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Summary
We are called to stop choosing the wrong master. Romans 6 confronts us with the question of why a freed slave would continue to obey their old master—and challenges us to examine who we are truly serving.
Key Lessons:
- Our new identity in Christ means we have died to sin and been raised with him—sin has been dethroned, not just forgiven.
- Sin is persistent even after it has been dethroned, and we must actively resist its rule by choosing what we present to God rather than to sin.
- Who our true master is revealed not by church attendance or outward behavior, but by whom we habitually obey when temptation comes.
- The wages of sin is death, but slavery to God results in sanctification now and eternal life—a free gift, not wages we earn.
Application: We are called to pursue righteousness with the same energy we once pursued sin—examining what we consume, what we present to God, and where our habitual obedience truly lies.
Discussion Questions:
- What areas of your life reveal that sin is still trying to reign, even though it has been dethroned by Christ?
- What are you ‘presenting’—your time, your tongue, your attention—to sin rather than to God, and what would it look like to change that?
- How do you respond after you sin? Does your response reveal genuine repentance and a hatred of sin, or a pattern of justification?
Scripture Focus: Romans 6:1–23 forms the backbone of this message, showing the progression from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness. John 8:34–36 reinforces that the Son sets us truly free, and 1 Peter 5:8 warns believers that the enemy is still prowling even after our freedom has been secured.
Outline
- Introduction
- Realizing Our New Identity (Romans 6:1–11)
- Resisting Sin’s Rule (Romans 6:12–15)
- Sin Is Persistent—But Dethroned
- Recognizing Your True Master (Romans 6:16–19)
- Remembering the Results (Romans 6:20–23)
Introduction
Man. Buenos.
All right. All right. I got to practice somewhere.
I just want to thank everybody who has been part of the worship so far. As I said this morning, especially the songs, they really tied in even with Pastor Mark and his prayer. I really appreciate that as we think about this topic of being slaves, whether to sin or to God, and what it means to choose the wrong master.
Before I pray, I just want to pose one question to you. Why would someone who has been freed from slavery continue to obey the old master?
Let’s bow before the Lord in prayer.
Our gracious God, we want to thank you for your word. We want to thank you for a time where we can gather together, sing together, have fellowship, and hear your word being preached and read in this church. You’ve blessed us to have Sunday school and many other ministries that seek to honor you and edify the body. I pray right now that you would use this time in the preaching of your word to build up and challenge your people. I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.
We’re in Romans 6. That’s where we’re going to spend almost all of our time. We’ll look a little bit into chapter 5 and also into John 8, which was read for you this morning.
In Romans 6, Paul attempts to answer a question that he anticipates will be asked based on all that he’s taught so far, especially how he ended chapter 5. If you look at Romans 5:20-21, Paul says, “The law came in so that transgression would increase. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The question that would come from that is this: the law came and made it clear what sin is. Sometimes you don’t know there’s a law about a certain thing. If you go into the state of New York, you can’t make a right turn on a red light, but it’s not posted everywhere because it’s just the law throughout the entire state. You drive over to New York from New Jersey where you can make a right turn at any red light unless it’s posted. You go there thinking the rules are the same.
But once the law is made clear to you, you think, “Okay, now I know. Now I know I’m violating this law. I didn’t know that before.” It still was sin. Now think about it in the sense of the word of God. It’s still sin even when the law isn’t there because the Bible says the law is written on your hearts so that we know it. God makes sure that we understand. We call it morals. We talk about someone having a moral compass, whether it’s high or low, or things that all humanity kind of understands—that there are things that are right and wrong.
But when the law comes and it’s explicit, it makes clear what sin is. When the law comes, sin abounds because now we look and see, “Oh, that’s sin. That’s sin, too. Oh, that’s sin, too. Maybe I didn’t know that was sin or I didn’t think it was that bad. But God sees it as sin.”
That’s what it means. The law is good. The law is holy. The law is righteous. This isn’t about the law. This isn’t some deficiency in the law. It’s that the law is pointing out our sinfulness.
So he says if the law comes and we’re made more aware of sin, but the more that sin abounds, the more that it increases, the more grace that we see, the more grace God provides or makes known to us. One of the questions would be: if more sin equals more grace and grace glorifies God, why don’t we just sin more? I mean, the more that I sin, the more God gets the glory, right? That kind of makes sense, right?
He anticipates this question. He actually states the question at the beginning of chapter 6. Then he answers the question and goes on in chapter 7, answering that question as well. A lot comes out of that and we’ll see. We can’t walk through the entire chapter the way that I would like in depth. That would probably take eight or nine sermons.
Instead, we’re going to do it in one. I hope y’all are praying.
In verses 1 and 2, he starts to point out this picture. He’s going to use throughout this chapter the analogy and actually the reality—but it becomes an analogy in human form. We’ll see that he even says why he does that—slavery. He talks about us being enslaved to sin.
If we present, and I’ll kind of just give it away now, he presents this other truth: if you are a believer in Christ and Christ has redeemed you and saved you, then you were enslaved to sin and now you’re a slave of God. The problem is us choosing to serve the wrong master.
