Christ Life In Us Romans 6:19-20 Present Yourselves as Slaves to Righteousness

Well, good morning. Well, today we're going to do some review. It was great that Miles, in our class at Sunday School in Galatians, he went back and reviewed, and I thought, boy, that's always, that's very valuable to do that. So I decided, because we had kind of missed a week, I would kind of go back and kind of look again at where we're at in Chapter 6. And I borrowed the, what's interesting is that you start studying, when you study for, do a message. If you look over, we look over people that we kind of agree with, and you look over the the Newell's and the Merriman's, the Malloy's, the 3M's, and this phrase kind of comes up, I think it started with Wiest, about the mechanics of the believer's Christian life. He kind of encapsulated chapter 6 as being, we're talking about the mechanics of the Christian life, which I think is pretty accurate. So, and we, and so actually it was like, I kind of see three sections, which we're gonna get, delve into here shortly. One through 10, 11 through 13, and 14 through 22. And then actually 23 kind of sums everything up.

So you could say about mechanics that it's God's inner working in a believer's life. That's what's happening. Paul is describing how God desires to operate in the Christian's life. And it's based upon the fact that Christ was the sinner's substitute, and so much more than that. That's what many people kind of stop at. He's only our substitute, but He's so much more. Our co-death with Him on the cross, He separated us from our sin nature, and we have His very life.

So those are kind of the key overview statements you might make. Then I've used this chart before, but I'm going to add another line or two and make it even more filled up. So it's basically based upon going back to chapter one. So chapter one through the first five chapters, very typical of Paul, he presents positional truths about the believer. You know, who is a believer? You know, we could say he's seated in the heavenly places. These are called positional truths. And you could list several of these. I borrowed some from my brother Hal Malloy.

So you can say, actually these all occur in the first five chapters. I would say the first five chapters of Romans don't have as many as some other chapters like in Ephesians. There's a ton of positional truths there. But this has a fair amount which kind of help us to move from the first five chapters to the rest of the book.

So we start free from the law, redeemed by his blood, peace with God, access and standing in His grace, God's love gushed out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. I only took the first little parts of these sometimes to fit them in here. The Holy Spirit is given to us. He indwells us. Then lastly, the super abundance of His grace, where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.

Yeah, it's always kind of a challenge sometimes, that little, with the newer version, this is kind of an aside. This is some of the struggle with building new charts. Unfortunately, with that little symbol there, it's great for doing stuff, but it does kind of obscure some text, and so you have to kind of be cognizant of that. Okay, so that's kind of the positional trues. So we have four more categories here. So we move into what's been called the identification trues.

These are truths that are true of every single believer, whether he realizes them or not. They're about what has happened to us as a result of our faith in Jesus Christ. So when we put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we are identified with him, and we're identified with all his work on the cross. So what did Christ accomplish on the cross? And we find out that we shared in everything When he went to the cross, we went to the cross. When he died, we died.

When he rose, we rose. And it seems almost ethereal, but it's true. And those are going to be the foundation for the Christian life. So just a few of them here, the key ones. We've been identified with Christ in his death, in his burial, and his resurrection. As I said, you could say, We died with Christ. We are buried with Christ. We rose with Christ. And that's going to be our foundation for living the Christian life.

And what's sad is so many people don't realize that's the foundation. They have some other foundation. They think, well, he paid for my sins, which is wonderful, which is marvelous. But that's part of the picture, but that's not the whole picture. What's the picture for today? Today is the 28th of December. 2025. What's to be true right now and is to be our identification with our Savior, that's what's to be at the forefront of our minds. So a couple more here, key ones.

The body of sin, which is our body, containing our sin nature, has been taken offline, has been rendered inoperative, is kind of the word, maybe too big a word. Taken offline, And we find out that we are been freed from our sin nature. It's still there, but we're now free of it. And then based upon that, we move on to 11 through 13. And we start off with what I've called the application of these truths. We started with positional truths. We moved to identification truths. And now we go to we apply these truths.

So the first thing, the first thing sort of out of the box, so to speak, is that this wonderful verse that talks about We're to reckon or count upon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. We have his very life, and we're to be counting upon that.

