Romans 6:15-23 Obedient from the Heart

Of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsack preaches from his series in the Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God.

Community, Growth, and the Big Picture of Romans

Let's listen in. Hey, I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here. I'm the one with the new shoes on, so. Glad that you're here. I hope that you're here with the purpose of growing in your faith. It's such a privilege to be together and have that opportunity to grow together in community.

That's really what Recast Church is about, is that opportunity that we have to get together, to grow in faith, grow in community, and grow in service. God has brought us together to speak to us in community.

I don't know if you've noticed that, but you see that in the New Testament. You see that in the way that he has left the church here on the earth as the means by which he is expanding his kingdom and developing his kingdom in our hearts as well as in our community.

We are not made to live in isolation. I want us to all think about that this morning as we walk through the text together. Even as we go through the Book of Romans each week, I fear that we could begin to get an individualized perspective on the gospel, as if the technical notions that we find in technical movement and thoughts that we have in the Book of Romans that the Apostle Paul lines out for us could become very self-centered and very personal, a personal Jesus, a personal gospel, a personal relationship with him that has very little to do with others.

I just come into church, listen, get my fix for the week, and then head out to my own life. We could even just, in terms of thinking about the gospel that is laid out for us here, realizing I recognize my own failures and my own sins.

I confess my own failures and sins. God forgives my own failures and sins. And now I grow in acts of righteousness on my own. And we could misunderstand that that is not really the whole thing that God has for you.

So much of the Christian life is living in life with others. You cannot love God without loving your neighbor as yourself. So please do not separate the big picture of Romans from the specifics of life together in community that we find throughout the entirety of the Bible.

We've moved from the big outline of sin, salvation, to sanctification. Really, Romans one through three, we've already kind of gone over that. And if you haven't been here, if this is maybe your first time with us, you could go back online.

We're working on that section of the website, but hopefully by the end of this next week, it'll be up and running again so that you could go back and listen to Romans one through three, where sin was explained in depth as a component of the gospel, understanding how broken, how fallen we are in our relationship with God.

And then we moved on to the explanation of salvation in chapter four through the first half of chapter six, really identifying what God has done for us in providing righteousness for his people through the sacrifice of Jesus.

And now in the second half of six on through chapter eight, we're gonna be talking about the big word sanctification. Sanctification is a big word that just means the process by which God is making us more and more like his son.

And this process takes place within the community of faith. We need others in order to be sanctified, to be growing in our likeness to Christ. Our text this week, by the way, is very similar in the format to last week.

Paul made a strong case that salvation is a gift, forgiveness or acquittal of our sins before God comes to us through faith and not through acts of obedience, not through obeying the law, not through the good things that we have done.

We cannot pretty up the outside and do enough good to please God to earn his salvation. It is a gift. And since that's true, the last two messages, last week and then this week again, is identifying then how do we live now?

What do we do now that we are saved by grace? If it's a gift to you that all of your sins, past, present and future are covered by the blood of Christ, then how should you live? Or how do you want to live?

And that's the question, that's the exact question that Paul is addressing here in our text. Since we are no longer under law, can we do whatever we want? And the question ought to be, well, what do you want?

And what the text is driving for is a change in our perspective, the way that our minds think about these things. Certainly the goal in the end is a life that is pleasing to God. There is an obedience component to the Christian life.

I don't want to push that aside, but obedience from what? Obedience in what method, in what way obedience? Certainly there is a type of obedience that we're called to, but don't launch out into a life of obedience without first grasping the heart behind it.

I fear that many people in the world today may have jumped into Christian obedience and Christian actions without first becoming Christians, without first coming to be a follower, a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ.

One who loves him, one who is loved by him, one who knows what he has done to purchase us so that now we can love him because he has first loved us. So improving in the Christian life is not automatic for a follower of Jesus.

Now, there's kind of different ways of thinking of this. It's not like, oh, Jesus saved me. Then all I do is just sit back and eat chips and watch TV and eventually I'll be holy. Eventually I'll be better and he'll just make that happen for me.

