March 26, 2017 Don’t Look Back by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Well, we continue in the book of Romans, and this morning, please turn there to chapter 6 of Romans, beginning at verse 15.

Verses 15 to 23 will be our text. You will hear some correspondence between verse 15 and what we started with last week in chapter 6, verse 1.

Let me just read that quickly, and then I will read our text. Chapter 6, verse 1, last week's text.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. Now for this morning.

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 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. What is it about sin?

What is it about sin that always seems so good, that makes it so hard to keep away from?

It seems like if we really saw Jesus Christ and the price he paid on the cross, shouldn't that be enough?

If we've repented once and we've committed ourselves, we've put our hands to the plow as Christians to lead a life of repentance, what is it about sin that seems to always draw back?

I speak to those whose hearts have been regenerated by God's Spirit, to those who see sin for what it is, as much as we're able, to those who've repented, to those who sought

Christ and his forgiveness. I speak to you, Christian. What is it about sin that always seems to have this draw on us?

If sin is so bad, and it is, and we're now by God's grace sensible to it, and it must be acknowledged that conversion brings a horror against sin, and our

Christian life is one of militant violence against our ongoing sin, if that be true, and it must be true, we can never let our guard down.

If all this is true sin, why do we so easily, so readily, so willingly return to it?

There's a few Proverbs even that anticipate our passage this morning. The last verse

I read to you, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And think of what Solomon wrote, just go through quickly, just a few Proverbs, the wages of the righteous leads to life, the gain of the wicked is, excuse me, the gain of the wicked to sin.

He wrote, Solomon wrote, righteousness guards him whose way is blameless, but sin overthrows the wicked.

The devising of folly is sin, and the scoffer is an abomination to mankind. I mean, given all this, and understanding all these things, and having ourselves aghast at our sin, even now, having been redeemed by Christ, why do we so often fall into the 26th verse of the 9th

Proverb, I'm sorry, the 9th verse of the 26th

Proverb, excuse me, like a dog that returns to his vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.

Why did Israel so often need to be reminded of the miseries they endured in Egypt, yet so often they turned back there in their heart?

Why did the Apostles Paul and John and Peter find it necessary to cajole us so constantly to stay away from the old, from the sin life, and stay on the path of godly righteousness?

Much of this is going to be answered actually in a few weeks when we do the, when we preach the second half of Romans 7.

And that one's going to be kind of particularly important for you in one way to listen to carefully when we get there, be about three weeks from now.

Because the way your pastor understands those verses has a lot to do with how I preach and how

I counsel, how I see myself as a pastor. The passage this morning, though, sounds like Paul's just giving us an exposition of two kinds of slavery and their respective consequences.

And there are two kinds of slavery described there. One to sin, obviously, we all pick that up.

One to righteousness. And the consequences of each are described to us, given to us clearly.

Slavery to sin bringing death, slavery to righteousness bringing sanctification and eternal life.

And in all these verses I read to you from Romans, just one command. Present your members as slaves to righteousness.

The command doesn't stand alone. Paul assumes that verses 12 to 14 from the previous chapter are still ringing in our ears.

Therefore, let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.

All this because Christ died on your behalf and the penalty of the law that it demands for our sin has been satisfied.

So walk, says the apostle, in newness of life. Now he has to answer this objection.

The chapter started much the same way as chapter 6, verse 1, as I said, and here it is, are we to sin because we're not under the law, under the grace.

We hear this gospel preached. We know the redemption we have in Jesus Christ. We're taught the awful price that was paid to quench

God's holy wrath of our sin. We're instructed that the law has been satisfied on our behalf by Christ's death and we need no longer fear its thunders.

And what must Paul immediately answer to the Romans 2 ,000 years ago, to the early church, those people in that Greco -Roman society, to Providence Bible Church 2 ,000 years later?

What must he immediately answer? He must tamp down our tendency to find the escape clause.

We want a path back to the old, the more carefree self. We're afraid that we've given up our autonomy when we've fallen before Christ.

What are these questions he's asking? It's just this, can I have my cake and eat it too? Can I have all the benefits of Christ's death, all the while living as I always have?

One I've heard it put before, now that I'm saved from hell, can I live like hell?

We're looking for the escape clause. We're looking for the way out. I want the benefit, but I want to keep what

I was saved from. How about I do evil in order to give God more opportunity to show off His grace?

And now in verse 615, doesn't grace mean that I can do as I wish? Please, oh please, oh please, let me have my old ways.

And what does God say to us? By no means. Such was not the purpose of His beloved,

His only begotten Son's death for us. If His death, if Christ's death means that sin's penalty has been paid,

His resurrection means we should walk in the newness of life now and do that now as we will one day do forever, this being the beginning of it.

Romans 6, 15 to 23 is here for one reason, it's really to press us away from our old ways, to keep us turned in the right way, towards righteousness, towards eternal life, towards what

God has provided for us by His Spirit through the atoning work of His Son Jesus Christ on the cross.

You were once slaves to sin, but now by the grace of God you're slaves to righteousness.

Your former slavery was leading you towards death, your current slavery towards life. Here's the message.

Don't look back. Don't look back. The warnings are everywhere in the

Bible. Peter tells us that our adversary is like a roaring lion looking for whom he can devour.

Be on your guard. Don't look back. That's the whole message.

It may come as a surprise for you to know that you were slaves. Did you know that you were slaves to sin before Christ saved you?

Do you know if Christ has not saved you, you are a slave to sin now? The picture is that stark.

It is that black and white. It is that clear. The division is that distinct. Does that surprise you?

Does that hurt your pride a little bit? Living in a free society like we do, we might have a hard time grasping this.

Jesus greatly offended the Jews when He told them that they needed to be set free. Steve just read this to you.

We are Abraham's children. We've never been enslaved to anyone. Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin, says the

Lord. Everyone who commits, practices sin is the way Steve read it.

I don't know which translation he was reading from when he got that word practices, but that gets to the heart of it. Who consistently does that thing.

There are different kinds of slavery. Some are condoned by the Bible. Some are not. Slavery in the Old South was man stealing.

It was brutal. It was dehumanizing. Its aim was only for the wealth of the owner whose only regard for the slave was his ability to work and make him prosper.

Israel's slavery in Egypt was like that, but neither was anything God would condone. He made man in His own image and that image has nothing to do with such cruelty.

When Paul brings in this image of slavery for we who are in Christ, he has in mind these two aspects of slavery.

Obedience and dependence. Obedience and dependence.

Not the savagery we often think of, but willing submission to a good and loving master.

Spiritual warfare is not center stage in the book of Romans. We don't find it as well developed as other of Paul's epistles.

That doesn't mean it's absent. Jesus in John chapter 8, Paul in Romans 6, they don't say that we're slaves to someone.

Notice this. They don't say you're slaves to that person. You're slaves to something, which is sin.

A slave, someone who is the legal property of another and forced to obey him. Here in Romans 6,

Paul writes several times that we were slaves. Verse 17, you who were once slaves to sin.

Verse 19, you once presented your members as slaves to impurity. Verse 20, when you were slaves to sin,

I ask you, do you object to that? Do you object to being called a slave? Do you cry back to Christ with the

Jews, we're Americans, we've never been enslaved to anyone, we're a free people? If that's anywhere in you right now, that kind of an objection to what this is saying to us.

First John chapter 5 verse 19 disagrees with you. We know that we are from God and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.

First Corinthians 4 verse 4, in their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ who is the image of God.

Ephesians chapter 2 verses 1 and 2, stand against you and you are dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

You're doing what he says. We know what this is referring to, you're his slave, a slave to sin.

If you say that you're no slave, you're at odds with the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Chapter 8 verse 44 of John's gospel, you are of your father the devil and your will is to do your father's desires.

You are living according to the whims of the flesh and are controlled by the desires that that arouses. Sin determines your actions.

Sin is the determining factor of your fate. Verse 16, sin which leads to death and this is the very definition of slavery.

