No Longer A Slave To Sin! - [Romans 6:19-23]

It's just a privilege for us to be back with you here, again, at Bethlehem Bible Church. We're thankful for your partnership and ministry.

And I'm privileged to open the Word of God with you this morning. This morning we're going to be in Romans chapter 6. If you'll turn your

Bibles with me to Romans chapter 6. While you're turning there, I'll share with you a little story

I came across as I was preparing this message about a town that was apparently in the

Northeast that had a power failure. And the best engineers in the plant weren't able to determine what was the problem and why they couldn't figure out how to get the thing started again.

So somebody said, well, maybe one of the former engineers that retired not long ago would understand why it's not working.

Maybe he could give us the answer. So they asked him if he'd come down and look at things. And so he came down, he's looking around the plant.

So finally, he grabs a wooden mallet that was over on the side and starts tapping around. All of a sudden, the lights come on.

And nobody could believe it. But about a week later, he sent him an itemized bill. And he charged him two cents for tapping and $1 ,000 for knowing where to tap.

And this morning, I want you to know something very important and significant for your Christian life. And that's what the

Bible has to say about our growth and sanctification. And about our pursuit of holiness.

Hebrews 12 says that without holiness, no one will see the Lord. If that's the case, then what can be more important than your own personal holiness before a holy

God? And as we look at the book of Romans, we see in the first three chapters that Paul describes man's need for righteousness.

And it comes to the conclusion in chapter 3 that there is none righteous, no, not one. There's none who seeks after God.

There's none who does good. Even the best things we do are done with ill and sinful motives. And so then in chapter 3, verse 21 to the end of chapter 5, he talks about how to receive righteousness by faith and be made right with God.

And then in chapter 6 through 8, we see that he talks about how the justified sinner grows in righteousness.

And we call this sanctification. So these are the great chapters on sanctification in the book of Romans, chapter 6 through 8.

And in the beginning of chapter 6, Paul is responding to a question that he knew people would have based on what he said at the end of chapter 5 because at the end of chapter 5, verse 20, he says, but where sin increased, a grace abounded all the more.

And he knew, and he wrote in a very lawyer -like fashion through the book of Romans, he knew how people would respond to that and what type of questions they would have.

And so he would ask a question and then answer it. And that's exactly what he does here in chapter 6, verse 1.

It says, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? So we could just continue in sin because we know grace is going to increase and God's going to forgive us.

Verse 2, he says, may it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

And he goes on to talk about what it means to be dead to sin. And the fact that we died to sin does not mean that we're no longer tempted to sin, but that we no longer live under sin's control, under sin's power in our lives.

To be dead to sin is to live unto righteousness. And Paul's main point here in chapter 6 is to show that the believer does not continue in a life dominated by sin, but is enabled to grow in righteousness and holiness.

And this is seen very clearly in the second half of the chapter, which is where we're going to spend our time this morning, where we see that the justified sinner now has a completely different relationship to sin than he did before salvation.

In fact, if you look at verse 17 and 18, he says, 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 having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So these verses reveal that there has been a change of ownership in our lives, and that before salvation, we were slaves of sin.

We were under sin's power. But now, as believers, we've been justified by faith, and we are now slaves of righteousness.

We now have a new owner. We're under a new ownership. And the rest of this chapter, in verses 19 through 23,

Paul talks about what it means to be and to live as a slave of righteousness. And that's what we want to focus on this morning.

And I believe that as we go through these verses, we will see how to realize growth and holiness, how to realize growth and righteousness in our lives.

So let's go ahead and read verses 19 to 23, and then we'll unpack it together. Paul said in verse 19,

I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derived your benefit, resulting in sanctification.

And the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

Lord. And in these verses, we find three principles to practice that, when applied, will grant you success or growth and holiness as you pursue holiness in your life.

And first of all, we want to look at the first principle to put into practice in our life, as those who are now alive and to righteousness and dead and to sin.

And that is, is that we are to pursue righteousness just as we once pursued sin. Pursue righteousness just as you previously pursued sin.

And we see this principle in verse 19, that really provides the method by which we are to pursue holiness.

And how we are, as believers, are to pursue holiness. Now, this verse doesn't tell us, these verses don't tell us everything that the

Bible says about growth and sanctification. But it gets us started.

