[Transcript may not match broadcasted sermon word for word, and contains extra material that was cut from the broadcast due to time constraints]

       Today we are continuing along in Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. Last time we considered the first half of this great chapter from our Lord, considering how we, as Christians, have died to sin, how we were united in Christ’s death and resurrection. We also discussed the great truth that we have been set free from sin, free from sin. And we noted the important part of that, which is the fact that we have to believe that we have freedom over sin in order to actually have that freedom. Our belief causes God’s power to flow in our lives. And that point is where we left off and where we are going to pick up today.

       Turn in your Bibles, or tap in your Bible apps on your mobile devices, to Romans chapter 6. We are pressing on, starting in verse 12: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” (Romans 6:12-14, ESV)

       I remember this exact series of verses in my beginning days as a Christian, when I was in the last half of high school and shortly thereafter. These verses were significant to me because I was seeking to align different areas in my life to look more like Christ, areas that I thought needed improvement in coming out of my old life--my old way of living. And as I recall it, the pastor I was studying under said this is the formula to be free from sin, to overcome sin in one’s life. And that’s true. Here in Paul’s words is the presentation of how to deal with sin in our bodies, in our members, how to crucify our flesh. It is a step by step Keynote if you will. When we become a Christian, God implants in us the desire to conform our thoughts, our words, and our actions to be in line with those of Christ. That’s one way we know we have been born again, when we see and feel these new desires within us.

       If we read this passage carefully, we see the different verbs in action of what we ourselves are to do in regard to our sin natures. Let’s look at them. Paul says, “Let not” “Do not present” and “present yourselves” “present... your members.” We see the fluctuation in what Paul is saying to us. These are clear instructions with clear implications.

       Paul said, “Let not.” Let not what? “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” So if we are to let not, that means that we could ‘let.’ It means that if we allow ourselves, we can let sin reign in our mortal bodies. And what will happen if we do this? Well, that sin will take control of us and make us obey its passions. See, even as Christians, as born again followers of God, we can still let sin reign in our bodies if we are not careful. If we are undisciplined in our thoughts, our words, and our behaviors, if we are not consistently seeking to align those with Christ, we can find ourselves involved in sin in no moment's notice. We can “present our members” either to sin or to God. We have the choice. And that’s the difference between the Christian and non-Christian. The Christian has the choice to present his members for righteousness and goodness because why? Because as we learned last week, the Christian is dead to sin and alive to God.

       You see, unbelievers don’t have the choice of whether or not they want to serve sin. Unbelievers are slaves to sin. They are born into this world that way, just as we originally were, but they still remain in that state. John notes the difference between the unbeliever and the believer. He said in one of his epistles: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:3-5, ESV). We, as Christians, are the only ones who have that ability. We are the only ones who can truly overcome the world. And how do we overcome the world? How do we overcome sin in our lives, in our flesh? Paul tells us, “but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” This is just as John just told us.

       We have to have faith, as John said, in order to present ourselves to obedience, to doing what is right. We talked about this last week. If we doubt, we what? We believe that victory is probably not going to be ours. That line of thinking, that we probably won’t win, is doubt. When is the last time you saw an athlete win a competition, and when being interviewed afterward, the athlete said, “Oh, I didn’t believe I would win, but somehow, someway, I won.” You usually don’t hear an athlete say that. Of course the athlete believes he or she will win, that’s why they try. Their belief works in cooperation with their physical activity. Sometimes we flat out don’t believe it is possible to have victory. And what’s that called? That’s called unbelief. That’s a worser form of doubt in our minds. It’s completely giving up. Even fear of failure can prevent us from trying. If we’re too afraid, we won’t try. So, we must not be too afraid either. In order to overcome sin, in order to present ourselves to obedience, we have to rid ourselves of these wrong mindsets, these wrong thinking patterns, and replace them all with a good, sincere, working faith.

       What is the end result, then, of all this presenting of ourselves in goodness to God? Paul says, “For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” In giving ourselves to God, and our members to him, there is no place for sin. Obedience to God snuffs out sin in our lives. Peter told us, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:11-12, ESV). If we have to “abstain from the passions of the flesh” and “keep [our] conduct among the Gentiles honorable”, this means a couple of things. It means those passions, may I say, evil passions and evil conduct can still be there. And it means that we have to choose to abstain, to not follow any fleshly desires that see arising within us. We have to quickly turn away from those things, and not let them grow and cultivate within us. Our conduct before unbelievers should be different than their own conduct. Again, as we discussed last week; there should be a difference.

