Sunday Sermon: Under Grace (Romans 6:12-14)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 6:12-14 and the Call to Live Under Grace

Well good morning.

Good morning.

If you have your Bible, open please to Romans chapter 6 as we continue our series in the book of Romans. We are picking up where we left off last week, our passage today in Romans 6 verses 12 through 14.

I was reminded this morning of this prayer from the Valley of Vision, I am nothing but thou makest me something. I have nothing, but thou givest me all things. I can do nothing, but thy grace is sufficient.

And we hear this morning in our passage, this assurance, as well as this reminder that you are not under the law, but under grace. And may it be that which compels us to do that which God has called us to as the people of God in Christ Jesus.

Let's stand together as we read. I'll be reading from Romans chapter 6 verses 12 through 14 in the English Standard Version. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome. Hear the word of the Lord.

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 the law, but under grace. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that as we come into this text today, we are reminded once again of the grace of God that has been shown to us through Christ our Savior.

We once were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, but we have been made alive together with Christ. By grace, we have been saved. This is a wonderful comfort and a wonderful assurance to us of the love that God has for us.

But may it also be the thing that compels us toward obedience. That we would not live our lives in such a way that we continually go back to those things you have set us free from, you have raised us to life from.

We were dead in those things, but now in Christ we have been made alive. So may we commit ourselves to those things that demonstrate that life that we have and have been given in Christ. Help us to show the grace of God to one another.

That we may encourage each other in this new life in which we walk. Forgive us when we sin and lead us in paths of righteousness for your name's sake. It is in Jesus' name we pray and all God's people said, Amen.

The Parable of the Talents and Faithful Servanthood

It's in Matthew chapter 25 that we read the famous parable of the talents. Now, some think of that word talent as the gifts that God has given you. Well, there's actually a connection to that. It comes from the same root word as this monetary reference here to a talent, a unit of money.

But it's also from that same word that we've come to recognize gifts and abilities that a person may have as being a talent. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.

To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one talent. To each according to his ability. And there's the connection between a monetary unit of money and also a person's ability. Then the man went away.

He who had received five talents went at once and traded with them and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.

Now, after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward bringing five talents more saying, Master, you have delivered to me five talents.

Here I have made five talents more. And his master said to him, well done, good and faithful, what? Servant. Now, literally, the Greek word being doulos, what his master said was, well done, good and faithful, slave.

You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. And he also who had the two talents came forward saying, Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here I've made two talents more.

His master said to him, well done, good and faithful, slave. You've been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Now, we're going to stop there. I may come back to that if I leave myself enough time at the very end.

But again, this reference to those servants as being slaves to the master. And these slaves joyfully tend to that which the master gave to them and rejoice to return back to the master more than the master gave.

And they take no offense at being called slave, as taboo as that word has become in our own culture or even around the world. It is their joy to be slaves of this master, for they know that in the service of this master, great is their reward to him who does well.

There is even a certain natural understanding. As I make a reference to general revelation, we all have this understanding that we're in service to something or someone. Even Bob Dylan wrote in that famous song, you're all going to have to serve somebody.

There is someone or something to which we are enslaved. Now we have read here about how Christ has set us free from our sin, but that doesn't make us enslaved to no one. We are now slaves of Christ. And what does this therefore look like in the life of a believer who is a servant of his master?

And that's what we consider today about being set free from the bondage that we were in in our sin. And now in Christ Jesus, who are we beholden to? This passage that we're looking at today, just these three verses, all of this is imperative.

We have an imperative in verse 12. Two imperatives in verse 13 and a description then in verse 14, which kind of becomes the theme of the passage we're looking at today. So as we outline this passage, the applications will come with our three points.

In verse 12, we start with a do not. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. In verse 13, we have a do not again, but then that do not turns into a do. Do not be instruments for unrighteousness, but do be instruments of righteousness.

And in verse 14, we finish with this reminder that we are not under the law, but under grace. Now it's one of the most abused verses in the book of Romans, but we'll get to that as we come to it. So again, in verse 12, do not let sin reign.

That's number one. Number two, do not be instruments for unrighteousness. Three, instead be instruments for righteousness. And the purpose of this is so that you would know and be assured that you are no longer under the law to be condemned by it.