Later in chapter 8, Paul talks about the Holy Spirit's role in our sanctification. But in these verses, this morning, he's talking about the difference in relationship we have towards sin as those who are no longer slaves of sin, but are slaves of righteousness.

And verse 19 gives explanation to what we just read a couple of minutes ago in verses 17 and 18, where he talked about how we've been freed from sin, and now we've become slaves of righteousness.

But notice the very first part of verse 19. He says, giving explanation to our new ownership as slaves of righteousness, he says, but I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.

So what he's saying here is that I'm speaking in terms that you can understand, in human terms. I'm going to use an analogy here, because of the weakness of your flesh.

Because of the weakness of your ability to grasp spiritual truth. And so he uses the subject of slavery.

Slavery was something that the Romans were very familiar with. It's estimated that there were about 60 million slaves in the

Roman Empire. And that there were about between a third and half of the

Roman population in the city of Rome would have been slaves. Now, interestingly, I was reading that they tried to pass a law at this time that the slaves in the

Roman Empire would have to wear a particular type of clothing to identify themselves as slaves. But it ended up not passing because people were fearful that if the slaves saw how many slaves there are in the city of Rome, that there could be a revolt, there could be an uprising.

And so when Paul uses this idea of slavery, he struck a chord with the Romans. They knew exactly, they understood that very clearly, because many of them were slaves.

Now, in our day, we have almost a radically different view of slavery. We view it as bondage and all the horrible things that happened in our country in the past.

And so it's difficult for some people to view themselves as a slave. Well, we first of all have to realize that our master is a loving

Lord. He purchased us with his own blood. He's not a cruel master. He's not a dictator, but he cares for us.

He bought us with his own blood. And actually, understanding the concept of slavery as slaves of God, slaves of righteousness, only describes one angle of our relationship with God, because we're also called friends of God and sons of God and things in Scripture.

And when you look at slavery in this context, especially in regards to being a slave of God, a slave of righteousness, it actually shows that it actually means freedom for us.

And we're going to see that in just a minute. And so it's critical to understand what Paul is saying here, because what he's talking about is what we were previous to salvation.

We were enslaved to sin. We were under sin's power, under sin's control, without any ability to not sin.

Now, Augustine, one of the early church fathers, he talked about man's relationship to sin in four ways, in his doctrine of the bondage of the will.

The first way he described man's relationship to sin was before the fall. So you have Adam and Eve before the fall.

They were without sin, right? And they were to care for the garden. And so they had the ability to not sin, because they were not sinners yet.

But they also had the ability to sin. And we know that it came to a point where they chose and they sinned.

Well, from that moment on, sin entered the world. And all of us today, because of that, we're born in sin.

We sin because we're sinners. And that describes a second relationship that Augustine described, and that is that we who are born as sinners, which is everybody who's ever been born, is that they have no ability to not sin.

All sinners do is sin. That's what sinners do best. And so as unbelievers, we don't have the ability to not sin.

Even our good works, even the things that we try to do that are good and kind and generous and benevolent, those are even done in ill motives, with selfish ambition, with sinful motives, because we're corrupted by sin.

But after salvation, and that's where Paul's talking about in Romans 6, we're in a third category.

He describes this new relationship that man has towards sin, and it's that now as believers that have the

Spirit of God, we now have the ability to not sin. God gives us the ability to live righteously.

And then there's a fourth category he calls. We're talking about our future relationship to sin. We're separated from sin forever.

And in that state, we will no longer have the ability to sin. We'll be in a state of eternal righteousness.

But right now, we're in this third category where we, because we are under new ownership, we have a new master who enables us to not sin and to live righteously.

Now we can live as those who are dead to sin and alive to Christ. And so as we look on in this verse, we look at the next phrase in verse 19.

He says, For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness.

So he's talking about what they were before salvation. He says, For just as you presented, past tense, what we were like before salvation.

And we were slaves of sin. He said that as unbelievers, we were slaves to impurity and uncleanness and everything we see in Romans chapter 3.

But as believers, we are called upon to stop it. We're no longer to live as slaves under the mastery of sin.

In fact, in verse 13, he said, And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of righteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

So Paul was calling upon the Roman Christians here to not sin, to not presume upon God's grace and expect that God is going to forgive you if you sin because where sin abounds, grace all the more abounds.

No, we've died to sin. We're to stop living as we did in our former enslavement to sin.

And so he describes here what we were like before salvation. He says, For you presented your members as slaves to impurity, which means uncleanness.