       What does it mean that we are not under law but under grace? We talked about this several weeks ago. We are not under the Jewish law system of the Old Testament, or any other law system for that matter. Rather, we are under grace. It is not what we have accomplished in our lives that matters, but it is what God has accomplished for us. He is our perfection; he gives us our perfection (our legal standing before him of being perfect in his eyes). By our own merits, none of us can be perfect; none of us can perform perfectly in this life. We just can’t do it no matter how hard we try. Not even after we become Christians. That’s why we need grace. Even though we may fail at this or that, we cannot and should not live under a cloud of guilt all the time. We are not meant to be guilty Christians walking around with our heads down all the time. That’s not what Jesus died for, that’s not what he died for us to have. It is Satan who is our accuser, and God is our justifier. You may feel guilty for giving up any guilt you may have, but it is absolutely necessary if we want to live under grace. The law brings guilt, and grace brings freedom.

       It’s also true that we may try to live under a law system of our own creation, passing on living by grace. And we can try to deal with sin in this same way. Have you ever noticed that trying to keep a law, putting a lot of effort into obeying laws we make, that that usually doesn’t give us the result that we want? We can try really hard to be obedient to God, but oftentimes it doesn’t produce the results that we desire. We still find ourselves struggling. And why is this? It is because, again, a law system cannot bring us life. Paul told the Colossian believers: “why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations—“Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch” (referring to things that all perish as they are used)—according to human precepts and teachings? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (Colossians 2:20-23, ESV). We cannot, and should not, try to do things from our own fleshly efforts, without God’s enablement and grace. Remember from last week, it is our belief in God’s help, belief that we can win over sin, that actually enables us to win. We have to believe. Trying with our own efforts, trying to follow the law, is not believing. It’s actually disobedience (more on this down the road).

       We must move on. Romans 6:15: “What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (Romans 6:15-18, ESV)

       Some want to take advantage of God’s grace. It’s clear and simple. Anyone who advocates that we can or should sin all we want because of God’s grace really doesn’t have an appreciation for what God has done for us on behalf of Christ. Recall, it is unbelievers who love sin. We loved sin before we were saved, if we were old enough. Why would we want to be like unbelievers, or be like we were before we were saved? As Paul told the Galatians, why would we want to go back to our former manner of life? When we were saved, we enjoyed the freedom from sin that we saw come into our lives. We don’t want to be like unbelievers, we want to be like Christ. That should be our heart’s drive and desire.

       Thinking back to the time when I was first saved, as I said it was my first week of being a junior in high school. I remember after I got saved, I didn’t want anything to do with the things I had been part of. I didn’t want anything to do with cliques anymore. I didn’t want labels. Gave up friendships with people who were pulling me in the opposite direction. I made some pretty drastic changes. But they were changes I wanted to make. No one forced me to make these changes. And as I call to mind becoming more involved in church after high school, and making new friends (and many of them had gone to a Christian high school), and, as I recall it, they often wanted to be like the world. And I didn’t understand that. I had come from the world and didn’t want anything to do with it anymore, and they wanted to be like the world.

       Anyhow, getting back on track, Paul also warns us that if we yield ourselves to sin, if we give ourselves back to practicing sin, then what? We’ll become slaves of sin. Interestingly, Paul spends this section of his text using an analogy of enslaved people versus free people. Slavery was a dominate thing in the Roman Empire, just as it used to be here in the United States. People would own slaves, buy and sell them, and have them do whatever they wished. Slaves would perform all kinds of work. It was so ingrained into the society and culture. Either a person owned slaves, or was a slave themselves. It was a truly immoral setup. But Paul uses the analogy anyway, almost apologizing in the upcoming verse 19, saying it is “because of [our] natural limitations” that he is using this example. It drives the point home, nonetheless.

       When a person is enslaved, the person is subject completely and entirely to his or her Master, to his or her owner. The person has no ability even to make their own choices. Personal freedom isn’t part of the person’s life. And this is what Paul says the unbeliever’s life is like. Unbelievers often like to paint themselves as the ones who are really free, and Satan spends a great deal of his time trying to make it look like this is the case. He wants the unbelievers to appear as the free people, and the believers in Jesus to appear as the idiots, the ones subjecting themselves to slavery. But, nothing could be farther from the truth. Unbelievers aren’t free, they are dramatically and hopelessly enslaved to sin. They are enslaved to their master, who wishes them harm and destruction. He tells them they are free, but they are only free to do his will, to carry out his purposes and desires. And this works in conjunction with people’s sin natures. They are blind. So, they go about performing their master’s will without even realizing they are hurting themselves, and they are forfeiting the real life they could have through Christ.

