Romans 6:15-23, What Now?

Romans 6:15-23 and the Question “What Now?”

Romans chapter 6 be reading for verses 15 to 22. Hear the word of the Lord. 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.

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.

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? 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 it's in eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his Holy Word. Well, if you ever reach the end of something and found yourself asking Oh what now?

Maybe you graduated from high school. Oh What now you go to college you go to work you go to the military? Maybe you start a business you want to start a business like a restaurant. Oh, what now? How do you start starting a restaurant?

We have several people own restaurants here. How do you start? With a restaurant. Will you first do you find a location? Is that the most important thing? Do you buy out a pre-existing restaurant or or maybe you start a new one from scratch?

It's one of the first things you do. This is to buy a sign. Is that it with opening soon on it and You just put it out there or do you just open hoping maybe the food will draw in the customers. Do you hire staff right away?

Is that one of the first things you do if you open a new restaurant hire staff? Someone here someone sitting right here said a certain kind of People open a restaurant and think I'm the boss.

We.

Think I have a job. Well the answer. They answer the question. What now? Differently, what happens if you don't know what to do next. You've been looking forward to getting out of school now you are. Or maybe you've been looking forward to retiring for work now you can.

So what now. Maybe you've been looking for that special Relationship and maybe you eventually find it you're happily married and settled. So what now. Maybe kids? Okay, you have children. What now? Okay raise them.

Then you do and they've left the house and it's quiet and you wonder is this all there is a what now. You're gonna live happily ever after. What in the world does that mean? Most of the time we don't bother asking ourselves these little these big questions.

Because we're so filled with activities and routines or making all kinds of many little Decisions about what to do next. The many little decisions get in the way of seeing the the big decisions. Having to decide what to eat for lunch gets in the way of seeing What I'm going to do with my life.

The Many Little Decisions That Hide the Big Ones

Next I.

Had a video game. I like to play called civilization in it. You have to make all these all kinds of little decisions to grow your little civilization and hopefully into a big one. There are so many little decisions just one after another.

You don't notice how much time is going by. Once I started the game in the evening and I lost track of time until I noticed that the Sun was rising. Not setting it was coming up. A life is kind of like that.

You have the many little decisions. You know what. Now what I do now. They rob us of seeing the few big.

What now?

Decisions. Some people don't know what to do next. So they just waste their time. They gravitate to doing whatever it is that entertains them fulfilling their dream of maybe moving to Florida Playing golf every day maybe video games eating out every night Going on cruises and trips and reading and watching TV with no burden to have to do anything.

They just wake up. They don't have to do anything. Whatever. So what are they gonna do now? Well, whatever they feel like and they hope they can live like that until the money runs out just as life does.

They hope they got that time perfectly. Of course the question so many people forget to ask themselves after the money and the life runs out.

What now?

That's the question for the truly saved to the true believers. They have believed the gospel. They have faith in Jesus. They started a new life. And now they ask what now? What I'll do next. Is there anything for me to do?

That's the question this passage in Romans chapter 6 second half of it Answers. The first half of chapter 6 answered the question of of why we don't have to serve sin anymore. Believers have participated in the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

And so they are free of sin. Why would you go back to the slavery of sin now that you're free of it? The second half of chapter 6 answers the question then Who do you serve now? Not sin anymore more than who?

What now?

Well Paul answers that in three parts here from verses 15 to 16 the myth of neutrality second from verses 17 to 19 the master of our new selves and then finally from verses 20 to 23 the moral of the story.

So the myth the master and the moral. What now we believed in Christ now, we're saved. What do we do next? Are we just to go back and live like we were before? There's no difference now with the security that when the life and the money is over we go to heaven.

Is that it? The scoffer would say yeah. We're free from the law remember he says the end of Romans 5 free from the law. We're not understand not under the law anymore free from those rules that told us not to sin.

So why not then why not do as you please. I'm free from the law. I'll do as I please if I feel like going to church and being baptized and reading the Bible and praying and giving and being Active. Well, I will do that.

But if I don't if I don't feel like it. If I feel like sleeping with anyone even though I'm not married to them or drinking so much I I get drunk and pass out or dropping out of church or not getting baptized or breaking a commitment I made or just giving myself to chasing after wealth and things.

That's my whole life is all about that and I don't have time for much else. If that's what I feel like doing if I want to do it. Well, then I'm I'm they told me I'm supposedly saved and that's my business, right?

Right, I can say what now I can say that's what I'm gonna do now. Well, this is the myth of neutrality that you can be saved and be neutral. You can kind of choose some sin if you want or you can choose some obedience to God or whatever and you can do.

