Present Yourself: Romans 6:15-23 (Sermon)

 

WELCOME / TODAY 

Good morning, church. We are continuing our sermon series in Romans. The apostle Paul has been writing to the church in Rome. Paul planned to visit on his way to Spain. He was on a mission to share the good news about Jesus. They knew the story. They believed it. But there was a way that it could help them more as they walk out their spiritual life in Christ. A person can let God’s grace go to one’s head and be lax in submitting oneself to follow the way of Jesus. Satan, the world, and our sinful nature can leverage temptation and twist the truth to return us to the tyranny and destructive results of sin. In our passage this morning, Paul sounds a bit like last week. We are getting to some tricky passages. Chapters 6 and 7—I said that for the younger crowd. Fill in your parents—Chapters 9, 10, and 11 will be technical. But I think we can make some sense out of them. Let’s dive into the second part of Chapter 6 to discover what God has to say to us today. 

TEXT 

I am going to have J.V. read for us. Would you please stand with me in honor of God’s Word, if you are able? 

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 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? 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, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 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. 

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:15–23, ESV)

PRAYER 

The Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, help us not be stuck. Break us free from sin’s grip. We need you. In Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen. You may be seated. 

STRUCTURE & MAIN IDEA

In the passage this morning, Paul used a rhetorical question once again to kickstart his exploration of an idea. A rhetorical question is not seeking an answer but is meant to make a point. From that question, Paul moved to application, explanation, and a conclusion. 

1. 15–16 Question: 

2. 17–19 Application 

3. 20–22 Explanation 

4. 23 Conclusion

The conclusion is a slam dunk: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The point Paul was making was that Surrendering yourself to sin results in deadly slavery while receiving God’s grace unleashes freedom, joyful obedience, and eternal life. Let me show you how I came up with that. 

VERSE 15

Look at verse 15:

“What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Romans 6:15a, ESV). 

We will stop there. Paul was continuing his train of thought. If you recall, Chapter, 3 verse 8 was similar. It asked, 

“Why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying” (Romans 3:8, ESV).

People were libeling Paul. They were resistant to the theology of grace,  afraid that preaching this way would promote sin. Paul wasn’t doing any such thing. And, being aware of that danger, he addressed it here in Chapter 6. 

6:1

In Chapter 6, verse 1, Paul wrote, 

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1, ESV)

It sounded like someone was excusing sin to make God look better. But in verse 15, the question holds the person accountable who abused God’s grace to enjoy sin. The Jewish people had a whole lot of rules. It was like now they had a pass to ignore them all. Some might have been taking an Amish Rumspringa-type approach. It reminds me of a silly logic which would say, “I can sin because God is love. He will forgive me. My sin is not that big of a deal. He is merciful and gentle.” If I pause in the midst of my impulses in my lifetime, I have had crazy thoughts like that. Have you? If you haven’t, awesome. People 2000 years ago did.

BY NO MEANS 

Look back at verse 15:  

“What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Romans 6:15a, ESV). 

What comes after that rhetorical question? BY NO MEANS! That is Greek for, “No way, Jose!”

VERSE 16

Why did Paul respond so forcefully? Jump to verse 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?” (Romans 6:16, ESV). 

Paul put forward the idea that those whom you offer to serve will become your master. For example, Proverbs says, “The borrower becomes a slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7, ESV). Whomever we yoke ourselves to, or whatever we join ourselves with, has a degree of control over us. Paul was positing that, after God graciously saves us, what we do with our lives still matters. God wants our allegiance and obedience. That is why Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). You will either obey or not, and the consequences are severe. 

OBEDIENCE LEADS TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

Paul wrote that obedience leads to righteousness. How? How does that work? The natural outcome of faith in God is following God. There is a rightness in a relationship with him through obedience. Is that something we wake up and choose? Who is ultimately responsible for righteousness? Let’s look back at Chapter 4. 

For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, (Romans 4:3–5, ESV)

That means through faith in Jesus, we have righteousness. It’s a gift of God. 