To be owned by someone or something that controls your actions and determines your fate. Let me just say that autonomy is actually a myth.

Autonomy is the God before whom most of the world bows and worships. It seems like freedom but it's actually slavery of the worst sort.

The promise is happiness but it returns only shame in this life and death in the next. Look again if you will at verse 21 in Romans 6.

But what fruit were you getting from the things of which you are now ashamed? What was the result of these things?

That looking back upon them you're now ashamed. Ashamed is an interesting word.

It's used nine times in the New Testament. Five of them by this author, by Paul the apostle. And if you think that Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, well seven times.

Seven of the nine are attributed then to Paul. This word means to have placed a hope in something that didn't give what it promised.

Didn't give what it promised. It's the same word we have in the opening chapter of this book.

Chapter 1 verse 16, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel. What's the difference here?

What is he saying? I'm not ashamed of the gospel meaning the gospel does what it promises.

Your trust in the gospel of Christ will never leave you ashamed as every word of God that he has spoken will accomplish the purpose for which he has sent it.

You will not be ashamed for trusting Jesus Christ. You will never be proven to be a false trust.

What fruit were you getting then before Christ came upon you, before the Holy Spirit awakened your soul?

What fruit were you getting then from those things which you are now, after being converted to Christ, now ashamed?

He's trying to get us to look back, not longingly, but just look back and remember what that was like.

Very few of us would have looked and said I'm a slave to these things at that time. There's another revelation that God gives us now, knowing that that was a slavery.

Look back. What were those things promising for you? What did you think would be the result of those things?

And I'm thinking particularly, as I think the apostle is, are those things which are against God, those things which we're now ashamed of because we now recognize them as sin.

What did they promise? And did they bring any of that forth to you? Did that fruit ever develop?

It was a false trust, a false hope. In chapter 6 verse 21 we have very much the opposite.

The fruit of your former manner of slavery has left us ashamed. Not embarrassed necessarily, though having placed ourselves in a hope that turns out to be false can be embarrassing, but in the strictest sense it means that the final result was not what was promised.

The whole world lies in the power of the father of sin. That's what I read to you from 1 John. It promises happiness, gratification, fulfillment.

That's the promise. That's the hope. Why has that turned out to be a shame?

Because it brings forth only death. And the world at large can't know this because the

God of this age has blinded them. Bunyan got it exactly right with Vanity Fair, that carnival where fun and game anesthetize people to their true condition and the fate awaiting them.

We can go through a whole list of death -inducing schemes that the world presents. Abortion promises freedom of choice.

LGBTQ and now plus, now variable I just heard, promises the chance to fulfill your self -determined destiny regardless of physical reality.

But babies die. Women are scarred in the soul and body. The suicide rate for the other soars well past the rest of society.

What is this? Is it giving what it promised? No. It promises one thing.

What does it bring? Death and death and death. Death now in the soul because we have a conscience.

We studied this weeks ago in chapter one of this book. God has given us all a conscience. You know these things are wrong.

And delving them now, satisfying that urge now, even while your conscience is bearing witness that it's wrong, it's a living death.

And ultimately an eternal death. A shame.

It's a shame because it doesn't give what it promised. I think the

Apostle Paul though would have us consider this more personally. Too often society's sins are recited as a cloak that covers our own.

But take a moment. What things can you look back upon to which you were enslaved, says the

Apostle, and are now ashamed? Not to look back with Lot's wife's longing, wistful eyes.

With shame. With Ezra. I can't lift my eyes to you Lord. Take a moment and think about it.

I mean was it pornography? Was it adultery? Was it greed? Was it violence? It was slavery.

And it leads or it led only to death. Were your sins less gross than those?

Less obvious? A pastor at my first church gave a testimony that had a line in there towards the end that was something like this.

I wasn't always a decent fellow like you see now. I once led a life of disobedience and greed and even violence.