You know, I talked about these identification truths. They're not just to be things we put on the shelf and say, oh, by the way, did you know, Charlie, that I died with Christ, I was buried with Christ, and resurrected with Christ. And pretty soon they'll say, well, I think you need to go to the hospital, maybe. Maybe you have some issues here. But that's to be our, we're to be counting upon those.

And that's the reckoning part. Then following in 12 and 13, he gives some kind of negative commands, you might say. He says, he's assuming that this is going on. He says, stop letting sin or the sin nature reign in your mortal body. And he says, stop putting your members at the disposal of the sinful nature. So he starts off with our, kind of game plan are counting upon these wonderful truths and he says, oh, by the way, you realize that sin is raining in your body. You want to stop doing that and you want to stop putting your members at the disposal of the sinful nature.

And then what's going to happen is we're going to find out, well, how do we do that? And he's already told us that in the reckoning part, but now he's going to give us some more instructions about that. He's going to talk about how we're to interact with that. And so we're gonna see that in what I'm calling the, we are now under grace section.

So starting in 14, he's gonna, and actually this is something I only realized and we had a chance to go through these verses in a kind of a short time period. For Holly Hills, this is unheard of, right? You go through the same verses, maybe not for Mike, but for me at least, go through the same set of verses probably within a year or so. So I have my notes from a year ago. I go back and I say, oh, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Look at this, Roger. Look at this.

In two verses, he says, he makes the same statement twice. And Mike had picked up on this too. In 14 and 15, he says, for sin shall not be master over you. And here's the reason. For you're not under law, but under grace. He says that twice. Wow, could that be kind of the topic of the remainder of this chapter? Could that be kind of the focus of where he's going? I think it is.

And what we're gonna see is, as amazing as this might say, if I told you, in your Christian life, don't worry about the rules. Now, I'm not proposing this for your family life. You have rules in your household, I hope. You know, you have rules. But rules are not to be the way we operate in the Christian life.

Because God realizes that we will fail. And the nation of Israel is a prime example of that. So he says, the way you're going to be successful in your Christian life is that my grace will be sufficient for you. Grace will control your sin nature, as strange as it may seem. And one of the key verses here I found, and this is from, Macaulay kind of pointed this out, is in Titus 11 and 12. It kind of shows the two aspects of God's grace.

The first aspect I think we all understand. We have songs about this, right? For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men." Right? You know, we have songs about amazing grace, right? But the next part of this is, I find just really exciting. Instructing us. So grace is going to not only save us, it's going to give us instructions. It's going to tell us, this is what I want you to do. This is how to live the Christian life. And it's not by rules, it's by my grace and your faith. So it says, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in this present age. So here we have, this is a little bit of the first part, but here we have Chapter 6 in three areas, if you will.

And we've been teaching in, we got, two weeks ago when Mike taught, he taught in 17 and 18. So we're going to go back and review that. We're going to look at, actually I'm going to do an overview of 17 through 22. Then I want to go back and look a little bit at 17 and 18 again. So there's some great things there. Let me just take a quick sip here before we start. Okay, so, and this overview is from Chester McCauley, which we use quite a bit sometimes. Okay, so here we go. So I kind of have three sections here, 17 and 18.

Chester points out, you could think about this as a transformation. Describes a transformation in the believer under grace of his relationship. And you find that that transformation, and we taught this several times before, maybe a month or so ago, back to 616, the believer's transformation has taken place.

It's based on this principle. you are slaves to the one you obey. So Paul's going to go through a lot of verses to talk about, he's going to talk about your slavery before you were a believer. You were a slave, you were under slavery, maybe you didn't realize that. Because in America, in Canada, places, we're all free, right? This is the Western world. We're all free. We can do what we want, right? Really? Okay.

So, Paul's going to show us there are three aspects of this, you are slaves, the one you obey. First of all, the believer's relationship. Secondly, the believer's conduct. There's a transformational point out about the believer's conduct. And then thirdly, about the believer's benefits or literally the believer's fruit, his fruit like the fruit of the spirit, you could think of that. So we have the believer's relationship has been transformed, his conduct has been transformed, and his benefits or fruit has been transformed.