You're free to do either as you like. And this is a widespread perhaps even Dominant view of what we do now as Christians the ant their answer simply is what do we do now? Well, nothing you don't have to do anything.

We're neutral. Salvation they say puts us in a neutral condition free from condemnation and free from any requirements. It's justification without.

Sanctification.

Like you can be justified and then you don't have to move on to be sanctified. You can just opt out of that. You don't want to do it. Paul's answer to that is again that adamant Dementiation really that just explosion.

By no means absolutely not no way. But what is different and even scary for us? Is that the idea that he is here just basically shooting down that he is saying. By no means that's absurd. It's a distortion.

That that idea is one widely celebrated today clung to as.

The gospel.

It's the false teaching of antinomian ism of lawlessness easy believe ism cheap grace. Just freedom from obedience and oh you can go the extra mile if you want to. You know, it's like taking honors classes in high school.

You can do it if you want. If you're willing to do the extra work you want to get that GPA up there that extra bit. But you're not required to to graduate you can get by with a minimum if you want you can still graduate.

They say the salvation is like that. All you have to do is say you believe and you're in. You are then saved and you shouldn't doubt it. If you want to do all the church and the Bible stuff if you like that kind of thing.

You're into that kind of thing. That's fine. That's good. That's like the honors route. But if you don't but you don't have to you don't want to just opt out. You don't have to do anything at all. You can be neutral about God.

And still claim you're one of his children. That's many people's idea of the gospel today and that is exactly what Paul is here. Basically putting his foot down against and he's shouting by no means. By chapter 6 Paul shows us that we were dead in Christ that when that when Christ.

We were in Christ when he died and so we died with him freeing us not only from the guilt of sin. But also from the power of sin as the Great Hymn says he breaks the power of Cancelled sin. Think of those words.

He breaks the power. He doesn't just cancel the sin. So you're not guilty of it anymore. He breaks his power. So you don't have to obey it anymore. We have a new nature that is not enslaved to sin if we're truly born again.

The new nature is not neutral. It's not just simply freed from something. Freed for anything you want you can go back to sin if you want. Notice here verses 14 and 15 that Paul is using his terms very carefully.

That he's not said that God's law has no place in the Christian life at all. But he says that we're not under it that is justification as being right with God does not come by keeping its rules. It's not our job description of how to get right with God.

But that doesn't mean that it has no role in our life. Paul says that we're freed from being under it. The antinomian is against the law. False gospel says that we are free of it. That's entirely different things very different things.

We're not we're not we're free from being under it. We're not under it. We're not free of it that is we have a Master someone's saying but what the law is not as any roller life. We have no master. We do is we please we're masterless.

We're neutral. Paul says by no means last week. We talked about remember the two slaves last week with Bill. Who pretended he was free? He's a slave. He's still a slave. He has to do what he's told he gives no gets no pay.

And he just dreamed himself as being free. He pretended he's free, but he's still a slave and then there was Jordan Anderson who took the risk. Even while being shot at To get his freedom and he would not be enslaved again.

Bill is the picture of the so-called believer today who says he's saved says he's been free from sin that Jesus has freed him. But he lives no differently. Then as if he was still enslaved to sin. He lives no differently than a slave of sin because he really is one.

Jordan Anderson is the one who is truly free. But even that that analogy used last week, that's an incomplete Picture and Mr. Anderson is free good for him. But here in Romans 6, we're not just free from an old master.

So.

Somehow being what people think today. Neutral kind of uncommitted. No Lord. No mass. Oh, we can opt to follow Jesus as our Lord, but we don't have to that kind of thinking. No true conversion is not just an escape to live unbound as we please.

True conversion is a Transfer of one kind of service to another. It's the switching of masters. That's what he says in verse 16. Do you not know? You should know this people. That's what he's saying. Don't you know, it should be obvious the neutrality is a myth.

Lawlessness is a lie. It's a self-delusion. You can be saved that race and then. Just kind of live as sinfully as you ever did before. No, don't you know that if you present yourself to anyone as obedient slaves?

You were slaves of the one whom you obey their sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness. Now there are two choices. Serve sin or you serve God as righteousness. There's no middle path.

Halfway between both as neutral or you can have you can kind of come to God cafeteria style. We're gonna have potluck later. You can have a little bit of each like we'll have maybe like Chinese food or maybe like some Western food.

You can mix them, you know, some people think of that same with God. Okay. I like some of this Christian stuff. I like some of this Bible stuff some of this righteousness. I like but then I got some of that sin, too.

I'll take a little bit of on each side. You know, let you can choose a little bit of following Jesus and a little bit of sin. You can do the church thing but you know if you don't want to keep your commitments or you don't want to keep sex and marriage or.

Then you can do you can do those things. Sure, you can be unfaithful. You'll be promiscuous you can do whatever and if someone says you're wrong, you should repent you shoot back at him. You're judgmental and legalistic.

I'm free from the law. Well, that's free grace. Some people today say and when you combine that with the individualism our culture. That we're just responsible for ourselves. No, no one's no one's the boss of me.

It's just me and God. No body. No body and nobody. Hold me to account. No authorities. No commitments or covenants or anything beyond my my whims. Nothing restraining me. Although say they're following Jesus, but there are Lone Rangers.

Allowing nothing and no one to guide them to correct them. That's modern American Christianity at least a lot of it is rootless and lawless as an outlaw robbing banks in the Old West and To that Paul says by no means.

Don't you know. It should be common knowledge. We should be able to take it for granted. There's no neutrality. You serve one master of the other either sin or the Lord. And the picture that Paul uses here is the the voluntary servitude that was common in his day.

That kind of slavery and so we need to get take a step back. Because when we think slavery we think of a particular kind we think of southern plantation race based slavery. But in their day many of the slaves Then were very unlike the slavery of the American South.

The slaves of the American South had often been either captured in war or kidnapped from their homes while they remember maybe they were out hunting or something and they got captured like they were animals and They were usually the victims of what the Bible in the Old Testament calls man-stealing.

Which is a crime in itself back in the Old Testament. Anyone who kidnaps a person to make him a slave and anyone then who still holds that person who was captured? To be kidnapped as a slave is supposed to be executed.

It's death penalty for that. Just case anyone tells you the Bible is all it supports of slavery. Well, not the kind you're thinking of. No, it was not.

But anyway.

But I got off track the kind of slavery Paul is talking about here and you can see it in the terms. He uses you present yourself as obedient servants obedient slaves. The slavery he's talking about is a kind of person might sell him him or herself.

Into voluntarily as a way. Technically voluntary, but you know probably weren't many good options left to pay a debt. You're on you're under debt and maybe this if you sell yourself to him present yourself to him.

He'll pay your debt to another person. Or maybe you're in debt to that person and you say I don't have the money to pay. I'll be your slave in exchange for you if you'll wipe out my debt. No, he says, okay.

Or.

There's just no other alternatives. But you remember there's no welfare state there. If you you don't have a farm you can't take care of yourself. You have no income. You're gonna starve. And so you think I'm gonna okay rather than starve to death I'm gonna give myself to be a slave.

It's hard for us to imagine that here in America after living in Ethiopia for two years. It's I've seen that that Condition is real and when if you're faced with that alternative. The alternative is either starvation or be a slave.

I'll choose those. I'll choose the slavery. But here you present yourself. So Paul is talking about that here a way to pay a debt or a way to get food and shelter. And if there was no other way so a person could say I present myself to you in exchange for you paying my debt or for room and board.

And Paul is saying in verse 16 that you have decided Which master you will present yourself to. You have to decide that which master are you going to present yourself to? There's no neutrality. You're gonna serve one of the other.

Who will who will pay your debt? Who you're gonna serve? You have to decide which master you either master sin. Who will pay? For your service.

With death.

That's what I'll pay you eventually if you serve sin or master obedience as obedience to God. You obey his word his spirit and he will lead you to. Says here righteousness meaning being right with him.

The pay you get from him if you serve him is that you're in a right relationship with God. Now if you think you can be neutral getting neither I'm just gonna be free. I'm not gonna serve anybody. So if you need to sin or the Lord kind of chart your own path.

Doing your own thing. That's what you think.

You just.

Deceive yourself. You're really only serving sin and you still are a slave. It's lying to you. Your master sin is lying to you. He's calling himself neutrality. I'm not really your master. I'm your friend.

Even though I make you. Commit immorality and steal and whatever else you do. The myth of neutrality that you're free of having to do anything that you can be safe and unchanged. You can be a good tree.

I'm a good tree. Okay, I bear a lot of bad fruit, but I'm a good tree at heart. Don't you know? No, Jesus said good trees bear good fruit. That grace means that you're free to send. That idea is a diabolical lie as Bob Dylan wrote and sang You've got to serve somebody.

Well, it might be the devil or it might be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody. Well first there's the myth and. Then there's the the master the master of our new selves versus 17 to 19.

What now?