Realizing Our New Identity (Romans 6:1–11)
So, how do we stop that? How do we make sure that we don’t—he presents this in kind of this way. I grouped it into four. We probably could do a lot more, but the first thing we would do is realize our new identity.
That’s the first thing: realize our new identity. And that’s going to take us through the first 11 verses. I’m actually going to go through that pretty quickly because that’s just the intro of the actual sermon. The sermon is starting at verse 12.
So he says in verse one, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin so that grace may increase?” Verse two: “May it never be? How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”
The first thing he points out is grace is not an excuse to sin. The reality is that we have died to sin. How can we still live in it if we’ve died to it?
And then, what does that mean? How do we die to sin? When do we die to sin? I get tempted every day. What do you mean by that?
Then verses 3 through 5, he walks us through what that means.
United with Christ in Death and Resurrection
Says, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death?
Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death. So that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
So he points out a lot there. We see we have been united with Christ in his death and in his resurrection.
When we place our faith and trust on the finished work of Christ on the cross for our salvation and nothing else, nothing more—not our own behavior, not our own good works, not our family’s lineage and pedigree or having parents that took us to church every week—none of that. We’re basing it solely on the work of Christ on the cross.
We now become immersed and that’s what that word baptized really means. It means immersed. It actually literally means immersed. The word in Greek is baptismal. It’s transliterated. Instead of us getting immersed, that’s why we have all this controversy about the mode of baptism—because it’s a made-up word and it’s a word that just reflects what the word is in Greek. But the Greek word really means immersed.
That’s how you can be baptized into a person. Like in 1 Corinthians 10:2, we see that the Israelites were baptized into Moses and he didn’t go take them to the river and dunk them and perform baptisms, but they were immersed into his teachings and even identified with him.
That’s what it says about us in Christ—that we were baptized in or immersed in and now we identify with Christ. When we identify with Christ, that means that we are connected to his death, his burial and his resurrection. That is what is being pictured in baptism. You go into the water and you come out.
It’s not that you come out and you’re now a new person. If you don’t know Christ, what I keep saying—old folks, and I’m one of them now, but what the old folks used to say—that you go down a dry sinner and you come up a wet sinner. If you’re not in Christ, baptism does nothing for you.
It’s a picture of what has already happened in your heart of this transformation, of the fact that we are being buried with Christ and we have been resurrected with him as well to new life.
“We are being buried with Christ and we have been resurrected with him as well to new life.”
Then verses 6-11 it says, “Knowing this that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with him. Knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God.
Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This connection that we have to Christ isn’t simply about being counted as righteous in the eyes of God. This isn’t just about what happens on judgment day and we get a pass now because Jesus paid the price. But this connection has implications in this life—how we live every day, how we react to temptation and sin and adversity and trials. That comes directly out of our connection with Christ.
That is how we know if we truly have a connection with Christ or not. It’s not about how much we give or our church attendance, but it’s about how we walk through life.
That is why in just about every book—not just Paul, but Paul follows this pattern that he preaches. He gives you a bunch of doctrine up front. Then he says, “Now these things are true and you believe these things, then this is what your life should look like.” He does the same thing in Romans, too.
Actually, he does the same thing in this chapter. We’re going to look at the second side of it, if you will. In Romans, we have the first 11 chapters that is about doctrine. Then chapter 12, what does he say? “Present yourselves as a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service.”
Why is it reasonable? Because everything I said in the first 11 chapters, all this doctrine—if these things are true, the logical, reasonable response would be to present yourselves as a living sacrifice. He does the same thing here. He presents all of this doctrine.
He tells us we were crucified with Christ. That we were slaves to sin and we’re no longer. Why? Because we died to sin.
Now, it also means that we’re not slaves to sin and sin is no longer our master. It just makes sense, right?
The relationship has been severed in both ways. Sin no longer has dominion over us because we’ve been raised with Christ. We’re now alive to God. We’re not alive to sin.
“Sin no longer has dominion over us because we’ve been raised with Christ. We’re now alive to God.”
Know What You Are in Christ
So before we move into the actual passage, I want us to review. I want you to notice one thing here in verses 3, 6, 9, and even 11. Paul uses the word know or knowing. In verse 11, he tells us to consider, or if you’re using the King James version or New King James, it would say reckon.
So before we can talk about having victory over sin, before we can talk about the songs sometimes, the kids’ songs, and it’s like the devil is under my feet or stomp the devil out and all these things, right? All these songs about victory and having victory over sin. A lot of I don’t know why we always have to spell the word victory, but like V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.
I can do it just off this because it’s in like eight or nine songs where they spell victory. But we’re so excited because we have victory over sin, right? And that’s great. But that truth that the Bible conveys doesn’t mean anything unless we understand what he said there.
Why would you have victory over sin? What makes you victorious? Not just singing a song. It’s not just being in church. It’s not knowing scripture, because Satan knows scripture and tried to use it to cause Jesus to sin.
He really went to the author of scripture and tried to use scripture to make the author of scripture sin. He tried to make God sin by using God’s word against God. He definitely will use it against you.
So even knowing God’s word isn’t enough if these things haven’t taken place in your heart.
“Even knowing God’s word isn’t enough if these things haven’t taken place in your heart.”