So we're going to go back and review 17 and 18, and then we're going to cover 19 and 20 today. Then next week we're going to go to 21 and 22. The last verse, Miles is going to cover that. He has a tremendous verse at the end. OK, so here we go. So now another overview, overview of overviews, right? So here's an overview of 17 and 18. So here we go. So a couple weeks ago, we saw the three transformations. So 17 and 18 describe this relationship transformation.

And basically, at the core, it's a relationship We work under the power of the sin nature, now we change under God's righteousness. The believer's relationship to the sin nature versus his relationship to God's righteousness. So the idea is that you once were versus we were now. You once were under the power of the sin nature, we now are under the power of God's righteousness. And the verse says, you were slaves to sin, versus you became slaves of righteousness. And they're based upon the wonderful truths we learned back in 613, I mean 6.3 through 10, about us being separated from our sin nature and so on.

Okay, so let's get into it here. And Mike covered these really well the last time, but I just wanted to add a few more points here. So it starts off, but thanks be to God, So Paul has used this term many times in his writings. And one of the cases is where he has in 2 Corinthians, he says, but thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ. So he's thanking God for what he's accomplished.

So he starts with that verse in this way. That, though you were in this past time, you're in this past condition, continuously in this past time, a slave of the sin, or the sin nature. So this is the negative side, if you will. Most of these verses are divided between, he presents a negative first, you were here, but now you're here. So he starts off on the negative side. Slaves is the word doulos, the one given over to the will of another. And it identifies believers in past time, and it will actually identify us as believers in the present time too, but under a different master.

You had no choice as an unbeliever. So this is where you were, as an unbeliever, living your life, even though you may not have realized it, and you were under the power, or your master was your sin nature. Then, something happened to you. You obeyed, from the heart.

And this is one of these concepts that maybe you're familiar with this, maybe you're not, but in scripture, If I ask you, did your mother ever say, you had done something maybe not the best when you were a child, and she said, I want you to obey me right now. I think my mom may have said that. I'm not sure. And I think it's very proper for her to say that. But that's not the concept here. In fact, it's a totally different concept. It's not that kind of concept. The idea of obeying here is not, I'm going to obey whether I like it or not. I'm obeying on the outside, but my insides, I don't want to obey. You're not struggling with yourself.

This is, you're listening under. You're listening to what God has said, and you say, wow, you're right, God. I am a sinner. I know you're right. And you're agreeing with God. You're obeying. And the obeying concept here is you're listening under. You're hearing what he has to say. Not you're gritting your teeth, and you're not getting enough. He's not commanding you. This obeying is something that you're doing because you know what He says is right.

And this was an event. This is speaking of our salvation. You obeyed from the heart. And that's that cool term. It has this little small little preposition called ek. And it was translated from here. It was out from the heart. You obeyed out from your heart. And the heart is the center of who you are.

In Romans 10.10 it says with a heart A person believes. So you listen under God's word and you believe. You trusted in what he said. That described who you were. And you said, I agree with you, Lord. I'm a sinner. I need your grace. I need to be saved. Okay, well something happened. And this verse kind of reveals, it's like it's opening the door. It's opening the window on another part of God's marvelous grace and how he saved us.

It says, to a form of teaching, And actually I'm using a translation you probably don't have. Merriman took the original and changed it a slight bit, didn't change the original. He changed the translation from the original a little bit. But I think it's more accurate.

You obeyed from the heart the form of teaching. And form of teaching could be, you could think of this as body of truth. You could think of it as body of doctrine. So what's going on here, let me just give you the next bullet here before we go. So here's the flow.

You obeyed from the heart, you listened under to what God said, to a form of teaching or a body of truth that was delivered to you. So salvation is kind of incredible. We are to be believing, but God does the rest. So when we believe, he delivers us to a body of truth. And you say, wow, it sounds kind of strange.

You're being delivered to his truths, to what he wants you to understand. The idea is you were delivered over to the body of truth, and God did it. So when you believed, you did your part, and he delivered you over to this body of truth, passive voice. So the big question is, what's this body of truth?

