Romans 6 - "SERVANTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
SERVANTS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
(Romans 6:19b)
Preached by: Pastor Carolyn Sissom
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Romans 6: 19b) “Even so now yield your (bodily) members and (faculties) once for all as servants to righteousness to holiness.” (Amplified)
In the previous chapters of Romans we have settled by Faith our forgiveness of sin with the blood, justification by faith, our resulting peace with God and in chapter five he dealt with our root trouble of being a sinner. Now in chapter Six he clearly reveals our deliverance from sin by the same Faith.
What is true of our forgiveness is also true of our deliverance. The work is done. Our sins were dealt with by the blood, but we were dealt with by the Cross. God has surely made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s dominion.
I don’t believe the God of our salvation left us dangling to not have the power to resist sin. But there is a small problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of Adam? There is only one way. Since we came in by birth, we must go out by death. Bondage to sin came by birth. Deliverance from sin comes by death and it is just this way of escape that God has provided. God does not require us to crucify ourselves. We were crucified when Christ was crucified. We died in him as the last Adam. We live in Jesus as the second Man. The Cross is the mighty act of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.
Our old history ends with the Cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.
Chapters 6, 7, and teach that the conditions of living a normal Christian life are four-fold:
- Knowing
- Reckoning
- Presenting ourselves to God.
- Walking in the Spirit
Our Spiritual maturity will end at Romans 5 unless we accept that in his death we all died. Just as we cannot have justification if we do not accept that he bore our sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not accepted that he actually bore us on the Cross.
There is a highly organized kingdom over which sin reigns as king. This inward mass of corruption is the source and seat of all sinning. This power has to be broken. That old man must loosen his grip on our reason, emotions and will. God is sufficient in His undiluted majesty and might.
Sin has now lost its power to rule us. It may vex us, distress us, influence us, but it cannot dominate us unless we desire it. Sin can indwell a Christian because sanctification is a daily dying out. God is making us righteous. There are two different principles here. When He justified us, He declared us to be righteous, but he is sanctifying us daily to actually make us righteous. In short we get credit in our account before we earn it.
Romans 6:1-2: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead in sin, live any longer therein?
Paul’s emphasis on God’s mercy at the close of the last chapter was so great that people could easily misunderstand him. He said, “The more sin there is, the more God’s grace abounds to cover it.” So he asked the question, “Should we continue in sin?” The idea is repugnant. He says, “I should say not.” He has now made known his official position on sin. He introduces for the first time a new term “How can those who are dead to sin go on living in it?” This again had to be a shocker to tell people who are sinners and know it that they are dead to sin. He devotes the next two chapters to explain the place of sin in a Christian’s life.
He does so with clarity. These are difficult chapters, but once we master them by appropriation of Faith, then we will come into a new level of the power of the Cross in our lives. We cannot skip the Spiritual journey of chapters 6 & 7 and hope to get to the Holy Spirit led life of chapter 8.
Let us not be deceived for lack of knowledge. There are many Holy Spirit filled Christians who are not living as Overcomers in total victory. Paul gives us the path to becoming Overcomers.
In society today there are two equal and opposite errors unto which our race can fall about sin, temptation and the forces of hell. One is to disbelieve the existence of the forces of hell. Another is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” Knowledge of the Christian faith would save the modernist, the backslider and the Satanist. The world perishes for lack of knowledge.
To totally understand death to sin, we need to know about Jesus’ two deaths on the Cross. There was the death of the soul and the death of the physical body. The first was accomplished when He cried, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” This was the atonement for our sins. At that moment the Father laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He became sin for us. He became spiritually separated from the Father (no one truly understands how). The atonement was finished.
He was still alive in the body. He said, “Father into your hands I commend my Spirit.” This was his physical death of the physical body and human spirit he inherited from Adam. We participate in this death by Faith.
Obviously this is not literal. Physical death cannot be transferred from one body to another. It is done by a legal process known as impartation. We are declared dead the same way Abraham was declared righteous and we are declared righteous.
