Servants of Righteousness I

Welcome to the

Whole Council Podcast, I'm John Snyder and this week we have something special and it will be actually for next week as well.

We want to introduce you to a sermon by Martin Lloyd -Jones. If you don't know much about Martin Lloyd -Jones, he was a minister in the first, the middle part of the 20th century in Wales and then in England.

And Lloyd -Jones is actually a Welshman and he preached often on the radio in Welsh.

Most of us know Lloyd -Jones through his books and if you haven't picked up a book by Martin Lloyd -Jones, you really ought to do yourself the favor and do that.

I remember the first time that I read one of his books, it would have been a collection of his sermons, which most of his books were the collections of sermons, on the

Sermon on the Mount. And as I was reading that, I noticed a couple of things. Lloyd -Jones is so logical.

Each sermon is clearly building upon the last. And there's a lot of repetition in his sermons.

So maybe the first page in the new chapter is just reminding you of what went before.

Lloyd -Jones also is wonderfully logical when he lays out kind of a big picture of the passage. And that's where I find him most helpful for me.

I mean, I have commentaries that talk about individual Greek words and grammar, but Lloyd -Jones is so helpful for the bird's eye view.

What's this all about and where are we headed? Also, Lloyd -Jones, though really balanced, quite penetrating.

And you know, he's definitely not a flamboyant preacher, but he's a preacher that gets behind my armor and does my soul good.

I remember one time listening to a series of his sermons on revival, and I had to paint a house.

So it was just me. And I was doing all the painting by myself in the middle of a Mississippi summer and hour after hour, day after day with a brush.

And I listened to all the Lloyd -Jones sermons on revival. It was wonderful. Well, today we want to introduce you to a sermon from Romans 6, verse 18.

And let me read it to you. It's one that I picked because it's so helpful.

Verse 17, which prepares us, says this. But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.

And then verse 18 says this. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

And Lloyd -Jones' sermon on this is just so helpful. Now, it's a long enough sermon that we're going to break it at the middle.

And so this is just our first. Also, we wanted to introduce you to a ministry that is so helpful.

While there are a number of companies that have taken his sermons, which have been put into print and published them, the

Banner of Truth, Primarily, Crossway, many others, One of the most helpful ministries with regard to Lloyd -Jones audio sermons is a ministry called the

Martin Lloyd -Jones Trust or the MLJ Trust. There's a website and there's a phone app.

Now this is a trust run by a handful of people who have full -time jobs and devote their time to this.

It makes Lloyd -Jones sermons available in different... You can search the site by various collections.

So the book of Romans or sermons on the gospel. And you can search by texts.

But all these sermons have been put up there by these volunteers. And it is, while there are no paid employees, there are costs involved in all of this.

And it is a ministry that is entirely funded by donors. And so if you are looking for something that you can give to that you know will bear lasting fruit, this will be wonderful.

Teddy will give you links in the show notes to the app and to the website, the

Martin Lloyd -Jones Trust. We hope that you find the first half of this sermon helpful.

We come this evening in a study of this epistle to the Romans to the 18th verse in the sixth chapter.

The 18th verse in the sixth chapter of Paul's epistle to the

Romans. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.

Now this is one of those verses, and we've come across previous instances and examples of this, in this very chapter in which the great apostle, as it were, sums up the position of the

Christian. You will have noticed that in developing his argument in this chapter, he keeps on doing that.

He works out an argument, then sums it up. That is, of course, of the very essence of true teaching.

And here, having worked out his argument in verses 16 and 17, he, as it were, sums it up, and again arrives at a fundamental conclusion about the

Christian men. And particularly, in terms, once more, of this objection which was being brought forward against his teaching by certain people, to the effect, namely, that his teaching was that because we are not under the law, but under grace, we can therefore continue in sin.

In other words, I am suggesting that this 18th verse is in many ways parallel to verse 11.

It more or less does, for this section, what verse 11 did for its section.

