Romans 6:15-19

Coram Deo Reformed Baptist Church iconCoram Deo Reformed Baptist Church

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We're in Romans chapter 6 verses 15 through 19, starting in verse 15, it says,
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What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?
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By no means. Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?
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Either 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.
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I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations, for just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
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Notice that in verse 15, Paul reiterates what he has already said.
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What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? God forbid.
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By no means. Here again, Paul addresses this same issue that he started with in the beginning of the chapter.
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So I think it's safe to say that this is a prevalent problem among the people to whom he's writing to.
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If you remember from the beginning of the chapter, verses 1 and 2, what shall we say then?
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Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means.
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How can we who died to sin still live in it? Paul legitimately has a disdain for this idea that grace is somehow a license for you to sin.
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So while we're on the subject of who he's writing to, let me give you a little bit of context.
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So he's writing to Rome, obviously. The book's called Romans. Rome is the center of the empire.
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It's also the center of depravity for the empire. Every part of the empire is in Rome.
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It's all represented there. Every sin that you could possibly think of is happening and is being promoted.
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It's sometimes hard for us to understand a place without Christianity in it because we grew up here.
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Now someone from India or someone from Africa or somewhere else might have a better understanding of what that's like, but here in America we don't because Christianity has always been here since the beginning of our country.
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Here in Rome, this church that sprung up, they have to deal with every sin you could imagine.
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Idolatry, all manner of covetousness, theft, adultery, slavery, abuse, rape, murder, homosexuality, pedophilia, all of this is occurring in Rome and all of it is promoted.
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And if you don't think that the last two were promoted in Rome, read about Rome. It is an abomination of a city.
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Actually not unlike many of our major cities that we have here today. So it's no wonder that you had people that number one claimed that grace gave you a right to sin because why not?
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You're saved. But number two that there were those that claimed that that was what
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Paul was teaching. Grace alone. How infuriating that must have been for him.
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And also how infuriating must that have been for Martin Luther. This was one of the things, the major points that he had to deal with.
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Was that the doctrine that he preached, the doctrine that Paul preached, justification by faith alone, gave people a license to sin.
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He addressed it in his day in numerous works. Let's go back to scripture for a minute and let's look at Galatians 5 for example.
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Verse 13. For you were called to freedom brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.
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Cephas or Petros, Peter agrees.
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First Peter chapter 2 verse 16 it says, live as people who are free.
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Not using your freedom as a cover -up for evil, but living as servants of God.
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A true Christian cannot live in such a way as to continue in the same life of sin that they did before.
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It is not possible. We are told that we can tell one another by our fruit, and in fact we are told to judge according to this.
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Speaking of fruit, verse 16 it says, do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either sin which leads to death, or of obedience which leads to righteousness.
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So what is the fruit of a person? This is in part to what
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Paul is talking about. It doesn't matter that you claim
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Christ. Anyone can just claim Christ, give intellectual assent to his existence.
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But what is the fruit of that person? An obedient slave is one who is willing to do the bidding of the one who has ownership of him.
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Plain and simple. For example, take two people.
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Both claim Christ. Both go to church, but what does their conduct show you?
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One does everything he can, searching the scriptures, constantly trying to be more obedient to God.
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He has the want, the desire to learn about God and the things of God, and the other comes to church, sings just as loud, and then goes and acts like the world the entire rest of the week.
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What does that tell you? Turn with me for just a minute, back to Galatians 5, verses 19 through 21.
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These are the works of the flesh. Now the works of the flesh are evident.
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This means you should recognize these. You should be able to see them. They're not secret.
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Sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery.
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The word there I want to point out for just a moment, that word that's translated as sorcery, it means practicing magic, as we think of magic.
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It also means drugs, because that word is pharmakia, so those who practice magic and those who habitually partake in drugs.
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Pick a drug. Doesn't matter. Now I'm not talking about medicine. It's a different class.
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Please, by all means, if you have a headache, take a Tylenol. It's not what Paul is talking about.
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What he's talking about is those who take drugs, like is promoted in our culture today, so that you can have a spiritual awakening.
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That is magic. There's a whole lot more magic than the dude with the cards.
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That's just tricks, right? Or the person with the crystals.
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That's magic too, but the person who takes hard drugs so that they can have a spiritual experience, that is more a devious deception than I can think of, and it's one of the largest things that's promoted in our culture, especially nowadays.
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Let's move on. Sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.
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That's not the complete list. Those are just the most obvious things.