You are under the grace of God. Forgiven your sin, but now in that grace, what does the life of a believer look like? So we come back again to verse 12. Do not let sin reign. Look at verse 12 again. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Obviously that word reign is in reference to ruling. So sin doesn't rule over you. Don't be obedient to sinful desires or be taken in by and servant to temptations. Remember what we just read last week in verse 11.

You must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. And I said that that was the central verse to chapter 6. The rest of the chapter revolves around that. Be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Don't be dead in your sin. Don't be dead in your sin. Be dead to your sin. Make sense? Don't live in the sin any longer. Be alive in Christ Jesus. And so here in verse 12, if you are dead to your sin, then your sin needs to be dead.

Let it not have any life in you. Don't let it reign in you as though you become a slave to it. And that sin is your master. Throughout Romans, Paul has been using two metaphors to describe our sin. Death and bondage.

In our fallen nature, we are as good as dead. We heard that argument in chapter 5, the description of all people in verse 12. Sin came into the world through one man. And death through sin, we're talking about Adam, and so death spread to all men who are born in Adam because all who are in Adam have sinned.

All of us, by our very nature, are born physically alive. But we are spiritually dead in Adam. Later, verse 21 tells us that sin reigned in the state of our dead spirits. So by your nature, what you are inclined to do, by your human nature as a child of Adam, you are inclined to rebel against God.

A pig loves slop. A fat kid loves cake. Sinners love to sin. And contrary to what this culture might tell you, a man cannot become a woman. A woman cannot become a man.

Why?

Because by their nature, they cannot be other than what they were born to be. When we are rebellious sinners by nature, it is our nature to rebel and sin. Remember what we read back in chapter 3. No one seeks God.

All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And then the result of such a dead person. Their throat is an open grave. They use their tongues to deceive.

The venom of asps is under their lips. We have these descriptions of rebelling against God and the dead deeds that we are committed to doing in that dead state. When we are dead in our trespasses and sins, we can do nothing alive.

We can do nothing that gives life. Oh, certainly there are rebellious, depraved men who can yet commit themselves to saving lives. The emergency workers in Central Texas who rescued people from the raging floodwaters that you might have seen in the headlines or read about in the news.

The soldier or the police officer who sacrifices his own life that another may live. The surgeon who is able to heal and save. The patient who is on his operating table. Christian or not, we would say that in this sense they save lives.

But the reality is they're only prolonging life. They may give a person a second chance at life, we would say. But no matter what they do, they cannot bring the dead to life. Nor can they save their own lives.

None of the works they do ultimately have any saving power at all. And the same goes for you. You can't save anyone else. You cannot save yourself. None of the works or deeds you do will save you. If left to yourself, the deeds that you do will only kill you.

They contribute further to the judgment that awaits everyone who has rebelled against God. Everyone who is in Adam, who will stand in judgment before God. As we're going to read later in verse 23, the wages of sin is death.

So by our nature being dead in sin, we can do nothing that makes alive. But praise God, He makes us alive. And He gives us a new nature. One that is not death upon death, but the works that we do are to be a reflection of the new life that we have in Christ.

God makes us alive even from the very moment that we hear the gospel, literally the good news that Jesus died for us as an atoning sacrifice for sin. He rose from the dead, and whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

God doesn't just leave it to us, though, to have to respond positively to that message. We can't. Again, we're dead. And in case you haven't noticed, dead people don't do much. Again in Romans 3, we have heard that no one does good and no one seeks for God, so how can you believe in God, which would undoubtedly be a good thing?

How can you, dead in sin, put dead faith in a God who makes alive? James even tells us that dead faith is worth nothing. God would have to act first and make you alive by His grace, and that's exactly what He does.

This is that doctrine that we call regeneration. The Holy Spirit acts first to take out your hard heart of stone and give you a soft heart of flesh, Ezekiel 36, 26, so that you are made able to believe in Jesus because God gave you a new nature to believe in Him.

This is what it means to be born again. As Jesus talks about with Nicodemus in John 3, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And it being the Holy Spirit who does this, unless one is born of water and spirit, this is Jesus making reference back to Ezekiel 36, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

And if this is you, if you have been brought from death to life, you can't go back to playing in the graveyard. Don't go back to those works that destroy the sins for which Christ died. As we read last week, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And so again, verse 12, we have a therefore. Do not let sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body. We just read in verse 11 of this new life that we have in Christ. Verse 12 reminds us that we're still in mortal bodies.