And we'll answer that shortly here. But I think a parallel verse is, kind of shows the same kind of idea. Very familiar verse, for by grace you have been saved. through faith, not of yourself, it's a gift of God. So it's important in this verse to always remember that, so what's the gift? The gift is salvation. Read very carefully, it's salvation is a gift. You provide your faith, God provides your marvelous, marvelous salvation. Very much the same picture we have here. You obeyed from the heart to this body of truth and you were delivered into which you were delivered. Okay, so now, I want to kind of get down to what is this body of truth or what is this form of teaching?

So our brother Merriman had some observations here. So one important thing, let me go back here, is that, and Margaret will appreciate this, the you here is y'all. Y'all hear that? Y'all, y'all? That's more than one of you. Y'all is more than one. So, in this verse it says, you, y'all, obeyed. It's talking about all believers. That's pretty important here. So Mariam picks up on that. Every believer has been delivered into the body of truth. There's none that have not been delivered. Every single one. You maybe didn't realize it. I didn't realize it. So, anyway.

And what's interesting is this body of truth of this doctrine, sometimes it's called, You know, man tries to make up his own rules, and even as we learned in Galatians this morning, man latches on and tries to obey God's holy and righteous law, but he can't do it. And God realized that.

So, we can't have a system that we've created By us obeying a set of laws that can please God, it's just not gonna work that way. And that's the difference between law and grace. Law is man's effort, grace is God's effort. So under the law of Israel, under the Mosaic law, which you could call the body of truth, was delivered to them externally, but they couldn't obey it. They couldn't live up to it. And that's why Christ had to come. But we, we've been delivered to this body of truth when we believed And by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can obey this body of truth. I like what Merriman says here.

The body of truth is basically the doctrine of grace. It's all of God's graciousness toward man. It's all of His grace truths. I was thinking about that. That one chart that I had that showed the positional truths, identification truths, and so on, and the application. That's all of God's grace.

God gave us these wonderful truths that we are to believe, we're to listen under. As we listen under, that's what that body of truth is about. That's what we've been delivered over to. His body of truth, the doctrine of grace. Just a marvelous, marvelous thing.

So John 1.17 says, For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. So hopefully that wasn't too heavy for you there. So then verse 18 kind of finishes this little section up. It says, having been freed from sin, you were freed from the sin nature when you were delivered over to the body of truth. So the question is, one of the questions here is, what is freedom? So I have a little quiz for you here. How many people were alive? Okay.

In the 60s and 70s, back in the ancient days, before many people's birth here in this room, there was a song called Me and Bobby McGee. Has anybody heard of that song? Raise your hand. Me and Bobby McGee. Did you realize the author of that defined what freedom was? Can anybody quote it? It's a catchy song. You don't have to. Okay, I'll quote it for you.

So here's a theological fact, a non-theological fact. So the song Me and Bobby McGee actually gives the definition of freedom. Here's the definition of freedom from the 60s and 70s. Freedom is just another word, listen carefully, for nothing left to lose. I'll say it again. Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

I've got to think about that for a while. I'm not sure I understand it. Okay, so that's what that person thinks is freedom. Well, forget that. That's not freedom. Well, they lost it. They thought, I lost my freedom. Okay, the problem is you never had it. So, okay, freedom. Freedom is, amazingly, is not doing what you please. From God's Word, speaking from God's Word. Freedom is not doing what you please. From the Bible, freedom is a change of masters. And it's because people don't realize, as unbelievers, you're in slavery. They won't admit to it. They'll never admit to it, because they don't understand it. But as believers, we can see that.

Before you're saved, you're under the mastery of sin. You change masters when you believe. Freedom is being freed from the mastery of my sin nature. That's such a wonderful thing. You haven't lost anything. You never had it. So, anyway. Okay. So, freedom is being freed from the mastery of my sin nature. And from that, so you've been freed from the sin nature and you become a slave. You change masters to righteousness.

It's a marvelous, marvelous thing. We are enslaved to the kind of righteousness that God, that pleases God. And two things, this is pretty good by Macaulay. Two ideas are kind of in view here in scripture about the believer and his servanthood. You have freedom and slavery. We're free, but we're free to serve our master. And our master is holy, righteous, and just. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. We have freedom and slavery, and they don't conflict with one another.

Okay, so that was a review. I'm tired. Anyway, and Mike got me when he started on this. He did a great message and I built upon that. Okay, so here's today's verses. Kind of a very similar pattern, but we're going to see a little different aspect here. Okay, today's verses.

I'm 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 regards to righteousness."

So, this is the idea that we're, this is what, you know, we talk about living under grace, living in the sphere of grace. with words is going to show us, he's going to instruct us about God's grace. He's giving us instructions. God's grace is instructing us in these verses. He's showing us what that looks like. It's not obeying a set of rules. He's showing us, you used to be this, and now you're this. You used to be that, and now you're this. And that's instruction in God's grace.

Okay, so let's go on. Okay, presenting your members as slaves. Okay? So what are your members? The Greek definition is melos is the word, members of the body, including the mind. So we have our eyes, we have our ears, mouth, hands, feet, and mind. And who remembers a song that goes along with this? Come on, guys. You got it. Oh, be careful. Be careful. You know, it's a catchy little song, right? Maybe, you know, oh, be careful little eyes what you see. or be careful of your ears, what you hear, and so on. I'm not quite sure how scriptural that is, but it's not a bad song, but let's see what God has to say about this.

Okay, so also, Zodiaty has the members of the body as a seat of the desires and passions. So everything we have in our body comes out in some ways, what we hear, what we see, how we walk, what our minds think, so it's all wrapped up and that's how we live our lives and how our members, and those are the way we show our slavery, either to sin or to righteousness.

Okay, so let's go on. So here's kind of the overview of this part. So now we're talking about our conduct. We're gonna, Paul's telling us about, you know, as a believer, you've been transformed in your conduct. That's what he's talking about. You once did this, You want what you did once versus what you do now is the idea. You were slaves to impurity, et cetera. Now you're slaves to righteousness. So the pre-salvation and post-salvation have similarities. They both, I mentioned before, they both have slavery and freedom, and they're not in conflict.

Okay, so let's go on. So he starts off with the idea that I'm speaking to you in human terms, And we're going to see why he wants to do that, I think, here. He's using illustration drawn from human affairs because of the weakness of your flesh. And so it's a reason for him. He's doing that. The weakness is inability.

Usually, in context here, it's going to be some moral weakness you have of the flesh, of the sin nature. So what we find is, you know, and we read these all the time, when we read 6.1, and 615, I think we see a picture of some of this weakness. Just the very question kind of indicates, and Paul actually proposes a question, but it's because of the listeners or his hearers, what they might say, what they did say.

So he says, are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? If you think about that, that's not a very smart question. You're saying, well, I can sin. If you realize that sins are a front to God, it's who he is, and you realize that sin, the sin nature, especially, it's a whole reason for your problem, to ask that question is kind of crazy. And there's another question, shall we sin because we're not under law but under grace? So both these questions, I think, kind of show the weakness of man's flesh, that you say, I can do more sinning, and somehow that's gonna be okay. And Christ had to die for every sin that ever was committed. So both those questions seem to point out man's weakness.

Okay, so let's go on. So this is the B part of the verse. For just as, we're going to do another comparison again, for just as you placed, so you're sitting before something, you placed your ears, your eyes, your mouth, and so on, and you did this over, the verb tense is over and over again, your members as slaves at the disposal of, and we're going to see that shortly, it's kind of a downward spiral, if you will. Again, slaves is the word doulos, the master to whom you serve, you're bound by him, and it's before salvation, you had no choice. So here's what you did.

You placed your members at the disposal of uncleanliness, that's this idea of moral impurity, lewdness, unrestrained, Actually, it shows up in the deeds of the flesh as impurity. And then you kind of move down, you start with uncleanness, and then you go to lawlessness. It's more than just being the absence of law, but it's a violation of the law. And then, you're not satisfied there, you go to resulting in further lawlessness.

