The Power of Sin — Roy Hession

The Meaning of Romans 6

Now this evening, I want to share with you some things that the Lord has been teaching me from a passage of scripture, which you yourselves, I believe, have been studying, those of you who attend the Sunday services here.

And that helps me very much. The ground of the scripture is not going to be altogether unfamiliar. But I want to share some of the fresh things that have come home to me in recent years from the well-known, oft-preached-upon passage of Romans chapter 6.

Of course, you might say, oh no, not that chapter. Because really, it's tantalised us for so long. We've wrestled with it, and we think we've got to understand it, and then not sure that we have. And I know exactly how you feel.

But all I can say to you, I've had my battles with this great scripture, and for years laid it aside, and said, Lord, you'll have to bring me back to it later on. And perhaps you'll do so through another door.

And I shall find it meaning something much simpler than I thought it to mean. Now this, before I say more about it, let's read. And we won't read the whole chapter. But I'm going to read that part of the chapter which we don't read so much.

The first few verses, we've gone over that, but we don't get the last part so much. So I'm going to read to you from verse 14 to the end. We shall have reference to the whole of the chapter, of course.

But let's read from verse 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you. For you're not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves slaves. That's the word. There are two Greek words for servants. One is a diakonos, and the other is dalos. The latter meaning a slave in our sense of the word, a servant.

The first word is one who receives wages. But not a slave. Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves slaves to obey, his slaves ye are. To whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.

But God be thanked that ye were the servants or the slaves of sin, that ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants or the slaves of righteousness.

I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members slaves to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members slaves to righteousness unto holiness.

For when ye were the slaves of sin, ye were free from righteousness. Isn't that an interesting verse? He said there was a time when you were as completely free from righteousness as could be. That's a good description of a man outside of Christ.

He's free from righteousness. Oh, undoeth the light. But when he becomes a Christian, he becomes the slave of God. And he becomes free from sin. For when ye were the slaves of sin, ye were free from righteousness.

What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, we can be as free from sin as we once were free from righteousness.

Really quite a provocative thought. You can be as free from sin as you once were free from righteousness. But now being made free from sin and become slaves to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life.

The Search for Sanctification and Victory

For the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. As a young Christian, I used to paw over this particular chapter. I thought it somehow held for me the secret of victory and much else that I longed for.

For instance, this verse had that great text, Sin shall not have dominion over you. And then three times it uses the phrase, being then made free from sin. And I was quite sure the secret of victory and sanctification was to be found in this chapter.

I longed to enter in. I longed if there was a second or a third or a fourth blessing, I wanted that. Indeed, I remember getting down on my knees, having read a book on the second blessing as it was called, saying, Lord, I don't want to get into bed until I've received it.

And I knelt down, but I did go to bed without having received that. Just couldn't stay up all night. And I used to feel it was somewhere here. And in due course, God did reveal very precious things which helped me very much.

And indeed, I used to love to preach the message of this chapter in my meetings. And when the Lord called me into full-time evangelistic work from a bank in London, I went into the ministry with a twofold message, salvation for the lost and sanctification for the Christian.

And as I understood it, the latter, for me, was based on this passage. And though God did bless me at one stage very much through its message, the time came when it died on me. And I used to try to reckon myself dead to sin.

That's one of the verses we didn't actually cover. But whereas the old man was said to be crucified, he just wouldn't lie down. And that line of things that have been such a help seemed to be dead to me.

And then it was that God sent back to England missionaries and African leaders from revival in East Africa, which revival continues to this very day, 40 years of it. And they came with just the message I needed.

I was in such need. They came with a much simpler message than I was trying to embrace. That simple message of the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, it was really simply the gospel which I'd been preaching to those that were without.

But I saw it had to be applied to myself as a Christian, that old, old story of Jesus and his love. And I had to see it had to apply to me. It was so simple. And God really began to work in my heart in a new way.

But I used to argue, especially with this team from East Africa, what about Romans 6, 7 and 8? What about identification with Christ? What about dying with Christ? They seemed to have little or nothing to say upon that aspect of truth.

