Dead to Sin, Alive to God: Romans 6:15-18 Introduction For the last several weeks we have covered the first half of chapter 6. In this chapter, Paul has returned o to explaining what he means by way of answering questions that he supposes his hearer might ask. The first question in the chapter o was presented in the first verse: Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound. o Paul devoted the next 13 verses to a comprehensive response to that question. o He showed that it was impossible for a true believer to habitually yield to sin. o He did so by revealing how the inner working of our salvation has, quite literally, set us free from sin. o We were slaves to sin. Sin controlled us, it had the authority and we were its servants. o However, through our identification with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the power of sin has been broken o and we have been awakened o to the newness of life. Now, Paul turns to a second question o that he sees as a possible response to his answer to the first question. That question is recorded in Romans 6:15 o and the remainder of the chapter is devoted to answering that question. Text: Romans 6:15-18 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.
16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. Exposition 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Here s the question that is under consideration here: Shall we sin because we are under grace? o Does grace allow sin? There is a distinction o between the way sinning is represented in verse one and the way it is now represented in verse 15 and it is an important distinction. The verb in verse one o was indicative of habitual, continuoul action. o The question was should we continue in sin? The question now has more to do with a single act. o Not the continual sin but rather the occasional sin. The distinction may seem subtle o but it is the distinction between an alcoholic and the occasional social drinker. That s the nature of the question. o If we cannot continue in habitual sin, are we allowed occasional dalliances? Note, we aren t talking about unintentional failures, o Or the occasional lapse in good judgment. This is intentional sin that is excused because of its infrequency. The person asking the question acknowledges o that his actions are sin but wants to excuse that sin on the basis of its occasional nature.
This may sound like an exercise in semantics but it is a very common temptation today. When we contrast the law to grace o we tend to emphasize the swift and severe punishment of sin under the law o while emphasizing the availability of forgiveness under grace. Grace makes it possible to recover from failure o but that truth leads some to make a tragic error in judgment. They assume that grace makes it possible to sin o whenever they want to, whenever it is enjoyable or convenient. They comfort themselves with the knowledge o that they can always ask for forgiveness after their failure. This is a dangerous position for a believer to adopt. Just because we have been set free from the law o doesn t mean that we can sin with impunity. The transition from law to grace o does not leave us free to sin, as if there were no longer any law at all by which sin is defined and restrained. Accepting grace o means the abandonment of the law system as a way of salvation, o but it does not separate us from law altogether. God never changes. o If murder, adultery, and idol worship were reprehensible to God when he wrote the 10 commandments in tables of stone with his own finger then it is still reprehensible to God now. Just because we have been given grace o does not mean that we can live a life that is contrary to God s desire for us. It is hard for some to accept o but even under grace
the law serves as a definition of normative behavior. We know what pleases God, o we know what God desires, and we know what is acceptable behavior according to the law of God. We may be living under the grace of God o but we are still bound to obey the moral law of the Word of God. It is true that the law is uncompromising. But grace, while it makes a way for us to be forgiven, is not lenient. o It is far stricter than the law ever could be. It is a far greater deterrent of evil than the law ever was. Kenneth Weust in his book Weust s Word Studies o uses an example that goes something like this: A dozen policemen stationed along the highway are a far greater deterrent to speeding, than any number of signs along the road indicating the speed limit. o In the same way, the Holy Ghost living within us convicts us of even the slightest sin. o It operates like a dozen policemen reminding us over and over again that we cannot indeed we must not o transgress the law of God. o While the law written in the word was like a dozen speed limit signs easily ignored and often overlooked. o Its guidelines were general, while the Holy Ghost convicts us in a very specific manner. Grace not only offers forgiveness for sins, o it also teaches us how we should live. 16 Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
To make this point clear verse 16 uses an analogy to slavery. The Greek word translated as servant here literally means slave. o One definition of that word is literally one whose will is swallowed up in the will of another. Paul is about to answer the question of the social sinner, o one who sins only occasionally but deliberately. To do so he identifies our condition, o both before and after salvation, in terms of slavery. Before salvation, o your will was swallowed up in the will of Sin, but since you have been saved, your will is swallowed up in the will of God. o Either way, you serve a master. The phrase know ye not at the beginning of this verse implies that the principle that is given here o should be common knowledge. Slavery was commonplace o in the Roman Empire of the first century. In large urban areas o nearly half of the population were either currently slaves or had been slaves at some point in their lives, o therefore the first recipients of Paul s letter would have been very much at home with this metaphor. They would have readily understood the principle o the Apostle is enunciating here. It is based on the fact o that in that culture many people entered into slavery voluntarily. If you owed a debt you could not pay, o one way that you could satisfy that debt was by temporarily becoming a slave to the person that you owed the debt to. o You would be their slave for a predetermined length of time in order to work off your debt. So the people to whom Paul was writing understood the underlying concept here.