Having worked out his argument in verses 1 to 10, he therefore says, Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto

God through Jesus Christ our Lord. That is the truth about the

Christian. Well, now here, he is stating it again, the same truth, really, but that he is putting it, obviously, this time in terms of this illustration of slavery, which he has been using as his argument in verses 16 and 17.

Now, it is important that we should thus understand the Apostle's characteristic method.

There is something else that is characteristic about this method also. You will generally find that he gives us one of these summaries of the

Christian and his position before he goes on to make an appeal or a practical exhortation.

Now, you remember how he did that in verse 11. Having told us that we are to regard ourselves, because it is true of us, as dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto

God through Jesus Christ our Lord, he then goes on to his appeal. Let not therefore sin reign in your mortal body, etc.

The appeal of verses 12 and 13. Well, now, he is doing exactly the same thing here. Here is the statement about us in verse 18.

Well, then, because of that, he says, I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh, for as ye have yielded your members, servants, to uncleanness and to iniquity and to iniquity, even so now yield your members, servants, to righteousness and to holiness.

In other words, because what he says in verse 18 is true of us, he has a right to make the appeal of verse 19 and the following verses.

Indeed, because of what is true of us in verse 18, it follows inevitably that he must make the appeal which he makes in verse 19.

And so, in every way, he proves the utterly foolish and futile character of this charge which is made against him and which he has put before us in verse 15.

Now, then, there are the mechanics of this most important verse that we are looking at this evening.

Having thus seen its position in its setting and having seen how the apostle came to make the statement, we can now proceed to consider it.

The first things I would say about it are general. Here is one, for instance. This is a statement of fact.

It isn't an exhortation. He is not exhorting us to free ourselves from sin.

He is telling us that we are free from sin. It's not an exhortation, it is a statement of fact.

This is the position of the Christian, this is the truth about the Christian. Secondly, it is something which is true of all

Christians. Now I want to emphasize that equally. It is true of all

Christians. It isn't merely true of some Christians who've gone on to have a second experience.

It is true of all Christians. No amen, I notice now. However, well now then, that's significant probably.

Well now, let's watch this. This is a very vital part of the whole argument of the apostle at this point.

This isn't merely something that is true, I say, of certain special Christians who have got something which the ordinary

Christian hasn't got. No, he is making it as a universal statement about all

Christians. If you like, I'll put it in another way. You cannot be a Christian at all except this be true of you.

Now then, let us work this out together. What then is it that he's saying is true of every one of us who is a

Christian? Well, you notice he starts with his negative. Here it's put like this in the authorised, being then made free from sin.

But there's a better translation. Having been freed from sin.

That's the negative that's true about us. And what does that mean? Well, let me add some more negatives.

It doesn't mean sinless perfection. It doesn't mean that we are now entirely free from sin in every respect.

That there is no sin left in us at all. And that we have finished once and forever with sin itself, or sin as such.

It doesn't mean that. He's not teaching sinless perfection. As the whole context shows, and especially the exhortation in verse 19 which follows.

So we mustn't interpret being free from sin as meaning that literally.

There is no sin left in us in any shape or form whatsoever. And that we have finished with it completely and absolutely.

It doesn't mean that. Secondly, it does not mean that we are free from the sinful nature.

Now those who've been following here regularly will understand these distinctions. It does not mean,

I say, that the sinful nature has been taken right out of us.

You remember we've drawn a distinction between the old man and the sinful nature. The old man has gone.

He is dead. We have finished with him once and forever. But not with the sinful nature. The sinful nature remains, as we've been reminded in verse 12, in our mortal bodies.

Now then, so I say it doesn't mean that we are free altogether from the sinful nature.

It means less than that. It means more than that. Let me expand that. It means less in this way.

That if we say that we are entirely free from the sinful nature, again it means sinless perfection, which he is not teaching and never teaches anywhere.

But then on the other hand I say that it means more than that. And I mean this.

There is a sense in which we are free from sin as a power.

Free not only from the tyranny of the sinful nature, but also from the tyranny of the devil and all his forces and even hell itself.

So that we must be clear to differentiate here and realize that he is not saying just that we are free from the sinful nature.