There is some effort exerted. But it also, on the opposite end of the spectrum is the thought that it's just duty. I'm just, I'm owned by God and I just have to do what he tells me to do and it's gonna be miserable.

As a matter of fact, I grew up kind of thinking like the whole please don't send me to Africa. Like if I said please don't send me to Africa, then that's probably where he was gonna send me. Does anybody know what I'm talking about?

Like probably the most, if I'm given three options, I can be pretty sure that the most miserable one is the one that God wants for me. Does anybody relate to that? Anybody relate to thinking like that or having that mindset about God?

And that's not, boy, does he love you? Does he care for you? And so thinking about it's not just mere duty, but it's going to be talking a little bit more about love in the heart and relationship. It requires an obedience that flows from the heart that has been committed by God to a standard of teaching, the text is gonna say, as we're gonna read it here in a second.

It requires being set free from the power of sin and it involves becoming a slave to righteousness through love. So let's open our Bibles to Romans 6, 15 through 23 if you're not already there. Again, Romans 6, 15 through 23, you can navigate in your device over to that.

I know you can probably get there quick in an app, but if you don't have an app or you don't have your own Bible that you brought with you, then you can grab the Bible under the seat in front of you so that you can follow along.

But it's Romans 6, 15 through the end of the chapter and I would love everybody to follow along to see the very precious words of God recast. We have the privilege of hearing from our almighty creator in the words that he has revealed through the Apostle Paul to us.

And this is what he says. 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 yourself to anyone as obedient slaves, you are a slave 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'm 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.

For 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? For 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.

Let's pray. Father, what a privilege it is to talk about things like free gifts when it comes to our sin and salvation. The very notion that the bedrock of this text is based on what we've read before in the book of Romans, the word free gift used five times in three verses in our last text that is the foundation of our salvation.

Free gift, free gift, free gift. Father, I pray that we would be moved. That in our spirits we would be challenged to reflect joyfully and with gratitude, deep gratitude for this free gift that is given to us.

We can get so mired and bogged down in the ins and outs of this life and even disappointment with ourselves and disappointment with others and at times even feeling a sense of disappointment with you but you have loved us.

You have given us such grace. You have even sacrificed yourself for us. So Father, I pray that that would balance out in our lives to a life of love and gratitude. I pray that obligation would not define it so much, that duty would not define it so much but love, obedience from the heart, our whole selves engaged because of the deep love that we see that you've given to us in Christ.

And I pray that that would overflow in our voices now as we have an opportunity to sing these things to you. Father, that we would recognize that it is so much more like falling in love than just mental ascent or rote duty but you have loved us deeply in Jesus' name.

Grace, Law, and Obedience from the Heart

Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated but remember to make yourself comfortable. If at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee, juice or donuts, don't worry about distracting me.

If you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side. And then I would just love it if you would keep your Bibles open or your device open or your app open to Romans chapter six verses 15 through 23 as we're gonna march through that text and kind of see what it has for us and try to explain that.

If you can reference it, that just helps. I wanna start off with a question. Kind of been doing a lot of that lately but what kind of person would ask this question that we find here in verse 15? Let's look at the question.

The question is this, what then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? What kind of person would listen to Paul's explanation of the gospel for all of these six and a half chapters or five and a half chapters rather?

And you've listened to that and then what kind of person is gonna ask this question? After an explanation of Jesus and the cross where he took on himself the wrath of the Father for us, who's gonna listen to all of that and our own corruption and our own brokenness and what he went through for us and then ask, so can I go on sinning?

Can I go on sinning? Is that what the point is? Is that what's going on here? Another way of asking this is just simply, well, how many of you have seen the movie The Passion of the Christ? You've seen that movie, some of you?

So can you imagine asking the question, am I free to sin as the lights come up on that movie? You just finished it, you just watched it and the next question out of your mouth is, so does that mean I get to sin more?

Do you get the point of this question? Who asks this kind of question? I would suggest to you it would be an ignorant person. I would suggest to you it would be an arrogant person. It would be a self-centered person that would ask this question in this context at this point of the gospel.

It would be a person who is struggling to connect the dots between their own personal sin, the sins that we've all committed, the brokenness and the crud. It would be a person who's having a hard time tracing their sin back to the cross, tracing their sin back to being the actual cause of his crucifixion.

The reason that he stayed there and hung there and died there was because of us. Let me say I believe it would be a person just like us. I think the person who would ask that question is a person just like you and me.

Back in verse 14, Paul declared last week that sin will have no dominion over you since you are no longer under law but under grace and that phrase that he mentioned back in verse 14 is gonna expound and expand into this question in the remainder of the chapter.

He's gonna be taking that verse 14 and exploding it out in detail for us. And from that comment springs a new line of question here. If we're not slaves to the law, if we are genuinely, legitimately saved and set free by the grace given to us at the cross, then the question is why can't we live however we want?

Why can't we just do what we want? Last week the question was similar but more general. Should we stay in the realm and the rule under the rule of sin so that God looks more gracious? And the answer was an emphatic no way, by no means said the Apostle Paul and the same answer is given now to our question this morning.

Are we free to continue committing sins because we are no longer under law but under grace? And Paul again emphatically, declaratively says no way. No way, Jose, there is no way that you are now free to go on sinning just because you are saved by grace and not under law.

That's not the way it works. But what Paul avoids, hear me carefully recast, this is fundamental. What Paul avoids throughout this text is very important and I would suggest to you that sometimes when we read, it's enough of a challenge for us to see what's there.

Do you know what I'm talking about? You read the text to understand what is it saying. But sometimes it's very valuable to take a step back and look at what's absent. And some of that comes from some deeper study and some deeper understanding of what you might expect if you really have studied the life of Paul and you've really studied what it meant to be a Jew and understanding his history and where he was raised and where he's coming from.

Something is very stark that is missing here and it is unreasonably intentional on Paul's part that this does not show up here. He does not give a role to the law for us in this text. He's not going to bring you back to saying, you know what, are we free, are we under grace, or now that the law doesn't have any binding on us, the question that's asked, now that we're not under law but we're under grace, can we go on sinning?

And he doesn't backtrack on his, he doesn't say, no, you've been misunderstanding me. Of course you're under the law. He doesn't bring us back to the law. If Paul was gonna backtrack and draw Christians back into law keeping as a method for growing closer to God, it would be in this text right here, right now.

This is the point and the place to correct it if you and I are meant to be law abiders. If we are meant to be law keepers, and that is the extent of what it means to walk with Christ and walk in a good relationship with God, then he would say it here and now, believe me.

This would be the text where he would set the record straight, but he doesn't. He does not bring us back into law keeping for the Christian life, and this is fundamental. This is very important throughout the book of Romans.

He is saying emphatically, it is by grace and grace alone for your salvation and for your sanctification as well. It is by grace through faith that we are brought in. It is by grace through faith that we grow.

You see, what he, you kind of might want him to say or think that he would say here, many of us have lived like he says here, is no, no, Romans, you've misunderstood me. If you could ask a question like this, then you're misunderstanding.

You are still under the law. I mean, maybe even if it's just a little bit, you're under the law or, well, you need to obey most of them, not all of them, certainly not all that sacrificial system in the Old Testament, but there's laws that you have to follow.

I mean, the Ten Commandments at least, right? He would at least highlight those for us and say, you at least have to keep those. But instead, he gives an unqualified, by no means. And he will not ever, in this passage, come back to abiding in the law.

He will never come back and say, that is the way that you live your life. That is the method by which God has given you to grow closer to him. That's not what he says. And at the start of chapter seven, at the risk of stealing my own thunder from next week's message, I think it comes really, it's very important on this text that we understand how emphatic he is.

In chapter seven, he's gonna double down on the way that we are now dead to the law. That's gonna be the message next week. Dead to the law. That's crazy talk from a guy who was trained in Jewish tradition, who was a student of the Old Testament, who was, understand, I mean, this was a radical teaching in his time.

And probably, to be quite honest, a radical teaching for some of us who were raised in more legalistic circles where you at least thought, well, I mean, maybe the best case scenario is I was saved by grace, but now I live by rules.