They could only speak that which was being made real to them. And they said, Roy, don't argue. Get right with God. Brother, there are things that we're sure in which you need to repent, even as we have had to repent.

You need to go back to the cross. And so at last I consented to lay aside my doctrinal and theological arguments and to take a sinner's place again. Though I was an evangelist, I had to take a sinner's place and find a sinner's peace again at the foot of the cross.

He showed me wherein I needed to repent, things that I had been blind to, things I hadn't been calling sin. And bit by bit he began to reveal the man I really was and he showed me that the whole lot of it had been anticipated and settled by the Lord Jesus in his body on the tree and I could know peace again and liberty again.

But I used to say, but what about those well-worn doctrines of sanctification which I used to mill over so much and which I used to try and give to other people, which at one point seemed to help me and seemed to help others.

What about that? I said this to myself, I didn't take it up with anybody else. And I said, I know what I'm going to do. I'm just going to lay all those themes that I'd used so much aside. And I'm just going to go on with those things that the Lord is making real and personal to me.

And I believe that later on in God's time he'll lead me back to those well-worn scriptures and show me their meaning. And I have a feeling I'll come into them through another door and I'm going to find that they mean something much simpler than I was making them.

More than that I think I'm going to find that they're consistent with this new simple message of grace and the power of the blood of Jesus which had come to me. And I would say in some measure God has indeed in these more recent years led me back to these scriptures and I found it as I thought it was.

I've come in to see them through another door and they mean something much simpler and much more practical to me than I thought. And so I want to share a few of these things the Lord has given and I'm hoping that you're going to be blessed because I believe that this great chapter is the charter for freedom for the saint.

It's a great, triumphant, joyous chapter. I want to pick on verse 14 to begin with. This is the verse from which I want to try and begin. Sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the law but under grace.

Sin's Dominion as Guilt and Condemnation

Now this verse speaks of three things at least. First of all it speaks of the dominion of sin. Inasmuch as it says sin shall not have dominion over you it implies that apart from the provisions God has made sin does have dominion over us.

And I think it's very important that we should understand wherein the dominion of sin over us consists. Now I used to think that to be under the dominion of sin meant that I had acquired certain sinful habits and practices which now had become habitual.

That their fascination was something that I couldn't resist and I was going on doing them almost helplessly. I used to think that that was the dominion of sin. And I used to think that this verse was suggesting that I could be brought to a place when I had no more problem with sin, when I was dead to sin's solicitations.

It no longer ruled me in that sense in that I was continually committing this or that sin. But I've come to see that the dominion of sin is other than that. I've come to see that the dominion of sin over me is the guilt of sin.

Now we've been used to thinking of the guilt of sin and the power of sin as two separate things. I suppose the famous hymn, The Rock of Ages Cleft for Me, conveys that. One line of which, at least in the English version, is Save me from its guilt and power.

The guilt of sin being one thing and the power another thing. But I've come to see the power of sin over me is its guilt which makes it a much more terrible thing. A man may commit a sin, whatever it may be, a particular sin, only once in his life and never repeat it.

And yet for years afterwards to be under the dominion of that sin in that that sin now has power to condemn him and to bring him a sense of guilt. And the passage of time does nothing to minimize that.

A skeleton in the closet for years. He's not repeating it. But just because he's not permitted grace to deal with that skeleton in the cupboard he's under its dominion. It's like a blackmailer accusing him.

And I would say that that is the dominion of sin, its power to condemn me and to bring me under guilt. It relates, of course, to larger matters or to day-to-day things. There may indeed be for us things in our lives about which we don't want anybody to ask us awkward questions.

Things which are to this day condemning us. Things to this day about which we haven't got a testimony of release. Always there. Whenever we think in certain directions. It may be something like that or it may be the day-to-day things that happen.

A whole accumulation of things which give you a sense of being condemned. Of having a sense of not being good enough. A sense of guilt. And I want to tell you I believe that is the true dominion of sin.

Here, for instance, is a cup of coffee. Or it was full of coffee. You had it before you went to bed the other evening. But you were too tired to wash the cup afterwards. But you said, oh, that'll be all right.