So our relationship with God impacts our relationship with sin. We actually spent all last year in Yam studying sin and what, as believers, our relationship is to sin now. And it was fascinating. Well, I thought it was. I was teaching. I don’t know. We have to see. All right. A couple of people who were in it were nodding. So I guess God used it with them as well.
But just studying that and seeing how we’re victorious over sin, but at the same time still can be affected by it, still can fall prey to it, and always have to be on watch for it. And how we can even minister to each other so that we all can be strong and we all can have victory over sin.
So after he explains this big, deep truth, Paul then hits us with a therefore. And that’s one of those things. All right, I just gave you all of this truth. I just told you all this deep stuff. Now here’s your part. Now this is what it means for your day-to-day life. Now let’s come out of the theology books and let’s go to work.
Let’s drive our car in central Jersey. I don’t know why y’all can’t drive out in central Jersey, but learning how to drive somewhere else and coming to central Jersey, having to drive—woo, that tests your salvation, I’m telling you. Or maybe your sanctification at least.
So this is when this stuff matters. It matters when you’re shopping and somebody leaves their cart in the middle of the aisle turned sideways, right? It matters when your boss puts more work on you than you think is fair. It matters when your spouse isn’t giving you the respect that you think you deserve, right? That’s when this stuff matters.
It doesn’t just matter when we’re sitting and debating someone or just thinking through theology on our own, but it matters in how we live and how we respond and how we act.
Resisting Sin’s Rule (Romans 6:12–15)
Now we get to Romans 6:12-23, and that’s where we get the “therefore,” right? What does he say right away? He says, “Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lust. Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
First, in the first 11 verses, you realize your new identity. We are now connected with Christ and we identify with Christ. We have been baptized or immersed into Christ. So we realize our new identity.
Next, we resist sin’s rule.
Being baptized in Christ doesn’t mean that sin no longer exists, but it has been dethroned.
“Being baptized in Christ doesn’t mean that sin no longer exists, but it has been dethroned.”
Sin now is not the king or the ruler or the master in our lives, in our heart. It’s been dethroned.
Sin Is Persistent—But Dethroned
Sin and Satan are very persistent. Just because they’ve been dethroned, they still want to rule.
If we look at 1 Peter 5:8, we can actually examine a few verses there. We’re only going to look at verse 8. So 1 Peter 5:8 says, “Be of sober spirit. Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.”
This warning was sent to believers. This isn’t about unbelievers who are playing with the occult. Peter was saying, “Hey, watch out.” He’s talking to us, that Satan is looking at what Jesus said to Peter, the one who wrote this. Satan asked about you. He’s looking to sift you like wheat.
That same Peter who went through a tremendous trial right after that came and wrote this: “Be sober, be vigilant, be on the alert.”
The devil is seeking someone to devour, and he will use everything that he knows about you to do it. It’s kind of like the Screwtape Letters, if anybody’s familiar with that. Even though it’s written as fiction by a man, I feel like God just gave him such insight to write that. But if you don’t know what it is, it doesn’t matter that much.
It’s basically about a demon writing to, I believe, his nephew, training him how to best impact humans and make them sin essentially and damage their relationship with God. Religious ones, non-religious, it doesn’t matter. They’re humans. Study their tendencies, their insecurities, their weaknesses.
Where does their pride get stirred up? What emotions take over? What makes them angry? Learn all these things and study them, then keep using them. If they don’t put those things to death, you’ll overtake them.
The great thing is that we belong to God and we’ve already been given victory. We just have to remember that.
“We belong to God and we’ve already been given victory. We just have to remember that.”
Sin continues to make demands on us. It appeals to our desires, exploits our weaknesses, and encourages us all the time to disobey God.
I have a lot of pictures in my head. This is how I think through stuff. So many years ago, there was a comedian named Flip Wilson who had a variety show called the Flip Wilson Show. He also did standup comedy and had a character named Gerald Dean who would always exclaim that the devil made me do it.
Whatever negative thing happened, it was the devil made me do it. In his comedy routine, he tells a story about a preacher. A man was talking to a preacher, and a wife comes in and says, “I just spent a bunch of money buying a new dress.” He says, “How could you do that? Money’s tight.” She says, “Oh, the devil made me do it.”
Not just that he put the thoughts in her head. The devil literally, as she walked by, pushed her into the store, dragged her over to the dress, made her try it on. She loved it. Then the devil pulled a gun out, put it to her head. This is all her story to her husband about why she bought this dress. He put a gun to her head and made her forge her husband’s signature on a check and give it to the person at the register.
It sounds humorous in that regard. But how often do we blame another person or blame our circumstantial situation or blame our heritage or why we have a certain defect or we sin a certain way? We get angry and we talk all the time about the hotblooded Latina, the hotblooded Latino person. No. You’re sinful. That’s what you are.
I don’t care where you’re from and I don’t care if you speak Spanish better than me. You’re just sinful. It has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with your mother tongue. You may have a propensity because in your culture things are expressed a certain way, but we have the same God and we have the same standards that we have to follow. We have the same power, the same Holy Spirit in us.
So no, the devil didn’t make you do it. The devil can’t make us do anything. The devil can influence us. The devil can use our own sinful tendencies and desires and the flesh that we have not yet put to death, but he can’t make us do anything.
