Freedom from Sin and Slavery to Christ

By Pastor Matt Black

18 August 2007
Lord's Day morning
Romans 6:1ff

Introduction: Open your Bibles to the book of Romans 6 and verse 1.  The title of this morning’s message is “Freedom from Sin and Slavery to Christ” or “A Simple Message on How to Be Holy”.

You do not need to know a massive amount of the Bible to make a huge difference for the Lord in the world.  You do not need to master the entire Scriptures to in order to make an impact for eternity.  In fact, you can be saved for 2 days, and you can have an impact for Christ.  You simply need really one thing.  It is a very great thing.  It is a very awesome thing.  I’m not talking about theological knowledge.  I’m not talking about any ability within yourself.  In fact, you can be a total misfit as far as humanity is concerned.  You can have a totally backward personality and make a massive impact in this world.  You could absolutely lack charisma and lack anything attractive in your natural communications and be used of God.  None of the things that we normally associate with giftedness is needed for God to use you!!!

People who have impacted this world are not people who have mastered a lot of things.  If you want to make an impact today, you don’t have to be from a good family.  You don’t have to have a college education or even a high school diploma.  Some of the people who have been used by God to shake hundreds of thousands, like D.L. Moody in the 19^th century.  God used an uneducated teacher by the name of Evan Roberts to shake all of Whales in Great Britain in the 1904 Awakening. 

You don’t need any worldly wisdom.  You can get a Ph.D. in human behavior or even in theology, and it won’t help you one iota.  Knowledge gained in a classroom is helpful to a point, but we’ve had so much of that in the last three generations of people in our country, and what has it gained us?   We have more education and information than at any other time in the history of the human race, and we have more lost people on the globe than ever in the history of the world.  We don’t need a seminar or a conference.  We don’t need another “how to” book.  Marketing skills and manipulation will not help us.  If you want to make a difference beginning today, right now, you just need to know a few penetrating truths.  In fact, you need to be gripped by them in such a way that you would be willing to lay down your life for them. 

How many years do you have until you give an account before the Creator of the Universe to tell Him what you did? 

I want to present these truths to you this morning.  

I. Truth One: Since Holiness is the absolute goal of our lives.  A Fierce Rejection of any theology that would promote Hypocrisy, or anything that guts repentance from the Gospel.  We must reject anything that would say that subverts holiness from our lives.  This has historically been called Antinomianism.  What is an antinomian?  According to the dictionary (Random House, 2006), an antinomian is “a person who maintains that Christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel.”  It is essentially turning grace into a license to sin. 

In order to get the context look at Romans 5:20, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”. 

We praise God for this message of grace! God is a loving God.  He is a good God.  He is a covenant keeping God.  He’s made a covenant, a pact, a promise to undeserving sinners like us!  We broke the first covenant with him in Adam.  He’s made a new covenant.  It is the everlasting covenant.  He sealed that pact with the blood of His own dear Son.  God is a God of grace!  His mercies are new every morning.  He is love.  He is good beyond your wildest dreams.  He is merciful beyond anything you can fathom.  His love is greater and more awesome and towering than any love known to man.  So we need to understand this grace.  But we must not turn the grace of God into lasciviousness!  We cannot presume upon the grace of God.  Do you presume upon the grace of God?  Do you teach a Gospel that has no demands on your life.  Do you believe in a hollow grace that is simply a license to sin and a way so that you can have your sin and heaven too? 

Jude warned of these people in Jude 1:4, “For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The essential problem is presumption upon the grace of God.  God does not owe us grace.  When God gives us grace, it is in order that He might dominate us.  It is so that we might wholeheartedly embrace the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  If God’s grace is in you, then the Lordship of Jesus Christ is over you.  That’s what Paul is getting ready to teach.  If Christ’s Lordship is not over you, then you are not a Christian.  If you are a Christian, then by definition, Jesus Christ is your master.  Any other Gospel that denies Jesus Christ His rightful Lordship over your life is no Gospel at all.  It is turning the grace of God into a license to sin.  Anything that blocks our holiness, our growth in Christ dominating our lives is to be rejected.  This is hypocrisy and antinomianism, or lawlessness.

God hates lawlessness.  The lawless are not Christians.  Look at Matthew 7:22-23, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? 23  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”

Paul warns of it here in Romans. 

So Paul says in Romans 5:20, “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound”.  From that, Paul asks an important question in Romans 6 and verse 1: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”  Sin is the transgression of the moral law of God.  God hates the transgression of His law.  God’s law is a reflection of His rule and His character.  You see, to transgress God’s law is to laugh at God in His face.  The omnipotent God of the universe gives a command—eat of all the trees of the Garden!  But not this tree.  Not the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  All creation is yo0rs, but there is something always that sets God so far above any of His creation.  To transgress God’s law is to ridicule His reign.  It is to laugh at His dominion.  It is to scorn His omnipotent wrath and to make light of our own sin and guilt.  The whole goal of grace is NOT that we might get more pleasure in sin!  No!!!!  The whole goal of grace is that we might have our wrath and guilt removed and have ultimate pleasure in God!   