       Now, at the moment a person believes in Christ, Christ himself in fact claims ownership of that person (and he has purchased us with his own blood). He purchases the person, and they become his slave. The thing of it is, though, is that he is a good Master. And being a good master, he what? What does he do? What does a good Master do? He sets his slaves free. Wow. Yes, you got that right. Through Christ is the only way to true, spiritual, and everlasting freedom. Christ is the opposite of Satan. Jesus wants us to have goodness flowing in our lives, doing things the right ways, the correct ways. He supports us and help us.

       Understand that our righteousness in our lives leads to our sanctification in life. For every good and right decision we make as Christians, we gain more and more life. We become more like Jesus in character. The Spirit of God works out his fruit in us so that we look more like Christ. A Christian is just that, a follower of Christ who inmates and looks like Christ. Now that we are saved, we are to be presenting (continually) our members to Christ. We should be making good decisions. We have to take the Christian life seriously. Many of us are sports fans, whatever sport we like, and we know that competitive athletes will spend a lot of time preparing and training to do whatever it is that they need to do, to be the best they can be at their sport. And how are we doing? Are we training ourselves so that our thoughts, words, and behaviors are closely aligned with Jesus Christ? Are we spending time in God’s Word? Are we letting God work the Fruit of the Spirit out in us? Or, do we just sit on the coach most days and do nothing. Are we consumer Christians, bench-warming Christians?

       Verse 19: “I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.”

       Again, and I want to reiterate this, even after we become Christians, we still have a choice as to how we are going to present our members. First of all, what are our members? Our members include our minds (our thinking, our thoughts), our mouths (what we say; how we encourage or discourage others), our hands (whether we help or hurt), and our feet (where we go and where we don’t go). Paul said, “so now present” as if we have a choice. We can not present our members as slaves of righteousness, or we can present them as slaves of righteousness. The choice is ours. Again, unbelievers don’t have that choice. They can only present their members as slaves of sin, of lawlessness.

       Before I was saved back in high school, I was a very negative and pessimistic person. If you ever met a person who could be a downer, it was me. I was so good at stating the negative, that I gained a reputation for being funny due to my sarcasm. It seemed good at the time to be liked for being so funny. Now, after I become saved, I was still a negative and pessimistic person. Once I was seeking to align my mouth with Christ, I realized, years after my conversion, that I didn’t automatically lose my pessimism. It just didn’t go away on its own. Some things we lose our desire for right when we become converted. I lost my desire to cuss; it was gone. But I was still a negative person. So, what did I have to do once God pointed this out to me? I had to start deciding, on a daily basis, that I was not going to be that way anymore. I had to decide I was going to replace my negative, pessimistic thoughts with positive, optimistic, hopeful thoughts. I had to choose to start living a faith-filled life. And to do this very day, it is an ongoing process, an ongoing battle. I still have to make the correct choices. I have to yield my mind and my mouth to be pleasing to God, so that I’m no longer displeasing him with wrong thoughts.

       The difference between the old man and our new man is quite simple. We have a newfound independence in Christ. We no longer have to live following our feelings anymore. Does that make sense? Our new independence from the old man means we get to follow what we know is right, even if our feelings disagree with us, instead of following what our feelings (our flesh in many instances) wants to do. Frequently there is a disconnect between the two. Paul tells us that we will be slave of one or the other. We will either be slaves of doing what our flesh wants. Or, we will be slaves of doing what we know is right, what is sound. And when we yield to the flesh, it compounds. It is a snowball effect. The snowball keeps getting bigger and bigger until we are in a real mess. When we yield to righteousness, it is a positive snowball effect. Righteousness leads to more righteousness, which leads to sanctification, ourselves becoming more and more like Christ.

       Continuing on in Romans 6. Verse 20: “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:20-23, ESV)

       ““For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” I think many of us can look back on those days. We can bring to mind when we “were free in regard to righteousness.” As I’ve been talking about, I sure remember it. I recall following my fleshly, random impulses, having no discipline in my life. And it wasn’t a pretty picture. I was telling a friend recently (and he said he was the same way) that I wouldn’t even do my homework most of the time. I said, “School gets eight hours a day. It has its fair share, and the rest of the time is mine.” Maybe you can relate. I had no discipline. I would rather take a hit on my grades, and spend more time doing useless things, then do what was right and try to learn. I didn’t understand the value of disciplining myself. I thought discipline was stupid, something that in and of itself was a sin. To always be on an emotional high, that’s what life was all about during those times.

