Free to Serve (Romans 6:15-23) We like to think that we are in charge of our lives. There is a certain helplessness that we feel when we think things have gotten beyond our power to control. We would rather think that we are invincible. While we may like to think we are always in control, it is an illusion. In fact, even as Christians who have been liberated from the control of sin, we may come back under its bondage. You see, freedom is not the ability to do what you want to do, it is the ability to do what you know you should do! And it is possible to forfeit that freedom. True, we have been forgiven and given a new life. But we now must live by this new life Christ has given us.
What should the forgiveness of Christ produce in us? Should it produce presumption on our part, where we impose upon the forgiveness of Christ? As Christians, should we continue to sin because God will forgive us? No! The forgiveness of Christ ought to generate a motivation to love Jesus Christ and to obey Him. Because of His forgiveness; in thanksgiving we now ought to be obedient to Him and reject sin. There is a lot at stake.
As a believer, what happens when I sin? What effect does sin have on me? What does the choice you make, when you choose to sin, do to you as you seek to live for Christ? Does it matter whether or not we sin now as believers? It certainly does matter, and we are going to describe several effects that sin causes in us, when we choose to engage in it.
Whose Slave Are You?
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. (Romans 6:16-19)
The first effect of sin is to make us a slave. You see, we have a choice to make, and the choice is who we are going to serve. Some years ago Bob Dylan came out with a song in which were lines that said, “You gotta serve somebody. You gotta serve somebody. It may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” How true. That seems to be the choice we have. Most people do serve either God or Satan.
Whose slave are you? That is the deception of sin. We think that when we engage in sin, we are just fulfilling a passing desire; or just engaging in some brief pleasurable thing that we want to do. One act and then we can forget about it. We can change; after all, we are free now in Christ, and as Christians, we do not have to serve sin any more. So let’s just go ahead and sin a little bit. The deception is that we do not realize that this always leads to bondage.
When we engage in sin and choose to willfully disobey God we become its slaves. It becomes like an addiction to us. We might think that we can change our behavior until we begin to try, then we find that we have been trapped and deceived. We are now under bondage and we cannot break loose quite as easily as we thought we could. If you engage in sin, you become a slave.
Sin affects us. It affects others as well. Try this: Get up in a grumpy mood tomorrow morning, and snap at your wife. What happens? She snaps back, because she is not going to be out-snapped. We like to make sure that we get the last snap. So she snaps back. Then you snap back. Then you snap at the kids and they snap at you. Pretty soon the whole house is in an uproar. The whole house has taken on your rotten attitude, and the day is ruined because your sin affects others. Our sin is not done in isolation. It affects us, and makes us its slaves, and it affects those around us.
“If Only…”
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! (Romans 6:20-21)
Secondly, if you engage in sin, you become ashamed. There is a very important principle in Scripture and that is the principle of sowing and reaping. Galatians 6: 7 says, Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. If you sow corn, you will reap the effect, which is corn. If you sow wheat, you will reap the effect, which is wheat. If you sow sin, you will reap the effect of sin, which is slavery and shame.
One horrible benefit of sin is that sin produces memories. This is a major problem for Christians. How do we deal with the memories of sin. You see, Satan uses those memories. He recalls those memories to tempt you and to condemn you. Many Christians suffer greatly because of sinful things that they have done and cannot change; things of which they are now ashamed.
Sins fill us with guilt and regret, and we say to ourselves, “Oh, if only I had done it differently. If only I could relive that moment. If only I could change that situation. How stupid could I have been?” We mentally kick ourselves for being so dumb as to do something like that. I’m sure we could all tell stories about things we have done that we regret to this day.
Sin produces memories, and many people are haunted by those memories. They are ashamed of what they have done. That shame does not easily go away. After a period of time, I believe, you can learn to live in Christ’s forgiveness for that sin, but you will always regret it. I have been forgiven for some things, and I know I stand forgiven. I know God does not remember those sins any more. The problem is that I remember them. And you will remember too. The shame of sin can destroy the quality of your life. That is why it is so important to avoid sin.
Dead, And Don’t Know It
Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:21b-23)
This is the sequel to sin. The sequel to sin is not “Sin II” but death. Eternal spiritual death is the wage of sin for those who refuse to come to Christ. But death, for the Christian, is that when we sin, we begin to die spiritually inside. That does not mean that at one point we are going to be thoroughly dead and lost again, but it means that sin affects us by making us dead on the inside to the things of God. Dead to love; dead to the joy of serving Christ; dead to spiritual things, spiritually insensitive and spiritually blind. Sin working in our lives has a devastating effect. It makes you a walking corpse as a Christian.
Whenever you make an unconditional surrender, it frees you up to be used of God, and to come into unhindered fellowship with Him. Then you enter into the joy of the Lord and you know the adventure of serving Jesus Christ. But, when you harbor sin, when you are unwilling to surrender, you begin to die slowly to the joy of Christ, to the adventure of serving Him, and begin to be among the walking dead.
Who wants to be limited? I want to be in the place where God can use me, don’t you? Remember, it is not so much your ability, but your availability that counts. That may be a worn out adage, but it is such a true one. It is not your gifts or talents; God has plenty of those to give freely. It is your availability to be used of God in His service. Do not sit out there and say, “Well I just do not have much to offer.” God has plenty to offer if you will simply offer yourself to Him. He will use you in many ways. He will use you in an eternal way to make a difference in the lives of people.
Now what are you going to do? You are free to choose. Who are you going to choose to serve? If you choose to serve sin, it becomes your master. Verse 14 says, For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. The grace of Christ frees us, but you must understand that our freedom is not unlimited freedom. It is freedom to serve a new Master, Jesus Christ. He told us in John 8:36: “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
But freedom does not exist outside of the freedom of the Son So, what shall we do? Continue in sin? God forbid! The message is strong because sin is serious. Sometimes we forget that it was sin that sent Jesus Christ to the Cross. God could deal with it in no other way. If you want to see God’s opinion of sin, look at the Cross. How much did God hate sin? He hated it enough that He endured sending His Son to the Cross to die. We should hate it also. We should hate it because He hates it. We should hate it because of what it does to us. We should reject it outright, and choose obedience to Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ has set us free. Let us walk in that freedom. Let us walk in that liberty. Let us claim our inheritance as His sons and daughters, as children of the King, and walk with our heads held up high, because we no longer have to yield to the temptation to sin. We can choose to walk in the liberty that is rightfully ours in Christ.