Law & Grace - Romans 6:14-23 Wages or a free gift

Good morning. Wayne, having read this partially expanded and explained, it gets a little wordy, but the idea is to get some things across in there that typically don't come through in the usual translations. And so we'll go through it in a little more detail here. We've also included the top last week's passage because, in fact, I'll be drawing from that as we move through this passage and putting these points together. One of the things that comes out as we look at this passage, and the ones we've looked at previously, is we get the picture from the Apostle Paul that we do not call the shots in our lives.

That essentially our position is not one of being in charge and in control, but a matter of committing control over to either the Lord or the sin nature. And of course, Scripture's call is for us to have the Lord be the one with whom we're having fellowship and depending. What we do, in fact, is decide whether we're living and walking in fellowship with the Lord entirely, or whether we are engaged with the sin nature entirely, 100%. There is no neutral zone. There is no gray scale. It's not a matter of, I'm walking about 20% in the spirit and about 80% in the sin nature or something like that. There's no mixture like that. It doesn't exist.

You have this table on page one and it kind of tables and shows the issues that come up in last week's passage and this one. And it shows the sin nature on one side and God on the other side. And from Romans 6, 12 through 23, we have these rather major issues in front of us.

The sin nature seeks to reign. And the sin nature was in charge in the believer. and the unbeliever, and was in charge of the unbeliever, and called all the shots, was in complete control. And now the sin nature, though it's a deposed monarch in the believer, continues to try to seek to reign, seek to rule and have authority.

We have in the other column there, God has a right to reign. We have that in brackets because it's not stated explicitly in this passage, although scripture makes that clear. The next thing we have there is, and we covered it in last week's passage, is the sin nature seeks to use us as military assets. Some of our translations will say instruments, but essentially it's military assets. If we as a believer are depending upon the sin nature and engaging the sin nature, the sin nature will seek to use us as military assets for the sin nature. We're actually picking sides. But the call of scripture is to present ourselves to God and to be used as military assets for the Lord.

That's a very sharp distinction that's put before us here in this passage. Similar to seeking to reign is seeking to have dominion. That's possessing the authority. That is, possessing the dominance. The sin nature seeks to have dominion. God has a right to have dominion. So what the Lord has a right to and what the sin nature seeks are an opposite. They're in opposition to one another.

We also have at the end of last week's passage in verse 14 and at the start of this week's passage in verse 15 the statement that we are not under the principle of law. That is, not under the law of Moses, not under a subset of the law of Moses, no man-made law, no law at all. We are not under law. We are not under any law.

But the sin nature loves the law. The sin nature loves the law because it either says, I can do it, or it says, no, I won't do it. Either way, the sin nature gravitates towards law. We are under the principle of grace. Completely under grace. Entirely under grace. No law whatsoever. full on, full out, pedal to the metal, mountains of grace, fountains of grace, an atmosphere of grace is what we breathe. All grace. Then this passage presents, we'll be a slave to the sin nature, resulting in death, if we choose to engage the sin nature, or we'll be a slave of righteousness, resulting in righteousness, if we are acting and living alive to the Lord. And finally, the last verse here, and one that we're going to address in more detail because it gets misunderstood.

The sin nature pays a wage, death, for the Christian. It's certainly death for the unbeliever, but even for the Christian who engages the sin nature, there is death. And we'll talk about what that means. But for the believer, the free gift of God is eternal life. Let's talk about this sin nature here.

Since the end of World War II, so about 1945, thereabouts, there's been a growing tendency among Christians to deny that believers have a sin nature at all. No sin nature is a common teaching among a number of Christians, and it's been a growing one among different groups.

There is a supplement that we have out there kind of showing the history of this teaching and some of the different variations on it. And it's on the cabinet to the right as you exit the room. So feel free to take advantage of that and let me know if we run out so I can get a copy to you. There are some really big problems, however, with this viewpoint. Let's touch on what some of those are.