Who's your master? Thanks be to God Paul says to the Romans to the Roman Christians. Thanks be to God. God is now your master. He knows that. Paul knows that by the fact not just of what they say they believe their profession.

But by the fact that they were once slaves of sin then they were obeying sin. They who were once slaves of sin obeyed sin when when sin snapped his fingers and said Live for money be greedy. They did it they obeyed they were greedy.

Hate be racist.

Lust.

Committed adultery.

Lie.

Break your commitments crave luxuries live for things. Sin said do that and if you're a slave you did it. They used to be that way. But he says you who were once slaves of sin. That's the way you were past tense, but thank God you are.

No longer you have become notice the verb tense have Become that is it began in the past and it's continuing into the present. You didn't just start and Then give up like a New Year's resolution. Started well in January, but you know by April you're tired and you're gonna go back to whatever you resolve not to do.

No, but you have become Obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. I Want you to think about that sentence? You have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed.

Let's try to look at every part of it. There's at least three vital legs to that phrase at the end of verse 17 first There's obedience. That is right practice Ortho praxi. Second there's obedience from the heart.

That is right feeling the right spirit Orthopathy. And third there's right teaching the right doctrine.

Orthodoxy.

These are the three legs that you need you need in your life. It's to be a Christian the three like legs for a stool or for a tripod. One leg or two. It's not stable right fall over but three it can be stable.

You need all three of these legs to keep your life Upright. So what's next? Well now you've been justified. You've been saved. You've been made right with God. Well, what do you need next? You need a right practice Obedience a right feeling an affection a heart for the Lord and third a right teaching a right doctrine.

Without each of those three you you fall down. But Paul thanks God that the Roman Christians have each of those three practice heart and teaching. Well, what about you? Have you become obedient? Now many say cringe or even convulse at that idea at the idea that we should be obedient to anything.

They think grace is an excuse to ignore obedience to be disobedient, but he says thank God That you once were slaves of sin you were disobedient you lived under its power you obeyed its beckon call. You have become in the past and still are now at your conversions and still to this day.

You're obedient to God. That's what you do now.

You obey.

But it's not an external kind of rule-keeping job description kind of obedience is what I'm supposed to do. I don't like to do it, but I'm gonna do it. Notice Paul. Thanks God that they become obedient from the heart.

What do you now? What do you do now that you are saved? You love God with all your heart and you do as you please. Now that you love God with all your heart. Some of you think what do you mean do as I please.

I've got all your heart and do as you please. How can that be? Well now that you love God with all your heart what pleases you? Well, if you love God with all your heart. Pleasing him should please you.

That's what it means to love someone, isn't it? You want to do what pleases them. You want to make them happy? Not because you're compelled to or. You think you'll get some reward from it like maybe the way we work for our employer we do the work.

We maybe don't really want to do it, but we do it because we want the money we want to pay. But because you love them from the heart. It's not fake or contrived or demanded or bullied or bribed. You have to have a heart that truly loves God and wants To obey him.

Nothing else makes sense without that. We're wasting our time here meeting here on Sunday mornings without that without that heart. The heartfelt love for God that wants to obey is one of the three legs that holds us up.

But it's also the the only one I don't have any way of making.

You have.

How could I get you to have that now for your obedience? We can hold you accountable. We can recite the Church Covenant and the other imperatives the commands of Scripture and expect you to take them seriously.

If you follow you have obedience you're obedient for your doctrine. We can teach you. We can preach. We can recite the Nicene Creed. We can give you instruction for your mind. And if you'll but listen you can gain that.

Thank God, but what can we do to give you a right heart? For God, how can we make you? Love him. Oh. We can tell you to love him heartily. We can even give you opportunities to to express your love for him as we do in our praise and worship songs.

Especially now do you realize that the main reason we sing what are sometimes?

Simple.

Contemporary songs. We did some just now. More love more power. It's pretty simple, isn't it? But you realize one of the main reasons we do that is not really that. Well. It's just a good way to keep the young folks happy.

They like the newer songs and we'll so we'll indulge them. Well, if we only had more mature people if we were more mature, all we would do is sing these weighty theological hymns all the time. No, I really don't believe that.

Do you think that you think that I? Those of you know me. Do you really think that I wouldn't insist that we sing only hymns if I thought that was the best way. I mean, you know me you really think that what I would.

If I really believe that hymns were what we should only sing. Those of you know me would you know, I would just just we're gonna do it care what you think. Do you really think that i'm compromising by singing new songs just to appeal to the younger audience?

No, I really think that at least some newer songs with a style of music. That's more familiar often simpler ideas and tunes and words appealing to feelings to affections. Affections. Jonathan Edwards wrote about religious affections.