APPLICATION 

The following section begins with an answer to these questions. Go to verses 17 through 19: 

 

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, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 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. (Romans 6:17–19)

Paul began with thanksgiving. Why? He thanked God because of what God had done. What happened? They were free not because of their financial giving, their faithful church attendance, or their volunteer hours. Their freedom originated in God’s Spirit, which oriented their minds and lives to him. God supplied what was necessary. He orchestrated it all: their parents, their community, their cognitive capacity, and the opportunity to hear and believe the good news about Jesus. The reason Paul could praise God was that God was responsible. He gave credit to where credit was due. They had been set free from sin’s reign of terror. That was not their own doing. It was God’s. Now, in verse 19, Paul was charging them to live as free people. The love of Christ compels (2 Corinthians 5:14). His people love because he first loved them (1 John 4:9). Friends, you and I can thank God for the faith he has conceived in us. Do you believe in Jesus’s death and resurrection for our sins? Good. Then it is God who has put that faith there. Out of that faith has come justification. Out of that justification has come peace. And out of that peace has been born the freedom to walk out in faith in obedience with the help of the Spirit. We are no longer enslaved to sinful patterns and habits. We are part of a new country, a heavenly one, citizens of God’s kingdom, liberated to live blamelessly before him. So in verse 19, Paul put action to his question. Present yourself as under new management. Submit to your Heavenly Father. Offer yourself to the captain of your souls and his service. Don’t go back to living under the lordship of lies. 

WAR

You and I are in a spiritual battle these days. A war against our freedom is raging. In the 1300s, there was a man who fought for the liberty of his country, William Wallace. He sacrificed his life to lead men to stand up for their freedom. William Wallace led his army on the battlefield. In the movie, Braveheart, he gave a speech saying, 

I am William Wallace, and I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You have come to fight as free men, and free men you are. What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?

Army (01:35):

[Inaudible 00:01:36]. NO

Speaker 7 (01:36):

Fight, against that? No! We will run, and we will live.

William Wallace (01:45):

Aye. Fight, and you may die. Run, and you'll live, at least a while. Dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our freedom? []

William Wallace believed that his people were truly free and that they needed to stand up against English tyranny, even at the cost of their lives. In the same way, we are free too. Why then go back to the prison camp, which we grew up in? Paul challenged his readers to lay their wills down at the altar of worship. To give back to God a gift of their lives. Our sin nature lurks in the shadows of time, looking for ways to bind us, the world and its systemic perversion seeks to water down God’s truth, and the Devil desires to thwart God every step of the way. Our old nature, the world system, and our Adversary all want to handcuff our faith. But the church, God has given us freedom through a relationship with him. We have a new spiritual homeland. We can freely present ourselves back to him every day. With our newfound liberty, we have the ability to say no to iniquity and yes to our duty. 

God’s people are his servants. And that is not a relationship of oppression, repression, or suppression, but brothers and sisters, liberation, justification, and eternal exhilaration. Jesus said the purpose he came into this world was to bring abundant life and life to its full (John 10:10). The Psalmist says God makes known the path of life and in his right hand are pleasures forever more (Psalm 16:11). Jesus said that whoever wants to save his life, will lose it. Our new master calls us to take up a death sentence to our old patterns of destructive living and follow him every minute of every hour.  Paul explained, 

“Present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” (Romans 6:19).

Sanctification means holiness. Holiness involves a pursuit of purity before God. We all can be moving in that direction. 

VERSE 13

Verse 19 echoes verse 13: 

“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (Romans 6:13, ESV). 

How? How do we practically present ourselves as instruments for righteousness? What does that mean? Galatians 5 offers guidance: 

Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Galatians 5:16–24, ESV)

If you are like, “how do I present myself to righteousness?” Picture asking yourself questions this week as a way to submit to God as the captain of your day: 

• Is this texting kind? 

• What would it look like for me to be gentle with my family? 

• How might I be more self-controlled online today? 

That is what walking in the power of the Spirit and presenting ourselves as slaves of righteousness can look like. That is what submitting ourselves to God’s leadership can look like. Don’t submit yourself to sin, but instead be open to the Spirit of God leading you each moment of the day. 

SINNING 

But what if I try and fail? What should I do? Well, confess your sins. Don’t beat yourself up. The reality is that we who believe are dead to sin, but at the same time, sin from time to time. If that were not the case, then God would not have written this command to believers to obey. Friends, we are constantly ambushed by temptation. Did you choose the ads while watching football this week? No. But you can choose to change the channel. I was checking my Fantasy Football, and an advertisement I don’t want to dwell on popped up. What should I have done? I chose not to dwell on it. I clicked a button that said, “Don’t show this ad again.” I didn’t choose that marketing. It is not my fault. Martin Luther in the 1500s once said of temptation, “You cannot prevent the birds from flying in the air over your head, but you can certainly prevent them from building a nest in your hair.” Temptation is everywhere. Friends, you can’t stop it. But you can take your thoughts captive once you have them. 

Surrendering yourself to sin results in deadly slavery while receiving God’s grace unleashes freedom, joyful obedience, and eternal life.

If we are not vigilant, sin will destroy our faith and wreck our lives. We must turn from it with all our might, fight like the Scots and William Wallace. Paul used graphic imagery in Chapter 8 to describe this battle: 

“So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Romans 8:12–13, ESV).

We need to slay the remaining sin nature resident in our minds. We need to create boundaries and safety railings to help us walk in the new life in Christ. God wants to sanctify us and make us holy, but to do that, we must present ourselves to his command, ready for battle. 

WHY?

Paul went on: 

 

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. (Romans 6:20–22, ESV)

The world, the devil, and our flesh will try to convince us that we have it bad and are missing out on freedom and fun. They are dead wrong. What they offer is a mirage and a cheap knockoff. What kind of fruit do you want? The fruit of God is sweet, satisfying, and guilt-free. 

SHAME 

Perhaps you live in shame. How does one deal with that? I was listening to Al Mohler this week, and he said, 

Are they [guilt and shame] the same thing or are they different? Are they separable? The biblical worldview helps us to understand that guilt is an objective truth, shame is often a subjective expression. That is to say that someone can be objectively guilty and yet, well, here’s the word we use for it, shameless can apparently not take moral responsibility for what he or she has done. But the biblical worldview also tells us that shame and guilt will ultimately be combined. And on the day of judgment, both shame and guilt will be fully demonstrated, and there will be no sinner able to stand that judgment.

He is right. And yet, Scripture gives us hope. We can stand before God, honest about our past, without shame and guilt. How? We stand forgiven and righteous by faith in Christ’s death on the cross for our sins. God removes our guilt and shame by faith in his Son, who gave his life for us. If you are feeling ashamed of your past, let that provoke you to turn to Jesus and his work, and inspire and equip you to submit yourself to him, ready for battle. 

SUMMARY  

Paul concluded the chapter with verse 23: 

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23, ESV). 

JOBS

My first job in high school involved sitting at a desk, welcoming people at night at Gage Elementary School. It paid something, like $6 an hour. I was rolling in the dough. One of the benefits was that I could get schoolwork done and get paid at the same time. At the end of the month, I got my first paycheck and a fair share of taxes. That was my wage for work. 

WAGE 

What was the wage for sin? What did Paul write? [Death.] But what was the inverse? Paul didn’t write about the wages of obedience, righteousness, holiness, purity, or law-following; instead, the free gift was eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. 

GIFT 

Friends, God’s gifts are the best. John 3:16 says: 

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, ESV). 

Remember the free gifts of God, Paul wrote in Romans 5? 

God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:8–11, ESV)

Let all those blessings sink in. We have so much to be thankful for. God, the author of history, wrote himself into the pages of the Bible for you. It is a love letter for you. It is an epic poem that has your name all over it. Will you listen? 

APPLICATION 

If you will, then don’t present yourself to sin but instead present yourself to obey the captain of your soul. How? How do you do that? By faith in Jesus, submit your will to his will every day. Bear your trials and walk in the Spirit. Surrendering yourself to sin results in deadly slavery, while receiving God’s grace unleashes freedom, joyful obedience, and eternal life. If you have never received God’s grace and feel enslaved by sin, pray to God and admit in your heart your wrong, ask for his mercy. (It is yours for the taking.) Then, join us in gratitude for all his spiritual presents and present your life back to him with us. He is worth it.  

PRAYER 

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your Word. 

• Some of us here are ashamed of our past. God, forgive us for our sins. Purify us from all unrighteousness.  

• Some of us are hogtied to sin in ways we have no idea how to break free from. God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, cut us free from that enslavement. 

• Some of us are fighting for holiness and are exhausted in the process. Please, help us rest in your free gift of grace and keep offering ourselves back to you each day.

Thank you for sending Jesus to die in our place, to suffer, and pay our sin debt. We are so thankful for the freedom, joy, and life we have in you. Help us now, in Jesus’s name, we pray. Amen.

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