Now I live by law, now that I'm saved, and Paul is having none of that. But first, in the remainder of our text, before we get to chapter seven, before we really tackle the law and take it down, or listen to Paul tackle the law and take it down, first he's gonna tackle our desire to continue on in sin.

And it's important to note that Paul never holds up the law as a tool for living the Christian life. And so the law, by the way, the law speaks of self-sufficiency. The law moves our hearts to mere duty.

The law skips our hearts and goes straight to our will. You see, it's not, our hearts is the whole being that incorporates and includes our emotions, our feelings, our loves, our affections. And so when the little boy called Law goes out in the neighborhood to look for some friends to come and play, he knocks on doors, and the only ones who come out are duty, obligation.

Those kinds of things come out to play with law. Do you understand what I'm saying? But when Grace comes to the neighborhood and knocks, who comes out to play with Grace? Joy, love, affection. That's who comes out to play with Grace.

Are you getting the picture? Does that speak to you? That's who he hangs around with Grace is love and affection and heart and feeling and emotion and connectedness with God. But when Law runs through the neighborhood, his posse is obligation, duty, stoicism, and just abject routine obedience.

Love and affection doesn't come to play with law. Are you getting what I'm saying there? And that's very vital to what Paul is saying here is that it's so vital that we grasp this understanding of what Grace ought to do in our lives, what our true coming to the foot of the cross and recognizing what he has done for us.

His love poured out for you and I. That's what we're talking about here. The Law skips our hearts and goes straight to our will. I need not love a legislator. Some of you got that. We need not love legislators in order to obey their laws, right?

There's not a love relationship there that is necessary in order for me to have a relationship to the Law. All I need in order to obey the laws is to fear the repercussions that are prescribed for disobedience.

And fear, by the way, has no room in the life of one who has been acquitted of all wrongdoing through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Fear is not to be the motivation for this Christian life. So then the question is, if it's not fear, what drives us?

What is possible? What could possibly be powerful enough to move us out to not just live however we want now that we're saved by Grace? What could possibly change and transform us? Well, let's go on in the text to find out.

For one, we know that we are supposed to consider ourselves dead to sin. That was from the text last week and it's kind of interlaced in here again. We have been transferred from the realm of sin and death into the realm of grace and eternal life through the love of God for us in his Son, Jesus Christ.

And so in verse 16, Paul states a general truism. What you have in 16 is a general statement of truth that we have to get our minds around and it can be a little difficult because of the analogy, because of the illustration that Paul uses.

We're gonna have to navigate this and explain it quite a bit. He says, if you present yourself to anyone to be their slave, you will indeed be the slave of the one that you obey. Now that's a foreign and possibly even offensive illustration to Americans who have a history of racial slavery.

But we need to understand that Paul was speaking the language of Roman Christians here, a language that was easily understood by those in this Roman church. It's estimated, by the way, in research, and it's a conservative estimate, that about 70 of the church during Paul's time, about 70%, if you were to look around you and just take 70 of you, 70 of any congregation would be slaves.

During this era, they understood what slavery meant. They understood what it was like to be in a ownership master slave relationship with another person. They knew what he means when he says, if you present yourself to somebody to be their servant, they would have gotten that.

As a matter of fact, at the highlight, at the high point, it's estimated that the Roman Empire was over 50 slaves. The Roman Empire was a economy built on a different form of slavery than what we think of.

Again, we think of racial slavery in the South in America. It's a different type, but it's still slavery nonetheless. You see, slavery was often a way to get ahead in the ancient Roman culture, where you didn't go into employment contracts with anybody else.

And so, without an employer-employee relationship and without all of the supervision that goes over some of that stuff in our culture, it was quite commonplace. When you live to eat, how many of you like to have food?

Just being honest, we kind of enjoy food, don't we? And so, when you live to eat, exchanging your labor for food and shelter could often be advantageous. Rather than starve, go submit yourself to an individual who's wealthy and work for him with an agreement of some sort.

And so, this kind of idea of presenting yourself as a slave was really common in that era. A person would choose an individual they wanted to serve and would go to them with a proposal. And they would actually enter into this relationship, willingly, knowingly, like actively enter into it.