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I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things are not or will not inherit the kingdom of God.
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These are fruits of someone who is obedient to sin.
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If someone claims Christ and continues in this type of lifestyle without any sign of regeneration, you can in fact say that they are not part of the body, and in Galatians 5, that's what he's talking about.
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You'll know them by this. The church itself is obligated to look for these things.
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That's why we have church discipline. Church has a massive responsibility to make sure that those who claim
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Christ actually exhibit fruits of a life lived for God, not only for the spiritual health of the individual, but for the spiritual health and well -being of the congregation, and like I said before, this is the reason that God gave us church discipline so that in the practice of church discipline, these sins could be called out rightly for the well -being of that person, that individual, so that either the
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Spirit will convict them of it because it's been brought to the light, so the
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Holy Spirit will convict them of it, or that they can be shown as an unregenerate sinner.
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and be put out of the body, be put out of the church. I won't say put out of the body because in fact, when you become regenerate, when you're elect and you're regenerated, you are in fact automatically a part of the body.
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Going to the church doesn't make you a part of the body of Christ. It's something that you will do.
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You will be convicted of. Can't have a finger way over there. It's got to be attached, right, but we want to remove those things that aren't part of the body.
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On the other end of this, we can also know each other by the fruits of the
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Spirit, which if you're still in Galatians 5 verses 22 and 23, but the fruits of the
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Spirit is love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control.
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Against such things there is no law. These are the traits, the things, the outward signs that show that someone is obedient to God, and because God is sovereign, and it is the
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Holy Spirit that does the work of sanctification, He is the one responsible for it.
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You can't not exhibit these things if you're regenerated.
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It's not possible to exhibit. It's not possible for you to not exhibit these traits.
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Not all at once, most certainly not all at once, but over time they will come and they will grow stronger.
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We cannot resist the work that God does in us. Thank God that we cannot resist it.
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But your master is the one of whom you do the bidding for.
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Just as the object of your work is your master, worship is your God. The thing that you focus on the most, that's your
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God, whether it's a wooden idol or whether it's
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TV or sports. Another way to say this is that what we do shows who we serve, 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.
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I want to point out, it's not just a matter of obedience to the moral law, and I will specifically state the moral law.
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It's not a matter of being obedient to it that shows the work of the
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Holy Spirit. It's not just that, you wanting to be more obedient, or you being more obedient.
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It's the wanting, the desire to be obedient that is the most prevalent. That doesn't mean you're gonna not sin, but you won't want to, or you will want to less and less.
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It is the man or the woman who in their heart screams, how? How do
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I be more obedient? God, please make me more obedient to your will. It is the wanting to do what
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God wants that shows in the love for his word, love for his people, and the love for those who are still lost searching scripture to know him, and to know what he wants, and ultimately, ultimately understanding that his word is sufficient.
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That is another thing that I could harp on for an hour and a half, but I won't. Very often when
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God brings someone out of darkness and into the light, he gives them a true understanding of grace very rapidly.
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They often tend to go on a rampage, which is totally understandable.
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When you look at people, you talk to them, and you say, how do you not understand this? It's right there in front of you on the page.
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It's infuriating. It would seem that the only thing that can be done for some of these folks is to put them in a cage until they calm down, but sometimes they mature, and they calm down, and they come to know that there are different levels of understanding, that that person is just not there yet, and yelling is not always the best way to help them along either.
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Other times, they show themselves to have no understanding at all.
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They know they can assent to these things, but they don't understand them, and they run full tilt down a path of works righteousness like the
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Pharisees. Who here can say that you know scripture better than a
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Pharisee? Not a single person in this room, me included, but what did they do?
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They knew the scriptures. Christ says, they testify of me, and yet you do not come to me.
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They didn't have understanding. Today, like Catholics and Mormons, and everyone who professes a false
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Christ, both ends of the extremes, Pharisees, Sadducees in Paul's time, in our time, extreme conservatives and extreme liberals in the church, legalists and antinomianism, but I will say this about those folks.
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They beat us in a lot of areas. Theology, no. Understanding of scripture, no.
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The true gospel, no, but I will say this.
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What a shame on us that these false movements outperform us in spreading their beliefs.
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They believe what they're saying is true. Most assuredly, or they wouldn't talk about it, but how vehemently do they proselytize or do they share with other people what they believe rather than the church shares the gospel?
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It's a great commission. This is true of what you would say is different parts of the church, the true church and the rest of the church.