But he’s persistent. Our sin is persistent.
Present Your Members to God
So we see that sin will continue to try to reign even if it’s no longer our master. It’s going to be persistent. But we also see in verse 13, it says, “Do not go on presenting, right? Presenting.” And then we’re told to present ourselves to God.
That means we have the power and it’s a decision. You can present your members. When it talks about members, it’s referring to the parts of our physical body. It’s talking about your mind as well. It’s talking about your tongue. It’s talking about your hands and the things that you are doing.
Do not present the resources, your faculties. Do not present yourself to sin to obey its lusts and desires, but present yourself to God. James, I think it’s James 3, he says that blessings and curses come from the same mouth and it shouldn’t be that we have a choice with the same tongue. In that whole chapter, pretty much at least the first half of it is about the tongue and how difficult it is to tame the tongue. That is what we’re called to do—one of the things we’re called to do.
The tongue can cut so sharp. But in every conversation, we have a choice. Are we going to take our tongue and present it to sin, to obey its desires and lust, or are we going to present it to God and to edify and to build up and follow Colossians 4:6? Or are we going to tear down and destroy with that? We have the choice to present our members to God or to sin in every situation.
“In every conversation we have a choice: present our tongue to sin or present it to God.”
We have to start looking at our lives and asking what can be used?
It’s almost like you walk into a room and if you’re getting a fire inspection, they come in and say, “Okay, what’s the danger? What can catch fire? Is there any place gas can leak?” They start asking these questions and thinking these things, and they’ll make you move certain things.
I didn’t realize—we do events sometimes, my wife and I. We’ll be outdoors and people will cook with propane or sometimes they have a grill, and you can’t have that under a tent because it’s a fire hazard. Even though the tent’s up high, nope, you can’t have it under a tent. Now you got to move it out there separate.
I didn’t even think about that till it rained one day and someone’s like, “I can’t do this now because I can’t bring it inside under the tent because it’s a fire hazard.” But you start thinking about that. We need to start looking at our lives that way. What are the hazards? What are the things that can easily make us sin? What are the things that I can get caught up in or caught up on? How is sin gaining access into my life and into my heart?
What do I need to put to death? What do I need to cut off?
What are we allowing to shape our thinking?
There are so many times that we, in the name of righteousness, we know we’re on social media—and not just social, the regular media, the traditional media has always done this actually. Social media just accelerates it. But the idea of rage bait or getting someone angry, and that gets them to click and that gets them to be active, right? Why do we fall for that?
Why, when we read, “Oh, a sinner sinned?” Oh, I got to click on this. I got to leave a comment. “You shouldn’t be sinning in this way. A sinner sinned.” Yes. Why? Why is that what you’re consuming? That’s not what Philippians 4:8 says we’re supposed to be meditating on and dwelling on.
But we so often will just put ourselves in a foul mood or make ourselves angry. And it’s so easy to sin in that state. And then in that state, we think we’re being righteous. “I’m mad because God’s law is being violated. That’s why I’m mad. And so now I can do whatever I want because this is righteous anger.”
We can so easily—and I know I did a little man voice there, but y’all women do that too. We have to make sure that anything in our lives that we are consuming, we’re consuming it for the glory of God.
Now you may want to know what’s going on in your congressional district or whatever. You want to know what they’re doing. You have kids. You want to know what the school is teaching. I’m not saying just be totally blind to what’s going on around you, but don’t consume things that are going to push you to sin in any way at all.
Why does he say here in verse 14, “For sin shall not be master over you”? That is our number one goal in this section here: that sin will no longer be master over us.
The great thing is we’re not trying to go and fight sin and throw him off of us. But it says, “For you are not under law, but under grace.” The law showed us our sin. The law showed us how it was impossible for us to be acceptable to God or to please God.
Grace is what saves us from our sin. We didn’t know we needed saving until the law came and the Holy Spirit used it to convict us. But it was grace that saved us, that brought us out of that.
Sin doesn’t have to be master over us. Our ability to resist sin rests on this new reality that God has established for us through Christ. Our new identity is what gives us the ability to resist sin’s rule.
“Our ability to resist sin rests on this new reality that God has established for us through Christ.”
Freedom from Sin’s Obligation
In John 8:34-36, which was read earlier, I’ll just portion that. Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever. So if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
No matter how strong the temptation is or how deeply ingrained the sinful habit is, you’re no longer obligated to obey. You have been set free.
John 8:36: “If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”
I know it feels good to give somebody a piece of your mind when they upset you. I know it feels good to chase whatever other pleasure you have, whatever other vent or release that you think you need.
It feels really good when you hear something that’s just juicy. I’m not going to use the word tea. I’m too old for that. But when you hear something, you like, “Oh, I can’t wait to tell this person. I can’t wait to share it with this person.” And every time we get some information, this other person got to know and they’re like an extension of you.
God says gossip is sin, right? And then sometimes we try to say, “Oh, did you hear about this? We got to pray for this person and we’re going to lay everything out because we want to talk about the stuff they’ve been doing.” But no, that’s a prayer request.