Those are inner sins of the heart and into lawlessness. Those are external actions and external sins.

And that type of a lifestyle, what does it do? What does it say in this verse? It says resulting in further lawlessness.

That's what a life of sin leads to. It leads to more sin, more lawlessness. Sin is like a vicious animal.

The more you feed it, the stronger it grows. Sin starts small in the mind, but left unchecked, it grows and it will grow into a monster.

And as one Puritan preacher once said, he said, Sin first tempts, then it damns. It is first a fox and then a lion.

Because sin is never satisfied. It always wants more. And the more we go on sinning, the more it grows in power.

And so the unbeliever who lives as a slave of sin is incapable of doing anything to change the situation.

The more the unbeliever sins, the more he's controlled by sin. But in contrast to this way of living,

Paul, in the second part of this verse, talks about that the believer is now in a different situation, a different relationship to sin.

We are no longer slaves of sin, but slaves of righteousness. Let's look at the rest of the verse.

So now, now in your new state is those who are alive into righteousness and dead to sin.

So now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

So notice the words here, just as, so now. Those are key words. You can underline those, highlight them in your

Bible, because that's the key to unlocking what Paul's getting at in this verse. He's giving a clear contrast of what we were before Christ to who we are in Christ.

What we were before salvation to what we are now as justified saints, who have died to sin and now have a new master.

And since sin is no longer our master, what is our new master in this verse? Righteousness. Christ is our new master.

And how does he say in this verse that we're to serve our new master? Well, look at the phrase. Just as you lived and presented your members as slaves to righteousness, so now.

So now, the same way you lived to serve sin, now live to serving your new master, which is righteousness.

So with the same energy and love and passion that you serve your old master, serve your new master.

The way you schemed and planned and worked to sin. So now put that energy into serving your new master, the

Lord Jesus. And notice that the more we serve our new master, what is the result?

It says resulting in sanctification. Well, what is sanctification?

Well, sanctification is growth and holiness, growth and godliness. It's growth in setting oneself apart from sin to Christ.

And in scripture, we find three types of sanctification. We see positional sanctification, which takes place at the moment of salvation.

You're it's the moment that you are saved and set apart from a life of sin and to Christ. And then we see progressive sanctification.

And that's what we're Paul's talking about in this chapter, which is a continual growth and sanctification.

Progressive progress in our growth and righteousness and holiness. And then there is a third form of sanctification we find in scripture, and that's prospective sanctification.

That's in the future. That will be realized in heaven when receive our glorified body and will be separated from the presence of sin to to Christ forever.

And as as Christians, we know that it's God's will for us to grow in our sanctification and to be sanctified.

Paul said in First Thessalonians, Chapter four, for this is the will of God, your sanctification.

So all of us are to be growing and in holiness, in Christ's likeness. And this takes place through the process of consecration where we set oneself apart from sin and to Christ on a daily basis.

We think about justification, sanctification and scripture. Justification is the moment of faith that puts a believer into a right relationship with God.

And sanctification is the growth of that relationship. And that was Paul's focus. And these and these chapters.

And so these words here, contrasting words, just as. And so now so that as we once served sin, so now we're to serve righteousness and cultivate habits of obedience to God's word.

And just as with sin, the more you sin, the easier it is to sin again. Well, the more you obey

God's word and practice righteousness, the easier it is to to obey the scripture and to obey

Christ. And so as Christians, we want to fan the flames of holiness in our life to see an increase of holiness.

And we'll talk about how we do that a little bit later. But the question for us in this verse is, do you give the same energy and passion to obeying the word of God as you once did obeying your old master?

Are you as good of a saint as you were a sinner? Is there a change in your life since you believed and where you see a growth, a progress in your holiness and your and your growth and righteousness?

Well, if there's no growth and sanctification, maybe it's because there is no new birth, there is no new life in Christ, as you've maybe heard it said, where there's no root, there's no fruit.

So as we think about growth and sanctification, we're not talking about like sinlessness, like sinless perfection.

But we're talking about sinning less as we as we grow in holiness.

And so the question is, is do you see that progress in your life? Well, that's what Paul is aiming for, for the for the

Romans here in Romans chapter six. And he says, what do you say in this verse? Present where to present our members as slaves to righteousness.

You probably ask, well, how do you how do we do that? Well, let's think about it.

Well, first of all, our minds. It's one of our members of our body, right? Well, Scripture says we're to set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth.

