WWUTT 143 Under Grace (Romans 6:12-18)

If the wages of sin is death, as it says in Romans 6 .23, and Jesus was without sin, why did

He die? Because He had taken our sin upon Himself when we understand the text.

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.com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We've been in Romans 6, verses 1 -14 this week, which is where we'll be again today.

But I'm not going to read 1 -11 again. We'll go from 12 -14 and then move on from there.

But I did want to come back to verses 9 and 10. Have I thrown out enough numbers there? Romans 6, verses 9 and 10.

Now, Jesus is the only man to have ever walked this earth who was without sin.

And death is a consequence of sin. We see that summarized later on, Romans 6 .23, for the wages of sin is death.

So if Christ never sinned, why did He die? It's reasonable to ask that question.

If He was a sinless man, why would He then have to die, considering that He'd never done any sin and not incurred that consequence for sin?

Well, the reason is this, because He took our sin upon Himself. That's why

He died. We read in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21, "...for

our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God."

Our sin was imputed upon Christ, and Jesus' righteousness has been imputed upon us.

This is part of the wonderful grace and gift of God. So when we read here that the death that He died,

He died to sin once for all, the life He lives, He lives to God.

The theology that Paul is laying out there is the reason Christ died is because our sin was placed upon Him.

He died that death one time for all sin, and now the life He lives,

He lives to God, to His glory, in other words. And when we see the hymn of Christ in Philippians chapter 2, it says that He has done all of these things to the glory of God the

Father, leaving His throne in heaven, taking on the form of a servant, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

And God gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus, every knee would bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue would confess that Jesus Christ is

Lord to the glory of God the Father. So likewise, we also must consider ourselves dead to sin, no longer mastered by sin, and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

With all that we are and with everything that we do, we give glory to God in all things.

So let's move on from there now, verses 12 through 14, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

And when Paul is using this word reign here, he's he's drawing the word from verse 21 in chapter 5, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our

Lord, reigning. You kind of understand reign, right? It rules. We should have the righteousness of Christ ruling over us, not sin ruling over us.

So here Paul is saying, don't let sin have that rule over your mortal body.

Yes, we still inhabit these mortal bodies. But if we are in the righteousness of Christ, shouldn't that be more powerful than anything that we experience physically?

There is nothing going on in the flesh. At least if the righteousness of Christ reigns within us, there should be nothing going on in the flesh that masters over that righteousness.

Amen. Because the power of God is that much greater. So do not let sin 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. So just as Paul uses reign, borrowing the word as he had used it before in chapter 5 verse 21, he uses dominion in chapter 6 verse 14, borrowing from where it was used previously in verse 9.

Death no longer has dominion over Christ. Therefore, let not sin have dominion over you, sin which leads to death, since you are not under the law, but you are under grace.

And there are some who will take this verse, Romans 6 14 and talk about how it's probably referring to two different periods of redemptive history.

There was the period in which God's people were under law and they were trying to attain their righteousness or attain their salvation by doing works of righteousness.

But we live in this new era of redemptive history under God's covenant of grace in which we are no longer under the law.

And I get the argument, you know, I'm not saying that it's wrong, but I think that the context here is less historical and more personal.

It's specifically saying that before Christ, you were under the law. You were going to be judged according to the law, as it was stated previously in Romans chapter 2.

But now that you are in the righteousness of Christ against which there is no law, as we read yesterday in Galatians chapter 5, but you are under grace and salvation, whether we're talking about the

Old Testament or the New Testament, has always been by grace through faith. Let's move on from there.

We'll go on to verse 15. What then, Paul says, are we to sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?

This is very similar to the question that he asked at the start of chapter 6. What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? See, he's asking questions that have been that are arguments that have been made of those who contend against this theology that Paul preaches.

Oh, yeah. So we're just supposed to go on sinning so that we can show God's grace all the more in our lives.

And so now, as he has just said, we're no longer under the law, but under grace. Those who contend with what

Paul is preaching will say, so then what? Are we supposed to just go on sinning then because we're not under the law, but under grace so we can just break the law all we want and God will just pour his grace out on us?

By no means, Paul says, my genoita, 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.

In other words, we could have followed the law until we were blue in the face, but we still would not have been righteous because our righteousness did not come from within.

Instead, it was coming from without. We were just putting on a good face. We look good on the outside, but inside our hearts were still far from God.

In the book of Amos, chapter five, God is speaking through the prophet Amos and saying to his people,

Israel, take away from me your appointed feasts. I can't stand them. Your music is nothing but noise to me, even though the

Israelites were probably following a certain standard of worship and following the law of Moses, their hearts were far from God and it wasn't genuine.

You have Jesus saying to the Pharisees in Matthew 25, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you're hypocrites because you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they're still full of greed and self indulgence.

First clean the inside of the cup and the plate so that the outside might also be clean.

And that's what Paul is saying here. We can't clean the inside. It is Christ who cleans the inside.

Thanks be to God. He says in verse 17 that you who were once slaves to sin and become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin and become slaves to righteousness.

So in other words, now we can follow the law in a righteous way where previously we could not.

So Paul's not saying just throw away the law because we're under grace. That's not the argument that he's making. But by the grace of God, we are now able to obey his commands in a way that is pleasing and acceptable to God where we could not do that before.

Furthermore, we are under this grace of God in a way that we can, we are relieved from the burden of having to keep the law perfectly.

We know that when we make mistakes, which is going to happen, we couldn't keep the law perfect before. We still can't do it now.

And when we falter, God will continue to show his grace to us in his loving forgiveness.

If we are faithful to ask forgiveness for our sins, God is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1, 9. Jared C. Wilson, I think, really presents this grace in a wonderful way when he says this, when we appear before the judgment seat of God, we will not have asked forgiveness for every sin perfectly.

And yet God's grace will be shown to us in the sense that he will have forgiven us for that anyway.

That is, if we are in Christ and we have received his righteousness, we are no longer under the burden of the law, but we are under God's grace and praise him for that.

God, I pray that you continue to teach this as we go, that we might understand this all the more and become better worshipers of God, praising you for this grace that you show to us every day.

As it says in Lamentations 3, your mercies are new every morning. Teach us to understand that, to praise you for that, to walk in that every day.

And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. This is the protection of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.