When You Feel You Are Missing The Fullness Of Joy

WHEN YOU FEEL YOU ARE MISSING THE FULLNESS OF JOY

Part one

The Causes and Cure of Spiritual Weariness - Pastor Ed Pruitt

Sunday July 30, 2000

Freedom To Obey God!

Romans 6:15-23

15 So since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does this mean we can go on sinning? Of course not!

Paul now asks a slightly different question than he did previously. In 6:1 he sought to correct any misunderstanding as to the relationship of the believer to grace. Now he wishes to correct any misunderstanding that might arise as to the believer’s relation to the law. Neither the submission to the former, nor release from the latter, is to be construed as an encouragement to sin.

See how the apostle starts at such a thought (v. 15): Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. What can be more black and ill-natured than from a friend’s extraordinary expressions of kindness and good-will to take occasion to affront and offend him? To spurn at such bowels, to spit in the face of such love, is that which, between man and man, all the world would cry out shame on.

16 Don’t you realize that whatever you choose to obey becomes your master? You can choose sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God and receive his approval.

17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you have obeyed with all your heart the new teaching God has given you.

6:17. The term conversion refers to the human response to the gospel, while regeneration is God’s creation of a new nature in the one who believes.

Conversion requires the commitment of the total personality, intellect, emotion, and will.

This is how people respond to the message of the gospel, when they understand the nature of Christ’s atonement, feel the guilt of conviction, love God, and surrender their wills to the offer of salvation.

The result of conversion is the changed life.

Illustration: Paul noted that the Romans had been servants of sin, but had “obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine,” that is, the gospel.

Application: Just as conversion results in our obtaining salvation and ultimate liberty from sin, so a continuous yielding of our will to God as Christians is the key to spiritual victory

4. He argues from their former sinfulness, where we may observe,

(1.) What they had been and done formerly. We have need to be often reminded of our former state. Paul frequently remembers it concerning himself, and those to whom he writes.

[1.] You were the servants of sin. Those that are now the servants of God would do well to remember the time when they were the servants of sin, to keep them humble, penitent, and watchful, and to quicken them in the service of God.

It is a reproach to the service of sin that so many thousands have quitted the service, and shaken off the yoke; and never any that sincerely deserted it, and gave themselves to the service of God, have returned to the former drudgery.

18 Now you are free from sin, your old master, and you have become slaves to your new master, righteousness.

6:18. The believer is not free to do whatever he wants. He is free only to do that which is consistent with the character of God. True freedom is freedom from sin.

19 I speak this way, using the illustration of slaves and masters, because it is easy to understand. Before, you let yourselves be slaves of impurity and lawlessness. Now you must choose to be slaves of righteousness so that you will become holy.

6:19. Holiness: They are set apart from the practice of sin and set apart to the practice of righteousness.

v. 19. It is the misery of a sinful state that the body is made a drudge to sin, than which there could not be a baser or a harder slavery, like that of the prodigal that was sent into the fields to feed swine.

You have yielded. Sinners are voluntary in the service of sin.

The devil could not force them into the service, if they did not yield themselves to it. You see the devil can only suggest or tempt he cannot force us to do anything, that come from our own choice.

This will justify God in the ruin of sinners, that they sold themselves to work wickedness: it was their own act and deed.

To iniquity unto iniquity. Every sinful act strengthens and confirms the sinful habit: to iniquity as the work unto iniquity as the wages.

Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind; growing worse and worse, more and more hardened.

20 In those days, when you were slaves of sin, you weren’t concerned with doing what was right.