08-17-14 Final Freedom Foundations Pt. 3

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

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.

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

Our study of these four verses

has brought us this morning

to the last verse in this passage,

Romans 6:14.

It has also brought us to our final morning

in this series on the freedom

our Lord Jesus Christ offers every person who comes to Him.

For most of the past four months

we have been looking at what true freedom is

and how our Lord goes about

bringing that freedom into our lives.

We started this series by recognizing

that in Christ there is no slight of hand

in His offer of freedom.

He does not do what our society does.

Our society claims to offer us freedom,

but when all the speeches are finished

and all the legislation is completed,

and all the politicians

have finally closed their mouths

and taken their seats,

in the small print,

way down at the bottom of the page

we discover that the “freedom”

offered to us by our society

is nothing more than the legal right

to live out those areas of inner bondage

that control and dominate our lives.

We are simply declared to be”free”

to live out our own personal inner slaveries.

But when our Lord offers us freedom,

He does not offer us the right to live out our bondage,

He offers us the ability

to break the power of that bondage in our lives.

Then, from there we went on to see

that our Lord’s freeing process

involves His bringing two major areas of freedom into our lives -

freedom from the law,

and freedom from sin.

And most of the time we’ve spent in this series

has been invested in understanding

what those two areas of freedom involve

and how our Lord brings them into our lives.

Then, to help pull together

the major principles we’ve studied,

we are ending our study

by taking three weeks

to take one last look at the four verses in Romans 6

that have provided our home base for most of this study.

Two weeks ago we looked at Romans 6:11 in which we find the foundation

upon which God’s entire freeing process in our lives is based.

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

Our freedom in Christ

begins with our understanding

that through Christ we now have

recreated hearts,

recreated inner spirits,

spirits that love God perfectly

and long to live lives pleasing to Him.

I have invested a great deal of my teaching efforts during the past 3 decades

into trying to help us understand

how godly living can become

an increasing part of our lives.

I have invested none of my teaching effort

into attempting to instill into you

a hunger for godly living

because, if you are a child of God,

God Himself has already placed that hunger deep within you,

and if you are not a child of God

nothing I could ever say or do

could accomplish that purifying

and recreative work within you.

Only God Himself can perform such a work,

and then only within those

who have turned to Him

through faith in Christ.

Then, last week,

we moved on to verses 6:12-13

and saw in those verses

the reason why

even though our spirits long for godly living

our lives so often don’t reflect that longing.

In those verses we heard Paul

turn our eyes onto what he called

“our mortal bodies”,

preparing us for the way in which

these physical bodies will war against

the life and leadership of our new,

righteous inner spirits.

We saw that this battle within us

comes from the fact that our bodies,

including all of our reasoning processes,

and our emotional responses,

and our learned need-meeting techniques,

and all of our memories prior to our submission to Christ

were established within us

under the leadership and control

of an inner spirit that was in open rebellion against God.

And now, for just a few brief years in all of eternity,

during the time between when we come to Christ,

and the time when we leave this physical body,

we find ourselves living with a spirit that longs to please God

and a physical plant that strongly resists the leadership of that spirit.

Under the leadership of God’s Spirit within us

these bodies can and will become

reasonably serviceable tools

for the work our God seeks to do both in us and through us while we are on this earth.

But He wants us to have no illusions about the source of our ultimate victory.

Paul talks honestly about this ongoing tension between our spirits

and our mortal bodies in Romans 8:23

when he says,

Rom. 8:23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

In a very real and practical sense

we experience our salvation through Christ

in progressive stages.

We have already received what Paul calls

“the first fruits of the Spirit”.

He is talking about the Holy Spirit’s recreative work

of that new inner control center within us.

But then when we look at these totally mistrained physical bodies

in which that new spirit now lives

Paul says, “we groan within ourselves, longing for the redemption of our body” as well.

And that redemption will come,

not by our finally being able to bring

this physical body into total submission to our spirit,

but rather by our Lord

freeing us from this body at death,

or at His return,

and His then giving us a brand new body,

one that has never been mistrained,

and one that will then provide our already perfect, holy, inner spirit

with a perfect means of expressing itself throughout the rest of all eternity.

So, Romans 6:11 - Paul presents our new identity in Christ.

Then, in verses 12 and 13

he presents the battleground

in which we fight for the expression of that new identity.

And then, in verse 14 he takes the two major areas of freedom

offered to us through Christ -

freedom from the law,

and freedom from sin,

and unites them in one final powerful statement.

He says,

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

We spent part of a morning with this verse

early in our study.

At that time

we established one major principle

from what Paul says here.

We saw that 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.

If sin continues to be our master

than one thing is certain -

we have not yet understood

what it means to live with God under grace.

This also means, of course,

that the more we correctly understand grace,

the more practical righteous living

will result in our lives.

But we can’t stop there

in our relationship to this verse.

There is something remarkable happening in this verse

that I don’t want us to miss

before we leave this study.

Throughout the course of this study

you have heard me mention numerous times

that the freedom offered to us by our Lord falls into two major areas -

freedom from the law,

and freedom from sin.

Well, in this 14^th verse

Paul takes both of those freedoms

and places them into relationship with one another.

He says, “For sin shall not be master over you...”

That is freedom from sin.

When sin is no longer master over us,

we are free from sin.

That does not mean

we do not at times

continue to fight against it.

But it does mean that sin’s power

to control,

and dominate,

and dictate our behavior is ended.

It can attack us,

but it can never again own us

and possess our lives.

For sin shall not be master over you...

That is freedom from sin.

And then comes Paul’s next phrase:

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

That is freedom from the law.

In the terms we have been using throughout this freedom study,

Paul is saying:

For you shall be free from sin

because you are already free from the law.

And the first two things I want us to see in this 14^th verse are these:

1. There is a clear order in our learning relationship to those two truths.

Our freedom from sin

results from our freedom from the law.

Do you know what that means?

It means if we are currently fighting unsuccessful battles with sin in our lives,

the solution to that defeat

will not come from fighting harder against the sin,

but rather from fighting harder for a correct understanding of grace.

2. And then the second thing I want us to see in this 14^th verse of in Romans 6 is this:

Our entrance into one of these freedoms is in the past tense,

and the other is in the present.

Because our freedom from the law has already taken place,

therefore, our freedom from sin

can be a daily, living reality in our lives.

Now, I know that right now with many of you this still just sounds like meaningless theology.

For four months we have been talking about our freedom from the law

and our freedom from sin.

And yet, if you had to state simply

how all of this stuff related

to the battles you’re fighting in your own life right now,

you probably wouldn’t have a clue.

You know that

because you are no longer under the law

therefore sin is not suppose to be master over you,

but somewhere along the way

the living reality of whatever that means just isn’t there.

So I want to see if I can put all of this together for us

in our remaining few minutes this morning

in a way that may help bring it to life.

You see, one of Satan’s most powerful strategies

in his ongoing efforts to defeat the Christian

is found in his attempts to get us

to invest our lives into continuing to fight battles we no longer have to fight.

And nowhere is this more true

than right here with these concepts we’re wrestling with right now.

And perhaps I can explain this best by contrast.

Before we came to Christ,

and before His death was credited to our sin,

and before His righteousness was granted to us in response to our faith,

before we were His,

our battle for God’s acceptance

and our battle against sin were the same battle.

That is what being under the law meant.

Now look at this -

if you were to ask any non-Christian this question:

“How can a person be accepted by God?”

far and away the most common answer you would get

would be something like this.

“Well, if you do good,

and if you avoid sin,

and if you keep the Ten Commandments, you certainly will have a better chance of being accepted by God.”

In other words,

our battle against sin in our lives,

and our battle for God’s acceptance

are viewed as one in the same battle.

God will accept me

if I avoid sin.

The more successful I am at avoiding sin

the more acceptable I become to God.

Now, of course, the fact that prior to our submission to Christ

we don’t even have a heart for God

or for righteousness

complicates this whole thing,

but the fundamentals are clear -

our battle for God’s acceptance

and our battle against sin in our lives are viewed as the same battle.

Now listen -

if Satan can convince us

that the same principle continues to apply to us after we come to Christ,

he has succeeded in wining the only battle he has to win in our lives.

Let me show it to you in a question.

I want you to think for a moment

about that chronic sin battle in your life right now.

We all have them.

I’m talking about that ongoing area of weakness

that started in your life long before you came to Christ,

and continues to harass you now.

Now, let me ask you a question:

“If this instant

you suddenly and permanently achieved total and complete and absolute victory over that sin,

would you view yourself as being

on a little more solid footing with God because of that victory?