I'll tutor your children if you take me in and provide for X number of years and I will be your slave. And that's actually well-documented. I mean, people would indenture themselves to an individual in order to tutor children.

You could be very educated and be a slave in the Roman Empire. Or, if you excuse this debt that I owe you, people would enter into slavery because of a debt that they couldn't pay back. So, if you excuse this debt, I will serve you for X number of years and we'll call that good.

Or, I will work in your fields and be your servant if you'll provide for me and my family with shelter and food. And an arrangement would be struck like a contract, like a business deal. This, of course, still follows.

Of course, we know that human nature hasn't changed and wasn't different back then. And so, there was certainly sinful human interaction centered around slavery. You still had masters who abused slaves.

But often, in the Roman Empire, it was more like employment than an abusive ownership. But Paul is here saying, this is his point. So, now that we've explained slavery a little bit and hopefully gotten the idea, at least the Roman idea, at least the idea that Paul was getting on about here, you can tell who is the master by the one that's being obeyed.

It's just a straightforward logic. And for the Christian who has been transferred from under slavery to sin to the new slavery of obedience, a new master, a new ruler, we've now presented ourselves to God as his servants.

It's silly for us to reenter that old slavery attitude towards sin. So, remember the fundamental question here is, are we gonna continue sinning? Are we gonna continue in sinning because we're under grace?

Well, why would you is kind of what Paul is getting at here. When we heed that voice of our old master, sin, and when we obey him, we're giving the evil one authority he no longer possesses over our lives.

We're basically saying, I'm enslaved to you again, and that's not necessary for us because it's not true. You're not even speaking that which is true. You're not even doing that which is true of you. You have been transferred now to a new master.

You don't have to live that old way and heed the calls of your old master any longer. We're no longer slaves, according to verse 16, to sin, but we are indeed still slaves. You see, we all, everybody, every human has a master.

Either you're a slave to sin, or you are a slave to obedience unto righteousness. There is no middle ground in Paul's writing here. We would all do well to dig down to bedrock and figure out, at the end of the day, who owns me?

Who am I serving? That would be fundamental, and that would be application point number one this morning. If you do nothing else, go and establish that in your lives this week. Go and ask God to testify to your spirit that you are his child, you are his son, you are his daughter, and start there.

That is the fundamental starting place in this application and this understanding of sanctification. There is no sanctification without salvation. There is no drawing closer to God without first meeting him on his terms in the way that he is designated at through faith in his son, Jesus Christ.

But notice that in verse 16, that verse 16 was a general principle, because verse 17, he gives the specific nature of the one who has been saved by faith in Jesus Christ and brought out of slavery to sin.

We're not slaves to sin any longer, and he exclaims at the start of verse 17, thanks be to God. He's rejoicing over the church in Rome, and he's grateful that God has brought the Roman church out of slavery to sin, and they have now become obedient from the heart.

Paul is not here saying, Roman church, you are perfect, you never sin. He's saying, your ownership has changed. Do you see what he's celebrating there? He's not celebrating their perfection. He's not celebrating that they never sin.

He's not celebrating the absence of any immorality in their midst. He's celebrating a transfer of ownership in verse 17, and he says, thanks be to God. You are no longer owned by sin. It no longer has the mastery and the power over you.

And you've become obedient, he says, from the heart. Obedient from the heart. And obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. A strange phrase, strange way to word it.

Here in this phrase, obedient from the heart, is the core of the message that will be expanded next week. It's the core this week, but it's gonna be expanded on next week with the introduction of the Holy Spirit.

So it's not gonna really give us all the details about how in the world are we obedient from the heart, because at the end of the day, how many of you know that you need some content to obey? Like, you're kinda going, well, what do I, I mean, you can't obey a non-command, right?

Somebody's gotta tell you something in order for you to obey, and it's not the law, so then what is it, Paul? And he's not clarifying that for us yet in this text. He's gonna clarify more in chapter seven.