And perhaps the reason that Paul does this is to remind these Christians of their weakness. Now, by faith in Christ, we've been justified. We've been promised immortality. That is 100 true. But our bodies, in which we still live, are still corruptible, like anything else in this world in which we live is corruptible.

It is still on a physical level, subject to decay and death. And because of this, we're still vulnerable in our flesh to temptation and sin. We have to recognize our weakness so that we may know that our greatest strength lies not in ourselves, but in God.

Don't let sin reign in your mortal body. So how do we do that? We have to come to Christ. Continually. Over and over. Every day. It's not us going to Christ and saying, hey, Jesus, I did pretty good yesterday.

I think I can do it pretty well myself today. No, every day we need to come to Christ for His help and for His strength. We have to keep coming back to Him who sustains us. And it's not about Him making us alive again.

He's done that once. He doesn't have to bring us to life again. Remember last week, we had read in John 13 the lesson that He gave to His disciples. He's already purified us and washed us and made us clean.

He doesn't have to do that again. One who has been washed doesn't need to bathe again. But we're still kicking up dirt on our feet that we need to have our feet washed. And we need to be cleansed in that way.

So it's not about us dying again and again and Jesus has to keep bringing us to life again and again. We've been made alive. So walk in that life. Remember we read death no longer has dominion over Him.

So if you're in Christ, it doesn't have dominion over you either. And we need to walk in the new life that He has given and He sustains us in. That's why we keep coming back to Him that we may walk with Him who keeps us going.

You've probably heard that, or maybe seen the poster of the story of the footprints in the sand. Heard that one right? So there's the footprints in the sand and there's footprints, a set of footprints and another set of footprints and this is where we're walking along with God.

And why is there one set of footprints in the sand? Jesus, after a little while, just see one set of footprints. Well, that's the time that I carried you. And then there's another addition to that story.

What's this like long scraping line in the sand here? Oh, that's where I was dragging you, kicking and screaming. But we walk with Him and He keeps us close to Him and He sets us on those paths of righteousness.

As we say, as we pray in Psalm 23, He leads me in paths of righteousness and He does this for His namesake, for His glory. Now, here in verse 12, Paul uses the word obey. So don't be subject to sin and obey it as if it were your master.

You've been raised from death to life. You've been set free from its bondage. In your old nature, you could do nothing but sin and later we'll read in Romans 14, 23, whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.

But now that you have faith, you are set free from your bondage to sin that you may serve a new master, a greater master who is Christ. And in Him, sin doesn't reign over you. You reign over your own body.

Any temptation, anything that would come your way from outside or within, don't let sin reign in your mortal body. So as I said, there are two metaphors that Paul has been using to describe our sin. The first one being death.

The second one is bondage. You've been raised from death to life and you've been set free from the bondage of sin. So let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. If you've been set free from it, don't go back to enslaving yourself to it.

Presenting Your Members as Instruments of Righteousness

So we go from here to the second part, the next imperative in verse 13. Do not be instruments of unrighteousness. Look at verse 13. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.

And we'll stop there for now. So if you've been set free from sin, now that you're no longer in bondage to it, if and when you sin, as a believer, as a Christian who's been set free from the bondage of sin, we still sin, right?

Talked about this last week. If and when you do that, it's because not that you're a slave to it, but that you allowed it. Now, in addition to comparing sin to death, as I said, we have this comparison to bondage.

And that's not just in Romans, of course. That's throughout the Bible. Jesus said in John 8, 34, Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Most translations say everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

The Greek word there translated either practicing or commits is synonymous with abiding or to be in agreement with. It means to prolong sin. So practicing sin means you just keep doing it over and over and over again.

Just like the term or the expression goes, practice makes perfect. Do you want to be perfected in sin? You practice it. If you continue in it over and over and over again, then that's what you're going to become an expert at, sinning.

And whoever is in that practice of doing it over and over again is a slave to it. And that's who you are. You never seem to be able to master it. There's no self-control. You cannot ever resist it. You just keep going right back to it.