When you make the decision o to submit yourself to someone, to yield your will to his, you become that person s slave. Your will is essentially swallowed up in their will. o For a prescribed period of time you have determined that you will not do the things that you want to do but that you will do the things o that they command you to do. o You will subject your will, in obedience to their will. This is the key point of this passage. God s grace gives us freedom to choose o between two masters sin or God. Our choice is demonstrated by our actions. o If we choose to live in sin, then we are sin s slaves, and the end result is death. o If we choose to obey God, then we become His slaves, and the result is righteousness. We are all slaves who serve a master, o but we do have a choice as to whom we will serve. We must choose between sin and our savior. Now, look closely at the verse. There are two opposites presented here. o On the one hand you have sin unto death and on the other hand you have obedience unto righteousness. Did you see what Paul just did there? o The opposite of sin is obedience. The opposite of a sinner is not just a believer. The opposite of a sinner is an obedient believer! o These are the only two choices. You can t serve them both at the same time, o and you have to choose between them. That s a sobering thought. Obedience or Sin? Listen very closely:
o There is no choice for disobedience that is not sin. Both choices result in slavery. You are going to serve a master. o And no man can serve two masters. One choice is to be a slave of sin. We ve already established the fact that sin is a slave tyrant. o It has controlled you before and it is ready to control you again. If you choose to submit your will to sin, o if you obey sin, then you become the slave and sin becomes you master. In John 8:34 Jesus said, o Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. The result of serving as sin s slave is death. o This is not death unto sin, like we experience in salvation, o this is the death of the new life that has been born in you. This is spiritual death, o which is the devastating effect of sinning and is the divine curse of sin. Spiritual death is what Adam and Eve o immediately experienced in the garden. It resulted in both physical death o and eternal death, but one dies spiritually first. That is the result of sin. Sin causes death. The other choice is to be a slave of obedience itself. Obedience is the means by which o we live as slaves to God, and righteousness is its outcome. We literally become slaves to obedience. o Being a slave to obedience is an unusual expression. o In effect it says that we literally obey obedience. That may be an awkward expression
o but it is the best way to describe what happens when we offer ourselves as slaves to obedience. We yield to the obligation to obey God, o to obey his moral law, and to obey his standards of righteousness even under grace. The point that Paul is making with the slave metaphor o is that we have an obligation to obedience. Obedience is the very essence of slavery! Let us consider the phrase Obedience unto righteousness. Righteousness is about conforming to the moral law of God. o A righteous person is one who conforms to God s law or satisfies the requirements of his law. It is someone who is obedient to the will of God, o their will is swallowed up in His will. The point here o is that grace does not make the law of God unnecessary. To the contrary, o grace demands obedience to God s standard of righteousness. We either serve sin unto death o or we serve obedience unto righteousness. In salvation we have offered ourselves o as slaves to God and slavery demands total, radical, obedience. In effect the bonds of the law o are made stronger by grace, not weaker. Rather than being free from moral restraint, o we have actually placed ourselves under obligation to righteousness. To sum up verse 16 we were slaves to sin before salvation. But since we have been saved o we have become slaves of Jesus Christ. We have changed masters. We have a new nature, o the newness of life,
and the old nature, which compelled us to serve sin, has been broken. o Sin no longer has any power over us. So, to answer the question o of the occasional, intentional, flirtation with sin the purposeful act of sin with grace in mind o Sinning with impunity is not a license that we have been given because of God s forgiveness. The principle of obedience opens our eyes o to the fact that our actions demonstrate who our master is. We cannot willingly obey sin o without becoming a slave of sin and we cannot be a slave of sin and a slave of Jesus Christ at the same time. Let me say again, o as I have said many times previously, this does not mean that if you fail, if you sin, there remains no forgiveness of sin. This means, though, o that you are fooling yourself if you think that you can deliberately sin and remain a child of God. 17 But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. All of us were once the servants of sin. We were all bound by sin, o the sin nature dominated us and compelled us to sin. But, thank God, Paul said o we WERE the servants of sin. The verb is past tense, o stressing the fact that we have been set free
from the bondage of sin. When we obeyed from the heart o the form of doctrine which was delivered. Can someone say, thank God for an apostolic preacher? o Somebody preached truth to you. o You heard a message of repentance, water baptism in Jesus name for the remission of your sins, and the infilling of the Holy Ghost, and you obeyed it with your whole heart. You experienced death, burial and resurrection with Jesus Christ o and you were set free from the bondage of sin! Lets look at a couple of things in this verse. First of all the initial obedience that set you free o was done wholeheartedly, it was literally from the heart. This demonstrated that you surrendered to God o of your own volition. It was your choice. You were not forced into service to God. o You sincerely and earnestly surrendered yourself to God. It was your choice o and you willingly entered into this slavery with your whole heart. The reason why the heart is emphasized here o is because a slave s service to his master is usually outward only. They serve with their body o but it insults their heart to surrender their will to another. So, while they are obedient on the outside, o they are in rebellion in their heart. However, when we enter into service to God, o the first thing we surrender to him is our heart and we serve him from the inside out. Our body follows our heart, o rather than our heart being constrained to what our body is doing.