Listen, we have the ability—not just we have the obligation first of all, but we have the ability as well—to obey Christ and to put sin to death, to disobey sin, our old master. Understand? We didn’t have that ability. This is what it’s talking about. You were slaves of sin. I was a slave to sin. We didn’t have the ability to say no.
We thought we did. We would just go from one sin to another. Sin didn’t care. You obeying me either way. It doesn’t matter.
So you don’t lust after her right here. You’re going to lust after her? I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. You think you’re better because this person is lusting after someone under 18, but you lust after someone that’s over 18. Y’all are all sinning.
And God is displeased every time.
I’m not Hitler. Well, at least I didn’t kill anybody. You’re a sinner. You’re a sinner. James 2 says that if you sin at one point, if you break the law at one point, you have broken the law completely.
And in there, he was using what we would consider a light example—showing partiality—and compared it to murder. But we think it’s okay.
We have been set free.
Not only do we not have to obey, but we also know that the pleasure of obedience to God is greater than the pleasure of obedience to sin.
Don’t fall for that trap that says you’re going to get some pleasure over here and it’ll be worth it, or nobody will know about it. Be sure your sin will find you out.
Listen, God wants all of you all the time. He doesn’t just want you in public. He doesn’t just want you when everybody’s on you and you’re acting your best. He wants you in private. He wants you in your darkest moments. He wants you when anxiety is really high.
He wants you when you’re as insecure as possible. That’s when he wants you. He wants you when you’re saying, “I can’t speak for you. I’m stuttering all the time. I don’t know anything. I can’t do this. I can’t go up to that person and give them to God.” That’s what God wants. He wants our obedience all the time.
And he gives us the ability and the power to obey. He has freed us from sin and brought us into his family. And the beautiful thing is being a slave of God. Jesus said, “You’re not just slaves, but I also count you as my friends.” Slaves don’t know what the master is doing.
You’re my friends.
So I am obeying God because he lovingly, graciously brought me into his family. He made me his servant and his friend.
And he adopted us into his family and made us the bride of Christ. And he did it all. He initiated it all.
And that means when sin comes, we have the willingness. We have the power. Even when we’re not fully willing, we then have the power. We have the reminders.
We have the Holy Spirit convicting us. We have our brothers and sisters who can help to keep us strong in those moments. We have the word of God. We have prayer.
We can talk directly to God. The song says, “Jesus on the main line. Tell him what you want.” I don’t know how many of y’all know that, but we used to sing all the time: “Jesus is on the main line. Tell him what you want. Call him up and tell him what you want.” In our darkest, deepest moments, we could call on God. We don’t have to go to whatever sinful things used to get us through those moments. Now we can go to God.
Coming back to our passage in Romans 6, Paul moves on in verse 15. He just repeats this objection again after giving all of this knowledge and he says, “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be?”
No, you’re not sinning because you say, “Oh, the more sin, the more grace.” And you’re not sinning because you say, “Oh, I’m no longer under the law, so there’s nothing for me to obey anymore.” Jesus came. He fulfilled the law. So that part’s taken care of. Obedience to the law is already done. I don’t need to obey anything now. I just live my life the way I want because God saved me.
And he says, “May it never be.” In some versions, it would say, “God forbid.” But it was the strongest objection that was available in the Greek language.
There is no way possible this thing could be true. This is never allowable.
And so we move on to the next section.
Recognizing Your True Master (Romans 6:16–19)
And the next thing we need to do first was realize our new identity in verses 1-11. The next was resist sin’s rule in verses 12-15. And the next is recognize your true master.
Recognize your true master.
Who Do You Obey?
Verse 16 says, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness.” Look, he said, God has brought you out of that slavery, but you still have a choice to make. When you choose to obey a master, that is who your master is.
It sounds really simple, and it reminded me of gangster films. I can see it—it’s a cliche, but there’s the leader who has all his henchmen around him. Somebody comes and confronts him, and he’s just like, “All right, get them, boys.” That’s how they talk back then apparently. They said, “All right, get them, boys,” and they don’t do anything.
Why? Because the adversary has already paid them off, or they believe the adversary is right and they sided with the adversary. But that leader didn’t know that. They said, “Oh, you thought they were your men. You thought they were obeying you and your commands, but they really work for me.”
“You didn’t know that secretly they work for me.” Even though they’ve been on the payroll of Bugsy Calhoun for the last 20, 30 years, they’ve gone to each other’s kids’ weddings, they did all that stuff. Who is their allegiance with? Who is their master? It’s not Bugsy. It’s Frank, the one that paid them off, because they’re obeying him.
Frank says, “No, don’t move. We’re all after Bugsy.” Guess what? They don’t obey Bugsy anymore. He’s no longer their master. It doesn’t matter what the payroll says. It doesn’t matter that they dressed in the same suits. It doesn’t matter that they meet up in the same clubhouse. The only thing that matters is who do they obey?
When you are presented with the choice of presenting your members to God or to sin, who do you obey?
“When you are presented with the choice of presenting your members to God or to sin, who do you obey?”
That’s how you know who your master is. Who do you obey? Now, I want to make one thing clear.
Sinning one time does not mean you have now run over and you now worship Satan, right? We’re not perfect. This isn’t calling for sinless perfect obedience. That’s the goal. That’s the desire.