And my last negative would be this. He is not saying that we are free from temptations, that we'll never again be tempted, that we'll never again be worried by an evil thought which the devil may throw at us, or that we'll never again be troubled by the motions of sin which remain in the sinful body, or in the body of sin as he calls it, or the mortal body.

He's not saying that. Now I'm putting these negatives for this reason, that there are many good Christian people who are troubled about this thing.

They are troubled like that. They seem to think that the mere fact that they are tempted somehow means that these great statements of the scriptures don't apply to them.

So it is important that we should not interpret the phrase free, being freed from sin, as meaning that we no longer are subject to temptation, or that we no longer will ever be worried by what

I call, and Paul calls in chapter 7, the motions of sin that are in the sinful body.

Well then what does it mean positively? And here we should find ourselves in a happy position.

It means clearly the opposite of what he says in the rest of the verse. You see there's this sort of parallel that he's so fond of.

Being then made free from sin, well what are you now then? What's the opposite of being free from sin?

Oh it is to be servants of righteousness. And remember the word servants here, as in all these verses we are dealing with, should mean slaves.

So as the positive means to be slaves of righteousness, what the negative means is that we are no longer slaves to sin.

That's the parallel. We are slaves to righteousness, but we are no longer slaves to sin. We've been freed from that.

We've been delivered from that. We are no longer in that position of bondage. Let me use the terms

I've used before. As Christians, and you can't be a Christian without this being true of you, you are no longer under the slavery and the tyranny and the dominion and the whole bondage of sin.

That's the thing that we've been delivered from. Now you notice that the apostle, in other words, is repeating what he has already said several times in this chapter.

Take verse 2. God forbid. How shall we that died to sin live any longer therein?

And you remember our interpretation there was that to say that we died to sin means not the various things that I've been dismissing again this evening, but that it means we have died to the reign of sin, to the rule of sin, to the dominion of sin, all that.

Sin personified and sin as represented by the devil and all his powers and all his subtlety.

We are dead to that. So he said it in verse 2, but he said it again in verse 6, knowing this that our old man was crucified with him.

And remember it means once and forever. It's again in verse 7. He that is dead is freed from sin.

Exactly the same thing. He that is dead is freed from sin, being then made free from sin.

You see it's a repetition. And you've got it also by implication in verse 10, where he says that our

Lord in that he died, he died unto sin once. And he says the same is true of us in verse 11.

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.

You have died unto it. Now then, it's just a repetition of all that. And in a sense he even says it in verse 14.

For sin shall not have dominion over you. Why? Well, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

And as we saw last week, it is the whole implication of verse 17. God be thanked that you were the servants of sin, the slaves of sin.

But you are no longer that. You have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which you were delivered or to which you were committed.

Very well. Now then, here is a most important statement.

The apostle says that this is true of us as Christians. And indeed, as the argument has been working out in verse 17, the very fact that we believe the gospel at all is proof positive that this verse 18 is true of us.

No man can believe the gospel of Christ while he is a slave to sin.

It's impossible. You see, the apostle has put it, as I reminded you last week, in 2

Corinthians 4. He says, If our gospel be hidden, it is hid to them that are lost, in whom the

God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them.

Now there is a man who is a slave of sin and all its power, and he cannot believe.

So the very fact that a man believes the gospel is a proof that he has been freed from sin.

Now this is, I say, a great and a crucial statement. It is the great argument of the whole of this chapter.

And therefore we must be perfectly clear about it. This is the fundamental statement of the

New Testament about the Christian man. He is no longer the slave of sin as a power, as a force, as a reigning body.

He has been set free from that. There is the negative. Well, let me hurry to the positive.

Being then made free from sin, he became the servants of righteousness.

Now that's the authorized translation. And unfortunately it isn't good enough, it isn't strong enough.

It's what it says is true, but it might be misinterpreted. He became the servants of righteousness.

A better translation is this. Ye were enslaved to righteousness, because that is exactly what the apostle says.

Not that we have become the slaves only, but we have been enslaved to righteousness.