And no matter how much you think that you can give it up or let it go, we've all made that excuse about something, right? I can give it up whenever I want. I can stop doing this whenever I want to stop.

You never seem to want to. You like it. That's the whole reason you keep going back to it. Sin's fun. And no matter how much you think you're in control over this, the reality is that your sin controls you.

That's what it means to be a slave to sin. And in Christ Jesus, you're not enslaved anymore. So don't go back to it. Don't allow it to gain a foothold in your life. With the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you, you're able to hear this command and do it.

Don't sin. That's not too much of a burden for you. God is not asking too much from you.

When He says,.

Do not sin. The dead man can't obey it, but the living man or woman can. You've surely heard it said, God will never give you more than you can handle. Well, He gives us more than we can handle all the time.

I already see some of you nodding. Yeah, He does. Death is more than you can handle. But these things are so that you will turn to God and rely not on your strength, but on His strength. The Bible never says that He won't give you more than you can handle.

It does say that He won't ever let you be tempted beyond your ability to resist. In 1 Corinthians 10, 13, Paul said, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

But with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. And we make so much about free will. I hear it all the time. And I'll be honest. I'm gonna be honest with you because you're the brothers and sisters with whom I grow and share, all right?

So I'm sharing something with you that I don't most often share with others. I find the term free will to be eye rolling almost every time that I hear it. So if you're ever in my company and somebody starts talking about free will, you know mentally in Gabe's head he's rolling his eyes.

I'm being polite, but I'm rolling my eyes. And this is not a term used in the Bible. The only time free will comes up is with regards to a free will offering that the people of Israel were not obligated to give like the other sacrifices, but they freely chose to give as they desired.

That's the only time the expression free will ever comes up. As often as I hear people use the expression free will, it's like they base their entire philosophy or even their theology in free will. It's the answer to everything.

It's the reason why the world is the way that it is.

Free will.

It's the reason someone is a Christian or not a Christian. Free will. God loves you so much He gave you free will as if free will died on the cross for your sins. They drink free will in their coffee in the morning.

They eat their free will donut. They make their free will lunch. They go to their free will work. They kiss their free will spouse. They play with their free will kids. My kids are not free will by the way.

They pet their free will dog. They come home and they lay their head at night on their free will pillow and they dream their free will dreams. They sure sound to me like they're enslaved to free will.

The Bible says that before you come to Christ you don't have a free will. You're in bondage. That's what the Bible says. But in Christ Jesus you have a freed will. In Christ we're not in bondage. We've been set free to do that which God has commanded us.

We are set free to worship God where previously we didn't want to before. We were in bondage to the dead person that we were in Adam. And our desire was only to do dead things. Was only to contribute to things that contributed to our death.

As we're going to read later in Romans 8 too the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. Galatians 5 .1 For freedom Christ has set you free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

You have been raised from death to life so don't go back to living with the dead. You've been set free from bondage so don't go back to being enslaved to sin. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.

You have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling within you. The power of God that has brought you to life and set you free. So you have the power within you to resist sin and choose righteousness. This is a command that is not being said to all people.

This is a command that's being given to the church. This is a regenerated people that Paul is talking to. It is a people who love to hear this and are willing to obey it because their will has been set free in Christ.

Do not submit your members as instruments for unrighteousness.

Amen.

Glory hallelujah. Go with the Lord. But we're not done yet. Let's go on to the next imperative. Number three. Be instruments for righteousness. Verse 13. 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. Now the word members also synonymous with parts so we're specifically talking about parts of the body.

And we're hearing this kind of from here on through the rest of Romans. We're hearing these references to submitting our whole bodies unto God. A verse that I've quoted to you many times. We're going to hear it many times more.

But Romans 12 .1. Submit your bodies as a living sacrifice unto God. Holy and acceptable to Him. And this is your spiritual act of worship. So we are talking about the physical parts of your body here that you would use them to God's glory.

This is the physical person that makes up this vessel that our soul brought from death to life inhabits. We've heard a lot of spiritual truth in chapter 6. There are things that we've come across and I've stopped and said, this is a spiritual reality.

When it says you've been crucified with Christ, that's not something that you literally experience. You didn't go through that physically. You experienced that spiritually. But here, this command.

Is you.

