'm saved, I can relax a little bit morally.

I should be deathly afraid of that. If where sin abounded, grace still more exceeded. It was met by counter questions which prove that grace does not merely help motive against sin, but what does grace do? It delivers the believer from it by the most decisive and ultimate weapon. What is that?

Dead, death, death. So we're down to the choices. You get to obey one of two things. You get to obey either sin resulting in death or obedience resulting in righteousness. So what's it gonna be? I only have two choices. Both result in a master over me. Either one of them is a master. If I sin or if I obey. If I sin, I die. I separated from God. If I obey, I receive righteousness. God's righteousness, not mine.

Now, last thing I want to talk about is obedience because it's a really hard word. for us coming out of Adam and into Christ. So let's talk about what it means. To obey unto righteousness. It means the case turns on the words to whom you present yourself as a servant. So obedience really depends on who do you turn to for servanthood? Who's gonna be your master? The great fact of human responsibility is plainly written here. I have a responsibility, and so do you. We have a responsibility to choose.

God, who would have all men be saved, is always ready to have them present themselves to him, always. We're studying in John on Wednesday night that the Lord Jesus will not turn away anybody who comes to him, not anybody, but We have to remember that the obedience under righteousness in verse 16 is the obedience of faith, always. So what does God expect of me?

The most important thing he expects is that I believe him. I trust him. When he tells me something in his word, whether I feel it or not, whether I really understand it or not, I believe him. I'm sure you've done the same thing. You have said to the Lord when you saw something, okay, I believe you about that, but boy, I don't know what you mean. And he said, well, that's good. You believe me, I'll explain it to you. I'll show you.

So, Paul argues, that to suggest that a child of God desires to commit occasional sin would necessitate his becoming a slave of Satan again, which is an impossibility since it would involve a change of nature brought about by his loss of divine nature and his reacquisition of the Adamic sin nature. You've heard this before, I'm sure.

If I were to say, I'm losing my salvation or I lost my salvation. I would be thinking out of my own head, my own logic. But if I were to lose or you were to lose your salvation, you know what has to happen? Jesus would have to come back from heaven. He would have to go back in the grave. come alive on the other side, up on the cross, get down off the cross, and go all the way back to Bethlehem and leave the earth, and that never happened. My salvation is based on what He did to me, not only for me, but to me. If none of those, if I'm gonna lose my salvation, then that whole historical process has to be reversed.

You see that? It's the same way with our Christian life. You cannot, but with this life comes a huge responsibility. And that responsibility is that I believe what God tells me, not only what he's done for me, but what he's done to me and how important it is as we read God's word, And he says things to us that we just simply say, okay, I believe you. I believe you. That's what the obedience is. I believe you every time because I'm a servant and you're my master and whatever you tell me is okay.

My will is totally taken over by you and that's a good place to be. We Americans always want to be independent. We wanna live on the yellow line and we think I'm gonna go left or right. No, you're either in Christ or you're totally out of Him. We're in Him and so the responsibility we have to learn what it's like to be in Christ and just simply to obey Him is our obedience. Let's close.

Father, how careful we need to be, we know to study your word to understand it and to rest in it by faith. And we recognize that you have dwelt each one of us by your spirit, which is the power to live a life that's pleasing to you. And we're so thankful of the position you've put us in and the grace that you shower on us all the time. We pray in your son's precious name. Amen.