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

We're just privileged 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 and 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 a thousand dollars 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.

Holiness, Sanctification, and the Need for Righteousness

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 three 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 chapters 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? 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 through 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 derive 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.

Pursuing Righteousness as We Once Pursued Sin

And in these verses we find three principles to practice that when applied will grant you success or growth in 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 into righteousness and dead into sin and that 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 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 kind of, we have almost a radically different view of slavery.

You know, 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, 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 so, 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. And 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. We're in a new, he describes this new relationship that man has towards sin is 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 they were, 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're 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 under 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 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 temps, 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. But 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 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 and instruments or slaves to righteousness.

So now so now the same way you live 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 we 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, as 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. When we think about justification, sanctification in 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 show 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 and growth and righteousness?

Well, if there's no growth and sanctification, maybe it's because there was 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 he's saying, 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? Paul, 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 and 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 to 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's basketball player out on the West Coast, maybe the greatest three point shooter ever.

And somebody's asking, you know, how do you consistently hit these long shots from just where nobody else seems to be able to hit him from? And he said, well, he it's muscle memory. He said, you know, you'd 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, but damn, 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 to live out the word of God.

But if we're constantly going back and and practicing sin and living sin, the more difficult it becomes to to grow in righteousness and holiness. So Paul here is saying in this verse, he's given us the method just as he wants, pursued all that wickedness and the way he used to live.

So now pursue serving your new master. And then we come to the second principle in verses 20 and 21, where we are, where you must remember that we must remember the destructive nature of sin. Remember this destructive nature of sin.

Remembering the 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 reap the fruit of our sin and we're under no compulsion to do what was right. In fact, we didn't want to do what 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 of our former life of sin and enslavement to sin was just shame.

Isaiah in Isaiah chapter six. 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 a man of unclean lips. See, 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's he asked this question. It's a rhetorical question. Verse 21, what what fruit or what benefit were you deriving from this thing? Nothing.

That's that's the obvious answer. He said, we're just you're just we're just ashamed of those things now. And as one Swedish proverb says, when sin drives shame, shame sits in the backseat. 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 and regret, remorse, failure, all the things that sin pays?

No way. I don't think any of us want to live. Nobody wants no Christian wants to live that kind of 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 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 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'll rip away your boldness. And that's that's no way to live. To go back to that way is to really to rebel against our new master righteousness. To go back to that, to the rot of sin is to 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've been tempted to say, you know, just one more time, I'll 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?

I mean, it was to never work. Of course not. You just you just do it again. And so it's a foolish, foolish way of thinking. It just shows us how deceitful sin really is, that sometimes we buy into our to 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. A heart sin does not decrease in a heart that is not given over to God.

You can't so bad habits and reap good character. You can't you can't so profane words and reap a tongue of encouragement. You can't so disrespect and reap respect. You can't so cruelty and reap kindness.

You can't so pornography and reap a pure heart and a clear conscience. So we need to understand how sin works. You can't so greed and envy and reap generosity. You know, 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. It'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? Why do we want to go back to that way of living?

I 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 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'd always be pheasants killed 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's a car coming because it's a two lane road, you couldn't drive around it. So you would drive over it. And I remember a couple of times in particular, you know, 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, is really to 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 back, 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.

Fixing Our Focus on the Eternal Reward

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 when these verses we see the beauty in the reward of holiness, which is greater Christ likeness 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. And 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 we're under new ownership. Also, in verse 20, talked about how we were 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 this is what Augustine described in his third categorization about man's relationship to sin is that now in this 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're free to 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 eight, 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 be fallen to 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.