I invite you to turn with me
to the sixth chapter of the letter of Paul to the church at Rome,
that portion of our New Testaments that we call the book of Romans. I want to read in your hearing
verses 15 through 23. Romans chapter 6 and verse 15. Shall we sin because we are not
under law but under grace? God forbid! Do you not know that
to whom you present yourselves as servants, better rendering,
as slaves unto obedience, his slaves you are whom you obey,
whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? But thanks be to God that whereas
you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that
form of teaching whereunto you were delivered, and being made
free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak after
the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh,
for as you presented your members as slaves to uncleanness and
to iniquity unto iniquity, Even so now present your members as
slaves to righteousness unto sanctification. For when you
were the slaves of sin, you were free in regard of righteousness. What fruit had you at that time
in the things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end of those
things is death. But now being made free from
sin and become slaves to God, you are having your fruit unto
sanctification, and the end, eternal life. For the wages of
sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ
Jesus our Lord. The scriptures are unmistakably
clear in asserting again and again that without a supernatural
experience of the saving grace and power of God, you and I are
utterly unfit to live as we ought, unprepared to die in peace, and
unequipped to appear before God in the day of judgment. This
supernatural work of God's grace and power is designated by various
terms and is described in various images and is illustrated in
various ways throughout the scriptures. We come this morning to consider
a text which in a simple and clear manner portrays this sovereign
work of God's grace and power as a threefold cord of saving
experience. The text to which I refer is
verse 22 of Romans 6. But now, being made free from
sin and become servants to God, you are having your fruit unto
sanctification, and the end eternal This text, I say, is a three-fold
chord describing true saving experience. The first strand
is this change of masters described. But now, being made free from
sin and become slaves to God. That's a change of masters described. Secondly, we have a change of
practice affirmed. In the light of this change of
masters, you are having your fruit unto sanctification. That is a description of a change
of practice. And then thirdly, we have a change
of destiny promised, and the end, eternal life. However, before examining the
text under those three simple heads, let us take a few minutes
to consider the setting in which this text comes to us. All of
Romans chapter 6 is calculated to answer the questions posed
in verse 1 and verse 15. Look at them. Verse 1. What shall
we say then? Shall we continue in sin that
grace may abound, and verse 15, what then? Shall we sin because
we are not under law but under grace? Now what caused these
questions to be raised to which the entirety of Romans 6 is God's
answer? Well, basically it was the clear
teaching of Romans chapter 3 and verse 21 all the way to the end
of chapter 5. Paul, having established universal
sinfulness and guilt and wrath-deservingness in the first three chapters of
Romans, begins in chapter 3 and verse 21 all the way through
to chapter 5 to set before us the very heart of the good news
of the gospel of the grace of God. and that gospel sets forth
two fundamental realities. The first is that guilty, hell-deserving
sinners are accepted as righteous before God solely on the basis
of the work of Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul has been
outlining a gospel which says, in Christ alone, Is there an
answer to the problem of human sin? Would we avoid our just
deserts as guilty, hell-deserving sinners? We must have dealings
with Christ and the salvation procured by His life and His
death on behalf of sinners. It was the proclamation of the
Gospel that says we are saved by Christ alone that precipitated
these questions, and it was a Gospel that says Christ and what He
has done for sinners is received by faith alone. In other words,
the only way in which guilty, hell-deserving sinners can enter
into the benefits of what Christ has done for them is to abandon
all hope of performing deeds of their own. They are to embrace
Christ in the naked hand of faith. It is trusting in Christ alone. So it was this gospel reduced
to its irreducible minimum as a gospel of Christ alone, faith
alone, that precipitated the two questions of Romans chapter
6. For when the apostle comes to
the end of chapter 5, he says in verse 20, And the law came
in beside that the trespass might abound. In other words, the law
was intended to show us how much we need such a salvation. But
where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly. In other
words, there is no mountain of sin we can raise that is so high
that God's grace in Jesus Christ cannot swallow it up And in this
salvation that is by Christ alone, received by faith alone, there
is no amount of sin that can hinder the sinner from finding
acceptance with God. And so Paul raises the question,
well, what then, in the light of this, shall we continue in
sin that grace may abound? If I raise a mountain 10,000
feet high with my sin, and grace comes along with a 20,000 foot
mountain to overshadow it, and Christ alone, by faith alone,
can take care of that mountain, well then let's go on and sin
some more, so the higher we raise the mountain of our sin, the
more the mountain of God's grace will be magnified. That's what
raised the question. And then Paul has asserted in
chapter 3 of Romans, and here again in chapter 6, that in laying
hold of that salvation, it is totally apart from the works
of the law. that when it comes to the question
of how do I lay hold of that massive mountain of grace that
overshadows and swallows up however high a mountain of sin I raise,
well, if it's without obedience to the law and without the deeds
of the law but simply trusting Christ, well then look at verse
15. What then? Shall we sin because
we are not under law but under grace? If we are not under the
condemning power of the law, the commanding power of the law
as a means of finding acceptance with God, then it doesn't matter
whether we keep the law. We can live a lawless life. And
Paul says, no, that's impossible. So you see, these two questions
of Romans 6, around which all the contents of Romans 6 is organized,
grow out of the very nature of the gospel that Paul has been
expounding in the earlier chapters. And so in answer to that first
question, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound, the
fundamental answer of verses 2 through 14 is given in verse
2. God forbid, we who are such as
have died to sin How shall we any longer live therein? And his basic argument is this. The faith that unites us to Christ
and puts us in possession of his perfect righteousness also
so unites us to Christ that his death to sin becomes our death
to sin. His resurrection to newness of
life becomes our resurrection to newness of life. So if we
say that we are saved by Christ alone, By faith alone, it is
impossible for us to have the mentality, well then, let's continue
in sin. He said, no, because our very
identity is we are such as have died to sin. In union with Christ,
I have died to sin's dominion and to sin's power, and I have
risen to newness of life. Then, in answer to the question
of verse 15, What then shall we sin because we are not under
law but under grace? God forbid, may it never be.
The fundamental answer is verse 16. Do you not know that to whom
you present yourself as a slave to obedience, his slave you are
whom you obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness. The Apostle says, look, the answer
to this second question is very simple. If you are truly united
to Christ by faith, not only have you died to sin, the teaching
of verses 2 to 14, but you have had an exchange of masters from
sin to righteousness, from being a slave to your sin to being
a slave to righteousness and to God. And that's the fundamental
thesis of that entire chapter broken down into its two central
issues. You see it? Now then, as he is
about to summarize that second answer or the answer to that
second question, the essence of which is, no, even though
we are not under the law, We don't go on sinning because to
do so would negate who we really are. To go on sinning would be
to declare, sin is still my master. But if I'm in Christ, sin is
not my master anymore. I have a new master. It is God
and righteousness. So in summarizing it, he comes
to verse 22, which is our text for the morning. But now, right
now, A little particle is used to emphasize this is true in
the present moment of every true Christian. If you sit here this
morning and claim any kind of association with Jesus Christ
right now, not sometime later if you get more serious, not
sometime down the road if you get more surrendered and more
yielded and more filled with the Spirit, right Now, in this
place, this morning, sitting where you are in that pew, right
now, standing in this pulpit, right now, but now, but now,
right now, having been made free from sin and become slaves to
God, you are having your fruit unto sanctification and the end,
eternal life. Now let's unpack the text. as
time permits. First of all, we have a change
of masters described. A change of masters described. And let's ask three questions
of this first part of the text. Who was the old master? Who is the new master? And how do we get from the old
to the new? Three very simple questions.
All right? Question number one. Who was the old master? According
to the text, it was Sin. Sin is personified throughout
this entire section as a master. And all men are its slaves. And this servitude to Sin was
both real and evident and exclusive. Look at verse 19. I speak after
the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.
He said, I know I'm using human analogies. I'm using the slave
master analogy in order to help you. And as he is speaking with
that analogy, notice what he says. For as you presented your
members, that is the various faculties of your mind and of
your body, as slaves to uncleanness and to iniquity, unto iniquity,
even so now present your member slaves to righteousness." He
said, in your past, your slavery to sin was real and it was evident. It was not an abstract theological
concept. He said, in your past, every
one of you Romans, in your own experience, You were presenting
your members, the faculties of your mind and body, as slaves
to uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity. You gave your mind
to think arrogant thoughts that you knew better what life was
all about than God did. You used your mind to set up
your own standards of right and wrong. and truth and error. Your mind was never given to
be the arbiter of truth and error, of right and wrong. It was meant
to be the receptor of God's definition of truth and error, of right
and of wrong. But you took that marvelous faculty,
that mass of gray matter, and you made it a member to serve
sin. You made it a chamber of lustful
thoughts, You made it a chamber of envious thoughts. You made
it a chamber of murderous, hateful thoughts. You presented your
members. You presented your mind as an
instrument, literally, the Greek word is used sometimes in the
military sense, as a weapon of iniquity unto iniquity. You presented your eyes. to look
upon objects you had no business to look upon with desire. And
your eye became the inlet of covetous desires. Your eye became
the inlet of lustful, covetous thoughts with regard to sexual
objects. You took your hands and you presented
them to touch forbidden things, to take things that didn't belong
to you. to touch the erogenous zones
of that man or woman, that fellow, that girl that you had no business
touching until the sanctity of a marriage bed. You presented
your members, your hands, your sexual organs, your feet to go
in paths forbidden by God. your affections to be set upon
objects unworthy of your affections as an image-bearer of God. Paul
says your slavery was real and it was evident. That's what he's
saying. For as you presented your members
as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity. Now it takes different forms
with all of us. For some of you, your sins were
more refined. For some of you, they were gross
and evident and obvious to all. But Paul could say across the
whole spectrum of our differing sinful lifestyles, he said, the
whole bunch of you Romans, no matter where you fit in that
spectrum, every one of you had a slavery to sin that was real,
And that was obvious. And furthermore, he says in verse
20, it was exclusive. Look at it. For when, adverb
of time, when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard
to righteousness. What does he mean? This is what
he means. When you were the slaves of sin, you regarded yourself
the same way a freed former slave regards his former master. That
master can speak and he says, you've got nothing to say to
me. I'm free with respect to you. He says, righteousness,
God, his law, his word would speak to you, perhaps speak to
you in conscience, for you've not been totally abandoned. and
the remnants of God's holy law are yet there inscribed upon
your consciousness, as Paul says in Romans chapter 2, so that
conscience functions, albeit imperfectly, yet really, and
in some ways answering to the standard of God. And when God
spoke through your conscience, ah, ah, ah, ah, don't do that.