We serve God with our whole heart! There is another caveat in the original language that is not readily apparent in the English translation. The last phrase in the verse, in the Greek, o reads this way: The form of doctrine into which you were delivered. The English makes it sound like o the doctrine was delivered to you but the Greek indicates that, actually, you were delivered to the doctrine. The Greek word has to do with being handed over o much like a slave changes ownership and is handed over to a new master. In this case we were handed over to the doctrine. o The doctrine refers to the whole scope of biblical and apostolic teaching. o It includes all biblical truth. It is the sound doctrine that is based on the word of God. Rather than being set free from our obligation o to the directives of the word of God, we have been literally handed over to the doctrines of the word of God. When we became God s slaves, o he delivered us over to the body of doctrine, which he has revealed to us through his word, both the apostles and the prophets. And he requires of us, as his slaves, o to conform ourselves to the doctrine. This is our job as his slaves. We are to shape our lives o by the pattern described in the doctrine. When Paul says that we have o wholeheartedly obeyed the doctrine he means that we have begun to allow it to mold our beliefs and our behaviors. That is how we achieve the righteousness o that is characteristic of a servant of God. That is the essence of our slavery to God,
o it is a lifelong process of conforming to the word and will of God. One final note: o David K. Bernard points out that this verse emphasizes obedience, doctrine, and conversion of the heart. o This verse eliminates the idea that all you have to do is believe in your heart and confess with your mouth to be converted. Conversion is linked to continual obedience to the doctrine. o You have been handed over to the doctrine. It is, in one sense, you new master. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. Verse 18 sums up the thought that Paul has presented in verse 17. By obedience to the doctrine o we have been set free from the bondage of sin. Sin no longer rules over us. o We have been moved out from under the dominion of sin. This does not mean that we are free to sin. o That s the issue that Paul is dealing with in this chapter. Rather than being free to sin o we are now free from sin. We are free from sin s control. One thing to note here is that sin and righteousness, in these verses, are mutually exclusive. There is no middle ground o where you can live in sin and still be righteous. By definition, if we live in sin o we are not righteous and if we are righteous, we are not living in sin. That is what leads to Paul s argument here, o if we are free from sin then we are servants to righteousness. In order to stay free from sin
o we have to live in submission to righteousness, we have to conform to the word of God. One more note about the slave analogy. It does not mean that God will force us to serve Him. o We have the choice. We choose which master we will serve. o But we cannot serve two masters. If we choose to serve God o then we must obey him, we must conform to the doctrine that has been delivered to us. It is our obedience o that yields continual righteousness in our live. To be clear, this isn t salvation by works. o We understand righteousness in two senses. When you were saved you were declared to be righteous. o Your life didn t fully reflect the declaration that was spoken over you, o but you were, by virtue of your faith, which yielded obedience to the doctrine, declared to be righteous. However, salvation is not a one-time event in your life. o It is something that must be continued in. From the point of conversion, o where you wholeheartedly obeyed the doctrine, you must go on to live a life that causes you to grow in righteousness. You are steadily becoming o what the grace of God has already declared you to be. You will never achieve perfection o on this side of glory, but that is the mark that you strive toward. God has declared you to be righteous, o and he has handed you over to the word of God to teach you to conform to his will and his ways so that you can grow into righteousness. You have become the servant of obedience unto righteousness. If you forsake that process, o if you strive to live independent of the will and ways of God
if you forsake the doctrine to which you have been delivered, you return to sin as your slave master. You can only serve one master. Close We, by virtue of our decision to follow Jesus and by virtue of the saving grace of God, o are now slaves to righteousness. We have acknowledged our obligation o to conform our thoughts and deeds to the word of God. We have recognized that we were sinners o and we needed the grace of God to set us free o and we have acknowledged the fact that we must become righteous. When we were saved, o God spoke over us a better word than our lives reflected. We were sinners, o but he called us righteous and we will live the rest of our days growing into that declaration. Our lives have a new purpose. o Our new purpose is to conform our lives to the will and word of God. We are, in a very real sense, o slaves to the will and word of God. This is a slavery that we have chosen for ourselves o and in order to remain in it we must continually choose it. We will be given the opportunity to choose sin, o we will be tempted. But we must choose obedience. o We must choose to grow into righteousness!