And so I feel like I need to go there just a little bit to help clarify for you this week so that this text kinda lands somewhere in your lives. It's not the law, but it's gonna be the Holy Spirit. We need to acknowledge that the obedience of the one who is now all in with Christ obeys from the heart.

Like I mentioned it, love comes out to play. Emotions come out to play. Affections come out to play when grace comes to call. Further, the one who is obeying from the heart has been committed to a standard of teaching.

Now, Paul doesn't always, doesn't often use passive tense, but he does so in this case, and it's intentional when he does. The way the sentence is passive shows that it is God who has committed our lives unto obedience, not us.

In other words, it's very vital to understand that it is a relationship that is begun by God with God that starts a life of obedience from the heart in an individual. Anyone who's doing it right didn't just start doing some things.

Hear me carefully, Recast, that's vital. If you're here and you just, the way you got to where you're sitting right now is just by doing some stuff. You need to go back and meet Jesus. You need to go back to the place where he has saved you, he has loved you, and you're embraced by his love, and you embrace him in love, and then go do some things.

Are you getting what I'm saying there? There are some that came to church, and maybe you came to church a decade ago, or 20 years ago, or when you were a kid, or maybe your parents just always took you to church, and you learned to just do what the people around you were doing, and you've been acting just like everybody else.

Or maybe you came to read some of the Old Testament or some of the New Testament or have that taught to you, and so you just began to follow the rules, and you've never been committed to a standard of teaching.

You have not been committed by God to a standard of teaching, you've just committed yourself. And once again, Paul bends over backwards here in this text to avoid saying the word law here. He's working hard to not use the word law.

He doesn't want you to go back to the law. He doesn't want you to go back to thinking that you can achieve it in your flesh. So the Christian is not obedient from the heart to the law. But here we find a standard of teaching that will be further explained next week.

But to steal a little thunder from that message, Romans 7, six is gonna say this to us next week. We serve our new master, here it is, in the way of the spirit and not in the way of the written code. So he tells us there, a little bit of the fuel for your life is not law, but it is spirit.

Not the written code, but the Holy Spirit who now resides in those who are his. Let me simplify this for all of us because it can get a little confusing. So just a couple of short sentences that I think if you're not tuning in, tune in now for just a second.

The fundamental thing that Paul is getting on about here is we are not law keepers, we are God lovers. We are not law keepers, we are lovers of God. His work on the cross did not buy your obligation. I hope you can honestly say in paying for my sins, he won my affections, he won my love, he won my heart.

Not just duty, not just obligation. That's why we sing that song more like falling in love. If our faith is merely a business transaction, merely a legal transaction, merely a duty-bound slavery, then we have missed it.

And I believe that fundamentally we miss it because again, fundamental is our misunderstanding about slavery in this passage. So if you just read it straightforward, you're like, well, but duty, isn't that like a slave obligation?

Isn't that like a slave and we miss it? And part of it is our cultural misunderstanding about this idea of slavery. Sure, slavery is the illustration, so I can see why we would be so ready, so prone to confusion on this.

But there's this passage in the Old Testament that I think is a, it kinda highlights our relationship with God now that we are brought into his family, now that we are indeed slaves to him, but I think it's more like a bondservant.

It's a specific word that entailed a specific ceremonia, a person who loved their master and found working for him good and peaceful would pledge his or her loyalty to him, and we just cannot wrap our minds around this idea.

But in Exodus 21, one through six, it says this. Exodus 21, one through six, you can jot that down, you don't have to turn there, but when you buy a Hebrew slave, says Exodus 21, he shall serve six years, and on the seventh, he shall go free for nothing.

That entire idea of Sabbath, Sabbath rest, but he will go free, go out free for nothing. He doesn't have to buy, he doesn't have to manumit, a fancy word that just means to pay money for your freedom.

No, you go free, you go free at the end of six years. But if the slave, this is what we cannot wrap our minds around, recast, because we're Americans and we have a terrible history of taking people from their homes and enslaving them because of the color of their skin, and that's not what we're talking about here.

It's a different brand of slavery. Remember that a lot of these were entered into contracts by an individual who said, I want to work for you. I want this relationship. My family will improve if I enter into this relationship.