Bible In A Year - Romans

Romans as Paul’s Doctrinal Masterpiece

We're continuing with the study of the books of the New Testament, and this morning we come to the book of Romans, which is written by the Apostle Paul, the first book that we're going to look at written by him, a great book, and I trust that the Lord will bless our time together.

Before we study, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Join me as we pray. Our Father in heaven, we do thank you, and we do praise you for the wonder of salvation in Jesus Christ, your Son. We're thankful that not only do you save our souls, but you keep us physically, Lord, even through the night last night while we were sleeping.

Your word says that you neither slumbered nor slept, and you watched over us, you cared for us. Lord, you gave us strength, the ability to be able to get up this morning, to be able to get ready, and to come, as it were, to the house of God to be able to worship you.

And it's our desire, Lord God, this morning that we would do just that, worship in spirit and in truth, that we would be ever mindful of the reason that we gather would be for the glory of the Lord, for the exaltation of Jesus Christ, or just to gather together to be strengthened, to be helped, encouraged, and equipped that we might be able to go out and serve our risen Savior, the Lord Jesus.

So in his name, we ask you that you would please bless our study together in the book of Romans, that we might be equipped, Lord, that we might be taught, that we might be helped, so that we could live a life that is more honoring, more true to the gospel, more fitting of the gospel for the praise of Jesus Christ.

And we ask it in his name, amen. Romans, it stands out in the books in the New Testament, and it stands out among Paul's many books because it offers the most complete summary of Paul's thought. This is a meaty book.

This is a doctrinal book. This is a book where though Paul is very profound and very deep in what he teaches, as you read this book, you can't just go through it in a once pass and say, I got it. It's one that you can just keep going over and over again and seeing more and more of, as the apostle Paul said in one of the chapters here, he gets to writing, and every once in a while, he gets caught up.

And he says, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been his counselor, or who hath first given to him that it should not be recompensed unto him again, for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever and ever.

He just gets caught up in the wonder of God's dealings with mankind and his dealings with his soul and the truth of what God has done when it comes to salvation for sinners. And all praise and glory goes to the Lord.

And as he writes, though, this book with this great depth, he doesn't neglect the practical teaching or the practical application of what he's taught. And he brings many aspects of how we ought to practically live this truth out in our Christian life.

And we're going to look at one of those aspects this morning once I go through just the overview of the book. So, Paul, in writing, in speaking of what God has done for us and in us through Jesus Christ his son, he exhorts every believer, and one of the focus verses that I think of there when I think of this, every believer to live a life that is holy and acceptable and pleasing unto the Lord.

As Romans 12, 1, I beseech you, or I beg you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. One of the ideas of the practical aspects of the book is that because of all that God has done, we just don't sit back and just kind of ride coast into heaven, just kind of glide, let go and let God and whatever happens.

But Paul always, consistently, focusing in every single book, every single letter that he writes that we ought to strive, that we ought to press, that we are to do something. One of the reasons why we come to this thinking of sitting back and just kind of letting God do everything is a man-centered gospel, really.

It's a man-focused, self-pleasing, self-aggrandizing gospel where, you know, God saves us by His grace and our sins are all under the blood and let's just kind of come to church and let's just kind of come to the Bible and let God do everything.

It's kind of a message in how people equate, and I understand when they say this, but they kind of equate the church as being kind of like a Fallon Clinic, you know, like a hospital, UMass Memorial. You just walk in the door and everything is done for you.

You just sit back and let God sanctify you. Let the pastors and the leaders of the church do everything for you. Just come in and get all of your needs taken care of. Now in one measure, I understand that Christ is the great physician and He's the one that saves the soul and He's the one that comes and just raises us up from the dead and gives us life, but there's another aspect of salvation.

God saves, yes, but the other aspect is that we are to personally, individually strive to be holy. We're very good, I believe at BBC, we're very good doctrinally. We teach the scriptures. We teach and we know what it means when we speak of salvation, we speak of reconciliation, and we speak of justification, and we speak of being forgiven of our sins, and we do quite well as students of scripture to understand what these things mean.

I would like this morning when we cover the practical aspect of this book to kind of focus on an area that we all need to be better at, and that's to be holy. The apostle Peter wrote that as he is holy, so be ye holy.

As the Lord is holy, and God is, it's a quotation from the old scripture, as God is holy, that we are to be holy, and we're to be a holy people set apart for God. And when it comes to sanctification, it is something that we are to strive at.

It's a personal issue, it's a matter of the will, it is a matter of putting one step forward day after day to be more like Christ, and to be more pure, and to be more set apart for the Lord's service, and we'll see that as we look at one of the chapters later on.

Paul’s Conversion and Mission to the Gentiles

Romans was written by the apostle Paul about 56 AD. He was raised as both a Roman citizen and a devout Jew. He benefited from the finest education of the time. He grew up as a Pharisee, a member of the strictest Jewish sect, and in the months following the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Paul had the reputation that he was the persecutor of the church.

He was the one who ruthlessly would run down Christians, compelling them to blaspheme, hating this new way, hating the way of Christ. But God changed that on the road to Damascus, the miraculous conversion of the apostle Paul where Jesus confronted him face to face, and Paul bended his knee to the Lordship of Christ, and he believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and God saved him.

And he helped, as much as he persecuted the church, and as much as he hated this new way or this teaching of Jesus Christ, he spread Christianity throughout all the Roman Empire, through the northern Mediterranean, three missionary journeys, going from city to city, preaching the gospel, people being saved, writing letters, confirming the saints with second trips and third trips as he went through.

Not caring whether he is stoned, shipwrecked, whatever came his way, it didn't matter. His desire and his focus, if you look in chapter 1, and in verse 14, I am a debtor both to the Greeks and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise, so as much as in me is, Paul had a readiness, no matter what.

He was always ready. He says, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also, for I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

This book is a book where Paul is just bringing this teaching to these groups of Christians that he has never met, who have never really sat under apostolic instruction, and he's writing them a letter to let them know about doctrine, to let them know about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

He's setting everything, a sure doctrinal foundation for them. He in the letter uses many, many ways that he writes. He has Old Testament quotations, and he sets up arguments, and he supports his arguments as he's going through his writing to prove his case.

There's doctrinal debate in there about different sides. There's theological terms, as I already mentioned, sovereignty and righteousness and law and purification and reckoning and faith and salvation.

It's all there. It's the gospel, and Paul's focus in all that he does, his focus is Jesus Christ and salvation, the plan of salvation that God in his wisdom has revealed to the apostle Paul, and he's revealing it to this church.

The Church as a Barracks in a Spiritual War

The focus, though, is the glory of God. Remember I said earlier the church is equated to being like a hospital or clinic and everything is done for you. Well, really, a better analogy of what the church is is the church is a barracks.

The church is a barracks, a place where the soldiers come to, and they come to gather together, and that's where we not only can rest, but we can encourage each other. Why would I say that the church is equated to being like a barracks?

Why would I say that? Somebody give me an answer. Because we're in a war. We're in a war. It's raging, and it's against sin. It's against Satan. It's against this world, and we're part of it. We're not like dropped way back on friendly lines.

We're not like way in the back out of the fray. This world is the battleground. We're in the front lines and beyond the front lines. We're in a wicked place, a perverted, twisted world which hates Christ and hates the gospel, hates the truth of the scriptures, and yet we as believers are right in the middle of the battle, and yet God is with us.

God is in us. God is for us, and the apostle Paul reminds this church that though that we're in this battle, there are things that we ought to just keep in mind. There are things that we ought to reflect upon or things that we ought to ponder, things that we ought to consider, and not only just to think on these things, but to walk in them, make them part of our behavior, make them part of the pattern of our living, and so when Paul's primary purpose for writing this treatise, it's just a wonderful book.

It's so rich, and it's so full, but he wants to teach the great truths of the gospel of grace to these Christians in this church who have not received apostolic instruction. There's no correction in this book like other books.

He's not teaching or warning or going after the church at Rome because of their error. He's not rebuking them for ungodly living. Just the opposite, they were a doctrinally sound church. I mean, if not, if there were problems, he would have written to them about those problems, but like every other church and like even Bethlehem Bible Church today, we need the rich doctrinal, that portion of it, the rich doctrinal teaching, and we also need the practical instruction which comes out of a letter like this, the letter to the epistle of Paul to the church at Rome.

You'll see on the sheets that I handed out on the back side, there are some great key words that you could look at, justification, reconciliation, hope, and the law. The overview, the outline of the book, I got about three different ones.

There's one on the left just so there wouldn't be any confusion. There's the Roman numerals one through eight, and then on the right-hand side, there's an outline that has a theme where each division begins with the letter S.

Sometimes we can do that. It helps us because it makes it easier to remember. And then there's another one that deals with the righteousness down on the bottom right. Does this book fit like the teachings that we have from the very beginning about into God's plan of redemption?

Of course it does because in Romans, Christ Jesus is presented by Paul as being the redeemer of mankind. Paul declares that faith in Jesus Christ alone bridges the chasm that is between almighty God and sinful humanity.

The only way that we can be justified, the only way that we can be forgiven, the only way that we can come into a right relationship with God is through his son, Jesus Christ. And the only way that we can do that is not by works, but by faith, by believing, by clinging to, by calling upon the name of the Lord Jesus to be saved.

And Paul makes that very clear. In the first chapter here, we see the apostle Paul, as I said earlier when I quoted those verses, and if you even go back to verse one, where Paul introduces himself and he says, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, he sets that down, that he is an apostle, separated unto what?

Separated unto BBC, or separated unto Paul's doctrinal statement, separated unto the AD 56 confession, the Pauline confession of faith. No, separated unto the gospel of who? Of God. God's gospel. This is something that God has, in his wisdom, has designed.

This is the way that God is going to save. He's going to save sinners by the gospel, by good news. And Paul has been separated for that. Paul has been set aside as a servant of the living God to be, one, separated unto the gospel to preach it, to deliver it, to live it, to love it, to not be ashamed of it, and to stand upon it, and to declare it in such a way with a desire that others would be saved.

One verse in this book, if you want to just, what might be popping around a little bit until I get to the place where I'm going to spend the majority of the time, but if you look in Romans chapter 10, tell me if the apostle Paul does not have a burden for those that are lost.

In Romans 10, he writes in verse 1, Brethren, my heart's desire in prayer to God for Israel is that they might become members of the church. He doesn't say, oh, they might be ones who participate in the home group.

Those things are good. Those things are great when we desire to have fellowship and we want to have folks come in. But the main focus in his ministry is the glory of God, yes, but the glory of God in what?

The glory of God and the salvation of sinners. And Paul is broken. Paul is just so desirous. His prayer for those that are about him, for Israel, for the nation, for these people who, as he says, for I bear them record, verse 2, that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

He says, for they being ignorant of God's righteousness, they go about to establish their own righteousness, having not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God, not by faith, not this Christ, not not just believing upon him.

That cannot be the way we must do something. We've got to work. We've got to contribute. We've got to participate. And that is some characteristic of the gospel. The sovereign free grace of God is that it humble sinners.

You can't do anything. You must not do anything. It is it is done by Christ upon the cross. And here you either the salvation or righteousness either comes by one or two ways. You either you either earn that righteousness by your good works or you believe in that.

And what kind of righteousness would it be if we do something? What does Paul call it? It is whose righteousness? It's man's righteousness, right? It's our righteousness. But the righteousness which is required for entry into heaven or into to be able to for a person to be saved is whose righteousness God's righteousness and Paul over and over again.

Let's go back if we if you and I cannot possibly go into to all of these chapters, but chapters two and three are written by the Apostle Paul to shut everybody's mouth. That's basically what he's going to do is anybody who would say that they have some merit whereby they should be accepted by God or God should look at me based upon what I've done and receive me because of my righteousness.

Paul's desire there as he writes chapters two and three is to pull the pillars out from everybody to pull away everybody's security blanket. Any reason whereby anybody would have any trust in anything that they're doing.

Paul's desire here is to show them this. And if you look in chapter if you look in chapter three. Look how he writes this after he says, you know, they've all gone out of the way. There is none that do with good.

There's none that seeks after God. Verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. And that's certainly true in Paul's day and is certainly true in our day. No fear of God before their eyes. I was speaking to to someone who's dear to me for many, many years doesn't live in in this state and someone I've kept in contact.

And and when I speak to him, he I just desire for him. My desire for him and prayer for him for years has been that God would save him. And he just said, Dave, you know, in my life, the problem is, is that there's just no fear in my heart before God.

I just don't. I mean, I go about doing what I do and I live and I sometimes just kind of check out when it comes to spiritual things. But when I'm involved in sin and I'm involved in rebellion, there's just no fear in my life.

What a what a godless, hopeless, Christless, graceless state. But God is greater than that. And God can save and just keep praying because as long as there's breath, there's hope. Right. We just keep praying for people like that who are desiring for the Lord to save.

So there's no fear of God. And then verse 19. Now we know that what things soever the law says, it says to them that are under the law. And here's the purpose that every mouth may be stopped or every mouth may be closed and all the world may become guilty before God.

That's his purpose for writing the chapters two and three is for people, no matter whether you're religious, Jewish, Gentile, wherever you are with law, without law, you are guilty. And, you know, a person is not convicted of their sin and, you know, a person is not ready to receive the gospel if they keep talking, if they keep justifying themselves.

I'm good. I keep, you know, I go to church or I'm not as bad as the guy over here. You know, the there's this idea is, is when the Holy Spirit convicts someone of their sin and God is, is, is, is safe.

It's when he, when God is saving someone and there's this conviction of sin and they're guilty and they're, and they're shamed and they're, and they're cast down before God and they know that they need a savior.

You can count on it that there are no more excuses, none. And the person is mouth is closed. So if you're, if you're evangelizing and someone's still doing this, you know, they haven't got it yet because they're still trying to put forth their merits.

And God's desire is, is that you're not going to just take your house and build Christ a room onto the house, a little addition. And there's Jesus getting added to your life because that person's still talking.

Just give me Jesus. And, you know, just keep going and kind of the idea is, is that it must be a total demolition of the house. It's all got to go. Anything that you've been trusting in has got to go and it's Jesus and all the world must become guilty before God.

And then that is, that shows us that not only is there a plan of salvation and God in his wisdom has designed that, but there is a need for salvation. The need for salvation is so evident because man is a sinner separated from God, rebellious and needing someone to save them from their sins and from the guilt of it.

And from the power of it and eventually from the presence of it. But, and how is that? There's the plan of salvation and the need for it. What is, what does God do? What is the method? Well, we see here in Romans 3 20, therefore, by the deeds of the law, there shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the laws and knowledge of sin and Paul and Paul teaches this not here, but elsewhere that the reason the law was given was to show us that we could not keep it.

And we, and, and we are sinners to bring us to the place where we are, are guilty, but we don't take the law and try to keep it in order to be saved. The law is like a mirror and it shows you going to the bathroom, get up, you got up this morning, you went into the bathroom, you looked in the mirror and you saw unsightly things, right?

And you, and the law, the mirror showed you those unsightly things, but you didn't take the mirror off the wall. Did you? And put the mirror and start rubbing the mirror on your face to do something. No, it was just to show you your condition.

It showed you that you needed soap or that you needed a brush or you needed a comb or you needed a toothbrush to get those things off your teeth when you smiled there, you know, the toothpick or whatever.

And the law is the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It is to show us that we're sinners. We don't take the law and try to keep the law in order to be saved. It shows us that we need, that we're guilty and we're sinners and we need Christ.

We need to be, we need his power to save us. And so it brings us or shows us our need for the Lord Jesus, not keeping it. And Paul is so clear about this because if you keep the law, you have man's righteousness.

If you have man's righteousness, you're in a hopeless situation because God does not accept man's righteousness as the standard where, which we would enter into heaven. We must be perfect. We must be absolutely without sin.

And that's something that we cannot do ourselves. But when we believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us and God looks at us as if we had never sinned, justified.

And we looked at us as if we had the righteousness of Jesus Christ and where we're then accepted in the beloved, accepted in Christ. And Paul lays that out in this chapter. He says in verse 23, yes, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

We see here that by faith, by faith over and over again, we see it here in verse 28. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Then we go into chapter four and we see in this illustrated in the life of Abraham.