We're to consider ways that we can use our time and our talent to serve the Lord. You know, what saturates your mind will set the course of your life.

So is your mind on Christ, of the things of God, the word of God, the gospel of God?

Or is it upon your daily earthly pursuits? Second of all, what about your feet?

Do your feet take you to places where you can serve God and minister to others and preach

Christ? Or do your feet run after mischief and wickedness? Actually, the

Lord said in Proverbs chapter six, there are six things he hates. And one of them is feet that are swift and running to evil.

So we are to be those who flee from sin and run after righteousness, right? As Christians. What about your eyes?

The Bible says that the lamp of the body is the eye. So what are you letting into your body?

Are your eyes set upon darkness and wickedness or upon the things of God? Are you looking for ways to serve

Christ and to minister to others and to preach Christ? What about your hands? Do you use that to build others up, to build up the body of Christ, to serve, to give?

Or are you a taker? Are you a giver or are you a taker? Well, what about your heart? Does your heart show love towards others?

Does your heart manifest a love for Christ? Is your heart clean?

Is it joyful? Is it thankful? Is it humble? What about your treasure? The Bible says where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

You know, we want to find ways to use the members of our body for righteousness, to serve our new master, to serve the

Lord Jesus. And the more we do it, the more natural it becomes. I remember watching a video clip of Stephon Curry.

He's a basketball player out on the West Coast, maybe the greatest three -point shooter ever.

And somebody was asking him, you know, how do you consistently hit these long shots from just where nobody else seems to be able to hit them from?

And he said, well, it's muscle memory. He said, you know, you shoot thousands of shots from a certain spot to where your muscles just memorize the distance and the strength and the force and the energy to hit that shot.

Now it sounds easy to him, but that's what he said, muscle memory. Well, as Christians, the more we live righteously, the more we live in obedience to Scripture, the more natural it is to be obedient, the more natural it is to live out the

Word of God. But if we're constantly going back and practicing sin and living sin, the more difficult it becomes to grow in righteousness and holiness.

So Paul here is saying in this verse, he's given us the method. Just as you once pursued all that wickedness and the way you used to live, so now pursue serving your new master.

And then we come to the second principle in verses 20 and 21, where you must remember the destructive nature of sin.

Remember this destructive nature of sin. And just as the first principle gave us the method by which we are to pursue holiness, this principle gives us the deterrent.

Paul here is reminding the believers of what they were before Christ and how they lived as slaves of sin as a deterrent to not go back to that former way of life.

Because here he talks about how ugly and how repulsive that former way of life really is.

He says in verse 20, for when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

What does that mean? Well, when we were slaves of sin, we were free in regard to righteousness in the sense that we had no obligation to righteousness.

We were actually enemies of righteousness and friends of sin. We were under no obligation to serve righteousness.

Being a slave of one master means being free from the dominion of another master. And so as being slaves of sin, we didn't owe righteousness anything.

Before salvation, we were enslaved to impurity and to wickedness. And righteousness had no control over our life.

We just reaped the fruit of our sin and we were under no compulsion to do what was right.

In fact, we didn't want to have a new master. We enjoyed our old master.

We enjoyed living under the control and power of sin, having the ability to choose to please our flesh however we wanted to without somebody telling us all the time, do this or don't do that.

And so the only way that there was ever going to be change in our life was God had to do something, right? And so for those of us who were saved,

God stepped in. God invaded your life. He invaded my life. He gave us a new heart through the preaching of the gospel, the conviction of the

Holy Spirit by giving us faith. And He removed the shackles of sin. And He set us free to be no longer under sin's bondage and power and control and dominion in our life, which only led to shame and guilt.

Look at here in verse 21. He says, Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things which you are now ashamed?

This word benefit is the word fruit. The fruit of our former life of sin and enslavement to sin was just shame.

Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6. How did he respond when he was in the temple and he saw the vision, the glory of God and His holiness?

He said, Woe is me. I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips. The first thing he recognized was the ugliness of his own sin and the uncleanness of his own lips.

And he fell in shame before a holy God. And so Paul here, he asked this question.

It's a rhetorical question, verse 21. What fruit or what benefit were you deriving from those things? Nothing. That's the obvious answer.

He said, We're just ashamed of those things now. And as one

Swedish proverb says, When sin drives, shame sits in the back seat. And that's how it works, isn't it?