The problem we are still faced with is the legal declaration does not kill the old nature. Sin does not die in us. The fact is we do sin. We all know that the Adam in us is very much alive. Once a Christian is set free from sin, it is unthinkable to Paul that anyone would want to continue in the old way of life. The purpose of God’s grace is to deliver a man from sin.
6: 3-4: “Know you not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death. Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father. Even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Baptism means “placed into”. There are two baptisms for the believer. 1 Cor. 12:13 says that water baptism is a symbol of our legal participation in Jesus’ death. Our spirit baptism is an actual event; there is nothing symbolic about it. This again has to be appropriated by Faith. We then are declared dead to sin by faith before we actually are. To be truly dead to sin, our body must die. However, by faith we have the ability to live Godly lives in Christ through the power of the Christ nature.
Matthew 28:19 is the Lord’s command to baptize all believers. The spiritual surgery that occurred at our salvation of the soul (circumcision of the soul) breaks the power of sin so that a believer is now on the Power side of the Christian life. This is the same glorious power that raised Jesus from the dead that will enable us to triumph over sin in our daily walk.
6:5-7: ‘For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that hereafter we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.”
He continues his argument that unlimited grace encourages sin. He is saying that having Christ makes it possible to live a Godly life, but it does not guarantee it. As long as we have free wills and live in unredeemed bodies, we can sin as much as we want to. How then is our old man (Adam nature- the one that is selfish and wants to do it our way) crucified? In the same way we are declared legally dead are we legally crucified. It is done by divine proclamation. We know old Adam is still alive and kicking but as far as God is concerned he is a dead man. God sees the finished product. He tests the product before he puts it on the market.
We are set free from the old man by three steps of spiritual surgery:
- The old man is declared dead (crucified).
- There is a literal circumcision of the soul.
- The Christ nature is attached to the soul.
This is supernatural and occurs beyond the scope of our five senses. We have to accept it by Faith. This is what Paul meant when he said, “I am crucified with Christ and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.”
6:8-9: “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over Him.”
If death has no more dominion over Christ, then I am part of His Body and death has no more dominion over me. Paul is not speaking of that future day beyond the grave when we will have new bodies and be sinless. He is speaking of right now. There is plenty of power available by Faith if we will appropriate the finished work of Jesus Christ into our lives.
6: 10-11: “For in that He died, He died to sin once; but in that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Jesus died for our salvation, deliverance, healing, sanctification, and death to sin.
He arose to eternal fellowship with the Father. Physical death has no terror for us now. It is a brief incident that thrusts us into the eternal presence of God. In this Church Fellowship, we are so blessed to live and move and have our being in the abiding presence of the Lord. By Faith we have accepted Jesus’ death and resurrection that thrusts us into that presence in the here and now.
The “reckoning” of Verse 11 is not the same as regarding sin dead to us. Sin is very much alive. The bible says, “We deceive ourselves if we say we don’t sin; we “reckon” ourselves dead to sin by picturing ourselves as unable to respond to the temptations and passions of the flesh. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” We do this in the renewal of our mind by Faith.
If our vain imaginations entertain sin, we surely will. That is a law of God. The image we hold in our minds will gradually become true in our lives. Because we are made in the image of the Creator, we can see things before they exist. Thoughts precede deeds. If a man thinks evil, he will become evil. The highest use of the imagination is to give reality to the ways of God.
The path of Faith is always against fact and appearance.
Fellowship with the Lord takes place in our Spirit. The imagination is the place of escape in the realm of the soul. If we yield our members (faculties and body) to the Holy Spirit, then we bypass the escapism of vain imaginings.
The formula Paul has for holy living has two steps:
- Visualize yourself dead to the evil impulses.
- See yourself alive unto God through constant fellowship with Jesus in the secret place.
6:12-13: “Neither yield you your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin; but yield yourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin, shall not have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace.”
Satan still has permission to do his best to get us to serve his kingdom. The lusts of sin are really the lusts of satan. The lusts of man are his own creative powers depraved and corrupt. It is not sin to be tempted; the sin is in the yielding. When we yield, we make the devil’s sin our own. James 4:7: “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
The drives of the flesh can become an instrument of evil or a weapon against the kingdom of darkness. By our free will, we make the choice.
The moment we are saved, we have dethroned satan, and turned our life over to Jesus. The Lord then promptly hands it back to us giving us the liberty to love and serve him freely. He wants us to choose to make Him King and Lord. The Lord will never dominate us. Satan puts people in to the bondage “chains” of sin. Then sin controls his victim.
The law made obedience compulsory---specific rules or else.
6:15-16: “What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know you not that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey: whether of sin to death or of obedience to righteousness?”
Paul is way ahead of his readers. Good thing he wrote these verses, because even today people are looking for easy grace, just like easy grease. Through the Mind of Christ given to Paul, we are reading some of the greatest words ever written by man.
There are two masters who want us, God and satan. Satan tricks people to serve him by bondage to sin. God wants us to want him, love him and serve him out of love. God will never force us to do his will.
6: 17-19: “But God be thanked, that you were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which has delivered you. Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh for as you have yielded your members (body and faculties) servants to uncleanness and to iniquity to iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness to holiness.”
Our hearts respond with faith to the gospel. Through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, we can throw off sin whenever we choose and do the will of God. God appeals to the heart. Satan appeals to the flesh.
The apostle is grateful for the clear cut conversion of the Roman Christians. Paul could not say this to the Galatians in Asia Minor. Paul accused the Galatians of falling from grace, i.e. abandoning heart obedience to God and trying to stay saved, or improve on their salvation by giving fleshly obedience to the law and imposing it on others.
The Romans weren’t free of sin. They were free from the guilt of sin through their faith. Many of the Romans were slaves. The type of slave here means “love slave”. A woman with a mother’s heart will totally sacrifice herself for her child. However, we must use wisdom. We can totally trust our heart to an innocent child, but when the child becomes a teenager, mother has to demonstrate tough love. The teenager is not mature enough to be trusted with something as valuable as a “heart”. This is also true of Christians as they mature.
6: 20-22: “For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit had you then in those things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of these things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end everlasting life.”
The consequences of one sin is another sin, and the process continues until destruction is complete. At the end of that process is hell. It can even be a hell on earth.
Sin always brings emptiness and torment. Man has an infinite appetite because he is made in the image of infinite God. Things of the world cannot satisfy a man because they are finite. Solomon’s life is a testimony to the futility of money, fame, sex and power; He renounced it all as vanity and emptiness.
It is a precious joy to be able to serve someone because you want to and not because you have to. With Jesus, the yoke is easy and the burden light. When we are fitted into our present season of Christian service, then we will be happy. One of the challenges of a Pastor is helping people to be fitted into their service. Not everyone will have a pulpit ministry. Those who are in that season of their life, the Lord will open the door. If it is pushed open, then it will turn sour.
The end of the path is joy in the presence of the Lord forever. God is indeed a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
6:23: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul summarizes in one sentence the difference between Christian slavery and satanic slavery. The word wages here in the Greek is the same as pay given to soldiers. Satan hires people with sin to battle against the Lord. Satan promises wages of fun, money and pleasure. That is another lie. The real wages of sin is death. Man actually earns death as their wages for serving the devil. There is no way to earn God’s offer of eternal life. It is a gift given in advance.
Both the saved and unsaved live forever. The sinner earns the right to live with satan. The Saint is given the right to live with God forever. There are many who believe in God, who do not receive Christ. Without Christ, there is no union and without union there is no life. This why the apostle John says, “He that has the Son has life, and he that has not the Son of God has not life.”
Through Jesus the way has been made for all people of all races to enjoy a covenant that gives life, not death.
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
We video our Sunday a.m. services and audio all other services.
Scripture from K.J.V. Bibliography: C. S. Lovett’s lights on Romans, F. F. Bruce Bible Commentary, Leslie C. Allen; Matthew Henry’s Commentary; Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible