“Spiritual Death & Life and the Practice of Sin”
Five Sermons on Romans 6 – Part 3: “Servanthood and the Practice of Sin”
TEXT: Romans 6:12-14
REVIEW
1. Weapon #1 – Baptism: Spiritual warfare is a part of the Christian life. As those who are convinced that we are not supposed to be lazy about that fight, we need to hear about weapons for our warfare against our own personal sin. The first of these that Paul lists is our baptism. God has promised to make baptism powerful for those who truly belong to Him. We are called, particularly in a time of temptation, to remember our baptism. In baptism we are marked for life, not for death. Thinking about that can be a powerful aid to us as we reject the pathway of death.
2. Weapon #2 – His Death and Life: The second weapon also calls us to think in times of struggle with sin. We are to consider the death of Christ, His resurrection, and our union with Him in that death and resurrection. If Christ has no intention to return to death, why should we who are united to Him pursue way of death any longer? We have been delivered from that manner of living. We don’t need to return to it. We should live as servants of God.
TODAY’S PASSAGE:
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin,
but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not have dominion over you,
for you are not under law but under grace.
1. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body.
In the passage that we read last week, Paul wrote briefly about one of the most exciting results of our union with Christ. The Apostle said to the Roman church, “We should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.” This idea is further developed in verses 12-19, and we will take two weeks to examine the ways in which the idea of servanthood is important for the battle that we face with our own sin. This week I will introduce the concept of servanthood, and next week, Lord willing, I will address how we are to use the members of our bodies in service to God.
The Bible teaches that if you have been truly united with Christ in His death and resurrection by grace through faith, then you don’t have to be stuck in sin any longer. In fact, sin requires your permission now in order to do its destructive work. Do not give sin permission to mess with you any longer. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body.
Sin was once your master. You served him. As an obedient slave of sin, you learned the way that sin ran his business. You knew that when sin rang the bell, you were to be a good butler. “You rang, sir?” And so you presented yourself to sin as his slave.
Sin would present you with his “to-do” list, and you had no life of the Spirit of God in order to resist sin’s commands. You were not yet alive to the Word of God. Sin’s to-do list included the lusts that he demanded that you pursue. You were not a servant of God at this time, and you did not do the works of God. “You cannot serve two masters,” Jesus said. You are going to end up hating one or the other. You cannot serve God and sin.
We live in an era – after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – where the Bible speaks of Satan as being forcibly restrained in some way. Revelation 20 tells us that during this time when there is still much suffering and martyrdom that our adversary has been bound so that he can no longer deceive the nations. This was necessary in order for the good news of life to go with power to the nations of the world, as it has gone and is going. As people hear and believe that Word of life by the work of the Spirit of God, they are freed from their servitude to sin.
You have not been freed from sin so that you could be your own master. That is not the goal of Christ. He loves us too much for that. Like the people of Israel who were rescued from Pharaoh’s bondage, we have been freed from the penalty and power of sin in order that we might be servants of God. If this is not the case, then why do we call Jesus our Lord?
2. Present yourself to God.
Just as Christ died to sin and lives to God, we should also now present ourselves to God. We once presented ourselves to sin. “At your service, sir,” we said. “You rang?” Sin was an awful master for us. As we followed his to-do list of lust, pride, laziness, and worthlessness, he was leading us into a pit of our own destruction. He had us digging the pit as part of the to-do list, and his goal was to bury us. When we served sin, we served someone who hated us and wanted to see us dead.
But now that we have heard and believed the message of Christ’s death and resurrection for us, we are to serve God through Jesus Christ our Lord. He loves us. He rescued us from sin. He is leading us to life. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” If we are to live as servants of God, we need to stay near Jesus. We need to hear His Word. We need to follow Him.
Before we were dead. We were useless in terms of the good things of life that might have been pursued. In our mind we were so tied up in the to-do list of lust and pride that we had no time for God. We could not hear His Word and follow Christ. As I say this, you may be thinking of prostitutes and thieves. But this dead condition is true of many who consider themselves to be the strictest followers of God. Unless they have been made alive by the power of God, they are still serving sin, though they may think that they are completely engaged in church work. We know this, because so many of the Pharisees, including the writer of Romans, once fit into this category. He thought that he was serving God when he went to Damascus to bring Christians back to Jerusalem for persecution. But God made it clear that Saul’s religious activities were against the Lord of life when He said to Him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting Me?” Saul, who later became Paul, was told this: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”
God had a new purpose for the new man Paul. He was not to return to his “dead” life as a Pharisee. He was to serve God with a new life. He had a new master. A master who loved him, and yet told him that Paul would suffer for Jesus’ sake as this Pharisee of Pharisees now would be bringing the Word of life to Gentiles. You too are alive from the dead. Present yourself to God for the work of righteousness that He has prepared for you. You do not have time to pursue a renewed acquaintance with your old taskmaster sin, nor is it safe for you to be hanging around his shop any longer.
3. Sin shall not have dominion over you.
Sin has no right to rule you any longer. You are under grace. The word of grace does more for you than the good word of the law could ever do. The law could bring you the knowledge of sin, your former master. But even though in your mind you might approve of the law’s good ways, you were powerless to free yourself from your old boss, sin. But when you heard the word of grace – how a Messiah came for you and rescued you through his obedience and death, you were united with Him in a new way of life. It is his settled resolve that sin shall no longer have dominion over you. You are one of His loved ones. You now have been freed to be a servant of God.
APPLICATION:
For this teaching to be most useful, it needs to be specific. Jesus said, “You cannot serve two masters.” You are going to end up hating one or the other. “You cannot serve God and money.” He could have also said fame, pleasure, ease, and many other things. But he said “mammon” or “money.”
That’s no accident. Very few people are able to see the hold that money has over them. Without thinking that we are presenting ourselves as servants to Master Money, we still find ourselves doing the things that brings us the most money without much thought of God, and we just call it sensible. We act as if we are slaves of the love of money, without even seeming to notice that we are letting that lust rule our decisions. The last time you made a decision about some significant income-producing activity or some major spending decision, were you more aware of and concerned about the word of Money on that matter, or the instruction of God?
These verses are telling you that the love of Money is no longer your boss. You don’t have to obey him. You don’t have to let him bully you around. You are free from his dominion, and so you do not have to present yourself to him every time he rings the bell. You do not have to follow the eager lust of money any more. Listen to these words of Christ from Luke’s gospel:
Luke 16:11-15 11 "… if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in what is another man's, who will give you what is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." 14 Now the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, also heard all these things, and they derided Him. 15 And He said to them, "You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”
Remember that God is the Lord over money and over everything else that you would be tempted to serve instead of Him. These lesser gifts make horrible taskmasters. They cheat their slaves out of what they promise, because they have no life. The man who serves money will be robbed of it in the end. Often he has no money long before his end comes. Serve God, and worship Him only.