I rebelled against all authority with all my might and main. And then when I turned eight the

Lord saved me from all that. He'd been raised in a Christian home. His sins weren't those terrible things like the ones

I just cited. And I would tell you don't be deceived because your sins are not that obvious.

Not that horrible. I would say that in quotes. Your condition may be more dangerous than the others simply because your sins don't force you to pay the price now.

Paul's point rings true. As much the same as what Jesus said about the narrow and the wide gates. You're on one or the other.

You're a slave to sin or you're a slave to righteousness. And the risk we have when we're in that way, when we have the blessing of being raised in a good and godly home by two parents who stay home and work hard and raise their family and nurture their children and we don't fall into these horrible things that sometimes people do is we just kind of get nonchalant about it.

I say well I'm not a slave to sin because I don't do these things. Paul draws a line for us here.

If you're not a slave to righteousness to Christ's righteousness to what God has revealed of himself in the

Lord Jesus Christ, that righteousness, you're a slave to the other.

Even if you're not a murderer or an extortioner or any of the other big ones. Paul says in verse 19,

I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. The NET and the New King James will say because of the weakness of your flesh.

I like that a little bit better than natural limitations. Natural limitations is sort of interpretation. Weakness of your flesh

I think is more of a better translation. But he's giving us this dramatic picture and he's trying to jolt us out of our complacency.

That's why he calls us slaves. Now it's a term that isn't used anywhere else in the

Bible to describe God's redeemed people. Whether it's Israel taken as slaves from Egypt and now made servants of God or we who are slaves to sin and now brought to Christ.

Think back to Exodus. You'll see that Israel's slavery after the redemption is always spoken of in past terms.

You were slaves in Egypt but now you serve God. Now is

Paul playing games here? No, he's not playing games at all. He's using a shocking term to force us not to look back with desire, with wistful eyes to the old self, to the old ways.

He's made the case that we were in every way imaginable really and truly slaves to sin.

You had no choice. You had to obey his direction. You had to endure its wages in this life and accept that God by his spirit, by giving you faith to believe in Jesus Christ, except for that you would have endured those wages in the next life.

But thanks be to God you were once slaves of sin and 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.

Set free from sin and now a slave of righteousness as much as you were obedient to the ways and the wages of sin, so much also are you now by the ways and wages of righteousness.

A complete turnaround. Why? Because of Jesus Christ, by faith in him, by the redemption that he bought for us on the cross.

The obedience of a slave is a coerced obedience, one enforced by crushing authority and punishment.

Our obedience to God, though characterized here is slavery, and remember when I say that that Paul says explicitly that he uses the term to keep us from wiggling away.

How does he put it? I speak this way because of the weakness of your flesh.

I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. I'm using a shocking term one could say because as soon as I present this gospel to you what is the next question

I have to deal with? Well can't we sin because of grace? Can't we sin because the law is no longer over us?

Can't we sin because sin brings out more grace and goodness of God? It has to shock us.

He has to do something dramatic to make us look back on this thing properly.

Our obedience to God is characterized as slavery and it's a full obedience to our master's wishes that he's speaking of here.

But it's not coerced, not the way slavery is the way we usually think about. We're not forced into a service by violence, by bludgeoning authority.

Remember our call to worship this morning from Matthew 11. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I'm gentle and lowly in heart. Paul speaks of a standard of teaching.

Thanks be to God for the standard of teaching to which you are committed.

The standard teaching they obeyed might have been an early sort of catechism or it might just mean generally the apostolic preaching of the cross in general.

Whichever is the case it was obeyed from the heart. From the heart and this is important.

A slave owner doesn't care why a slave obeys, only that they do.

But our Lord doesn't make men slaves, he redeems them from slavery. Our obedience to him might be as full and exacting as a slave's, that's true, but it is an obedience that flows from where God looks, which is the heart.

You know there is in the law of Moses a provision regarding slaves that I think helps us here.

I want to read this to you and I'd like you to read along with me as I read. So it's in Deuteronomy chapter 15. I'm going to begin at verse 12.

