Freedom from the Sinful Nature

become free from the grip of sin on our lives. He uses two illustrations here that go together. I talked about one of them last week, but I'd like to go back and talk about that one and connect it with what takes place in the beginning of chapter 7. You know by now, I suppose, that the chapter designations in the Scripture were not made by the writers of these books. They were just people who sometimes later sat down and tried to figure out where these divisions came, and we don't have any indication that they were divinely inspired. They were just like any kind of human effort. So I think the first part of chapter 7 and the last part of chapter 6 are two ways of looking at what happens to a person when they enter the kingdom of heaven. What happens whenever you make a commitment to give your life to Christ and you're transformed? What is it like? And Paul is saying, verse 19 of chapter 6, I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves, just as you used to offer parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. Paul sort of apologizes in the beginning of this because he's talking about a human way of looking at things. I apologize in advance for the fact that I'm using human illustrations rather than spiritual or divine illustrations. It's the only way I can think of to help you understand the analogy that I want to present. Now, what I'm talking about is, you used to offer parts of your body in slavery to impurity. Now, he uses the word offer as if this person is making himself a choice about what he wants to do. And I think that this kind of language helps me to see, at least, that Paul is not seeing life as predetermined for us. It's not that we're placed in this world and we're determined already to be sinners or determined already to go to heaven. He says, you offer yourself to sin. You make a voluntary choice to surrender your life to the control of Satan's temptation in your life. So you give yourself to this. It's an act on your part to surrender and submit. He's already talked about this in chapter 3 where he talks about even pagans and even Jews, all of us have come to the place where we choose the way of wickedness over the way of righteousness. Now, these parts of our body is how sin works itself out in the tongue, in the eye, in the hand, in our lifestyle. Sin is a physical expression of the spirit of the heart. And so it works itself out in activities and actions and attitudes that a person has. So you've surrendered yourself to control of sin. It takes control of the elements of your body and there it works its way out into actions. You offer parts of your body in slavery to impurity. So you become a slave. Now, he talks about this previously, the issue of slavery and the comparison he wants to make with it. But remember, slavery is much different than a person who is an employee. An employee works for you eight hours and then he's off. A slave is a 24-hour-a-day job. Once you're a slave to a person, whatever they want you to do, whenever it is, you're under their control. So he describes sin as a permanent hold on your life. And once you choose to offer your body, it means temptations come and you say, OK, I'll do it. Whatever it is, whether it's your tongue, your mind, your hand, or whatever it is, when you say, OK, I'll do it, then sin takes control of you. Wickedness takes control of you. Lawlessness takes control of you and begins to control your actions and behavior. So you get used, you get this ever-increasing wickedness in our lives. All of you know how this works. All of us have experienced it. The first time you did something, you really knew it was wrong, whatever it was. You stole something as a kid, or if you told a lie, or whatever it was, it was easier the next time to do, and easier the next time to do, until you get to the place where you think nothing really bad is going to happen. All of us, and I think I've heard people, so many people say this, we say to the person, you know, who's a political figure, who's done something, you know, immoral, how do they think they'd get away with it? Where you see some national figure who gets caught in some kind of a homosexual behavior, immoral action, or taking money for bribes, and you look at that and you say, how do they not realize that they can't get away with this kind of thing? Sin deadens us to the possibility of exposure, and it takes increasing control of our lives. And when it begins to take a hold of us, it gets worse, and worse, and worse, and more dangerous, and more dangerous, and more risky. When sin gets a hold of us, it's an, he calls it here, an ever-increasing wickedness or lawlessness. It means that there are no boundaries for that person. They've stepped over the boundary a little bit, and then they begin to step over bigger boundaries, and greater boundaries, and farther boundaries, until finally there is no law for them. There is no right or wrong for them. They are just lawless. We're increasingly seeing, and I don't know in this country if it's because we just learn more about these things, but we're increasingly seeing the most terrible wicked things that people do. I saw an article on the internet the other day about some woman that was involved in helping a child, a five-year-old child engaged in pornography, and they arrested her. And you see people that have terrible things that happen. It seems like they have no idea that there are boundaries between right and wrong. And the further people drift away from the Word of God, and letting the Word of God come to their mind and their heart, the less of these boundaries they have in their life. He describes this as the nature of what sin does to a person. You can't just dabble in sin and draw back, for once you touch it, it begins to control you, and you become more and