What shall we say that Abraham is found? What did, what did Abraham find out in this example here for verse two, if Abraham was justified by works, he has whereof to glory, but not before God. If he was, if he could work and do something, he would have something to glory of, but not before God.

He says, for what says the scriptures, Abraham believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness that goes all the way back to Genesis 15 and Genesis 15. We read there that Abraham believed God.

It was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh verse four is the reward, not reckon of grace, but of debt. So if you work for something, if you work for your salvation, if that's the method or the mode that it's supposed to come in, then you would have earned it.

But, but the apostle Paul is saying, that's not the way that it is for. He says in verse five, but to him that worketh not him that worketh not, but believeth on him Christ who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

And we see this great example here of even going back to, to Abraham that, that, um, that fit that righteousness and God's righteousness and acceptance before God comes by faith and by faith alone. And what a great example of the apostle Paul going back all the way to Abraham to tie it into these people who would know of the, of the Jewish history and the people that were in the church needing to know this because it would be a great foundation for them.

And then in chapter five, he talks about the blessings of salvation. We can't go into all of this, but just the wonders of it. Look at verse one, therefore being justified by faith again, over and over again, by faith, the just shall live by faith.

We, that's a verse previously that we didn't look at, but therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God, peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have peace with God. Notice in verse two, by whom also we have access by faith into this grace access into the, into the grace of God, access into the presence of God through the blessing of this wonderful free gift of salvation.

Notice in verse nine, much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. We're saved from the wrath of God, which is to come through Jesus Christ. These are just some of the blessings that he's mentioning here.

Notice in verse 10, for if, when we were enemies, we were what reconciled to God, reconciliation coming to us by the death of God's son, reconciliation, having the idea of two, two parties being at enmity and that wall or that relationship of enmity being done away with.

And now what? There's a, there's reconciliation and there's, there's peace between those two sides. Verse 11, and not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the atonement, the atonement for our sins, salvation, forgiveness of sins.

I mean, just on and on as we, as we read through this chapter and now I'm heading toward the place where I want to kind of spend some time. I mean, you can read, you can read Romans eight and you see the great verses of that great link about, um, in there where it talks about that God has predestinated and those whom he, uh, foreknows he predestinated that he called justified and glorified that link that cannot be broken.

No one can separate us from the love of God. Sovereignty in chapter nine, wonderful verses in there where the clay and God is the potter and, and, uh, and he can do whatever he wants with, with his creation.

And he's chosen someone to salvation and some are vessels of wrath fitted for destruction or the horror of that. You know, it's so amazing if you think about, if you look in that chapter, maybe we'll just peek in there just for a moment in, in this chapter in nine in verse 14, what shall we say then?

Is there unrighteousness or is there injustice with God? God forbid. Basically he's saying God can have mercy on whom he will have mercy and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion. I just kind of looking at this again recently in studying what it means to be elective God.

And you know, the teaching that says that God elects based upon his foreknowledge that he looks down through the quarter of time. He knows who's going to believe. And because he sees that they're going to exercise their faith, which is man centered and man sourced, right, but wrong, but because they're going to exercise their faith, God is going to choose them.

Why then would the apostle Paul in chapter nine be talking about an argument where people would be saying that God is unfair? Why would he be teaching that in there? It has nothing. I mean, it's not unfair according to that type teaching.

If God looks down through the quarter of time, sees it, and then he elects them based upon that, Paul would not have to come out with this argument. Why do you find fault with God? There'd be no fault in that.

It would be easy to see. The reason why Paul writes this, that there is people finding fault in God or accusing God of injustice, is because it has nothing to do with mankind. It has nothing to do with us.

It has everything to do with God's pleasure and purposes to choose those he would choose having nothing to do with us at all, not conditional upon anything that we will have done or ever have done. And it has to do with a sovereign God, with a sovereign election, coming and visiting mankind with a free and sovereign grace to save us and to keep us for all eternity.