Every time we sin, we should hate it. We should despise it every time we sin. But we know that sin happens.
“Every time we sin, we should hate it. We should despise it every time we sin.”
But what happens when that sin happens? What is our response? Do we just sin more? Do we justify?
Oh man, it’s so easy to justify sin. The Bible—and I think the ladies, you’re going through First John now, right? Somebody show. Yes. Okay, I got ahead to speak. We went through First John a couple years ago. I’m not saying anybody’s trying to copy or anything, but it’s a little coincidence.
In First John, John makes a lot of very strong definitive statements. If you sin, you don’t love God. If you hate your brother, you can’t love God. You don’t know God if you sin. If you practice iniquity, in those cases the verb is typically in the present tense. It typically indicates a continuous action. It’s talking about something that’s habitual.
Is something that’s characteristic? Are you known for lying? Is lying your default? Is anger your default? Is that the typical way you respond—to go after drugs or alcohol to calm yourself? Is the typical thing when you feel anxiety to push everybody away and forget about all the one anothers in scripture? Is that typically what you do?
Then if you say yes, you are obeying a different master. You are obeying sin. It’s not saying, “Hey, I got angry at this one person. I’m saying, man Nathan, can you please forgive me? I got mad at you because you got mad at what I said about Captain Bat. And because you were mad, I got mad. Right?”
It’s different. You’re coming and saying, “I’ve sinned against God. I’ve sinned against a person. I need to make this right.” That’s very different than habitually.
Now, also, you could habitually keep saying you’re going to make it right and habitually come every day doing the whole, “I’m a sin. I’m sorry. I’m sin. I’m sorry. I sin, I’m sorry.” That’s not repentance either.
Understand, repentance is not saying I’m sorry. We don’t have time to go into everything repentance is. Repentance is not just saying, “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.” Right? It’s changing your mind. And that change of mind leads to a change of behavior.
But I just want to make sure we understand that when you see somebody sinning one time, don’t go tell them they’re a servant of Satan. But they need to get right with God because that easily can become a habit.
And sometimes, don’t go too far the other direction, because sometimes that does reveal who our master is. And we need to get right with God. There’s some of you listening to me right now who don’t know God and think you do.
Now, I don’t know which ones you are, so I’m not going to sit and start pointing fingers. If I happen to look at you too long, don’t think it’s because of that. But some of you hearing this don’t know God, but you have been fooled into thinking that you do.
For whatever reason, society said, “This is what a Christian looks like.” And you look like that, and you think, “I’m a believer.” Society says, “This is how often you go to church. When you check your attendance, I’m there.” Yep. Oh, just made it. Okay, I’m a Christian now.
And that’s what society says. These are things that Christians do. This is how a Christian behaves. This is how a Christian votes. This is where a Christian sends their children to school. This is what a Christian does. This is what a Christian looks like.
None of those things expose the heart. But who do you serve? Who do you obey? Whose call do you hear? Whose voice do you listen to?
Slaves of Righteousness
Now verses 17 and 18, he says, and I love this because there’s this confidence that Paul has for us.
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.
“We’re still slaves, but we just changed masters—from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness.”
Simple thing: we’re still slaves, but we just changed masters. We went from being slaves to sin to now slaves of righteousness. I love this the way that this pictures it because it’s not just slaves of sin, which is something that’s kind of abstract, and slaves of God, but now it says you’re slaves of righteousness versus sin. Now we can even see it clearer the choice that we have to make.
We almost can make a chart of your actions and say sin or righteousness.
Sin or righteousness.
But if you have truly devoted yourselves to being a disciple of Christ, you’re his slave. He is your master.
Now again, this is not about reform. This isn’t about trying to do the right things. Even if it comes from your heart, if your heart has not been transformed and you’re trying to have a heart of stone, as Ezekiel says, try to do things that only a heart of flesh can do, it’s not going to work.
This isn’t about some behavioral reform. I’m not preaching this because I know that there are some things that some of you are doing and I hope you’ll stop.
This is God’s word driving us to serve our one true master and examine our hearts to make sure that Christ is truly our master.
Shaped by the Word of God
In this section, it talks about the form of teaching to which we were committed.
This word “form” here could also be translated as “mold.” It’s the picture that God’s word is set up as a certain shape. I think of molten aluminum, but you can think of making cookies in the shape of gingerbread men or something. You get the cookie cutter in that shape and you pour the batter into it.
That is what God’s word is. The shape is that of an obedient servant of Christ. As we’re poured into God’s word and molded by it and shaped by it, we’re transformed into that.
“God’s word is the mold. As we’re poured into it and shaped by it, we’re transformed into obedient servants of Christ.”
Sometimes, especially if you apply the mold after it gets harder, there are some crusty edges you have to shape off. But we’re still being molded into this.
This is where it’s important to look at how we approach God and God’s word. Some of us have been through a lot of stuff and we have a lot of religion and we bring that with us when we come to Christ. We bring all of this stuff—things that a Christian is supposed to do or things that we just believe. It may even be the right things or things that line up with the Bible, but we don’t have a biblical reason for it. It’s just always been how we felt.