I'll just leave it. It'll look after itself. And the next morning the coffee certainly was gone. But the stains were left. Well, you see, that's quite easy. You just leave it a day or two. This is, of course, the sort of argument that men indulge in when their wives have to be away from home.

So they're left with the dishes. And they would like to feel that you just leave a thing, the thing will clean itself. But it does nothing of the sort. And when the wife comes home she sees the accumulation of days of dishes.

And the stains are still there. And so it is with us. Those things may not be necessarily being repeated in the present. They're gone! You're not necessarily repeating them, but the stain is still there, accusing us and bringing us a sense of guilt.

Now I want to suggest that this is the reason why the devil trips us up and causes us to fall. Not merely that we should do something unethical. He's very glad to get us to do that. But rather, having done it, that unethical thing could continue to condemn us and to accuse us and to bring us under guilt.

And so I would suggest that this is the dominion of sin, which in a sense is more inexorable than perhaps the usual conception of it. Maybe there's nothing particularly that's got you, that so fascinated you, you can't stop doing it, but you can still be under the dominion of things that have happened.

There they are, staining the conscience, staining the cup, under the dominion of sin. But we are promised there's a way of release. But before we come to that, I wanted to look at the second thing this verse speaks about.

The Law, the Moral Standard, and the Strength of Sin

It speaks about the law, because it says you're not under the law, but under grace. And it suggests, doesn't it, that it is possible for us, apart from stepping into a new place with God, to be still under the law.

Now the law in the Bible is the ceremonial law of Moses, and along with it, more important than the ceremonial law, the moral law. The ceremonial law related to the services of the tabernacle, the temple, and the offering.

Much else. And that, of course, has passed away. It's no longer binding upon us today. But the moral law, as revealed in the Ten Commandments, uttered from Mount Sinai, has never been abrogated. And the phrase, being not under the law, does not mean that that moral law is abrogated.

It's still there. It's still an expression of God's will. Thou shalt, thou shalt not. Now the phrase, to be under the law, means this. To seek peace and restoration to God by means of trying to obey that moral law.

It's binding on us, certainly. It's an expression of God's will. And to be under it, in the Pauline sense of the word, means I'm trying to restore myself, to get free from the dominion, the thing that's crushing me, by my effort to keep that holy law.

And that, of course, is the natural thing for us all to do when we're conscious of failure. When we're conscious of that dreadful hangover of guilt. Because, you know, the sin can be one thing, but what the devil builds on it can be another.

A great superstructure of accusation. And very often the superstructure is out of all proportion to the thing on which it's built. And it can blot out the sun for you, and take away your joy, and make you feel just a hypocrite.

And how can we serve the Lord in that condition? And when we're in that sort of place, the natural thing for all of us is really to have recourse to what Paul calls the law. You say, well, if I improve, if I make a new attempt to embrace the standards of a victorious life, if I make a new consecration, that's the way to rid myself of my darkness and my burden.

But actually, to have recourse to the law is to make your situation worse rather than better. Because, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, the law actually strengthens sin. Do you know that verse? The strength of sin is the law.

The strength of sin are the Ten Commandments. You might have thought that the strength of sin was temptation. That's how most of us would do it. No, no. The strength of sin is the law. How is that? Why, those Ten Commandments, which I now embrace afresh for myself, actually only give sin the greater occasion to accuse me, and condemn me.

They give sin more to accuse me of. Look what you've promised. Look what God commands. Look what you've done. Look where you are. And thus it is, our attempts to try and get peace with God, to get blessing, to get performance of the Spirit, anything you like, by means of improvement, or doing more for God, or coming up to certain standards, actually makes my situation worse.

Romans 7 and the Failure of Self-Improvement

That's exactly what you've got in Romans 7. You have a man in Romans 7, this is Paul's experience in the next chapter, who tells you what it was like to try and get right with God by the deeds of the law.

And he found that the good that he would, he didn't do, and the evil that he would not, that he did. He found that the commandment, which was ordained to life, he found to be unto death. Do you understand that verse?

At Sinai, the covenant was very clear. This do, and thou shalt live. But it was also implied this fail to do, and thou shalt die. And of course we've all failed to do it. So all we've got from this law, this holy righteous expression of the will of God, which we've tried to do but failed, is a condemnation, is death.

The commandment, which was ordained for life, had I been able to keep it, I found to be unto death. And so it is, that the law only adds to the dominion of sin. It gives it more strength to do that terrible work.

And more than that, it gives Satan his power over us. I like to think of Satan as the jailer. Do you call them jailer? The man who looks after the prisoners in prison. The law of God says the wages of sin is death.

And the devil says, and I'm going to see they get it. In good measure. Not only the second death, but here and now I'm going to see that they rarely feel that they are prisoners indeed. And this very law that I run to, hoping for good things for myself from, is actually that which gives the devil his power over me.

He's called the accuser of the brethren. And what does he accuse them with? He accuses them where the very law and the very standards of victory which they espouse. You know, the way in which the devil accuses us.

You haven't done this. You haven't prayed enough. You haven't won souls enough. You haven't witnessed enough. You aren't holy enough. You know, you would think he was a holiness preacher. By the things he accuses us of.

He's nothing of the sort. All he wants to do is to get you reeled down. And he does it. By the very thing to which naturally we all gravitate as our only hope. The law. Our promises. Our efforts. And more than that, even as you then try and serve the Lord, the devil sees that one of his special demons is sitting on your shoulders.

You try and teach that Sunday school class. And as you try and teach them, he says, hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite. He's done that to me when I've been preaching. There's something been accusing me. Something I haven't got right with the Lord about.

But I'm trying to do my bit. And that demon says, you hypocrite. Stop it. Now, friends, I want... How do you get on? Not very well. And all this in turn leads a person to more sin. You're so down. You feel so out of touch with God that nothing really is going to be lost by a little more sin.

I mean, could you lose much more? And that's the way in which this dominion of sin does actually lead us to the committing of more sin. It does not basically consist in merely its attractiveness. It consists, as I've said, in its ability to condemn you, which in turn makes you feel so out of touch that a little more isn't going to make much difference.

And so we go down and down. An illustration to me that's appropriate here is the illustration of the tablecloth on Sunday morning. And mum puts a nice clean tablecloth on the table on Sunday for Sunday breakfast.

And the family are awfully very careful, or try to be, that they don't spill anything on the clean tablecloth. And if any of the children do, oh, there's a cry goes up and reprimands, because that precious tablecloth has got one stain upon it.

But by Wednesday, there's so many stains upon it that another one doesn't make any difference. It's all part of the general pattern. And that's the state in which you and I can be, even though we're believers, groaning under the law, wishing for better things, but everything going the other way.

And there's so much wrong, a little more, is only going to be part of the general pattern. And so this verse speaks of the dominion of sin in as much as it says it shall not have dominion. It implies that sometimes it does.

It also speaks of the law in as much as it tells us, we shall see now what that means, you're no longer under it. And it also speaks of grace. You're no longer under the law, but under grace. Let me recite that verse then to you and see the cadence of it.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you're not under the law, which gives sin the bigger opportunity to accuse you, but you're under grace, which points you to Jesus and his blood. Now let's be quite clear what we mean by grace.

Grace as God’s Unearned Favor

I'm perhaps telling you what you know only too well. Grace is not something merely that you say before meals. It's not only strength that's imparted to you, Oh Lord, I'm going through a big trial, give me grace to go through.

It's not merely that. Much more basically, grace is simply an element in the divine character. It's that element in his character which makes him glorious in a way that nothing else does. It's that element in the divine character which makes the angels veil their faces in wonder and worship.

What is it? Is it the same as love? Yes and no. There's a link between the love of God and the grace of God. Love is his beneficence to all his creatures, to the whole of creation. But when the object of his love doesn't deserve it, but deserves rather the reverse, but still is love and has things done for it, the love of God is called by a different name.

It's called the grace of God. If it be of grace, then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more of grace. Perhaps the best distinction between the love of God and the grace of God is the distinction between the sunlight.

