TEXT: ROMANS 6:1-14
THEME: NEW LIFESTYLE
Greetings: The Lord is good and His love endures forever.
Introduction: I would like to deal today with this entire chapter of Roman 6. I want to leave with you three important aspects of our daily lives. We can be habitual offenders, we can habitually live a new life, and we can be happy testimonies of the Lord.
1. Habitual offenders (Romans 6:1)
Story of Self-Imprisonment: ‘In the fourteenth century, two brothers fought for the right to rule over Belgium. Raynald, the elder brother was fat and horribly obese. Raynald’s younger brother Edward led a successful revolt against his brother and became the King. Raynald was imprisoned in a room. The door was not locked, and the windows were not barred. Edward promised his brother Raynald that he could regain his land and his title any time after leaving the room. The obstacle was not in the doors and windows but with Raynald Being grossly overweight. All Raynald needed to do was follow a strict diet and walk out a free man. However, Edward provided him with a variety of tasty foods, and Raynald’s desire to be freed never won. Edward said, “My brother is not a prisoner. He may leave when he so wills.” But Raynald stayed in that room until Edward was killed in a battle.’ (Adopted from readings).
The Enduring Word comments that believers struggle with Habitual Sin. Paul discussed the idea that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20). Probably he thought that someone can take it for granted to live as a habitual offender to enjoy grace. Some people think that their job is to sin and God’s job is to forgive.
Sin rules as king in your mortal but is short-lived, and perishable (Romans 6:12). So, do not continue offering or yielding your bodily members and mental faculties to sin as instruments and tools of wickedness (Romans 6:14). Do you not know that if you continually surrender yourselves to anyone to do his will, you are the slaves of him whom you obey? If you give to sin it leads to death (Romans 6:16).
In the early part of the 20th century, Russian monk Gregory Rasputin taught that those who sin the most require the most forgiveness, therefore a sinner who continues to sin without restraint enjoys more of God’s grace. Therefore, Rasputin lived in notorious sin and taught that this was the way to salvation. He had more disciples, naturally!
2. Habitually New Life (Romans 6:4 AMPC)
The new life in Christ is like a new citizenship in a new country. You forgo the rights and privileges, responsibilities of the Old Country, and you vow to abide by and follow the rules and regulations of a new nation. This is the experience of every one of us through Baptism. We’ve left the country of sin and its sovereignty; we left our old house of that nation of Sin. We packed up and left that for good. When we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! (Romans 6:2, MSG).
Therefore, we are no longer captive to sin’s demands! We need to throw ourselves wholeheartedly and full-time into God’s way of doing things. God gives a believer a new man, a self that is instinctively obedient and pleasing to God.
This new man was created in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24), and is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:10). Hence, put off the old man as something dead and gone (Ephesians 4:22, Colossians 3:9).
It is true that our old being has been put to death with Christ on his cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed but living in fellowship with God through Christ Jesus (Romans 6:6,11 GNT). You have become the servants of righteousness, that is the conformity to the divine will in thought, purpose, and action (Romans 6:18). You have become the slaves of God, So, you have your present reward in holiness and its end is eternal life (Romans 6:22).
Paul seems to say that we still have a daily choice to make, however. We have been freed from the penalty of sin. We are forgiven. We have also been freed from the authority and power of sin. What we haven't fully lost is our desire to sin. Sin still attracts us. The old habits and ways of thinking still come naturally to us.
But we need to keep our testimonies. Paul gives another reason we should not continue freely sinning once we are in Christ. That leads to a lifestyle of volunteer slavery.
3. Happy Testimonies (Romans 6:14-23).
As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. Now you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do. But you have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master (Romans 6:22-23 MSG).
If the fruit is unto holiness, if there is an active principle of true and growing grace, the end will be everlasting life; a very happy end! Though the way is uphill, though it is narrow, thorny, and beset, everlasting life at the end of it is sure. The gift of God is eternal life. And this gift is through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ purchased it, prepared it, prepares us for it, and preserves us to it; he is the All in all in our salvation (Mathew Henry).
Calvin comments that Eternal life is the gift of God but sin produces death. This gift of God, justification and sanctification, brings us the happiness of eternal life. Our salvation is altogether through the grace and mere beneficence of God. Paul might indeed have used other words that the wages of righteousness are eternal life but he knew that it is through God’s gift we obtain it, and not through our own merits.
St. Paul is setting before us in a figure the choice of two lives the life of a Christian, life in Christ, and the life of one who is in Sin. Both involve services the service of a servant, and of military service. We can choose our master, our leader; but serve someone, do someone’s work, and fight for someone’s cause. (Sermon Bible Commentary).
Paul has been striving in the last verses to bring out the contrasts between the two services. They differ in their objectives, their aim, their methods, and their issue. It contrasts their rewards. The end of living for pleasure, living for self, and living only for this world is death. (Sermon Bible Commentary).
The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord for life ever deepening, widening; self-conquest, freedom, the conscience growing more sensitive and more completely mistress of the life, all instincts and perceptions of moral beauty growing keener, all lofty and generous emotions strengthening the sense of God's nearness, the trust in His goodness, the sympathy with His purposes, for ever-increasing, brightening to the perfect day (Sermon Bible Commentary).
Conclusion: Are we habitual offenders to displease God? Are we coming to Him and enjoying the new life? Are we living as living testimonies for Christ?