There are a lot of times and a lot of issues where we formed this opinion before we came to Christ. Now that we come to Christ, we’re like, “Oh, okay. Seems like I was right all along.” Our thoughts, our beliefs, our positions are not always being formed by the word of God. And they should be formed and shaped by the word of God all the time.
I don’t see Tina here today, but I can pick on my favorite Jamaican, my wife. She tells me that in Jamaica there are certain places that you can’t go if you’re a Christian—like to the movie theater or to the dance hall or other places like that. Do they say Rumbar? I don’t know. But you can’t go to those places. Why? Because Christians don’t go there.
I might not be able to point to a verse that says “thou shalt not watch Avengers 6,” but I’m going to tell you that Christians don’t go see movies. We will have that as a strong conviction whether it’s biblical or not.
It’s cool to have your own convictions. It’s cool to say, “I’m not going to do it because I don’t know what’s in it. They may flip some words in it that I’m just not comfortable with. So I’m going to avoid the whole thing altogether.”
Obedience Rooted in Conviction
That’s cool. But when you start judging other people for it, especially after this sermon, I don’t want y’all going to call somebody a slave to sin because they had to go watch a movie that came out. It may have been a bad choice. It may have been a waste of money to see those things, but it’s not sin.
But make sure that the things that we stand on, stand strong and stand firm on, that we expect to see, that we hold people to, we hold ourselves to and teach to our children are things that we could go back to the word of God because we always want to cultivate obedience to God, not obedience to our own thoughts and our own desires in every way. Now again the outworking of that may give us things that the Bible doesn’t say directly but we hold to those things as convictions and they are not wrong.
“We always want to cultivate obedience to God, not obedience to our own thoughts and desires.”
Romans 14 and 15 are very clear about that. But those same convictions in the hearts of your brothers and sisters aren’t wrong either unless it causes them directly to sin. So make sure that we keep that in mind too as we look through this because I know a lot of us are just like, “Oh, I wish so and so was here to hear this sermon,” and we do that a lot of times when it’s a sermon that could convict us. I’ll be honest, I did it. I did it.
I said, “Oh, I hope person X will be here. Oh, maybe I hope this.” They’re like, “Wait, I’m here right now studying this. I need to just work on my own conviction and how God is tearing me up about this stuff and showing me where my allegiance needs to be.” And that’s what we have to make sure that we’re doing.
So why this analogy? Why did Paul choose to do this? I said we would get to this a little bit and we’re actually almost done. Verse 19, he says, “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, now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.” So again, he says the same thing, but he says it in a different way. He says, look, first just because of your limitations as humans, right?
The weakness of your flesh, I had to break it down to this analogy to something you will understand to make it very basic. Then he restates what he said and then actually points to certain things. Look, you were slaves to impurities and lawlessness, not just slave to sin. Now he brings out other words as well just to make it deeper for us to understand that we have violated God’s law. We have missed the mark. We have stepped out of bounds of the path.
All these different ways of saying the same thing that we have sinned against God. Of these different words that the Bible uses to talk about that point. He says, “So present yourselves as members of righteousness, right? Your members are slaves to righteousness for sanctification. We could be sanctified. That’s how we’re sanctified.
The more and more we serve righteousness and we’re slaves of God, the more that those things of old desires get put off, the more that we hate the rule and the mastery of sin and we hate it. We loathe it and anytime we choose to sin, it disgusts us and we’re ashamed of it.
And that’s how it should be. That’s how our reaction to sin should be. So it should be so sickening to us. The Bible talks about in Revelation 3 the church of Laodicea was lukewarm and he said, “You’re not hot and you’re not cold, but I would just want to spit you out of my mouth.” And it’s actually talking about not just from like saliva, but it’s talking about bringing it up like vomit.
You picture that. If anyone ever saw The Three Witches of Eastwick, you’ll know what I’m talking about with the cherry pits. If you haven’t seen it, don’t worry about it. I’m not going to describe that here right before you have lunch. But that’s the reaction that we should have towards sin. The same reaction God will have.
It makes me sick that I sinned in that way. It makes me sick that I even thought of that. I didn’t act on it, but I still thought about it. I still wanted to do it and something just stopped me. Man, the other week, somebody text me something disrespectful. I’m telling you, I was so tempted to text them back.
And the first words of the text were going to—I didn’t text it. So I didn’t get as far as having to delete the text. It was, “Yo, you ain’t going to be disrespecting me. Like, I was actually born out here in the cornfields. Like, that’s—I don’t know who you think you talking to, man.” That was the first, and I’m just like, this man is an unbeliever. He doesn’t know Christ. How would I win him to Christ by speaking to him this way?
Don’t worry, I wouldn’t talk to you guys that way either if you’re believers. But at that moment I had to stop and I had to talk myself down.
But I’m just like, why did my mind go there? Why did I even think to say that stuff? Why did I think to react? Because my pride was hurt because a man chose to disrespect me. And I’m like, man, I’m a grown man. Who you think you talking to? Like that was the first reaction and then I had to come back. I’m like, man, I can’t react. I got to stop. I can’t be like that.
But I had to talk myself out of it because it was there. That was the first thing that rose up in me and I had to stop it. But if I didn’t at that moment, if God didn’t grab me, who knows what would have happened. I might be in jail right now because you don’t know. I could be in the hospital.
Who knows? Like you don’t know where that could have led. Somewhere ungodly for sure. Definitely I would have lost any chance of trying to share the gospel with him.
Like this has to be real in every part of our lives. So that showed me I have work to do. I have work to do in my heart. I can stand and be prideful and say well I didn’t even respond to him. I took the high road. I didn’t want to. The desire was there to do wicked, to do evil, to serve sin.
And I want that desire gone.
And we need to want—we need to be sick when we have the desire to sin. Now it is progress when you go from committing the sin to thinking about the sin and not committing it to craving something and not giving in to that. So don’t think that’s bad. Like no, that’s good. If you have something that held you captive for many years and now you’re like, “Oh, let me go back to my—nope. I’m not doing that. I’m not opening that liquor cabinet. I’m not opening that text thread. I’m not going back to that woman or that man for some rendezvous.”
I’m not doing this anymore. I got this information. I’m just going to pray about the person. I’m not going to gossip. I’m not going to vent my frustration.
I’m going to serve God.
And stop using all these other soft words for anger. Sorry. Frustration. I’m like, what? Where is it? I don’t memorize every word in the Bible, but I don’t remember seeing like just frustration. Oh, I was a little tiff. No, I was annoyed. I was—man, we say everything but the sin, don’t we?
You were sinful. Okay, but move on.
So what he says here is we have to pursue righteousness with the same energy that we used to pursue sin because we would stay up all night pursuing sin, some of us.
But are we going to stay up all night praying for our brother and sister?
No. We want to go to bed at 6:00 now because we’re holy.
But when you was in the club, you was out till 2, 3 in the morning and then went out to a diner after that. Come on.
Remembering the Results (Romans 6:20–23)
So the final thing in our last few verses is remember the results. Realize our new identity, resist sin’s rule, recognize our rightful master, and remember the results. The verses are Romans 6:20-23.
For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regards 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 is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So no matter how we felt about the sin at the time, our connection to God now causes us to look back with shame and regret. I remember there was a brother here, and he’s still a member here. I’m not going to say his name, but one of his children was talking about violence and some of the things that he did in his past. They were talking about some of the things they did together as father and son—committing some violent acts.
The son was all like, “Yeah, and we did this. I remember we grabbed this person and we jumped them and man, I was hitting them like this.” And the father was like, “Man, don’t be talking about that stuff. Don’t bring that up. That was horrible what we did. We shouldn’t have.” And he was so remorseful about it. That’s how it should be.
Even if they bring back some moments like, “Oh yeah, that was nice. We did that.” No. All the time. That’s what our reaction should be to past sin. Even if no one was impacted and it was just us, or it’s a current sin, it does not bring us joy. It brings us pain that we pain God in that way.
The Outcome of Sin vs. Slavery to God
We realize just the wickedness of our sin that we probably didn’t realize before because we were enslaved to it. We didn’t think it was so bad. But now that we tasted freedom, it’s like, what was I doing? How could I do that?
How could I get so low?
We now are to be rejoicing because our enslavement to God results in eternal life and sanctification. Even now we know that what we were doing, we were on a path of death. That’s the result of sin and having a sinful life and being obedient to sin and having sin as our master—it is death.
“The result of sin being our master is death—complete separation from God in this life and in eternity.”
It’s complete separation from God in this life and in eternity.
But being obedient and being a slave to righteousness and a slave of God means a connection with God in this life and our sanctification. It means eternal life.
The Free Gift of Eternal Life
We rejoice when it was up to us, our work and our labor.
The only wages that we deserve with our work was death.
Now we no longer work. We accept a free gift and we rest as Jesus said, “All of you who are laboring and you’re heavy laden, come to me and I will give you rest.”
Stop laboring because you’re laboring for righteousness. You’re laboring to try to know God. You’re trying to chase after God or chase after Nirvana or paradise with your good works, and being good enough only leads to death.
But resting in a free gift that God provides because of what Christ did on the cross leads to eternal life.
“Resting in the free gift God provides because of what Christ did on the cross leads to eternal life.”
In all of this big chapter with so many different sub-themes, we’ve been commanded to stop choosing the wrong master. And remember, the only way to do that is to realize our new identity, resist sin’s rule, recognize our rightful master, and remember the results.
Amen.
Let’s go before God in prayer.
Our gracious and eternal God, we want to thank you because salvation doesn’t just mean that we get to spend eternity with you, but it means right here and now you have given us the power to be freed from sin. You have rescued us from the kingdom of darkness. You have rescued us from slavery to sin.
You have brought us into the kingdom of light where we are slaves of righteousness and we can work along with you and your Holy Spirit toward our sanctification.
I want to thank you, God, for encouraging us with this truth and challenging us with this truth from your word. I pray that we would glorify you as we walk the rest of this day, this week, and the rest of our lives obeying you and serving you.
Whenever we trip, whenever we fall, whenever we find ourselves obeying some sinful temptation or even wanting to give into it, we will be quick to put it to death and we’ll be quick to make things right and come back to you.
I pray, God, that we would just trust you and love you and ask you, God, to be with us even as we fellowship after singing this song. I ask this in Christ’s name. Amen.