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How much do those folks over here share their beliefs more than the true church does?
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Again, not in the word that they proclaim, but in their wanting to do it, in their efforts and in their training to do it.
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We must not let go of that fire that new folks have, those folks that I was talking about before that are newly regenerate and just can't understand why no one understands.
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We can't let go of that fire that we had for the Word of God when we first came to know the truth.
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We must also not let it begin to burn out of control or out of the control of the
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Word of God. We have to keep that fire burning and section it off and govern it with our continual return to Scripture.
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2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 13. Follow that pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me in the faith and love that are in Jesus Christ by the
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Holy Spirit who dwells within us. Guard the good deposit entrusted to you.
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The deposit that he's talking about is the truth. Guard it.
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Don't let anything that isn't true slip in and pervert it. But where once we were willing and unwitting slaves of sinful desire, now we have been set free from that life and made knowing and willing slaves of God.
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What Paul is referring to in the last part of that is that we have literally become new people.
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We were once these people and now we're these people.
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But then Paul says, I'm speaking to you 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, now
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I present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
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When Paul says speaking in human terms, he just means in a way that you'll understand. He knows, like we talked about before, that there are different levels of understanding in the church that he is writing to.
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Paul could very well speak in a way that is vastly above everyone else's head. He's Paul.
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He's an apostle of Christ. But he doesn't.
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He speaks at a level of understanding and he uses terms that the church would understand.
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Jesus talks about this in his conversation with Nicodemus. John chapter 3 verse 12, he says, if I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can
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I, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? I'm talking about Nicodemus's understanding of what he's saying.
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If you don't understand that, then how are you going to understand spiritual things?
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But also Paul here in his analogy of slave and master is using terms that people will understand.
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It makes it easier for them to grasp what he is talking about instead of him talking over their heads.
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Today we struggle to understand. We struggle to understand it because we don't technically have a relational understanding of slavery, of slave and master, like we talked about the other week.
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It doesn't exist except in history for most of us, and I will say for most of us.
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It is still a problem in the world, but we have a historical context of it, and that is vitally important.
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Without it, we would grasp far less of what he is teaching, but ultimately our relationship isn't exactly like slave and master.
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We have the privilege of calling God Father. Speaking of Christ as our
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King, our Savior, our Friend. It's not exactly the same, but it is similar enough that we can understand what
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Paul is talking about. The other thing that Paul is talking about here is when we were wicked, when we delighted in our sin, we gave ourselves completely over to it.
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There wasn't a moment in your life before you were regenerated that you went, you know what, for a few seconds
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I'll think I'll go over here and I'll do this godly thing. No. There were moments when you said, well, you know,
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I'd like to be a good person, but there was never a moment which you devoted your effort to God.
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Now being regenerated, the thing that you want is to do what
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God wants, and yet sometimes you go that way.
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You go the other way. Sometimes that's not a conscious thing. You're talking to somebody, and you're like, oh, what
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I was thinking about saying doesn't sound cool, and a lie comes out, or you get angry.
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You do this. You do that. You sin automatically. Because it's in your flesh.
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It's still there. What Paul is talking about is since you didn't split your desire beforehand, your effort, your time, do your best to give all of your time to the pursuit of God and the things of God as you did before to sin.
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This is not necessarily a works righteousness thing, but endeavor to fully devote yourself to obedience as you did before.
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You're going to struggle. You're going to have a hard time with it. You're going to go an hour or two and then do something, and that will happen every day for the rest of your entire life until we're called home and we're glorified, but while we have a desire to do the things of God, we should also endeavor, but it gives us any righteousness of our own, but we should endeavor to fully devote ourselves to obedience rather than depending on the
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Holy Spirit to do it for us. I can do this, and I can do that, and I can do that, but ultimately the
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Holy Spirit will get me to a point to where He wants me to be. That is absolutely true, but you can't constantly walk through your life like that.
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If you desire the things of God, you make an effort, so make the effort. I don't have really anything else written on this page.
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I'm just kind of going at this point, but as you go through your week this week, just think about that.
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Give it a couple seconds a day. Think, how can
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I be more obedient to God? I want to be obedient, so how in my daily life can
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I do that? Because obedience isn't just going to service and singing hymns and reading your
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Bible, although that is a part of it. How do you be obedient in your job?
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How do you do electrical work? Or deliver pizzas? Or help people?
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Or do banking? Or do landscaping? How do you do that for God?
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I'll be quiet so we can eat, but just give it some thought.