And so Paul here is saying, Is that truly how you want to live? Do you really want to go back and return to that former way of life and bring back all the guilt and the shame and the embarrassment and the sorrow and regret, remorse, failure, all the things that sin pays?

No way. I don't think any of us want to live. No Christian wants to live that kind of a life.

We recognize that any thrill that sin gives is at best momentary. It's short -lived and it's always accompanied in some way by consequences that we don't want.

And so Paul here is giving the believers a deterrent to reminding them what that former enslavement was like.

Sometimes we forget pretty easily. In fact, I always tell people, Just notice how many times in Scripture it says,

Remember or don't forget. It's over and over and over. And so Paul's reminding the Romans here of what life was like.

Because sin will strip you of your joy, will take away your courage, saps you of your spiritual strength.

It will rip away your boldness. And that's no way to live.

To go back to that way is really to rebel against our new master, righteousness. To go back to the rot of sin is to turn our back on the sacrifice that Christ made to purchase us from the slave market of sin.

I mean, how many times have you and I been tempted to say, You know, just one more time. I'll just do this one more time. I just got to say this to this person.

I just got to get it out of my system. Did it ever pay off? Did it ever work?

Of course not. You just do it again. And so it's a foolish way of thinking.

It just shows us how deceitful sin really is. Sometimes we buy into the deception of sin.

And what Paul is calling for here is not calling for the believers to flirt with sin, to see how close to the edge they can get with sin, but to completely abandon it, to not go back towards it.

Sin does not decrease in a heart that is not given over to God. You can't sow bad habits and reap good character.

You can't sow profane words and reap a tongue of encouragement. You can't sow disrespect and reap respect.

You can't sow cruelty and reap kindness. You can't sow pornography and reap a pure heart and a clear conscience.

So we need to understand how sin works. You can't sow greed and envy and reap generosity. As Christians, we can't neglect the fellowship of the saints and neglect the ministry of the church and expect to reap spiritual growth.

We can't neglect daily time in the Word of God and expect to reap godliness. That's just not how it works.

So what Paul is saying here is don't turn back. Don't turn back to your old life because sin won't produce anything praiseworthy or honorable in your life.

Notice what he says in the rest of verse 21. He says, For the outcome of those things is death. The former life of sin brings no glory.

It just brings shame and death. So why would we want to go back to that way of living?

Remember the tragic results of obeying your old master. Remember the shame and the embarrassment that he brought.

Your old master, he does not care about you. He's cruel and his last act is always death.

As Thomas Watson once said, he said, Sin turns beauty into deformity. Sin is the womb of sorrow and grave of comfort.

It turns the body into a hospital. It causes fevers, ulcers, and strokes.

Maybe some of us have experienced that. David did in Psalm 32 verse 3 when he was overridden by the guilt of his sin.

Psalm 32 verse 3 says, When I kept silent about my sin, when he did not confess and forsake his sin, he said,

My body wasted away through my groaning all day long. He was absolutely miserable.

And sin can result in physical illness. So don't subject yourself to the consequences of sin.

Be wise. Remember the ugliness and the stench that death brings. We lived in a town in the

Czech Republic where between our town and our church, there was a forest area. And there was a pheasant farm there for a while.

And there would always be pheasants hit out on the road because they'd fly out and they'd get killed on the road. And there was other animals.

I don't know why in this section, but there was a lot of dead animals a lot of times that were killed. And sometimes when there was a car coming because it was a two -lane road, you couldn't drive around it, so you would drive over it.

And I remember a couple times in particular, we had our car vent open. I learned to close my car vent when

I see a dead animal because the stench of the animal just comes into your car and it's just foul.

Well, every time we're tempted to go back and sin and put ourselves under the old slavery, live as slaves of sin,

Israel would say, you know what? I'm just going to turn my car around. I'm going to go back. I'm just going to drive over that thing one more time. I mean, it's foolish.

But that's how sometimes we can deceive ourselves and allow ourselves to fall back into temptation.

And so Paul here is trying to provide a deterrent for the believers to remember what life was like and to not go that way.

And why? Because Christ has a better way. And that's the next two verses, verses 22 and 23, which brings us to our third principle as we pursue holiness, and that is fix your focus on the eternal.

Fix your focus on the eternal. Verse 19 provided the method by which we're to pursue holiness.

Verses 20 and 21 provided the deterrent against returning back to the old life of sin and ways of sin.