What a beautiful thing sunlight is. Sometimes in the summer you get a bit too much of it, but we don't get too much in England. And oh how we appreciate the sun on a sunny day. We can put up a little bit of heat, that sun.

It bathes everything with its wonderful rays. What a beautiful thing sunlight is. But there's something more beautiful than sunlight. It's the rainbow. And what's the rainbow? It's sunlight still. But sunlight shining through rain on dark thunderclouds.

And then the sunlight is split up to its component parts and you have the most beautiful phenomenon in nature, the rainbow. And the love of God becomes the grace of God when the one loved doesn't deserve it.

When the one loved is in tears. When the one loved mourns over its failures and finds it's still loved. And it is. The wonderful truth of the Gospel is that God loves the sinner. And that all the sin of man has been proudest to put God against man.

He's put man against God, but he's never put God against man. He's loved still. And that is grace. That's why you were saved at all. Because he loved sinners. And that love shone on the thunderclouds.

And the sin and the failure. And we see something more beautiful than love. We see grace. It's God doing things for men on the grounds that they deserve nothing. And you do deserve nothing. And everyone, if we only knew how wrong we really were in God's sight, can be candidates for the grace of God.

What makes you a candidate for grace? Oh, of course, the fact you're living a good life. Man, grace wouldn't be grace if a good life qualified you for it. It's because you haven't been. And if you can somehow see yourself as a failure, as a sinner, as a Christian who's a pathetic effort of one, and confess that fact, then, my friend, just because grace is on the throne, you become a candidate for that marvelous grace of our loving Lord.

Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt, yonder on Calvary's mount outpoured, there where the blood of the Lamb was spilled. If to be under the law means trying to get blessing by means of the works of that law, which you can never really keep and do.

To be under grace is consenting to receive everything as a gift to a man that doesn't deserve it. Even the fullness of the Holy Spirit is given to us as the gift of grace. The fullness of His Holy Spirit is not the reward of your faithfulness, but God's gift to your weakness.

Is that really true? Sure. So all I have to have to be a candidate is weakness? Yes. An emptiness? Yes. Well, then that's just fine because I've got plenty of that. Well, praise the Lord then, brother.

These very things rightly understood and honestly confessed make us candidates of that marvelous grace. Grace is flowing like a river. Millions there have been supplied. Still it flows as fresh as ever from the Saviour's wounded side.

And to be under grace is to be a recipient of the blessings of God without regard to whether we deserve it or not. But your good under grace doesn't help you. And your bad under grace, if truly confessed, will be of no hindrance to you.

You're going to be dealt with without any reference to your good or your bad. I'm sorry about that. Those of us who've been trying so hard to be good. This is what enraged Israel when the Lord spoke. He brought within the message of grace and it made nothing of their goodness.

They were trying so hard and they weren't going to stand for it. Do you remember when he said there were many lepers in Israel, in the time of Elisha, but none of them was healed but Naaman the Syrian, a Gentile.

And grace passed by the Jews of those days who were so punctilious. His goodness, his ceremonial, did nothing to commend itself and it reached a man outside the covenant. And it was then they took up stones and tried to throw them over the hill.

They were furious that this message made nothing of their goodness. But on the other hand, how encouraging. It means that you're wrong and your failures need be no hindrance to you if they're honestly confessed.

You're going to be met by and blessed by and dealt with by divine grace. This is what we love to say, saved by grace. Yes, I believe we don't realize that's a trite expression. But oh, how precious. Not a chance for any of us were we having to be only under the law.

Christ’s Blood and the End of Condemnation

So sin shall not have dominion over you for you're not under the law but under grace. And the supreme act of the grace of God was for God to give his Son for a world that had its back to him. Thou didst not spare thine only Son, but gavest him for a world undone and freely with that blessed one thou givest to all.

You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor that you through his poverty might become rich. He was under no obligation to do it. God needn't have done it.

People think that, oh, forgiveness of sins, that's what God's for. Nothing of the sort. He hasn't got to forgive anybody. He hasn't got to save anybody. If he threw the lot of us into hell, no angel in the sky would charge him with injustice.