If you're following in the Hebrew Bible that's page 159. Moses writes this by the

Holy Spirit. If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman is sold to you, he shall serve you six years.

And in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you. And when you let him go free from you shall not let him go empty -handed.

You shall furnish him liberally out of your flock, out of your threshing floor, and out of your winepress. As the

Lord your God has blessed you, you shall give to him. You shall remember that you were, that you were, note the past tense, that you were a slave in the land of Egypt.

And the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore I command you this today. But if he says to you,

I will not go out from you, because he loves you and your household, since he is well off with you, then you shall take an awl and put it through his ear into the door and he shall be your slave forever.

And to your female slave you shall do the same. Now I used to think that this strange ceremony signified somehow

God's displeasure that a man who had been redeemed from slavery in Egypt and brought to the land of promise would choose any other life other than complete independence from man and freedom living under the

Lord. So I thought that this was like a minor maiming of his ear so everybody would know that oh this is a man who chose not to live under freedom, under the freedom that God by his mighty arm outstretched against Egypt bought for him.

But after studying Romans chapter 6 verses 15 to 23 for this very message, I have to tell you

I changed my view on that. And I'll have to warn you as you read your

New Testament, if you read it properly, it has a way of doing that. It has a way of changing your view on things, especially the

Old Testament. Because the New Testament does stand over, it is the revelation.

And if we see Christ everywhere in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament, I think we can get a better grip on what he's saying.

So here's what I think now, it seems to me that this portion of God's law was meant to point forward to something, point forward to the pleasure that God has when someone loves him so much that they would give themselves to him because of that love.

It's like what Paul says, you have become obedient from the heart. I think this is approaching that voluntary submission that pleases

God so much. It's not that we're any freer or less obedient than a true slave, it is the reason for it.

God is not some warrior king who simply won us from a weaker one, and then he kept us as slaves just as we were.

He's a God who changes hearts. He changes hearts. He's a

God who in his son, as we read in Matthew 11, woos us to himself. He's gentle, he's lowly in heart.

Yes, he chose us before the foundation of the world. Yes, Christ's atonement on the cross will save all those for whom it was intended.

So predestination is a biblical doctrine, we know that. How does

God accomplish all this though? How does he bring us to the wonders of his redemption? By taking our stony, cold, rebellious hearts, the ones that had been content to slavishly serve sin, and giving us new hearts.

By regenerating a soul and spirit, making us want to serve his righteousness. I think that's what's being portrayed in the slave who says,

I love my master, and I will not leave him, even if I have to have an awl stuck through my ear to signify this relationship.

I love him so much, I'm going to be his forever. Now we think of it that way, we're approaching that voluntary submission that pleases

God. To Israel he says, therefore circumcise your hearts.

To the church he says, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing and regeneration of the

Holy Spirit. See, he makes us want to serve him. He makes us want to say,

I will not go out from you because I love you. I said earlier there's only one explicit command in our passage this morning.

So now present your members as slaves to righteousness. Slavery is an analogy meant to shut any escape hatch we might have tried to keep open and reserve.

Jesus said that once the hand is laid to the plow, there it must stay. Count the cost now, but once you lay your hand to this work, to this gospel, don't look back.

Just don't look back to the old. He says present your members.

Present means more than simply the way something is used. It has to do with religious service. As when the angel said to Zechariah, I am

Gabriel and I stand, and that's our word, I stand, I present myself in the presence of God. In the same way we present our members, the faculties of our physical bodies to the enthusiastic, committed, and wholehearted service of God.

Like a slave, but not as a slave. He says you were once slaves to sin, but now by the grace of God you are slaves to righteousness.

Your former slavery was leading you towards death. Your current slavery is leading you towards life, towards the paths of righteousness, towards the image of Christ himself who saved you.

What's the message here? Don't look back. Don't turn back.

Lot's wife looked back to the security of sin -filled Sodom and turned into a pillar of salt. Her freedom from that slavery was at hand, but she declined it.

Steve's reading from Exodus makes the same point. Look at Numbers chapter 11, if you will.