And verses 22 and 23 provide the reward that motivates living a sanctified life.

These verses look forward to who we are in Christ and look forward to where we're going to be. And in these verses we see the beauty and the reward of holiness, which is greater

Christlikeness and ultimately an eternity with Christ in heaven. But notice the very first word of verse 22, the word but.

It's important to notice these conjunctions in Scripture because it helps us to see how things are tied together.

Well, just as in verse 19 you had the contrast between just as and so now, just as you were slaves of sin, now you're slaves of righteousness.

Talked about how we're to live our lives. Well, now we have that same pattern in verses 20 and 22.

In verse 20, what does it say? It says, for when? For when back when we were slaves of sin. He talks about how we were slaves of sin, but verse 22, what does he say?

He says, now we're slaves of God. We're under new ownership. Also in verse 20, he talked about how at that point we're free from righteousness.

We had no obligation towards righteousness. Well, here in verse 22, he talks about how we're now free from sin.

We're no longer under the obligation to obey our old master, sin. And so now we find in these verses that we're actually free from sin.

And this is what Augustine described in his third categorization about man's relationship to sin is that now as believers we're in this third state where we now have the ability to not sin.

We've been given the spirit of God, and he's given us the ability to no longer live under our old master, but to live by his power and to serve him, which means we're now free to be holy.

Before we were free from righteousness, and we were free to live a sinful life, and we enjoyed that.

But now we're freed from sin, and we're free to be holy. And this is what Paul's getting at here, because in the next chapter he's talking about his battle with sin.

In chapter 8, we talk about how the Holy Spirit helps us in our growth and sanctification. But here he's talking about our relationship to sin as slaves of sin and slaves of righteousness.

And now we're under our new master, and we're free to serve him. And he gives us a new heart.

He gives us new desires, a new will. And as verse 17 says, which we read earlier, we now have the ability to obey from the heart.

It's no longer external things. It's from within. We have ability from within by the spirit of God to live a life that's pleasing to God.

And so because of this transfer of ownership, we no longer obey out of compulsion or because somebody says, oh, you should do this and not do that.

No, but we obey out of a heart that has been given over to God, a heart that is in right relationship to God.

And so it's no longer obedience out of love to try to please somebody, to try to earn some sort of favor or something.

No, but it's obedience out of love. And that's the kind of obedience that God desires.

Anything else is works -based righteousness. It's hypocrisy. It's false religion. But the beautiful thing about this new ownership is that God provides us a new ability and he gives us new responsibilities to live a holy life, to live righteously because that's the message of Romans, how to be righteous before a holy

God. And now as those who have the imputed righteousness of Christ, we also have the ability by Christ to walk in holiness.

So don't allow yourself to go back and fall into enslavement to sin again.

With the same fervor that you previously served your old master, put that into practicing righteousness and serving your new master.

Just as an athlete practices to become a better football player or a musician practices to be a better pianist, so we should practice righteousness to be holier, to grow in holiness.

And that's what we see in the life of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 9 .27. He didn't say, I buffet my body, just give it whatever it wants.

No, he said, I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly after I have preached to others,

I myself should be disqualified. So maybe you need to get help. Maybe you need accountability.

But we need to learn to exercise discipline and manage our vessels if we are to grow in holiness and into greater

Christ -likeness. And this is part of the method of how we grow in holiness. To remember this, that we are now free to do so.

Sanctification is a process of daily making decisions, making choices to leave the old life behind and to live for Christ, to live for Jesus.

And to recognize that how we live our lives each day, our goals, our desires, our careers, everything belongs to Him.

So we live every day for His glory. And so each day we are to be presenting our bodies as living sacrifices, as Romans 12 says, renewing our minds with the

Word of God, with the truths of God's Word, which contains the mind of Christ, and walk in obedience to Him.

And what's the result of this type of living? Well, let's read on. It says, now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit.

It's that Greek word again, fruit. And what's the fruit of living this type of a life? It results, resulting in sanctification.

And the outcome is eternal life. So the fruit of our enslavement to God is sanctification, greater separation from sin and growth in Christlikeness.

And so daily we're faced with a choice. Are we going to present our members as instruments to sin, to be used for sin, or as instruments of righteousness, which results in the fruit that extends into all eternity?

The fruit of sin, which is shame and death, or the fruit of righteousness that carries on into eternity?