I don’t want you to raise your hands, but just answer the question in your own heart.  How many of you have a television? What comes over that television?  Do you have an internet?  What comes over that internet?  What do you view in private? 

God hates violence.

God hates fornication.

God hates His glorious and beautiful name taken in vain.

God abominates foolish jesting.

God loves obedience.

God loves it when you thirst after righteousness.

God loves when you let Him reign over you.

God loves when you say NOOOOOOO to sin!!

God says in Deuteronomy 5:29, “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!”

You can have the right words.  You can say the right things.  You can be at the right place.  At church.  In service.  But where is your heart?  Is your heart right?  Do you love sin or do you love God? 

Do you say that you love Christ?  John 14:15, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”

Listen to the words of the Saviour who bled for you a few verses down in verse 21, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.”

Again in John 15:14, “Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”

You must love the absolute dominion of Christ over you and hate the transgression of His law and dominion.  Grace is not liscence to sin.   We must not turn the grace of God into lasciviousness.  If you want to be great, turn your guns on antinomianism.  Antinomianism says that grace is hollow.  It mechanicalizes the Gospel.  It guts the Gospel of repentance and holiness.  It is the good time gospel, which is no Gospel at all.  It is a false gospel with no anguish over sin.  It has no anguish over the price that Jesus Christ paid for us.  It simply takes the grace of God and prostitutes it.  It pirates the grace of God.  It is a cheap imitation. 

So here’s truth number one: If you are a Christian that has been touched with God’s grace you, you will be repelled by all that turn God’s grace into a license to sin.  It will grieve your heart that there are false believers, self-deceived people in this world that actually think that there does not necessarily have to be a radical inward change as a result of conversion.

Reject this false gospel of easy believism and hollow grace.  The true Gospel is a Gospel of Holiness.  Men who see God are like Isaiah.  “Woe is me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, for mine eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts!”  You know that the angel told him after that “Lo, …thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged” (Isaiah 6:7).

Now Isaiah didn’t get up from that vision and say, wow, now that I know that God is a forgiving God, I can live however I want.  Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?  Let’s look at verse two for that answer.  Look at verses 2 and 3 of Romans 6, “God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? 3  Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?”  That brings us to our second truth.  Our first truth was that we must reject any theology that would excuse our sin.

II. Truth Two: Death to Sin.  So should we continue in sin?  No!  We are what? “dead to sin”  and verse three says , “so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death”.

I am sick and tired today of someone who has been following me around all my life.  I’m tired of his excuses.   I’m tired of his justifications for not following Christ more fervently.  I’m tired of his failures.  I truly want you to pray for this person.

You are looking right at him.  I’m tired of me!  Leonard Ravenhill once said that “Today some of us need to go to our own funerals”. 

John 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

I was reading in my wife’s Bible on the page where it says “Deaths”.  You know in some Bibles it records marriages, births, and here was the page that said deaths.  Listed there were her grandmother.  Her uncle.  Some others.  And then a statement.  A date and then a statement.  My wife’s maiden name is Wenger.  It said, “Today Jill Wenger died.”

Oh, that we would right that down every day!!

We need to die.  Do you know why you are so dominated by sin at times?  Because you are listening to your corrupt nature.  Be dead to it.

Look at verse 6: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7  For he that is dead is freed from sin.”

Look at verse 11, “For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11  Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12  Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13  Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 14  For sin shall not have dominion over you…”

Look at verse 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.”

Put off the old man, put on the new!  A dead man is not dominated by anything!

III. Truth Three: Liberty.  Romans 6:11  Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  By doing that you get liberty! “18  Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”  Death gives you liberty.  You do not need to obey your sin. 

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

IV. Truth Four: Slavery to Christ—You must be mastered by Christ.  Look at verse 16 again, “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?”  Verse 18, “18  Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”

Jesus said in John 4:34  Jesus saith unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

A Christian is one who is in slavery to obey Christ.

Matthew 7:21  Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

1 John 2:17  And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

I want you give you the key ingredient for holiness, and for your life to bear much fruit.  You need to be mastered by Christ.  You must be a slave to Jesus Christ.  You must do exactly what He says.  Slavery.  Absolute devotion and obedience to Jesus Christ.  He must dominate you.  You must be loyal to Him above all others.  You must be disloyal to all other claims that are contrary to His.  You must learn to say NO to anything that is even slightly contrary to His demands on your life. 

Conclusion:  You don’t need to know a lot.  Just simply let Christ dominate your life.  Do what He says.  Let’s go to some funerals today.