Romans 6:15-19
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. We are working through the book of Romans right now, over the course of the book, we have seen a number of points that St. Paul has made. The first three chapters were spent telling all of us that everyone is a sinner. Jews were sinners. Gentiles were sinners, which meant that all of us are sinners, religious and non religious people like none of us can live up to God's standard. And it closes with the explanation of the three gifts of grace that God delivers us through Jesus Christ, that despite our sin, He offers salvation by the death and resurrection of our Savior. Next, Paul pointed out that this has always been the way that God works, that he has done this since the very beginning, when he came to Abraham, who believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. We continued on through Romans, to the point where Paul continues to talk about this grace that God has given us until we get to a question which asks, now that we live in grace, how should we live? It's an important question, isn't it? Because the first thing you do is when you say, you can never follow the rules, and God forgives you anyway. People will say, then sweet. I don't have to follow the rules. Which of course, is not true. That is what Paul asks here. He says, What then? Are we to sin? Because we are not under law, but under grace? That's the Pauline version of that. Sweet, no rules, right? No, is of course, when he said St. Paul then sets up a two options for the human being. What he says is when human beings live, we either obey sin, He calls us slaves to sin, or we obey righteousness. He says, being slaves to righteousness. And the question was, who do you obey? Now I have to tell you, after I submitted this title, I thought to myself, am I being a good obedient? grammarian? Here? Isn't this supposed to be whom do you obey? I actually don't know. Maybe maybe the English teachers in the congregation can help me out afterwards. Right? But we all have to obey, right? At least something. And in the Christian church, we recognize that there are really only two sides. There is sin, death, and Satan, or there is God and righteousness. And you obey one or the other. Now, as Americans, when you hear the word obey, I bet you don't like it. I bet you react relatively negatively. We are in fact, the most individualistic nation and culture on the planet. We, our ancestors came here because they don't like obey. And yet, the pastor is up here saying, Who do you obey? You have to choose. And we know this is the case because even independent people follow in a pack. Have you ever noticed that the independence groups in the history of America have kind of a uniform? Right? You look back at all the different rebel groups, rebel cultures in the United States, and they all dress the same. Think about the beatniks remember the beatniks slam poetry, cafes. They'll dress the same right. Black black with the Baray. The rebels felt the need to have a uniform. What about the Greasers? You know what they look like? Because of Greece, right? They've got the hair the pompadour, the white t shirt, cigarettes in the sleeve. And you know, what about the hippies? They've got a look. They were the rebels have their day. Even the hipsters, the ones who are ironic about everything, somehow you can spot a hipster from a mile away, which I could do in my old neighborhood in Chicago, they always had the giant bushy beards, and they wore super tight pants. And yet they were supposed to be the rebel. Because human beings are not independent, it doesn't matter how much you wish you were, we always follow. We always need a tribe, a group, a story, a belonging. And in the spiritual world, no matter how independent you want to be, you are either following sin, death, and the devil or God leading towards righteous. And St. Paul asks, Which one do you want to present your your body to? Do you want to follow righteousness? Or sin? When you put it that way, Pastor, that sounds like an easy choice, right? But it's less so when we hit our day to day activity. Because sin often is the one that our bodies want to do. It's the choice that we want to make when we're tired, when our will is worn down. And well, it would just feel nice this one time. And so what St. Paul is suggesting to us is that a life, a disciplined Christian life, following righteousness is the aim that all of us should have. We should turn away from following sin, discipline ourselves, so that we can lead towards righteous. This is all because of the grace that God has given us. What St. Paul says is that God has set the Romans free from the sinful ways that they once walked in. You see, they were once trapped in sin, because they didn't know who God was. They didn't know anything about their savior, Jesus Christ, and couldn't possibly know the holiness that he gives them. And when the message of the gospel came to them, they were set free. And the same is true for all of us. Before the gospel came, no matter how young you were, you couldn't have followed righteousness, because you need the Holy Spirit, do it. You need to know about Jesus, but you have been set free from that. Which means it's time to keep going in that direction to live a disciplined Christian life. So St. Paul says, present yourselves as slaves to righteousness and not slaves to sin. Well, when you present yourselves as obedient slaves to God, you do things that are good for you. And holy. And isn't that a good thing? One of the things that is challenging for Christians is that when we face a decision that our we're tempted to do we often think wouldn't it be so much more fun to do the tempting thing? Right? I know I've been in that position. I often happens to me when I when I have food that I'm not supposed to eat. In fact, Kathleen's office is the source of most of my temptation with all the candy in it. And I break my will. But what I know is that if I continue to eat all of her candy, my running and my health will suffer. Right? If I don't live a disciplined life, I won't reach my goals
and it's Same in the Christian life. Every time we turn towards temptation, what we end up doing is marking a path and taking an extra step towards the things we don't want. And away from the holiness that we do. Every time we take a discipline life and focus on following God. We are in graining habits, and the good things that God wants for us in our life. St. Paul talks about this when he says, What were you getting when you were following this, this slavery to sin, things that you were ashamed of? Right. But when you follow righteousness, what do you get? Sanctification that leads to eternal life. And the worry here is the more we turn towards sin, the more we ingrain the habit of walking away from righteous. And you do it a couple of times. You know, there's always forgiveness. But the question is, for how long? How long can you walk away from God? before it begins to affect your faith. This is why we live a disciplined life. Why we keep saying, Turn to God ingrain these habits of receiving God's grace through his sacraments and hearing His word and coming to church, because it is all about developing the habits of being a faithful Christian. And habit. One good habit leads to another good habit. God wants us to have this so that instead of drifting into sin, we can march towards the holiness, the gift of God that He gives them. And it's all because of the great end, the Paul has in mind, both for the Romans and for us. He says, but now that you've been set free from sin and become slaves of God, the fruit to get leads to sanctification, and to its end, eternal life. And that's the goal. That's why we live a disciplined Christian life is because we want to stay focused on the free gift of God, so that we don't turn away from it. We want to stay focused on the amazing gift of Jesus Christ. And we know that on the last day, he will come back and raise us from the dead and this outstanding gift, the Christ one for us on the cross and rose from the grave to give us we'll be there for you. And so we keep our eyes focused on that. What we don't want is the other way. A saint paul says For the wages of sin is death. We don't want to take our steps down the path of sin to continue to follow that. Because we know that eventually that path and eternal death and damnation, eternity in hell. What is glorious about God's promised that is available for all who comes with the gift of the Holy Spirit that you get here is a gift that can sustain you in your disciplined life in. We just have to know that while the gift of God is free, following Him takes work. It takes discipline it takes gathering here to receive and turning away from sin so that the joy that we can have on the last day will be full in God's grace. In Jesus name, Amen.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai