06-22-14 Free From Sin

The teaching you are about to hear

did not come into being

without consider turmoil.

I attempted to write this talk

at least 4 times.

I spent one full day on one of those talks,

and nearly finished a completed set of notes

before I risked rereading what I’d written

and ended up throwing the whole thing away in disgust.

You see, I ran into a problem

as I attempted to prepare for our time together.

The problem I ran into

was my perception of what I thought your expectations might be at this point in our study.

We are into our third month

on a study of the freedom offered to the Christian through faith in Christ.

We have spent no small time defining freedom from God’s point of view.

We have seen our Lord making it clear

that He is not in the business

of performing the kind of slight of hand we’ve grown so accustomed to

in the society in which we live.

Our society makes a huge noise about freedom,

proclaiming ourselves as being

among the most freed of all societies in human history.

But then, when all the parades are over,

and all the speeches are finished,

in the small print at the bottom of the page,

we discover that our society’s “freedom”

has nothing to do with actually freeing us from those areas of bondage

that shred our spirits

and destroy our lives.

All our society offers us

is the “freedom” to live out our bondage without those around us

being permitted to interfere.

Not so with our God.

When He talks about freedom

He talks about breaking the power

of those destructive forces within us.

And when I made that distinction early in our study

I believe it struck a powerful chord

deep within many of you here,

because I put into words

something God has already spoken to your spirit.

When you came to Him,

you came longing for forgiveness,

but you also came longing for a better life, a different life, a changed life.

And you already know

without me saying anything

that God is actively involved in the process of making practical changes in your life.

Then, once we defined freedom from God’s point of view,

we then moved on to an examination

of the first of two major areas of freedom

offered to us by our Lord -

freedom from the law.

And now, after wrestling with what that means for several weeks,

we are at the point where we should logically move on

to a discussion of the second major area of freedom,

freedom from sin.

And right here is where my mental perceptions of your expectations

began to get me into trouble.

If I heard a preacher

announce that he was going to teach on

the freedom from sin offered to us by Christ,

if he was a man I trusted,

I would go eagerly,

expecting him to provide me

with some clear,

strong,

effective Biblical principles

that would equip me to more effectively break the power of stubborn sin patterns in my own life.

I mean, that’s what the guy said he was going to talk about,

so I certainly should have every right

to expect him to deliver the goods.

And with that expectation in mind,

my first few attempts

in my preparation for today

were written with the hope of offering you

a neat little list

of those sin-bashing Biblical principles.

But each time I would go back and re-read what I’d written

I knew all I was doing

was skillfully hiding from the real issue

that has to be addressed at this point in our study,

the issue that I know forms the heart

of everything else our God has to say to us about the freedom He offers us,

but the issue that,

when I bring it up and share it with you,

I know will leave many

if not most of you feeling frustrated and disappointed.

But in the end

I decided that the only way for me to handle this

is for me share with you

what I know to be the truth.

So, with that as a little background

on what’s been going on inside me in my preparation for this morning,

I now want to take us to the key passage in Scripture

dealing with how freedom from sin

becomes a growing reality in our lives.

It is found in the sixth chapter of the book of Romans.

And actually, the theme of freedom from sin through Christ

is carried throughout most of the sixth chapter,

but the heart of what is being presented

is summed up in Paul’s statements

in Rom. 6:11-14.

Now, he starts out with an affirmation,

a call for us to do something.

He says,

Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Now, the truth is, for most of us

that statement doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

What in the world does it mean

for me to “consider myself to be dead to sin”?

And then it gets even more frustrating

when he follows it with this statement:

Rom. 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,

Rom. 6:13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

You see, we agree with the goal wholeheartedly.

What he is calling us to do

is exactly what the Spirit of Christ within us

gives us a longing to do-

at the deepest level of our being

we do not want to continue presenting

the members of our body to sin,

as instruments of unrighteousness,

and we would love to present ourselves

to our God,

and our bodies as instruments of righteousness to Him.

We are right with you, Paul!

You are saying beautifully

what we long for in our spirits.

But the problem is that

there are some areas in our lives

where we seem powerless to do so,

places where the master/slave relationship

between us and sin

still seems to be rigidly in place.

It’s not that we don’t want the freedom,

it’s that we don’t know how to get it.

And in those situations

I’ll tell you the first thing

most sincere Christians will try to do.

Here we are, with this hunger and thirst for righteousness within us.

And before I go any farther,

I need to clarify something.

If there is no hunger and thirst for righteousness within you,

if your spirit does not cry out within you for a life that glorifies and honors your God,

then nothing I have to say this morning

or throughout this series

will be of any value to you.

I don’t know if you noticed it or not,

but nowhere in this study

have I ever addressed the issue

of how to create within a person

a heart longing for freedom from sin.

I won’t do that

because I can’t to that.

Only God can give us a love for righteousness

and a longing for moral purity.

And if that hunger is not in you,

nothing I say or do

can bring it about.

I might be able to make you feel guilty

for your sinful behavior,

but that is not the same thing

as a hunger for righteousness.

I might be able to make you feel fearful

of the consequences of your sin,

but that is not the same thing

as a hunger for righteousness.

I received an e-mail some time ago

from a wonderful young Christian

who was terribly afraid that he might be one of those lukewarm believers

that Christ talks about in the book of Revelation,

one of those believers

that He says He will spit out of His mouth.

My e-mail friend looked at his own life

and saw himself at times falling so far short of the kind of Christian he really wanted to be.

I wrote him back and told him

that the very fact that he finds himself

troubled by his fluctuating performance

proves he is not a lukewarm Christian.

You see, the lukewarm believer

lives in his or her own self-contented fog.

They don’t look at their own life

and hunger and thirst for more of their God.

They say to themselves,

Rev. 3:17 "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and he does not know that he is wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked...

He does not know, because he does not want to know.

A hunger and a thirst

to be more than we are,

born not out of guilt,

or fear,

but out of a love for our Lord,

is one of the most powerful evidences of spiritual health and vitality.

And if it is not present in a person’s life,

if what you’ve got is all you want,

if your own battle with lust,

or with greed,

or with indifference doesn’t trouble you,

or if there is not a restlessness within you

that cries out for more of your God,

then the answers to those issues

do not rest with me,

they are rooted in unresolved issues

between yourself and your Creator.

I’m a Bible teacher.

That is the assignment God has given me in life.

As such, God’s Spirit equips me

to feed those who are hungry.

But I learned a long time ago

that I can do nothing

to create a hunger in those who have none.

Only God can do that,

and then only in the lives

of those who will let Him.

But let me get back on track.

Here we are, with this hunger and thirst for righteousness within us.

And the first thing most of us will try to do

is to create our own freedom from sin

through the power of the flesh.

We’ll listen to motivational speakers,

and we’ll read motivational books,

and we’ll commit

and recommit

and recommit ourselves yet again to our God.

We’ll try to keep ourselves all psyched up for change,

while all the time inside we know

that we’re just like that little kitten

in that “Hang In There” poster,

hanging by two paws from that branch,

our back feet frantically probing empty space,

while our front claws keep slipping farther and farther down.

Our motives are great.

Our goal is superb.

But our means is disastrous,

and in the end

the flesh will fail us miserably.

And then we come back to this passage

and read the next verse,

and at first it causes more problems than it solves.

Paul says,

Rom. 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,

But then Paul goes on to give

what he obviously believes is the solution

to that sticky ongoing master/slave relationship between us and our sin.

He says:

Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

Now, we’re right with him up through the first half of that verse.

Paul says, For sin shall not be master over you...

and we say “Yes! Tell me how!”

But then he gives his answer.

He says, for you are not under law, but under grace.

And we respond by saying, “HUH?”

How in the world does that solve our problem?

How does a little piece of Christian doctrine

break the master/slave relationship

between us and sin?

We won’t get to most of the answer to that question until next week,

but this morning I do want to plant

one additional major thought into our thinking.

In this statement Paul tells us

that freedom from sin

comes from knowing that we are not under the law, but under grace.

What that means is this:

in those areas of our lives

where we continue to battle unresolved sin issues,

we do so not because we don’t have enough POWER,

or because we don’t have enough of the SPIRIT,

or because we haven’t yet fully committed ourselves to our God.

Rather, we continue to remain under the mastery of sin

because we have not yet correctly

or fully understood

what it means to live in a grace-based union with our Creator.

So, if we have areas in our lives

where sin continues to be our master,

then one thing we know for sure -

that we have not yet understood

what it means to be under grace.

Paul says that breaking the power of sin

grows out of understanding the true nature of a grace-based walk with God.

So, if I continue to live in bondage to sin,

that bondage provides clear evidence

that I have not yet understood

what it means to be under grace.

And the truth is

it shouldn’t surprise us to see Paul making this connection

between how we act

and what we believe.

Do you remember where we started this whole series?

John 8:32 and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. "

What was Christ doing in that statement?

He was uniting how we think

with how we live.

He was telling us that knowing His truth

would result in our experiencing freedom in our lives.

When Paul talks about

the means by which

practical change takes place in our lives in Romans 12:2,

where does he say it comes from?

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

We are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

To the degree our thinking patterns

are brought into conformity with the truth,

to that degree we will find our actions,

our behavior conforming to the image of Christ Himself.

So, all we’ve said so far today

is that our entrance into freedom from sin

is inseparably linked

to the degree to which our minds correctly understand our freedom from the law

and our union with Christ

that provides us with the grace-based walk with God.

And perhaps now you can better appreciate my apprehension at reaching this point in our study.

You see, there is a part of me

that longs for the magic bullet too.

There have been times in my life

when this single phrase in Scripture,

Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace...

has caused raging battles between me and my God,

times when I have pointed out to Him

that the statement makes no sense whatsoever,

times when I have informed Him

that there must be a page missing in the text.

As I have grown some

in my understanding of what it means to be under grace

I have found greater peace with the passage.

But I want to end this morning

by offering you both a promise

and a warning.

The promise is this:

The more we grow in our understanding of the grace of God,

the more we will find the power of sin

being broken in our lives.

And when I say that

I need to emphasize that understanding God’s grace

is not a concept we learn,

but rather it is a reshaping of our entire outlook on every aspect of our lives.

It involves reshaping the way I view my God,

and the way I think He views me.

It involves reshaping the way I view myself,

and the way I view my needs,

and the way I view every relationship in my life.

It involves reshaping the way I view

my purpose in life,

and my priorities,

and my possessions,

and on and on.

You see,

when Paul says,

Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace,

he is telling us the absolute and exact truth.

Our freedom from sin

is directly and inseparably linked

to the degree to which we understand

the true nature of a Grace-based union with God.

And then one final word of warning:

beware of those who rewrite that verse for you.

There is a place where you can find

lots of voices offering you the magic bullet.

That place is in the world of Religion.

In the world of religion

you will find many people who will gladly reveal to you the secret truths

that are guaranteed to bring instant victory over sin.

Some will offer you an experience.

Some will offer you a list of duties for you to fulfill.

For your own protection I would encourage you to give yourself a gift:

memorize this one verse -

Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

Then wrestle with it,

let it make you angry,

let it cause you frustration,

but let it also protect you from all those who would like to scratch off the last half

and rewrite it for God.

OK, we have just barely begun.

All we’ve done so far is to open a doorway,

and in the weeks ahead we will walk through it

and discover a world we never knew existed.

Next week we’ll take another step or two

and I’ll also share with you

the two pillar lies that always exist

with a Christian who continues to live in bondage to sin.

That’s just a glimpse of where we’re headed in the future.