Romans 5.12, which we started off with several weeks back, has the beginning of the use of this definite article, THE SIN, and it shows up repeatedly.

Here, for example, in Romans 5.12, and this is typically not brought out in our translations, entered into the world and death through the sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. The all sinned is the action of sinning, but the sin is what we refer to as the sin nature. The sin, this sin nature, this inclination to think and to act, seeks to reign, seeks to have dominion, seeks to use us as military assets, and seeks to enslave us.

The sin also pays a wage and is stimulated by law. This actually does things. It is not simply some vague principle of sin out there. This is the sin nature that even believers have, and it's associated with this body. The sin nature is associated with the present human body that we live in. That's why we still have it. One of the things we pointed out, and we had this diagram we used, and you have a copy of it there, we used a couple weeks back. One of the things we pointed out is the sin nature is still associated with this body.

The sin nature remains in the believer, but it is offline. That's probably the best way to put it. The sin nature is a deposed monarch. For the unbeliever, The sin nature was THE monarch, calling all the shots, in charge. For us as believers, the sin nature is still present, which is why Paul has to write about this. What do we do with this sin nature? He says, we are dead to. The sin nature is not dead, we are dead in relationship to it. That explains why God doesn't just end the sin nature, it's attached to this body. to get rid of the sin nature, he'd have to kill us. Can you imagine? Here's this guy, and all of a sudden he just disappears. Like this drawing, this picture you see here. It's just empty clothes sitting there.

Somebody else must have become a Christian. So the Lord leaves us in these human fleshly bodies because that's the only way He can have us still here. He wants to use us here. He wants us to be here and to carry out ministry. So that's why we still have the sin nature and Christians do have a sin nature. It's associated with this body. It has to be for us to be here. But, just because we say, here's the sin nature and here's God, they are opposite for sure, but they are not equal. The sin nature is terminal. When this body goes, the sin nature goes. God has condemned the sin nature in the flesh.

We'll get there in Romans 8. But God is not in the business of improving the sin nature. It can't get better. There's no fixing it. You ever heard, you can't fix stupid? You can't fix sin nature either. That's the way the sin nature is. It's not going to get better. It has that characteristic. It wants to do things apart from God. That's its nature.

Romans 6.11 told us that we must consider, count, and reckon.

It's an accounting term. that we are dead to the sin nature and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's the position we have. He tells us that we are to present ourselves to God rather than the sin nature, since the sin nature will use us as military assets. Present ourselves deliberately to God. You are to count and consider and reckon yourselves alive to God. That is essential.

And then present yourselves to God. so that the sin nature does not use us as military assets in the spiritual battle. From there, Paul makes a distinction between presenting ourselves to the sin nature and to God as slaves, and the spiritual outcome of each of those positions is spelled out. Each of those presentations, if you will. So we have this kind of summary chart here that we showed on page one of all the different main events that are brought forth and points that are brought forth in this passage. Let's look at this principle of law and principle of grace. It is critical that believers understand that we live under grace entirely. We live under a massive and amazing grace.

We do not need law. Law does not help. What we found out in chapter 5 is that the law only helps sin. The law does not help righteousness. Certainly the law that God gave is holy and righteous and good. The difficulty is in us. We lack the ability and instead the sin nature takes advantage of the law. Now we have there at the beginning of this passage that Wayne read for us.

What then? Shall we sin because we're not under law but under grace? May it never be. If you compare that starting couple of verses It's very similar to how the chapter started off. Romans 6, 1-3, that we studied previously, reads like this, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in the sin nature so that grace may increase? He asked that question because he'd previously stated that the sin nature abounds, but grace super abounds, so you can't out-sin grace.

But he says, may it never be. That logic does not follow. He says, how shall we who died in relationship to that sin nature still live in it? Or do you not know? He says, and then goes on with his argument. Here in this passage, he does similarly. He says, what then, and implying what shall we say then in there, shall we sin? So that's different, but similar.

Shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace? So grace, it is very important for us to recognize, grace is not a justification to either engage the sin nature nor to sin. Grace can't be twisted that way. Ever run into someone who feels like, oh, we've got to have some law, otherwise we'll go hog wild. They don't understand. They think somehow we need law as if that's going to help. It doesn't help. The law will help sin. We are under grace. He's emphatic here. Grace is not a justification to engage the sin nature or to justify sin. But that doesn't justify law either. Very important.

I would say most of Christendom does not understand this. They think, oh, we've got to get some laws in there. And we'll even make up some. And we'll take the Ten Commandments and we'll clip out one and adjust that one about the Sabbath because we don't like that. But we'll go and add tithing to it, right? So people are always coming up with some new laws.

When I was going to San Jose State in engineering school, I would go back and forth on the bus. And so I was frequently at the bus stop there at San Jose State. And one day this very nice elderly lady came up to me She's probably the age I am now anyway. This nice elderly lady came up to me and she at first was very pleasant and all of a sudden a very strange change came over her face.

And I could tell something really strange is happening here. She turned a corner in the conversation and she says, because people are worshiping on the wrong day. The Sabbath starts on Thursday. What? And anyway, so I couldn't wait for the bus to get there, because this lady was a nutcase. But anyway, I was glad when I got on the bus, but you know, she didn't stop. She just kept talking to me through the bus, you know, through the bus window, and she kept talking as the bus drove away, you know. It's on Thursday! It's on Thursday! People think, well, we've got to, you know, add these laws, adjust these laws, recognize the right laws.

No, we don't need any of them! We don't need any of them, not a one. Grace is all we need, but it's not a justification to engage the sin nature nor to sin. Paul's point here is not to say, but you got to have some laws. Paul's point is to say, no, we are not under law at all. Grace is sufficient. It just shouldn't be used as a twisted justification for the sin nature or to sin.

Now, how about this presenting? That comes up in last week's passage and this week's passage. At any moment, any moment, each one of us who is a believer is presenting ourselves to the sin nature or to God. And there isn't any grayscale, there isn't any halfway in between, there's no neutral zone. We're always acting from within one or the other. But the urging of God's Word is always to present ourselves to God. There is no contrary urging. It's always to present ourselves to God.

We are dead to that sin nature. God has taken the sin nature offline. And that presenting will result in our being used as military assets by the sin nature, if we present ourselves to the sin nature, or by God. That's the way this passage lays it out there. And we will be slaves to the sin nature, or we will be slaves to God, one or the other.

Now let's talk about the word obeying and obedience. This is an important one. A lot of Christians, when they are taught grace, say, well, obedience, that sounds legal. Well, no, let's take a look at it. Here's what it is. Most translations carry across the Greek word with some form of obey or obedience. That's what you typically see. And we have here the New American Standard for Romans 6 uses obedience a couple times. Obey once and obedient there. So some form of obey. But our expanded and explained version, we didn't do that. Why?

It's because the word that Paul used means to listen under. To listen and then place yourself under what you're hearing. That's what the Bible means by obey. And it's important to understand that two-part distinction. Because we hear obey and it just sounds like one thing.

But it's two parts and it starts with listening and it ends with placing ourselves under what we've listened. So we can obey grace teaching, listen and place ourselves under the grace, or we can obey legal teaching, listen and place ourselves under the law. So the obedience is not automatically legal, but it can be if we listen to law and put ourselves under it. But we can also, and scripture uses it this way, we can also obey, listen, and place ourselves under grace teaching. And that's what he's calling for here. You see this listening and placing yourself under several times here in verse 16 and 17. And that's what's translated some form of obey, obedience, or obedient in most of your English translations.

But it's an important insight for us and the reason is this. Paul wrote this listen under It starts with listening and ends with placing ourselves under what we hear. This is a key point. And the reason is because it's the listening that is the starting point.

If we listen to God and grace teaching and place ourselves under that grace teaching, then that's a good thing. But if we listen under to the sin nature's siren call, then we're in trouble. And it starts with listening. So don't listen to the sin nature.