We were before enslaved to sin. We have now become enslaved to righteousness.

Those who followed the argument last week can see why I'm emphasizing and stressing this. We were delivered over unto the form of doctrine.

Yes, and now he's putting that in a different way by saying that we have become enslaved to righteousness.

Remember the meaning of the word righteousness? He means by it the type of life that is pleasing to God.

It doesn't just mean a bit of morality. It means this original righteousness which

God gave men. It means uprightness in the highest moral sense.

Indeed it means, as he will put it specifically in the next verse, holiness.

And I shall explain in a moment why I'm emphasizing the meaning of the word righteousness. Very well.

Now our position is that we have been enslaved to righteousness.

What does this mean? Well, it doesn't just mean that we admire righteousness. It doesn't just mean that we desire to be righteous.

It doesn't just mean that we are attempting to be righteous, or attempting to practice righteousness in our daily lives.

It includes all that, but it's much stronger than that. What the apostle says is that we've become slaves to righteousness.

Nothing less. Not servants. We are the slaves of righteousness. Now then, what does this mean?

Well, as I'm saying it means this. We have come under the power of righteousness.

We are under the control of righteousness. We are under the influence of righteousness.

Look at it like this. As once we were tyrannized over and ruled by and governed by sin, we are now, if you like, tyrannized over and governed and ruled by righteousness itself.

Now that's the statement. And from that we deduce the following truths. This then is something that is true of every one of us from the moment of our regeneration.

He's talking about Christians, any Christian. So I say from the moment we are regenerate, it is true to say of us that we are no longer slaves of sin, we are the slaves of righteousness.

You see, therefore, how utterly wrong and unscriptural it is to separate justification and sanctification, and to say that a man can be justified without being sanctified, or to say that a man can receive his justification and perhaps years later go on and receive his sanctification.

Now, according to this argument, that is not only wrong, it is completely impossible.

From the moment we cease to be the slaves of sin, we are the slaves of righteousness.

There is no interval in between. There is no no man's land. There is no neutral position.

You are either the slave of sin or else you are the slave of righteousness. And the moment you're delivered from that, you're in this.

So there is no gap between justification and sanctification.

Sanctification starts from the moment of our rebirth. I go further.

There is really no choice in this matter of sanctification. The moment we believe, the moment we are made regenerate, the process begins.

You remember how he puts it, the same apostle puts it in the first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 1 and verse 30.

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

And if you're in Christ, all that is true of you immediately. Well, now then, how does this work out?

What is it to say that we are enslaved to righteousness? How does it work,

I ask? Well, it works like this. To be born again means that a principle of new life is put into us.

Yes, but that principle of new life is a principle of righteousness because we are made partakers of the divine nature.

So the new life that is given to a man at his moment of rebirth is a principle of righteousness.

And it's a principle that begins to work at once in us. And it works as a power. The apostle puts it in different form in Philippians 2, 12 and 13 like this.

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do.

That's the principle of righteousness working in us. It was put into us at the moment of regeneration and that is how it works.

It is working, it is God that worketh in us both to will and to do. And, of course, the teaching is that the

Holy Spirit does precisely the same thing. Take, for instance, Galatians 5, 17.

The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.

Now, you notice the same thing is said of the two. The flesh lusteth, yes, but so does the spirit.

And the moment a man has become a Christian, the Holy Spirit of God is in him and the Holy Spirit of God is lusting within him already, lusting to win him.

Now, you get a parallel statement in a very interesting way in the epistle of James in the fourth chapter and the fifth verse.

The authorized translation has it like this, the spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy.

But you'll find a very interesting and, as I think, very right translation in the margins of some of the

Bibles. The spirit which he made to dwell in us yearneth for us even unto jealous envy.

Now, here is the Christian, you see. There are forces that are anxious to get his suffrage, to use him.

There's the power of evil and of sin. Yes, but this other spirit that God has given us is lusting on the other side even unto jealous envy.

What for? Well, to win us to God, to win us to righteousness, to make us what

God would have us be. So, you've got these two forces. Now then, this is how this enslaving to righteousness works itself out.