Would you be more pleasing to Him,

more acceptable to Him?

Would you have a greater measure of peace in your relationship with Him?

Would you relax more

in your relationship with Him?”

If you answer “yes” to any of those questions,

then you are still believing

that your battle against sin

and your battle for God’s acceptance

are the same battle,

and have not yet understood Romans 6:14,

nor have you understood what it means to be under grace, and not under law.

When Paul says,

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

he is telling us that when we came to Christ

the two great battles in our lives

have been severed forever.

Through Christ

our battle for God’s absolute and total acceptance

and our battle against sin

become two separate

and completely distinct battles.

One of them, our battle for God’s total, eternal acceptance and love

has already been won forever.

Paul says simply,

Rom. 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,

Rom. 5:2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; ...

And the other, our battle against sin,

now becomes a winnable war

because we are now fighting it with our God within us,

and beside us,

daily aware of His love for us.

We are no longer fighting for His acceptance,

we are fighting with His acceptance and His love

as our strong foundation.

Let me see if I can give it to you in an illustration that may help.

Throughout most of our daughter, Joni’s, childhood

our house boardered a large section of heavily wooded land.

When my daughter, Joni was in grade school,

she never went into those woods by herself.

They were too big,

and too dark,

and too far from home to be safe.

I do remember one time

when she and a friend of hers

decided they would pretend

they were lost in the woods.

They got mommy to pack them

a really good snack before they left for their adventure.

Then they got a ball of string

and tied one end to the house

and then unraveled it as they went out into the woods.

That string, of course, was just to make sure they could find their way home.

I can still remember them standing

at the end of their string

about fifty or sixty feet from the house,

realizing that maybe they needed a little longer string.

But I want you to imagine for a minute

what it would have been like

if my little girl had somehow

really become lost in those woods.

She was playing in the yard

when suddenly

her little puppy saw a rabbit

and bolted into the woods.

She’s afraid the little dog will get lost

so she runs as fast as she can

into the woods after him.

But then, in a matter of minutes,

she’s lost sight of the dog,

lost sight of the house,

and has no idea how to find her way home.

She cannot see the house,

and doesn’t even know what direction the house is.

To make matters worse,

it’s getting dark,

and she finds it harder and harder to see.

There are no trails to follow,

the bushes and shrubs push and scrape against her face as she wanders first this way,

and then that way.

Strange, unfriendly noises come from every direction.

And then, through the deepening shadows around her,

in the distance through the trees

she hears a crashing, breaking sound,

and suddenly realizes there is a man in the woods with her.

She was frightened before,

but now she’s terrified.

She’s old enough to know that

big men in dark woods

are not altogether safe things.

She tries to fight her way quietly through the bushes,

doing her best to keep low and out of sight of this stranger,

but she doesn’t even know what direction to go.

The only thing she knows

is that if she can get through the woods

and back to the house

she’ll be safe from both the woods

and from that man.

I think that’s a little bit the way it is

in our battle with sin and God

before we come to Christ.

Those woods are like our futile battles for righteousness before we come to Christ.

Half the time we don’t even know what direction to go,

and we certainly don’t know how to get where we need to be.

And that man is like God.

We can see him just a little,

just enough to know we don’t feel safe with Him.

We’re certainly not going to run up to Him and ask Him for help.

It’s best if we just thrash away on our own,

and try to keep out of His sight.

But now imagine once again my daughter

suddenly realizing that the man in the woods has turned her direction

and is now walking straight at her.

She can hear his boots crunching the branches under foot as he moves closer.

She tries to crawl under a tiny bush to hide,

but she knows the dark figure

in the dim light will be able to see her

in another step or two.

And then, when he is just a few steps away,

she suddenly looks up into his face

and sees that the man in the woods is me,

her Papa,

her daddy.

I reach down, pick her up,

and together we fight our way

back through the woods

and to our home.

That is what Paul is saying

when he says,

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

Because through Christ

we now live in a grace union with our Creator forever,

the God we once hid from

is now the One who holds us in His arms.

It’s true, we still have to fight our way through the woods,

through the sin battles that surround us,

but now we fight those battles with our God forever with us,

fighting for us,

caring us in His almighty arms,

and showing us the way into the freedom our spirits long for.