That's what the urging is about there. It's the listening that gets us in trouble because then the next step is to place ourselves under. So what we listen to is the key insight and very important to draw out of this passage. By the way, the term obedience of faith is at the first chapter of Romans and in the last chapter.

It is grace teaching. but it is listening under and placing ourselves under the grace teaching. We are going to serve one, the sin nature, or the other, the Lord. There is no other way to do it. We are not in charge calling the shots. This passage conveys we're going to be slaves, either way, serving either the sin nature or serving God. You see, but the sin nature no longer has ownership of us. God does. God does. Because we have been bought by Christ. The price has been paid.

1 Corinthians 6.20 and also chapter 7, I think 7.23 also says the same thing. We've died in relationship to the sin nature, but the sin nature can still be engaged. Paul says there's no reason to do that. We will make ourselves slaves to the sin nature if we present ourselves to the sin nature. If we listen, place ourselves under, and present ourselves to that sin nature.

Well, going back a few years, Bob Dylan actually released an album called Slow Train Coming. And that was back in 1979, a little while back. And in that, he had a chorus to one song, Gotta Serve Somebody. And so I've taken the chorus and changed the words a little bit. Apologies to Bob Dylan, I guess.

So it goes like this, But you're gonna have to serve somebody. Yes, indeed, you're gonna have to serve somebody. Well, it will be the sin nature, or it will be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody. And that's really our position, isn't it? We can serve the sin nature or we can serve the Lord, but the selection is not arbitrary or equal. God isn't coming up to us and just say, pick one, right? But it is an important realization that as believers, we are going to be serving either the Lord or the sin nature. We don't have some place of, boy, I'm in charge. That doesn't happen.

We're going to have to serve somebody. Now we have lusts or the word of God. So the believer who listens to the lusts of the sin nature and then places himself under those lusts presents himself to the sin nature to be used as a military instrument and as a slave. That's the point here in last week's and this week's passage to the sin, the sin thing, the sin source.

As believers the only thing that makes spiritual sense in view of what has been revealed by God is to listen to what the Word of God teaches listen and place ourselves under that teaching so as to be military assets for God and to be God's slaves we are going to serve somebody now one of the other things that comes out of this passage three times in this passage Paul references death so we probably ought to take a good look at that So why is Paul talking about death so much when he's writing here to Christians? What does he mean when he writes about believers experiencing death? Don't we have eternal life? What's all this death talk about? Anyway, you may be as puzzled as the lady there on the screen. Let's talk about this.

In our position we do have eternal life, but in our condition And I could distinguish that with, in our daily condition, changes even moment by moment, if we present ourselves to the sin nature to be used as military assets for the sin nature, and enslaved by the sin nature, we are living then separate from God. That is experiencing death even though we have eternal life. We experience death.

Why? Because it's living separate from God and not independence upon Him. That's death. A Christian can live death. Separation from God. Not having fellowship with the Lord is separation. As we listen to and place ourselves under the lusts of the sin nature, the outcome is always death. That's why he keeps repeating death, death, death in this passage here. Separation from God and our daily condition and loss of fellowship.

It's not loss of salvation, it's loss of fellowship. That's the problem. It's not that we go, whoop, I'm outside of Christ now. I just got unseated from the heavenlies. We don't have a loss of salvation. We can, as Christians, have a loss of fellowship. That's the death that he's talking about.

We will be used as military assets for the sin nature and slaves to the sin nature when we're walking out of fellowship with the Lord. The outcome of presenting ourselves to the sin nature will also be lawlessness. And we need to talk about what does that mean, lawlessness? I thought if we're not under law, that's lawlessness? No. It's living unprincipled, an unprincipled life. That's lawlessness.

Presenting ourselves to God, the one to whom we are to be alive, the one to whom we have been made alive, will result in righteousness. That's Paul's emphatic point in this passage. Christ is the very definition of righteousness. As Paul writes, Christ our righteousness. He is the righteous one. The outcome from living out Christ's righteousness is our sanctification.

