I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.TOPIC: Sanctification
TITLE: OUR OBLIGATION – To die, live, serve, and be united to God!
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: How does Paul attempt to free the Romans from the Law and lead them to understand their new freedom?
CONCISE OUTLINE:
I. BY USING DEATH TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR FREEDOM!TRUTH/CONTEXT: Paul apologizes to his Roman audience for using slavery as an illustration; slavery had a specific meaning in Roman times … a citizen of the Roman Empire could not, by law, be enslaved to anyone!
II. BY USING LIFE TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR FREEDOM!
III. BY USING SLAVERY TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR FREEDOM!
IV. BY USING MARRIAGE TO ILLUSTRATE THEIR FREEDOM!
This later word is a new word in Paul’s day … a word that supposedly enhances its twin, holiness; but the word “sanctification” has, in English, become something inferior to the twin.
Holiness is the goal of the sanctified life, and is the focus of chapters 6-8. Let me illustrate what the essence of the section is …
[MASTER BUILDER] A master shipbuilder steps out into his yard and looks around him. There are vast skeletons of ships in the process of completion; there are others nearing completion. But there is nothing in the scene to satisfy, nothing is as he envisions. The big hulls are at present good for nothing. A thousand hammers pounding a thousand rivets into place like a thousand woodpeckers from hell. The yard is strewn with scrap and jigs. [Continue reading ... ]
Sanctification is both the inauguration of and the process of the life in fellowship with God, as well as that life’s objective … an ultimate state of permanent and perfect sanctification. It’s my opinion that the whole kit and caboodle are in view in verse 19, though the process seems to dominate.Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. [1 John 3:2]
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: How does Paul attempt to free the Romans from the Law and lead them to understand their new freedom?
EXPANDED OUTLINE:
PAUL DOES SO BY USING …
I. DEATH TO ILLUSTRATE THIS NEW FREEDOM! [6:1-8]
A. If indeed we died to sin “how shall we … still live in it?” [v.2]II. LIFE TO ILLUSTRATE THIS NEW FREEDOM! [6:5-14]
B. Our baptism is a baptism into Christ Jesus’ death [v. 3]
C. So we’ve been buried with Him (with our unrighteousness, and the Law that enslaved us) [v. 6]
D. Thus, we’re free from sin by our death in Christ [v. 7]
A. If we're like Him in His death and His burial, how is it that we will not be like Him in His resurrection? [v. 5]III. SLAVERY TO ILLUSTRATE THIS NEW FREEDOM! [12-23]
B. We will live again ... this should motivate us to a new kind of life [v. 8]
C. Death is no longer a master over Christ [v.9] and (by our baptism into His death [v. 3]) it no longer is masters us
D. The life He now lives He lives to God [v. 10] “so consider yourselves to be dead to sin” and “alive to God in Christ” [v. 11]
A. I’m glad Paul used slavery as a type of commitment to God for sanctification … today’s culture insists on itIV. MARRIAGE TO ILLUSTRATE THIS NEW FREEDOM! [7:1-6]
B. Paul says because of our intentional slavery to sin we are morally defective [v. 19]
C. Therefore, we must, in the same way, intentionally submit ourselves to righteousness, so sin might not, like death, “reign in [our] mortal body so that [we] obey its lusts” [v. 12]
D. This, he says will lead to sanctification (aka: holiness) [v. 19]
E. This goal demands and deserves this new master “for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace” [v. 14]
F. So obey this new Master [v. 16] for “you became slaves of righteousness” [v. 18]
G. What benefit is there in those “things of which you are now ashamed?” [v. 21]
H. You are now free from all that and are “enslaved to God” which results “in sanctification” and the benefit? Life eternal! [v. 22]
I. The wage of sin is death, but God in Christ gives us life everlasting [v. 23]
A. In this sin fallen world, if one is alive, the Law, by default, reigns over him [v. 1]APPLICATION/CHALLENGE: When we accepted Christ as Lord we discovered
B. But if we’ve died to sin and born-again to God [v. 11] the law no more reigns
C. Paul’s example: the Law binds a woman to her husband as long as he lives (don’t get any ideas women), but when he dies, she is free to marry again [v. 2]
D. by dying to sin and the law you’re now free to join with another [v. 4-6]
E. Remember, Jesus said we can't serve two masters [Luke 16:13]
F. “so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter” [v. 6]
- we were free from sin, its yoke had been removed from our shoulders,
- we had a spontaneous desire to have nothing more to do with it; and
- a desire to serve and please God, with Him as our Master and righteousness as our labor
Let's surrender to holiness and be as sincere and unqualified in our zeal for it as we were to sin. This is every Christian’s obligation.
Had every Christian employed the same energy in advancing the Kingdom of God as they did in promoting Satan’s kingdom, every land would have felt every step the Bride of Christ took.
It should be our lament that we have not; that we’ve used so much energy in Satan’s cause and have done so little in God’s service is our shame.
Remember, God is our Master Builder and though we may not yet be what He wants us to be ,He is building us according to blueprint drawn in the Blood of the Lamb.
We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. [Romans 8:28]So we should be serving Him as if the goal is in sight.
The key of course is do you love God? Are you called according to His purpose? If indeed you do are, you should be looking back upon the fervor with which you served the devil and in the same way give service to God as your Master, only the latter should exceed the former.
If it does not or can not you would be wise to ask why!
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