We are under this power that is lusting for us even to jealous envy in order that we might be finally perfect in the presence of God.

It is the will of God, even your sanctification.

So, we can resolutely and confidently say this, that this work which

God has begun in us, he will go on until it is absolutely perfect. He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

That is his will for us, even our sanctification. He puts the principle of life in us, it's righteousness, and it works, and the spirit works in it, and so the process will go on until we shall be finally faultless and blameless before him in glory.

And he has many ways of doing this. I mustn't go into them this evening. But you know, in a sense, it's a terrible thing to be a

Christian. The moment you and I become Christians, we must be very careful as to what we do.

If you do not obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, well, you can expect chastisement.

You can expect punishment. You can expect that you will find yourself in positions of difficulty and you'll be bewildered.

What's it mean? Well, it means this, that God is perfecting you.

God is sanctifying you. And if we will not allow him to sanctify us through the truth, he has these other measures, and he brings them in.

If it is God's will that we be sanctified, we will be sanctified. In other words, we are under the slavery of righteousness.

We have become enslaved to it. And so it is that he brings it to pass.

Very well. That is now our position. We were the slaves of sin.

We are no longer that. As regards the tyranny and the reign of sin, we are free men.

But we are not free because we are now the slaves of righteousness.

That then is all that the apostle is concerned to say at this point, to establish his argument that it is monstrous and foolish to suggest that any man who believes this doctrine will then go on to draw the deduction.

Shall we then continue in sin because we are not under the law but under grace?

Now that is all he is concerned to do. But we cannot leave it without indicating this, that we must still carry in our minds the way in which all this happens.

There is no verse that I know of, in a sense, in the case of which it is so dangerous to take it out of its context as this verse we are looking at this evening.

Imagine a man just picking up this verse and saying, being then made free from sin, he became the servant of righteousness, and beginning to work it out after his own imagination.

He might say, oh, well, I can see. It was our belief and our obedience that did this.

But it isn't our obedience that does this. It isn't our believing that does this.

What does it? Oh, it's the same thing that does this as does everything that the apostle is dealing with in the entire chapter.

And what is that? It is our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is because being baptized into him, we are baptized into his death, and baptized into his resurrection.

It is the result of all that he has done for us. Now that was the great argument, you remember, of verses three to ten.

We cannot deliver ourselves from slavery. We cannot make ourselves slaves of righteousness.

No, this is what is done to us. This is what happens to us. We were enslaved to sin.

How? Because we were in Adam, because of Adam's original transgression that enslaved us all to sin.

We didn't choose to be slaves to sin. We were born slaves to sin. In the same way, a man doesn't decide to be enslaved to righteousness.

He is enslaved. It's done to him. He is put into this mold as we saw last Friday evening.

And so we must continue to bear in mind that what makes this verse possible and what produces this result in every one of us who is a

Christian is that grace has taken hold of us, has delivered us from the bondage and the reign of sin, and has put us into its own glorious captivity.

It has bound us with the fetters of which we've just been sinning. It has enslaved us to righteousness.

Now that is the teaching. And that is why I was so careful over this translation. It isn't just enough to say that we have become the servants of righteousness.

No, no. We have been enslaved to it. And that it is this power of grace, it is the reign of grace that has laid hold upon us, and we are in its mighty and its firm grip.

If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.

And he makes us free from sin by making us his own slaves. He has bought us out of the market.

We belong to him. We are now the bond slaves of Jesus Christ. And therefore, his argument is that to continue in sin is something which is a sheer impossibility.

Well, now there is our exposition of this 18th verse of this 6th chapter. But having done that,

I now proceed to make a comment upon it. Well, we're going to stop there in the sermon, and we hope that you'll be able to join us next week.

If you haven't ever purchased Lloyd -Jones sermons on the book of Romans, there are many volumes.

This is just one of them. But the volume on chapter 6 is worth its weight in gold.

We hope you'll join us again next week as we look at the rest of what Lloyd -Jones says about Romans 6, verse 18.