So what does that mean? Being increasingly set apart for God's holy purpose. This is spiritual growth. This is spiritual growth. How do we grow spiritually? By walking in fellowship with the Lord. As we present ourselves to God, we will experience that eternal life now. We'll have the experience of eternal life now as we walk in fellowship with the Lord.

Now, in Romans 6.23, the last verse in this passage, we have in the expanded and explained version, for the wages the sin nature pays, colon, death. But the free gift of God, colon, eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Now, why is it carried out this way? This verse is often applied to unbelievers. You ever hear that? It's applied to unbelievers, you know? The wages of sin is death, and it's told to unbelievers. But this is actually written to believers. It's thought of as the wages of sinning is death, and that's because the definite article isn't brought out. It is in fact the sin nature that it's talking about, not sinning, not the action of sinning. And it's often translated with the verb, is. But what I mean to tell you is, is isn't there. You got that? You know what I is talking about, right? Okay. For the wages of sin is death, that is is actually not present in the Greek. And neither is, but the free gift of God is eternal life. That is is not present there in the Greek either.

So, for the wages the sin nature pays, colon, death. but the free gift of the God, and that definite article is there, eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul is writing to believers about what happens when a believer presents himself to be used as military assets and to be enslaved by the sin nature And he left out the verb is, which is why we used a colon instead. But Paul is not trying to give some verse for unbelievers, he's talking to believers about the huge distinction between walking in dependence upon the sin nature, where you get paid death, and walking in dependence upon the Lord, which is based on the free gift of eternal life. And we have it in this slide here. You're going to have to work for death wages. If you want wages, you're going to have to work for them. If you want death, you're going to have to work for it. The wages of sin is death. But eternal life? Oh, that's absolutely free. That's absolutely free.

So the wages that the sin nature pays to believers is death, which is spiritual separation in our condition, loss of fellowship, The Lord can't have fellowship with us if what's happening is we're abiding in the sin nature. We're depending upon the sin nature, letting the sin nature call the shots. So we have in our condition, not in our salvation, but in our condition, loss of fellowship with the Lord. Death. When we engage the sin nature, We don't lose our position in Christ, but we do not enjoy the experience of eternal life right at that moment, at that time. As we present ourselves to God, we will, on the contrary, experience eternal life now. There's an insight here that goes back to the culture.

During the Roman Empire times, in which Paul lived and wrote, and he was writing, by the way, to the capital, capital city Christians there, Rome, the Roman soldiers worked for a wage. Unless one happened to be an officer, that wage was not terribly high. As a matter of fact, the wage that a Roman soldier was paid was about the same as a day laborer, an agricultural worker, during that time. So they weren't paid a lot.

So the people who would read this went, okay, the wages of sin, the wages the sin nature pays, death, those wages, death wages. When a new emperor came into power, however, in order to ensure the loyalty of his troops, he would give the soldiers a free money gift on top of their wages. Ah, now this is beginning to make some sense here. So the wages the sin nature pays death. If you want wages you're going to have to work for them. You'll get death regularly if you work for it every time.

But the free gift of God and God is the new ruler. The free gift of God is eternal life. That's free. Absolutely free. Doesn't cost a thing to the soldier or to you. A new ruler has, in fact, come into power in each believer and has given us a free gift, and that is eternal life. Absolutely free. You can't earn it. You can't even owe God for it. Not at all.

It's grace. It's amazing grace. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that as we look at this, It's crystal clear. It's crystal clear. The sin nature has no right to call the shots in our lives. It still will try to remind us of the way things were. It will still try to draw upon things that once drew us. But we have a new master. We have a life. the very life of Christ within us. And we have been placed into Christ.

And we thank you that that's absolutely free. And it's always free. It always will be. And it doesn't need any law. It needs absolute pure grace, which is what you provide. We thank you for that. Thank you for your very amazing grace. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.