The thing that they can't get over is he did the very opposite. So loving that world that he was willing to part with that eternal Son. Who can tell the love of the Father for that Son? And yet he so loved the world he was willing for the Son to go through that.

That's great. And Jesus, giving himself up to the cross, there on the cross accepted the responsibility for our sins and our infringement of the divine law which make us incur the curse of the broken law.

And he became a curse for us that you might never bear the curse. And doing that, settling the issue with the law which we had broken, he robbed sin of its power to condemn. Thou hast fulfilled the law, says a lovely hymn.

And we are justified. Ours is the blessing, but thine the curse. We live, for thou hast died. And when Jesus said it's finished, it meant that sin thereafter had no further power to condemn. And the first person it lost its power to condemn was Jesus.

It had power over him. The moment he took my sins and my sorrows and made them his very own, he came into that realm where judgment must fall upon him because that's the due reward of sin. But having borne it, having extinguished that fire of God against human sin, sin had nothing more to do.

It lost its power to condemn the Lord Jesus. There was such sufficiency in the blood that he shed, there was no reason for him to lie a moment longer in that grave. And the third day God raised him from the dead as a sign that sin had lost its power to condemn our surety, our substitute.

But if it's lost its power to condemn our substitute who had all of us, all of the sins of the world on him, it's lost its power to condemn you and me. And you needn't be under the dominion of sin for any longer than it takes you to get to the foot of the cross and confess it.

For Jesus has finished it and you can be free. Sin shall not have dominion over you for you're not under the law that will condemn you but under grace that points you to Calvary where Jesus finished it all.

Dead to Sin as Freedom from Condemnation

And so this is the great charter of our freedom. You see, what does it mean to be dead to sin? Because this is what the passage is about, first verse. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!

How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? What does it mean to reckon yourselves dead indeed into sin? In the light of what we've said, may I suggest, there's a very simple meaning for it.

Now, if you want to know what it means to be dead unto sin, you've got to remind yourself in verse 10 that Jesus, in that he died, he died unto sin once. Now, usually we think of Jesus dying for sin. But here we're told he died unto it.

Why, that's the very thing I'm asking myself. What does it mean to be dead to sin? What did it mean for Jesus to be dead to sin? Because what it meant for him to be dead to sin will surely show me what it means for me to be dead to sin.

But what did it mean for Jesus? He died unto sin, not for it, but unto it, like I'm called to do. Now, if I think to be dead to sin is to get to a wonderful place of sanctification where I'm dead to sin solicitations, where they mean nothing to me, I shall be in trouble understanding it.

And actually, of course, very often it has been taught as if it is that we're dead to sin solicitations. And I've heard the illustration. Now, I said, being dead to sin, reckon yourself dead. Now, here's a drunkard, here's an alcoholic, and he can't resist liquor.

But he dies, and there's his corpse. You can put all the bottles of booze you like around him, and he won't lift a finger to get a bottle to his lips. He's dead to booze. Well, he certainly is. The illustration is fact, of course.

But I don't think that's what means this. Look, did it mean that there came a point in Jesus' life when he died unto sin, he died unto sin solicitations? No, it doesn't, because he never was alive to them.

Indeed, he could say, the prince of this world, come in and have nothing in me, nothing that he can appeal to in me. Therefore, Jesus being dead to sin can't mean that. What did it mean? In that he died, in that he said it's finished, in that precious blood was shed, he died unto sin's power to condemn it once and for all.

Never again will he be called in question to pay the debt. It's done. And sin could no longer hold him. For three days there was joy in hell, because they thought they'd got our champion. But the third day it was turned to groaning.

And up from the dead he rose, showing that the work was enough. Sin had lost its power, Satan had lost the one he thought he'd captured. He died unto sin. Likewise. Likewise! You reckon yourself dead to sin in the sense you reckon yourself dead to sin's power to condemn you.

Having repented, all that's implied. Having taken God's side about it. Are you going to go on still licking your wounds? Because repentance, important as it is, by itself doesn't set the soul really free.