Actually, we're going to see this is going to help us really when we see the comparison with the believer's life. Uncleanness, lawlessness, further lawlessness. You're going in a downward step. We're going to see the Christian life is to be an upward step. We're going to see that shortly here. And then here's in 1 John 3, verse 4, it says, everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.

So that's where you came from, so to speak. And actually, I'm not going to do a whole lot with this one. Let me just go through. So this one just kind of, we just kind of had some points I wanted to just kind of show. Again, he talks about the slavery of uncleanness and lawlessness. So his first point is, the word spoken of slave is one who's been swallowed up in his master's will. He kind of already talked about that a little bit. The word refers to a slave who's devoted to the interests of his master to the extent that he disregards his own interests.

And then here's a verse that just describes where we came from. So the bottom line here is, Paul is trying to show us this comparison, and we're to learn something from that. So the challenge in my mind, I say, what in the world can I possibly learn from my going deeper and deeper into sin? How does that help me learn more about my life in Christ?

So keep that in mind. Okay, so then the third part of this verse is, thus now, so here's the contrast, here's the positive side, thus now you place Same kind of idea. You're placing your members, your members as slaves. Same kind of picture. Again, you're placing them at the disposal of, and you're doing it over and over and over again. But this time, at the disposal of righteousness. And that's going to have a result. This is the first part. This is God's attribute. He's holy, righteous, and just.

And I saw a parallel here to Romans 12.1. I urge you to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship." So they both have presenting in both cases, and it's over and over again. Even though Mike and I don't always agree about the verb tense there. Anyway. Talk with me. If you want to hear more out there, you can talk to us.

Okay, so the result of that is sanctification. The positive side, you now, in contrast, you place your members at the disposal of righteousness, resulting in sanctification. So, sanctification sounds like a scary word. The idea is growing in grace and the knowledge of Him. In short, moment by moment, in sanctification, you are being delivered from the power of your sin nature, day by day, moment by moment. Okay. Okay, so then this verse is interesting. Rather than having, he goes back to a negative if you will. He kind of tells you where you were.

He says, for when, speaking of the believer's past, we have two aspects of you were. You were continually in this state prior to your salvation, slaves of sin. He must say this, slaves of sin, maybe five or six times through the course of all the years. You were a slave of sin. His point is, look how bad off you were. You were a slave of sin. And look where you are now. You were a slave of sin. He was a doulos, under the control of the damning nature, the sin nature.

But what he's gonna point here, here's a, but this is kind of the flip, he flipped it around. You were free in regards to righteousness. So think carefully, if you were a slave to your sin nature, you could not have any righteousness. So he kind of says that kind of in a interesting way. You were those who were continually free with respect, had no relationship to righteousness.

And I just felt this verse in Isaiah kind of speaks to that. All our righteous deeds are like filthy garments. Okay, so just a summary thought here. I found a new top for this. Andrew sent me one, I didn't like his. I found this guy looking over the ocean looked kind of cool, so. Anyway, okay, so here's final thoughts. Today, these are mine. So I want to go kind of the, it was that, it was this.

You are now placing your members, by faith, at the disposal of God over and over and over again. That's your Christian life. Day in, day out, you're doing that, you're walking, walking in the spirit. Before, you let sin reign as king in your body and obeyed his lust, resulting in more lust.

Now, you're beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. As an unbeliever, you went from one depth of sin to another depth of sin to a downward, downward thing. But now, but now we're going from one state of glory to another state of glory.

Pretty stark contrast. You were here, you were there, and that's God's instruction. You think, well, boy, it seems like, isn't that a hard way to say that? But that's how God wants to show the gloriousness of his righteousness, what you have in our Savior. You were here, and now you're here. And we're gonna continue with that thought next week. Okay, so let's just close.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much. Thank you for the blessings we have in the Lord Jesus. Thank you for your marvelous word, how it tells us we've been saved by grace, but your grace doesn't stop. Your grace instructs us through every line of scripture, instructs us how to live the life that pleases you. We ask this in Christ's name, amen.