In your physical body taking the parts of yourself under the control of your freed will,.

Amen?

Empowered by the Holy Spirit and you are making these parts of your body your slave. So take the members of yourself, the parts of you and then present them to God as someone who's been brought from death to life.

Living in the grace of God. Living the life that He has called you to and give Him the parts of yourself to live righteously.

Now.

That's members, that's parts, okay? The word instruments is a little different word. The way that we use this word, you might picture your left arm as a trumpet, your right arm as a trombone, your body as a tuba, your feet are drums, you know, whatever.

And we're going to dance around and make music to the Lord. We're instruments, right? The Greek word here for instruments is hop long. I thought that was funny. It sounds like hop-along. So we're making music to God.

But more literally, the Greek word translated here as instruments is better understood as a tool or a.

Weapon. Either.

Tools for working or weapons for war. This is exactly the way the same word is translated in 2 Corinthians 6 where Paul says in verse 7 that he possesses the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left.

Same Greek word that's translated here, instruments. The same understanding applies. It's like there's a spiritual warfare aspect to this. Every.

Day, you.

Must choose not to sin. You must fight against that desire. You must do war with the devil and his schemes. And you must willingly go forth and fight back sin and build your life unto the kingdom of God.

So let me get really.

Specific here in our application with this. Let's talk about the parts of ourselves. The instruments that we have been given and how we are to use these things as instruments for righteousness. You must not use your tongue to speak.

Evil.

To speak words that tear other people down. To speak in vulgarity.

To.

Talk like the rest of the world. Vulgar and corrupt speech you must put far away.

From you.

You must not gossip. You must not lie.

As.

Ephesians 4 .29 says, let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear. In other words, don't take your tongue and make it an instrument for unrighteousness.

But.

Take your tongues that have been brought from death to life and submit it to God as an instrument for righteousness. Make it your slave. Give it to the Lord. Now, of course, we should speak this way of one another in the body of Christ, and I hope that goes without saying, that we speak with grace.

We build one another up with our words. Bearing with one another. Be kind to one another. Forgiving each other, as said in Colossians 3. But we must even be gracious in the way that we speak and deal with unbelievers.

You must not slander and speak disparagingly of your neighbor, even if that neighbor is an enemy of the kingdom of God. You are not at liberty to speak of him or her in whatever way you like. Well, they're fallen, so it doesn't matter.

No. Jesus said, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So even in the way you talk about your unbelieving neighbor, it must be gracious. As Paul said in Colossians 4 .6 about speaking with outsiders, let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

And if I may give you a word of caution here, be careful about those teachers that are constantly saying, like this is the theme in their message, constantly talking about how all of our enemies and our greatest threats are out there.

It sounds great on social media. It'll get you a lot of followers on YouTube. You'll mount up your soldiers and your social media army against the forces of darkness in this world, I suppose.

But your.

Greatest threat and your greatest enemy is not out there. It's in here. And we must daily die to ourselves.

And.

Take up a cross and follow Jesus. We must daily be aware of these things so that we don't stumble and fall into making ourselves slaves of sin again. But we have control over our members that they may submit to us and we commit ourselves to God.

What's another part of the body that we might consider? How about your.

Eyes? What are.

You putting before your eyes?

Are.

Your eyes instruments for righteousness, or are they instruments that you keep submitting to unrighteousness? You keep looking at evil, wicked things and being entertained by it. You've surely heard the old Sunday school song, Oh, be careful, little eyes, what you see.

For the Father up above is looking down in love, so be careful, little eyes, what you see. That's a song that's made for kids, but man, there's still deep theological wisdom and application for us as adults as well.

Without.

Getting graphic or dwelling on this too long, I think it goes without saying that we live in a very pornographic culture. Some things you end up seeing, you probably couldn't help it, but what do you then do with that?

Are you taking every thought captive and making it obey Christ? 2 Corinthians 10 .5. Or are you dwelling on it, and then you go looking for more of it?

This is wicked.

It is deeply wicked, my friends. And we must be self-controlled. Don't let your eyes or your mind.

Go there.

As Psalm 101 .3 says, I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless. Psalm 119 .37 says, Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things, and give me life in your ways.

You know.

Jesus' command in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5 .27 -30, You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.