FREE AT LAST!
Romans 6:15-23
Swindoll: “I don’t know anyone who would build a summer home at the base of Mt Vesuvius.
It would be tough to get campers to pitch tents where Big Foot had been spotted.
No family wants to vacation in a house boat just upstream from Niagara Falls.
Nor would we want to swim in the Amazon near a school of piranhas.
Or build a new home on the San Andreas fault.
You don’t light a match to see if your gas tank is empty!
Yet many Christians flirt with far greater risks.”
We try doing whatever we feel like. If anybody questions our actions, we write them off as a legalist, and go on doing what we feel like. Some samples:
“God wants me to be happy. I can’t be happy married to her. So I’m leaving. God understands.”
“There was a time when this might have been considered immoral. But not today. God gave me this desire, and He wants me to enjoy it!”
“Nobody’s perfect. So I got in deeper than I planned. It’s a little shady, but what’s grace all about?
“Life’s too short to sweat the small stuff. After all, we’re not under law, you know!”
SALVATION BY FAITH PRODUCES GODLY LIVING (6-8).
Apart from a by-faith salvation we don't have power to satisfy God's demands. In Christ, God gives us power to fulfill His demands.
Some object to salvation by faith: “if salvation is by faith alone, you can live anyway you feel like.”
Rom. 6-7: 3 OBJECTIONS to salvation by faith.
OBJECTION CONCERNING GRACE 6:1-14
Objection: If salvation is by faith alone, then the greater the sin, the more God's grace abounds.
Doesn’t that open the door to say it’s better to sin more, so God's grace will be even more evident? 6:1
Response: No! We’ve died to sin and risen to new life with Christ.
Therefore, we can't go on living in sin. 6:2-14
"You can't live as you once did because you’re no longer the person you once were."
Consider ourselves dead to sin but alive to God;
Stop presenting ourselves as instruments of unrighteousness;
Present ourselves as instruments of righteousness to God.
Summary: Sin isn’t our master, because we’re not under law, but under grace.
[Protects from false charge: some might think he’s saying that since we’re no longer under law, a little disobedience to the law won’t hurt us! We might as well go on sinning!]
OBJECTION CONCERNING LIBERTY 6:15-7:6
Objection: 6:15a We aren't saved by law; we're saved by grace.
Doesn't that leave us free to break the law?
2nd objection is based on the fact that salvation is by faith in Christ totally apart from works of the law.
We receive eternal life without keeping the law.
Only way to be saved is NOT by keeping rules, but by trusting Jesus.
Many people trying to live by codes of law.
No shortage of groups who will be glad to give us their list of “laws to live by!”
We’ll never make it that way. No one’s good enough!
We’re not saved by law!!!
Christian living isn’t about following a list of rules!
We’re truly free! Free at last!
“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32)
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (8:36).
We are truly free for 1st time in our lives! Why would you want to go back into bondage?!!
If law doesn’t matter, we might as well go out and live it up! Right?!!
Doesn't that leave us free to break the law without having to worry about losing our salvation?
You could say this kind of salvation makes us free to sin.
Fear: people who hear this message will get idea they can forget about law and live sinful lifestyle!
Response: 6:15b-7:6
NO WAY! ”Don’t even think about it!!”
Faith in Christ doesn't give us FREEDOM TO SIN,
but rather FREEDOM FROM SIN. Freedom to avoid it!
We are now FREE —to serve God.
Far from becoming lawless, people saved by faith, who used to be “servants of sin” are now—for the first time—able to become “servants of righteousness.”
Interpreting our freedom in Christ as an absolute right, allows sin to suck us back under it’s authority
Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "The demand for absolute liberty brings men to the depths of slavery."
Becoming a child of God doesn’t make us free to do as WE please; it makes us free to do as HE pleases! It creates a desire to serve HIM and to please HIM!
[2 illustrations make his point. First, . . . ]
ILLUSTRATION FROM SLAVERY 6:15b-23
Slavery illustration: when a slave changes owners, old owner no longer has authority over him.
This is what happened to us.
Before we were SLAVES OF SIN, but now WE ARE FREE FROM SIN.
We don't have any reason to go on sinning.
Now we are free to serve righteousness and live a godly life.
Biblical LIBERTY IS NOT THE ABILITY TO DO WHATEVER I WANT TO DO! It’s the ability to do what GOD wants us to do–what pleases HIM!
We’re ALL slaves of something.
Some sirve sin;
Others have been freed from slavery to sin, to serve righteousness.
Two errors about spiritual freedom and slavery:
1) False view of “free will”
2) False view of “enjoying freedom to sin!” SIN ENSLAVES!
If we refuse to serve righteousness, we submit ourselves as slaves of sin (6:16).
Roman law had declared that no freeborn person could be enslaved. Con artists learned to work the system. They would sell themselves into slavery, take profit, then have friend attest that they were freeborn. They would have to be released.
New law enacted: Anyone who sold himself into slavery could no longer claim free status. It became clear that “to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, his slave you are.”
Profound principle of slave world: You can tell who a slave’s master is by watching who he obeys. Each one obeys his own master!
That’s how it is in the spiritual realm also.
Those who obey sin’s orders, are slaves to sin.
Those who walk in righteousness are slaves of righteousness.
But everyone obeys SOME master!
Before, we were all slaves of sin.
We weren't allowed to choose another master.
But now, having been freed from sin, we can serve God.
Obedience to God liberates us to be all that we can be.
Key to full life: profound slavery –obedience to God.
God has given us ability to follow a godly lifestyle 17-23
We used to be slaves to sin, now we live according to new pattern.
Half the people in Roman Empire were slaves, so they all understand
Jesus used same idea to communicate with Jewish people.
In John 8, He was talking about freedom.
When they interrupted to insist that THEY had never been slaves to anyone,
He responded: “Whoever commits sin, is sin’s SLAVE!”
This is a powerful call to commitment.
It’s a call to slavery—to total obedience, to total accountability.
Only in slavery to God is there true freedom.
Fruit of old lifestyle was embarrassing.
In the end, it brought shame and death.
That’s what sin does; it brings shame—ultimately it leads to death.
Prodigal Son: When home, he decided he wanted freedom, so he left home looking for fun. But his rebellion led to slavery. He was a slave of wrong desires, and ultimately, a literal slave, taking care of pigs and sharing their food. Nothing could be more embarrassing in the Jewish mind! It was only when he returned home and yielded to his father, that he found true freedom!
Slaves of sin produce wickedness which leads to death.
Slaves of righteousness produce holiness which leads to eternal life.
When we were slaves of sin, righteousness couldn't control us.
Now we’re free to serve righteousness; sin can’t control us.
Satan is paymaster. He’d be glad to see we get exactly what we deserve.
While life of faith is free from the law’s demands, it always produces a holy life that is pleasing to God.
Gal 5:22-23 describes fruit of the Spirit which this kind of life produces—"against such things, there is no law."
Lifestyle salvation by faith produces, is superior to what law produces.
Gospel produces a life committed to God which results in eternal life.
It never produces “free” lifestyle that revolves around our self-centered desires.
Liberty faith produces motivates us to serve God.
WE HAVE LIBERTY
NOT TO GO ON SINNING — BUT TO AVOID SINNING
Poet captured thought:
I do not work my soul to save, That work my Lord hath done.
But I will work like any slave For love of God's dear Son."
So then, shall we sin because we’re not under law but under grace? NO WAY!
Why? Because we’re slaves of Christ .
We’ve been freed from the law
so we can follow a new master, in newness of life!
In Christ we are truly free for the first time in our life–
Why would you ever want to go back into bondage?
7:6 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.