Page 119 on the Pew Bible. Numbers 11 beginning at verse 4. Again recounting

Israel on the other side of the Red Sea. After Egypt had been destroyed, after God's mighty arm had put those 10 plagues upon Egypt and he drew them out of Egypt.

Egypt always being that metaphor for slavery, for sin. And now there's this body of water protecting them from Egypt.

And what's at the bottom of that body of water? The army of Egypt that had been chasing them.

In that situation, Numbers 11 beginning at verse 4. Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving, and the people of Israel also wept again and said, oh that we had meat to eat.

We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing. The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.

But now our strength is dried up and there's nothing at all but this manna to look at. Nothing at all to look at but our our

Lord's daily supply. Nothing behind but the security of a stocked pantry.

Nothing ahead but freedom and life. Nothing behind but slavery and death.

What is our message? Don't go there. Don't look back. Don't ask why the former days were better than these because they weren't.

You were a slave. You're a slave to sin. It was bringing you death in this life and promising eternal death in the next.

When I said we want a path back to the old more carefree self, it sounds so innocuous doesn't it?

A carefree self, a life of self -indulgent, unworried, unhurried, self -assessing calm.

Self -assessing calm, that word self -assessing is fairly important there. But it was none of that.

You are if you are outside of Jesus Christ. If your faith is not in you are a slave and you are slavishly serving and obeying the whims of the world and are under the sway of the father of lies.

Speaking of our adversary satan, the devil. He was his way is sin from start to finish and all the promises of happiness and self -fulfillment whatever that really means will never come to fruition.

Death now, death to come. This is what Paul is saying and this without Christ is your slavery.

Don't look back. I mean it's really the whole message. You were this, now be what

God has made you. You were once slaves to sin, now have the same dedication to God and his righteousness that you once had to these other things.

The call of the gospel transformation, the process we call sanctification is always this, be what you are, be what

God has made you. The new man created by God in true righteousness and holiness, put him on every moment.

Be what God has made you. Don't look back to those old death -bringing ways that promised so much but delivered only shame.

What did Egypt have? Leeks and onions and fish, cucumbers and whatnot, and the slave driver's lash.

All just death. Thomas Chalmers put it well.

He said, the question, whose servants are ye, resolves itself into a matter of fact.

The apostle on looking to his disciples pronounces them by the test of obedience to become the servants of righteousness.

And he not only affirms this change but he assigns the cause of it. Now God be thanked, said the apostle,

I look at your fruit and I find it the fruit of holiness. I look at your life and I find it to be the life of the servants of God.

You see the sea has been crossed. How so? Because Jesus Christ died on the cross.

The pursuing army has been drowned. Jesus at the cross destroyed the works of the devil.

Moses promised Israel, for the Egyptians you see today you shall never see again. Oh church, don't look back on those old ways.

Don't look back on that old slavery. I think this is Paul's message to us.

You were that, but God in his mercy and his grace has redeemed you from that and brought you into his service.

Obedient from the heart, standing before God with our ears ready and saying yes

Lord pierce my ear whatever it takes because I love you so much. I want to be here and I want to serve your righteousness.

I want to be under your influence. I want to do what you would have me to do to draw me into the image of your son

Jesus Christ. Don't look back. That army that was chasing you is not there.

Your slavery to sin has been broken. But now that you've been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end eternal life.

On that I'll just close and say amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for this word that the apostle has given us.

We thank you Lord that you have drawn us from slavery that was leading definitely and inexorably to death and made us your servants.

Lord may we serve you with so much more determination than we once served sin.

May we look to your righteousness and the prize of Jesus Christ as always that which we would grasp after and not look back with any wistfulness or any desire, any longing upon the old ways and the past slavery in which we were immersed.

Father we thank you for the redemption, the freedom that we have in Jesus Christ. We thank you for the admonition of the apostle here that we not take advantage of your grace, that we not use grace as an excuse to do the opposite of grace.

Father just by your spirit that you would make us into what you Father have have decreed for us to be brought into the image of your son