Romans 6:15 - 23
Notes
Transcript
6:15-19 6:20-23
6:15-19 6:20-23
15-19
15-19
15
15
Verse 15 is a lot like verse 1 but now looking from the view of not being under the law but under grace as verse 14 ended with. Paul is asking probably more for the Jewish Romans than the Gentiles another of his rhetorical questions, since we are no longer under the law of Moses and now under the new covenant of Grace through Jesus are we to sin with no regard to upholding the law? Verse 15 ends just as verse 2 started, “By no means!” we are not to sin with abandon, it will not provide God more opportunity to show his grace as we discussed last week and we are not to sin because we are not under the law but under grace. We are no longer under the penalty of the law because of the substitutionary penalty Christ recieved on the cross but this is our redemption and should, if we are truly a changed and new creature, bring about a turning away from our sin and deepen our shame and guilt when we do stumble and sin. If we do not we should truly examine ourselves in the scriptures about our own salvation.
16
16
Verse 16 basically is saying that we are slaves for one of two masters, we are either slaves of sin and death or we are slaves of God. So what we do, or present ourselves to, will show who our master is. If we sin with abandon with no shame or guilt, living for the pleasures of this fallen world, whether or not we claim to be a child of God with our words, we are showing ourselves as obedient slaves of our true master sin which leads to death. But if we present ourselves to be obedient to God’s word, not living for this life but doing the good work that God has commanded us, the obedience that leads to righteousness, we are showing ourselves to be slaves, or servants, of our new master Jesus Christ.
17-18
17-18
So if we are saved and no longer slaves of sin we should be thanking God loudly and as often as we can. We have been given new hearts, through which we now have the desire and will to be obedient to the teachings and the example that Jesus gave us. We are no longer slaves of sin, we have been set free from its bondage that has held the human race and all of creation since Adam and Eve fell in the garden in Genesis 3. Now having been set free from sin and having a new master Jesus, we are to emulate Jesus and strive to do righteousness, we are slaves, or servants of righteousness. We were slaves of sin, but we have been bought and paid for by Jesus and are his. There are truly only two options for us, we are slaves, either of sin which leads to eternal death, or we are slaves to God. If we do not recognize that and we believe that we are free and have the right to do as we please then we are not free, we are under the delusion of freedom, sin has blinded those who think that they are free to do anything they deem right. But being shown the grace of God and dying to sin in Christ we have been set free, free from sin and that will lead to the changed heart that will delight in being called a slave of righteousness.
19
19
Paul says that he is speaking in human terms, using the master/slave imagery so we can more fully understand these spiritual truths, he must speak in human terms because we are human, our natural limitations. Paul then includes a recap of the previous few verses to ensure that we understand what he is teaching. We were once slaves to sin, impurity and lawlessness, and we presented ourselves as such and our lawlessness and sin was a downward spiral leading to more lawlessness and sin, but now we have been saved, redeemed, washed clean and are now slaves to righteousness and we should present ourselves as such, we have been made righteous and having now the will and desire to do righteous deeds, thus leading to our continued sanctification, which will never be perfected while we sill have sinful bodies but our sanctification will grow and grow as we walk closer and closer to our new master Jesus. It probably will not be a steady upward slope, if we could graph our process of sanctification, there would be slow ups and some sharper upward trends but also there may be some downward trends, but over the whole course of our lives the graph of our sanctification should be an over all upward line until we finish our race on this Earth.
20-23
20-23
20
20
So we are either slaves of sin or slaves to righteousness. So when we were under the mastery of sin, we were free in regards to righteousness. This is the opposite view point that Paul just gave, that since we are now God’s and He is our master then we are free from the bondage of sin. Paul uses this opposite looking view point so the can get to the product of being a slave to sin.
21
21
When we were slaves to sin what were we producing? When we are saved the fruit of our salvation is good works, so when we were unsaved the fruit of our damnation was evil works, things that we are now ashamed of, to quote Romans 1:29–30 “They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,” These are the fruits of the unsaved who are slaves to sin and those fruits lead to death.
22
22
So if all that is the fruits of the unsaved, the saved, having been set free from sin and being now slaves, or servants of God, will have good fruits leading to our sanctification and the result of sanctification, eternal life.
23
23
Paul then ends this chapter with a very brief but extremely deep summation of this letter to the Romans so far and a one sentence summary of the whole gospel, the wages of sin is death. Wages are what we are due, what we have earned for our work, our works of sin have earned us death. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Our salvation is a gift from God, a free gift, there is nothing we can do to earn it, if there was something that we have to do, some work or deed or prayer or anything, it would no longer be a free gift, it would be what we earned or our wages. Our salvation, the work Jesus did on the cross to save us was not earned by us, it is a gift, a free unearned and undeserved gift of grace from our God, and this gift is not only freedom from sin, not only the Holy Spirit in us helping us in our path of sanctification, but also of eternal life in a new resurrected perfected body so that we can be in the presence of and enjoy the full radiant glory of our God for all eternity.