more passioned and controlled by it, until you do things that sooner or later other people look at your life and say, how did they ever think they'd get away with this? It blinds us to the reality, because what happens to us is now we're controlled by it. It now controls our mind, our will, and our emotions. And that's what Paul is warning here. You offer your body to slavery, to impurity, and you offer it to ever, ever increasing wickedness, so that the person is enslaved in this and unable to be set free. Now, you look around you at the people you know, who are nice, who are good people, everybody likes them. If their lives are not devoted to Christ, I'll tell you that inside of them, sin has a tremendous hold on them. I don't mean to say that people in church, he doesn't have that, but he talks about that in just a moment as a fact that it's no longer controlling our destiny. But however nice the people are you see, however kind they are, however good they are, inside of them, Satan has control, an ever increasing control, so that their life is becoming more and more imprisoned by the power of sin and the control of Satan. You may not see it on the outside, but it's there. On the authority of Scripture, we know it's there. We can look at them, and from the outside, because they're nice and kind and pleasant to us, we say, well, they must be good Christians. But if they have not surrendered themselves to Christ, this infectious nature of sin is inside of them. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and until you come to the place where you make a change in that, this wickedness continues to control you. So he says, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness, leading to holiness. You have an option to control who is your owner. You're going to be a slave to sin, or you're going to be a slave to God. I know that because Bob Dylan wrote a song about it. You're going to love somebody. You're going to serve somebody, he said. Either you serve the righteous, or you serve Satan. You serve the wicked, or you serve the good. You're going to be a slave to something. That's biblical teaching. Your only option is the source of your slavery. That's the only choice that you have. Now, he says, you offer yourself as a slave to righteousness. Now, righteousness here he's talking about as an expression or a way of talking about God, who is the author and source of all righteousness. And so he could have said, you offer yourself not to sin, but to God. He could have said Satan and God, but here he chooses to use what Satan does, that is the power of sin, and what comes out of God, the power of righteousness, instead of identifying each of the characters. So, you have a choice. This is a very important thing, I think, to see, because it's one of the ways by which Baptists have always read the Scriptures to describe what happens to us. It's not that you're set free from the power of sin by baptism at birth. You're set free by the power of sin when you make a choice to offer yourself to God in redemption and salvation. You see, it's the choice that you make. He says, so now offer the members of your body in slavery to righteousness. Now, he started this chapter talking about baptism, about being baptized into Christ, and we're baptized into His death as we're buried with Him through baptism. We're raised into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might live this new life. He's talking about baptism as being an adult event in which someone has the awareness to say, I understand my life is controlled by sin. I understand my life ought to be controlled by God and His righteousness. And so we offer ourselves to God as a slave to His control, promising to Him that He would control 100% of our lives. Remember, the imagery of slavery is of total submission and control. You can't offer yourself partly to God and expect to be a slave of His. That's not what a slave is. You can't offer yourself partially to God. That's not what a slave is. You offer yourself completely, 24 hours a day, everything in your life, completely and wholly. It's the only way that you can really enter the kingdom of heaven. And when people sometimes go through the motions of some religious experience that come forward to confess their faith, to be baptized, and they have not made this yielding completely to God, they are no longer, they're not outside of the realm of slavery to unrighteousness or lawlessness. There has to be this complete, total submission and surrender to God's authority and control. And in our culture, it's so easy for people to come and say, yeah, I want to be a Christian, I want to join the church, without that submission and surrender completely to Him. Paul's warning to us is, you must become a slave to God, a slave to righteousness. So you offer your body, all your members in slavery to God and His righteousness. This, in turn, will lead you to holiness. Now, holiness is simply a description of something that is set apart for the purpose and use of God. The temple was holy because it was to be used only for what God did. A person is holy when he's used only for the purpose of God. Holiness does not necessarily describe being sinless. It describes the intent and purpose of the object. And so the Bible uses all kinds of ways of describing holiness. A place can be holy. Ground can be holy. An action can be holy. If it is completely surrendered and submitted to the authority and control and purpose of God. So a slave then, who comes under the authority of God, is growing now in righteousness and holiness. That means their life is becoming more and more controlled by Christ. Just as sin comes into our lives and becomes more and more controlling of all of our mind, will, and behavior, so when God comes into our life, there is the growing process where we become more and more controlled by God. Our life becomes more and more submitted and surrendered to Him. This is what sometimes in theology is called sanctification. Being made holy or being made saintly. So that whether you're a slave of sin, you become more and more sinful, or a slave to God and righteous, you become more and more holy. There is a growth either in holiness or in righteousness. There is a growth in righteousness or lawlessness. And you have the choice. You can offer your body one way or the other. That choice is indeed yours. I think this is a powerful testimony that the predestination of a person's soul before they're born is not taught in Scripture. There is a choice that you have to make. You offer yourself, and that choice is yours to begin to make. And that's what Paul is talking about here. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. And what it means to be under the control of sin is to not let God control your life. So that if God does not control your life, you're free from His control and you do whatever you want to do. You live the way you want to live. You make choices you want to make. That's the very nature of this slavery to sin. You're free from that control. Now, Paul goes back to remind them. When you were in that condition, what good did it do you? What benefit did it reap you at the time from the things you're now ashamed of? If you look back on your life before you came to Christ and you see your life then, you see that it was a life of lawlessness. It was a life without rules. It was a life leading to disaster. Now, remember that. Whenever you yielded your life to that sin, the disaster came to you. All of those things result in death. Not only physical death, but spiritual death. And so he starts in verse 22. But now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. Under the control of Christ, this slavery, not partial, but this slavery, complete slavery, means that your life has changed. You become slaves of God. Now, he changes here. Instead of slaves of righteousness, he spells it out clearly. You're now slaves of God. And the benefit means that you're becoming more and more a part of God's life and more and more directed toward what He has. And the result is eternal life. Now, the phrase eternal life in the Bible does not refer to endless days only. That's included in the concept. It's really, the word in Greek is life of the ages or the eons. And it's a word that kind of points to life like God lives it. And of course, God's life is endless. But the life that He has to give to us will be endless. But it's more than just endlessness. One of the most miserable things you can have is to have a life you don't want and you want out of. And there are many people that have a life that they want to kill themselves. Life is not worth living. So, endless days is not the promise God makes to us. It is a life of such quality that we value it and it then continues endlessly. So, there are two qualities to this eternal life. One is the quality of value and the other is the quality of time. And when those two are put together, it's the same life God has. He lives this life endlessly and He also lived this life of victory and authority and control. So, what we have promised to us is to be able to live with God in heaven like He lives in the world He lives in as a part of His world. Which is more than just never dying. It is really living while you live. That's the promise He makes to us. Now, remember this promise is not to come only when we die. For when we surrender ourselves in slavery to righteousness, we receive in this world eternal life. Our life suddenly is transformed instead of a life just lived by human beings to living this spiritual life, the Holy Spirit inside of us guiding us, helping us with our choices, helping us to see things in a different way. Instead of seeing disaster, we see the promise of God in the middle of disaster so it gives us comfort and peace. Instead of looking at the world and seeing only danger and fear, we look at it and see possibilities, potential, and victory. Instead of seeing people who are angry with us as enemies, we see them as people God needs to touch and change. Instead of being angry and resentful toward things that happen bad to us, we're able to understand that God is changing our lives and transforming us so that the bad things that happen to us cause us to be determined to keep on living for God. And that determination and passion to keep on living for Him will eventually develop patience in our lives and eventually develop character. So that even the worst things that come to us are great blessings to us because of the promise God gives us, that they're going to be transformation experiences. And then the final thing that he says, the summary of all of this up to this point, for the payoff of sin is death. He's already talked about that and he just summarizes it here. The wages, you have earned the result of sin, which is death. And when you sin and it controls your life, that's where it leads you. But all the death that it brings, you have earned because you have yielded your life to sin. You have offered your body to lawless behavior. And Satan has taken the offer that you've made to him. And he uses you as a pawn to destroy yourself. If Christ has come into your life, you often look at people around you whose lives are controlled by lawlessness. And you shake your head saying, don't they see what's happening to them? Can't they see what it's doing to them? Can't they see what it's doing to their family? This lawlessness is under their control, is outside of their control. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Not eternal life for us, but it's in Christ who now controls us that this happens. Both of these words are words used from the military in Roman country. The word for wages is what a soldier gets every month whenever he's done his duty. The word gift is what happens sometimes in the Roman army if the birthday of the emperor or the anniversary of the emperor came, they would give everybody a bonus. They didn't earn it just because their emperor wanted to be nice. Or if they had a special occasion take place, they would give them a bonus. And this word was that word, a free gift that you did not earn, given to you just because we want to. And that's what the free gift is. You don't earn it. It's not as a result of your work. It's not based on your position in the military or how much good you've done. It's just a gift given out of the generosity of the person. And that gift given to those who are under the control of Christ is eternal life in Christ Jesus. That is, we're immersed in Him, controlled by Him, and our life is found in Him. Then he says, Do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to men who know the law, verse 1 of chapter 7, that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? Now he's gone back to talking another example of this control. He's using the word law here from the Old Testament concept of the law or the legal concept of the law. The law controls you as long as you live. In this world, if there's a speeding law, when you die, the speeding law no longer applies to you. They can't arrest you for speeding. They can't arrest you for loitering. Even if you die in the middle of the street and don't get up, they can't arrest you for loitering because you're dead. The law no longer applies to you. That law has authority over a man so long as he lives. For example, by law, a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he's alive. But if her husband dies, she's released from the law of marriage. In other words, when you get married legally, you're bound to each other. But when you die, no longer can that person say, Well, that's my wife or that's my husband, because the legal requirements are all now passed. The law only has control over this time that a person's alive. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she's called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she's released from the law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man. So, if a woman's husband dies, she's free to marry, and the law of adultery saying you have another husband no longer applies because the law that man dying removes him from the scene. It's a simple illustration of the power of law is cancelled by death. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ. Now, he's changed his focus. Using this illustration, he's talking about the law as in the Old Testament mosaic law. So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ. Remember, he started the last chapter talking about baptism, being immersed in Christ, becoming a part of the body of Christ or the church. So, when you died to the authority of the law to give you salvation, then that power that the law had over you is gone. No longer does it control you. You also died to the law through the body of Christ that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear the fruit of God. Now, if he had kept the illustration that he was using previously about dying to sin or dying to Satan and being alive to Christ, maybe it would be a little clearer for us to get. What he's really talking about is, as long as you lived under the law where you were trying to earn your salvation, and you were trying to do good enough to be able to get into the kingdom of God, you were controlled by that law. And once you came to Christ and you were buried with him in baptism, that old way of life was gone, and now you have a new way of life. You're no longer controlled by the rules of the mosaic law. The law that said, if you work hard enough, you're going to be saved. If you're good enough, you're going to be saved. If you do the right things, you're going to be saved. When you die to that, when you put that behind you, and you accept the grace, the gift of Christ's new life, and you submit to him under his authority, that old law that described work's salvation is now dead for you. It's dead. It no longer controls you. For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies. And when he described this before, he talked about the law being a curse because it points out to us the things that we should do, and if we don't do them, then we feel guilty or shame. For example, if you were to pull out in a street, and you had no idea that this was a one-way street, and you started driving down the street the wrong way, as long as you were driving down that street, and you didn't know that it was a one-way street going the other way, you would be perfectly happy. You'd feel good about yourself. You'd feel good about where you were going. You'd feel good about the time you were making. But the first time you came to the sign that said one way, the other way, all of a sudden you would feel fear, shame, and a sense of great embarrassment that you were violating the law. What he says is, many times the behavior that we have, we can live feeling good about it until suddenly we read, thou shalt not. And then when we come to realize that God says you shouldn't do that, suddenly the law brings upon us a sense of guilt and shame that we never experienced before. He mentioned this earlier when talking to the Jewish people about the law. The law, when it came into your life, made things worse for you, because they told you of all the things you were doing that were contrary to what God wanted you to do. And when you read the law, suddenly you became aware of how far short you've fallen from what God wants. Now, this law that comes into your life makes you aware of the sinful passions you have. Now, he uses this language to describe something that happens. You know, if you have kids around your house and you say, you can go in the living room and play, but don't go in the closet. I don't want you to go in that closet. You know what those kids want to do? There's something about the law that makes us curious about violating it. I mean, until I read a story one time, a guy was talking about disciplining his kids. He said he went to the ballgame and he said, now you can go anywhere you want in the gymnasium, climb up and down the stairs, walk along the stairs, anywhere you want to do, but I want you to look down on that floor and see that big ring around that floor, the mark around there? Don't go past that. You can't step over that. He didn't pay any attention to his kid for a while. One minute he looked down there, and there he saw his kid down there, and the kid was looking up at him, standing right by that line, putting his foot over it, bringing it back, putting his foot over it, bringing it back. There's something about the law that just incites us to want to see if it's really true that it's a bad thing to eat that apple. You get to looking at it and you say, boy, it looks good to me. I wonder what it's going to taste like. And the rules that God gave were only one, but it was one that, in spite of having everything else and no other rule but this, caused them to walk right up to that and passionately desire to do the very thing they were told not to do. So the law inspires, for when we are controlled by sinful nature, the sinful passions are aroused by the law. They are at work in our bodies, and we bore the fruit of death from it. All of us have those temptations to step over the line. Here's what Paul says, But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve the new way of the Spirit. We don't have a bunch of rules and regulations. What we have now is a way of living with the Spirit. God's presence in our lives, his very presence, the one who loves us and cares for us, now there is a relationship of love with him. It's not a series of rules, but it's a friend who lives with us and says, This is not in your best interest. It's not what I want you to do. If you do this, it's going to break the relationship and friendships we have. It's not the law of rules, but the power of love that holds us together with the Spirit that's inside of us. That's what we have. We're free from these rules that were passed on down to us, and now we live in Christ with the Spirit in our lives. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. Once you yield yourself to Christ and you say, Take my life and control it, everything changes for you. No longer are there a bunch of rules that you live by, but instead you live by the presence of the Spirit of God in you. And you say to him, What do you want me to do? And when you come to a choice, you say, What's really the right thing for me and what is your advice to me? And because he's a part of your life and you're his slave, you do whatever he tells you. And when you mess up with that, it's not that you've broken a rule, it's you violated a relationship. It's a world of difference in that. It's a difference between saying, Okay, I've gone over the speed limit and I should suffer the consequences and saying, I've hurt the feelings of someone I love. There's a world of difference in those. And this is the world we live in. We live in the world of a relationship with our Father who loves us and cares for us, has brought him into himself and helping us to grow in righteousness. And the things that we do in violation to his will are a relationship of broken hearts and broken spirits and not a relationship of the curse of being lawless. Paul describes this life that we have as a choice we make to live in obedience to God. Count the cost, he says. Make sure that you're ready to turn loose of this life of sin. Make sure that you're ready to become a slave of the righteous God, to allow him to create in you a life of righteousness and holiness. He will set you free from the guilt and shame of having to live by laws and open up a life for you of a living and a loving relationship with someone who cares for you, this life of the Spirit. For now you are a slave of someone you love and you want to do everything they tell you not because you are a slave but because you love the one who's your master. All this has changed. It opens up for us a new world of righteousness and holiness, a wonderful freedom from the control of sin that so destroys human nature and human life, the glorious life with Christ. Let's pray. Father, we have to give thanks to you for such a wonderful plan that you have for us. It's so hard to be perfect. And when we read the things that we should do and things you've said we are supposed to do, we have to hang our head in shame because we cannot live up to those. And when we recognize that what you really want from us is to say we love you more than anything in this world and we want to be like you, we want to yield our bodies to your control, our minds to your control, our lives to your control, and we want to grow in this righteousness and holiness that is only found in you so that every day we become more and more like you. We thank you for setting us free from sin's ultimate control. Oh, we know it's still there. We experience its temptation and we experience regularly the power it has to divert us from your purpose. And in shame we come back to you and we confess that we're not strong enough yet. But you always forgive us and you always renew our spirit and you always help us to grow stronger so that the next time it takes a greater temptation to turn us away, how thankful we are for the growing power of holiness and righteousness inside of us. Help us not to give up on you, for we know you will never give up on us. In the name of Jesus we ask it. Amen. Amen.