Well, each day we make those decisions. But Paul wants us to remember in this verse to choose the way of the

Master, to choose the way of Christ, which is much better.

He's a much better Master than sin, isn't he? So we need to keep our eyes on the

Master, keep our eyes on Christ. As one of the Puritan preachers once said, sin will not be bitter until Christ be made sweet.

The question is, is Christ sweet to you? How sweet is your fellowship with Christ?

If we want Christ to be sweet, we must abide in Christ. We must meditate upon Christ. We must study

Jesus. We must love Jesus. We must be the passion of our heart.

And lastly, verse 23 says, For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our

Lord. He's our identity. That's who we are. Interestingly, we often quote this verse in the context of evangelism, don't we?

In the context of justification. But it's given in the context of sanctification. This verse is part of the motivation to pursue holiness.

Enslavement to sin, we see in this verse, pays the wages of the devil, which we already saw is death.

Whereas the reward of being a slave of God is righteousness and sanctification and ultimately eternal life.

But the word that Paul uses here for wages, he says the wages of sin is death, was a word that was used to speak of daily pocket money or daily wages that were paid to soldiers.

And that's what sin does. It pays ongoing payments of death. Death to a clear conscience.

Death of the joy of the Lord. A death of relationships. Death of ministry in the church.

Death of opportunities to be witness for Christ in the community. Physical death and ultimately eternal death.

So we need to remember to not yield to sin, but to yield our bodies as instruments of righteousness and enjoy the gift of eternal life.

But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's our reward.

That's what we presently possess. We don't have to work for it. We don't receive eternal life because of our works, but because of Christ's works.

It's a present possession for us. So as Christians, we're not practicing righteousness to gain some sort of personal merit or better standing with God, but to be more like Christ, to grow more into His likeness and to His image.

And so as Christians, though we may fall into sin, we don't stay there. We don't stay there because our heart belongs to Jesus.

He owns our affections. But the question is, does your heart belong to Jesus?

Have you come under His ownership? Or does sin still have its grip on your life? Ask yourself, maybe consider if there is a controlling sin in your life that you ignore and maybe you just expect

God to forgive you. Also, we can ask ourselves, do we pursue holiness as Paul is calling for here?

And do we do it with joy? Or do we envy sinners who just in freedom sin at will?

That tells us a lot about the state of our heart. But when your heart belongs to Jesus, you live a sanctified life out of a heart of love to Him and out of a heart of thanksgiving and gratitude for His sacrifice for your sin.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5 .14, For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died.

And he died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

That's why we live. That's why we do what we do. Because of a love for Christ that controls us and drives us.

And if that doesn't describe you, I know that Pastor Mike or one of your other pastors or elders here would love to show you from God's word how you can be freed from a life of enslavement to sin and come under new ownership, the ownership of Christ who died to purchase us from the slave market of sin and give us a new heart and a new desire and a new love and a new will that glorifies

God. And so as believers we look at this passage and we recognize the method by which we're called in this verse, verse 19, to pursue holiness.

And then we come to verses 20 and 21 where we see the deterrence to remember to not go back to the old ways that just brings shame and guilt and death and all the horrible consequences that sin brings forth.

But then we're reminded here of verse 22 and 23 of what Christ has done for us and of the reward that we have in him, which is greater

Christlikeness as we pursue growth and righteousness and holiness. So I hope that your heart is encouraged this morning as we look at these verses and that you remember that you are now free to be holy.

You're no longer free from righteousness and enslaved to sin. You're freed from sin and free to be holy, to live a life that glorifies

God and brings praise to him. So let's close in prayer. Father, we just thank you for this time together this morning and your word.

Lord, we thank you for these principles that Paul provides for us in this passage to aid us in our growth and sanctification.

And Lord, we thank you that you are with us and that you're doing a work in us, Lord. And we also have a role in that,

Father, and I pray that we would take our obligation seriously, Lord, to grow into greater

Christlikeness and to give you glory as we pursue growth in Christ, as we seek to manifest

Christ in our life, that others may see you, that they may see their need for a

Savior, and that you may receive all the glory for all that we do and say, whether we eat or drink or whatsoever we do,

Lord, we want to do it all to your glory. I pray, God, if there's any among us this morning that doesn't know you or that is listening online,

I pray that you'd call Pastor Mike or somebody and, Lord, that today would be the day of their salvation. And I pray this in Jesus' name.