       Just doing whatever you want to do, or whatever you feel like doing, doesn’t bring fulfilling life. Sure, it brought temporary fun, pleasures for a short time. But when I would lay down my head at night to go to sleep, there was also an empty, unsettling feeling that I had. I knew there had to be more to life. I knew I wasn’t following righteousness. I also knew most other people didn’t follow doing what is right, so I justified my actions stating, “I can’t be expected to do what most others aren’t doing. Only preachers are good people. The rest of us just have some darkness, and that’s the way it is.” I can think back on having thoughts like that. Nonetheless, that isn’t what God thinks and expects from us. God wants us to be acting righteously, no matter who we are. And not only that, but he has provided a way for us to do that, an easy way, which Paul is talking about in our text today.

       I can think back on doing sinful things and then later feeling guilty for doing them. I felt both guilt and regret. That never stopped me from continuing to do wrong things, however. See, I was a slave to sin. I didn’t know how to not do wrong things. I didn’t know how not to make fun of certain people. I didn’t know how to not laugh, or even tell, dirty jokes. I didn’t know how not to look at girls with the wrong perspective. And I couldn’t have stopped doing wrong even if I had given it my very best. My master wasn’t God; it was the wrong master. And he certainly didn’t have my best interests in mind. He didn’t care about me, or anyone else for that matter. He always told me to avenge myself on the occasion I was wronged, to be following lustful desires, to buy what I wanted to buy whenever I wanted to, that I didn’t have to treat people good, and on and on the list goes. Total rebelliousness. No discipline. No God in my life. And, all there was, at the end of the day, was death. No life, just death. Sure there were moments of happiness, but they never lasted. It wasn’t until I became a Christian, that I had happiness, peace, and rest that actually lasted continually, day after day. It didn’t go away like before.

       Even now that we are Christians, we still have weaknesses, and Satan is aware of that and he will attack those weaknesses. It is important for us to recognize, to be able to identify, our weaknesses. Even though we have been made free from sin, as has been our theme today, we can still choose sin, and Satan knows that. He tries to capitalize on that fact. He wants us to follow sin instead of righteousness. Jesus said the following in John’s Gospel, and I think it is pivotal here. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” Jesus said referring to Satan. But he says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10, ESV). Satan wants to steal from us, to steal our life. He wants to kill us. And he wants to destroy us, to destroy our lives. Before, back at the time we were unbelievers, we didn’t realize that. Some of us thought that Satan was good. We thought his ways were really the good, fun, life-giving ways. Now, though, we are ashamed of those ways. Or, at least, we should be. Jesus continually, daily gives us good, optimistic, hopeful life.

       We can either progress in our rebellion, or we can progress in our life of sanctification. We can only be moving in one or the other direction. Remember what Elijah said in 1 Kings? And it is a great verse to think about. It is written “And Elijah came near to all the people and said, “How long will you go limping between two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21, ESV). You see, we have to make a choice. We have to choose who we are going to believe in, and who we are going to follow. Are we going to follow a life of rebellion, or a life of righteousness? Are we going to follow God, or are we going to follow Satan? If you are not following God, then you’re automatically following Satan. There are no other ways. It isn’t Jesus, and a whole host of other religions. It’s either Jesus or Satan. If not Jesus, it’s Satan whom you are following.

       Eternal life is what the Christian is ultimately waiting for. That’s what all of us as brothers and sisters in Christ are waiting eagerly to obtain. This life is great. We follow Christ, and we reap the tremendous blessings from that. And we love each other, our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, as one, big family. That’s all great. However, what is to come for us is far greater. We will be in close, intimate fellowship with God forever, being able to stand right next to him. We will be in his presence continually. We will have most of those whom we love with us. We will have a whole host of new friends, friends we had not known, from different times. We will have great possessions in the next life. Life will be absolutely perfect, with no flaws whatsoever. Any of the burdens of this world that we face, no matter how big or small, all the issues that tie to this current earthly life, will be gone. They will be done for. And we will experience a new level of freedom, the next level, the freedom that we, as humans, had always been created for. And anyone can have this freedom in the future by believing in Jesus.

       You want all of this, don’t you? I know you do. Yes, if you want freedom from sin now, and want to spend eternity in freedom, and have all the blessings that eternity in Heaven brings, God has made this possible for you. Anyone by trusting in Christ’s sacrifice of himself on the cross and resurrection from the dead can gain real life now. No matter what you’ve done in your current life, all can be forgiven by God. Even if others don’t forgive you, God does. By believing in Jesus, you may enter life, new life, today.

-Daniel Litton