Practical Sanctification in Romans 6

Okay, I've got to go back to, let me just kind of think, the other chapters. Chapter 10, 11, 12 and on, great, great practical, you want to see where the good practical teaching starts, look in chapters 12, where it deals with the duties of the members of a church.

I believe I've always looked at that as individual teaching, but it's really good if you look at that. Really, the context of it is, is that these are the duties of a local New Testament church. Chapter 13, the divine ordained institution of the law and the minister of the law, the government and the law agencies that we have.

Chapters 14 and 15, dealing with the weaker brethren, how we should deal with each other there. And then at the end of the book, we have the salutations. But as I said earlier, we know doctrine. I mean, we can, everything I've said already, probably the majority of you who have been at this church for any given period of time would be able to say, yes, I know about reconciliation and justification by faith and salvation and election and sovereignty and all of that.

And we can be experts at that. But what I'd like to look at this morning just quickly is in chapter six, we have this parentheses here after chapter five. I believe the apostle Paul is still dealing with, with salvation, the subject of it, but he kind of goes off to deal with this with an issue.

And I would like for us to get to be, I think experts is a bad way to say it, but just for the sake of just winging something here this morning, experts at being holy or, or those who are striving to be more holy.

Striving to please the Lord in all that we do. And of course the apostle Paul in chapter six, verse one, he says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace me abound? And he really kind of opened this up in the previous chapter in chapter five, verse 20.

He says, moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded grace did much more abound. And that is so true. But the apostle Paul, whether he was actually dealing with folks who were opposed to his message and already talking to him about this or, or debating him about this, or I think it's more Paul anticipated this maybe in those.

And as he's laying out his argument, he's saying, you know what? It's not the law that saves it's faith in Jesus Christ. But you met you people, you continue to want to still do things. You want to do something, you want to work for your salvation, but it's not that way.

As a matter of fact, it's all by grace. It's a gift of God. It freely comes to us from God. And it says that, and not only that, he says, where sin abounded, grace did much more bound, but he didn't want anybody to think, oh yeah, sin abounded.

I can keep sinning and then grace will be just piled up. And Paul's anticipating that. And he says, look, that is so contrary to the thought in the mind of God. When it comes to salvation, it is so contrary to what grace really is.

He says, shall we continue in sin? Verse two, God forbid. I think pastor Mike taught on this once. And he said in the Greek there, that's the closest that you can come to a conniption fit. God forbid, may it never be certainly not.

That's not what I'm teaching. That's not what I'm trying to say. When I talk about that salvation is free, it's the free gift of God. It's all of grace. It's God having favor on people. And no matter how great your sin is, God's grace is greater than all our sins as we sing.

He goes, God forbid, we should not do that. We should not continue in sin. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? And he starts to unfold this argument. And he begins the first 11 verses of this chapter.

And he deals with kind of the teaching, the instruction. He's laying a foundation so that we get to the place where we say, I see it. I understand how I'm supposed to live. You know, there's Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

He said in second Corinthians 517, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creature. Old things are passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Or the old is passed away and the new has come. There is to be a change in the life when God visits the soul.

When salvation is imparted to the sinner, when God grants this gift of regeneration, reveals Christ as the only Savior. Of course, having already convicted us of our sin, and we embrace Christ. And we, as it says in chapter 10, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And when we're saved, we have a different thought about sin. We have a different thought about how we're going to live. And it is not that because God has been so gracious, because God has forgiven all of our sins and Christ has died for us.

And every sin has been taken out of the way that we should live a licentious life. That's basically what he's saying here. It ought not to be. It is so foreign to the mind of God and to the design of salvation.

Because if you remember when we started way back in the Old Testament, when Moses went before Pharaoh and asked by God's direction, was not asking, but demanding of Pharaoh, let my people go. What was the reason he said that God wanted his people to be let go for?

Anybody remember? So that they could worship, they could serve the living God so that they could come out of Egypt and come out of the bondage, come out of the prison, come out of the clutch of Pharaoh, where they were servants, slaves, be set free to serve the true and the living God.

And the apostle Paul is making that known here in this. Look, we were the slaves of sin. We were the servants of sin. Notice in verse 20, for when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.