You need a heart of affection toward god. That's part of what we need and there's nothing wrong with feelings particularly affection. It's like your diet. Sure, you need the protein. You need protein in your diet.

You need the protein of sound theology you get in some hymns. And you need the carbohydrates of simple worship songs. You need to obey from the heart not just from the mind. Right, he said obey from the heart.

You say obey from the mind or obey from the will. You just make yourself obey no matter how you feel. No, but obey from the heart. You need to love god from the core of your being. And express that love with affection.

Well, finally the third leg in verse 17 that they are obedient from the heart to to something a standard.

A form.

Not just to their own whims and their feelings. They are obedient paul. Thanks god to to literally a Form of teaching that is there was a specific body of instruction on what to believe and how to live.

It was rooted in scripture. I don't think it was scripture because I think if he he was just they were just obedient to scripture that he would have said. To scripture said i'm thank god that you're obedient to the heart.

To the scripture.

But he says a form of teaching there was a rule of faith and life that they obeyed. They weren't lawless people who just said, you know, we're neutral I can follow god or I can follow the world or a little bit of both.

However, I feel like no there was a form. There was a standard.

A structure.

Of how they were to live and what they were to believe. And they obeyed that christians in the past used to understand that before wave after wave of antinomianism wave after wave of antinomianism or individualism.

Distorted the church basically turning it into a religious shop for the customers. Uh, that's. But that's why they had before all that before those ways of lawlessness. Church covenants such as ours. That is a that's a form.

Church covenant is a form of teaching rooted in scripture not human traditions to which they obey. Our church covenant is every phrase of it from scripture and his Specific standard of teaching to which we are to be we commit to be obedient.

That is a biblical form of teaching that paul thanks god. Believers have been delivered by god, too. God handed them over to a specific form of teaching and they obeyed it from the heart and he says thank god.

And we do this because we're not just Free from sin in verse 18, but free.

For god.

Slaves of righteousness. He says in verse 19 that this analogy. This analogy with slavery. It's an analogy. He says it's a human one, which I think he means it's not perfect. Uh, don't don't. Don't take it beyond what he's saying here.

It's not perfect to compare sin on the one hand with righteousness on the other as though they're just two masters but that is an analogy that They can understand and we can see. It's like for us having having a job or a boss.

That we present ourselves to. Is your boss sin or is your boss righteousness? And you do what is he says in the second half of verse of that verse. Verse 18. Uh, just as you we used to give ourselves to lawlessness.

It's what we did before living. However, we felt without restriction. I'm trying to just strain against restrictions and that lawlessness led to more.

Lawlessness.

You know indulging in sin. So we became more and more uninhibited in our sins thinking that we would. Thinking that we needed what we needed now. We need to break even more of god's laws. Not content.

When you break up a little bit you want to go more and more and more and that's the way we were He says. But now we were to present our our bodies as slaves to righteousness. When righteousness snaps his fingers Righteousness bids us to come.

Come to the word Come to prayer.

Come to church.

Come to baptism. Come to integrity. Come to giving. Come to sacrifice to service. When righteousness bids us to that. Well, we come. When it tells us to go. Go away from sin. Go away from temptation. Go away from pornography away from bad company away from racism away from commitment breaking.

We go. If we disobey god We are a slave to sin. We're not free or neutral if we disobey sin then god Is our master? And he leads us to at the end of verse 19. He leads us to Sanctification that is growth in holiness and us becoming more like the jesus We claim to love.

Slavery, Neutrality, and the False Gospel of Lawlessness

The myth of neutrality is a lie. The master jesus is the truth the moral of the story. Third part. The moral of the story is that sin pays us with death.

While god.

Rewards us with life. There are two masters. There's no neutrality. So you can have one little one or one of the other. You have to choose one or the other. And which one we choose will result either in our moral deterioration Going down down down or our moral transformation Going up our sanctification.

And that last paragraph we see that the antinomian gospel.

Yeah.

No, you're no restrictions. No standards. You can be saved and not live any differently. That gospel is a false gospel. Then now that we're saved that idea now that we're not saved we can we don't have to do anything.

We don't have to live any differently. That is a lie. True salvation isn't pretending We're free while we're still serving sin. Like bill last week true salvation results in you being Set free from sin like jordan anderson.

Who won't go back to slavery, but it goes beyond that.

What now.

After true salvation is that now you serve god.

God.

Is your new master in verse 20? When you were slaves of sin, that was an entirely different condition. And you are now things have changed. Then you were free to righteousness. When you were a slave of sin you were free.