You looked up at righteousness and said, who are you? You're
not my master. Sin's my master. I choose to
make sin my master. I choose to obey sin as my master. I'm free with respect to you,
Mr. Righteousness. Mr. Sin is my
master." That's what Paul is saying, that their slavery to
sin was not only real and evident, but exclusive. For some of you,
righteousness not only speaks in conscience, But by the law
of God that you've learned in your families, in this church,
some of you sit here this morning and righteousness speaks and
you say, I do not regard righteousness. I am my own master. I'm free
to do what I want to do with my mind, my eyes, my ears, my
mouth, my tongue, my hands, my sexual organs. I recognize no
Lord but sin. Paul says, That's the master
that we all have by nature. Who was the old master for these
Roman Christians? It was sin. And their servitude
to sin was real, it was evident, and exclusive. But now, second
question, under this first heading, who is the new master? Look at
verse 22a. But now, being made free from sin and
become slaves to God. The new master is God himself,
God revealed in Jesus Christ, God in the context of the Book
of Romans, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The God who
in redemptive grace and activity has revealed himself in all the
wonder and mystery and glory of his triune being so that throughout
the book of Romans the salvation set forth is a salvation from
God by Jesus Christ made effective by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. And Paul says, now your new master
is God. himself, but then look at verse
16a. Know ye not that to whom you
present yourselves as slaves to obedience, his slaves you
are, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness. Here he says your new master
is a disposition of obedience that leads to a pattern of righteousness,
living as we ought. in the light of God's Word. Well, is my new master God, or
obedience unto righteousness? Or look at 18b, and being made
free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. Well, am I,
in my new master-slave relationship, am I the slave of God, the slave
of obedience unto righteousness, or the slave of righteousness?
You don't need to make the choice. It's all one and the same. For
you see, I cannot become a joyful, willing bond slave of God the
Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit without committing
myself to a life of obedience to God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Spirit And I cannot commit myself to a life of obedience
to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without being committed
to a life of righteousness. That is, living by the right
standard of God's Holy Word, calling sin what He calls sin,
calling virtue what He calls virtue. choosing what he delineates
as the will of God for me. So Paul can use these terms interchangeably
because it's all one ball of wax. The new master is ultimately
God. And in being God, lest we be
deceived and say, oh yes, I've got this wonderful relationship
with God. I get the fuzzies when I think about God, and I get
the woozies when I think about Jesus, and I get the goosebumps
when I think about the Holy Ghost. He says, look, If God the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit is your new master, you have become a
willing slave to obedience which results in a life of righteousness. There is an objective standard
by which to evaluate whether or not you have the new master.
You see it? Who is the old master? Sid. And that servitude was real and
evident and exclusive. Who is the new master? It is
God. And that servitude is real, verse
16, know you not that to whom you present yourselves as slaves
to obedience, His slave you are, whom you obey, whether of sin
to death or obedience to righteousness. That new slavery is not a theological
concept. It is not a religious phrase.
It is a real servitude resulting in obedience. It is a servitude,
notice, of verse 19, just as you actually presented the members
of your body slaves and instruments to sin, iniquity to iniquity,
even so now, present your members, slaves to righteousness unto
sanctification. This is real stuff that meets
you in the real decisions of life, where once you willfully,
wantonly gave your eyes to look upon lustful objects, now you
willfully, You choose to set your eyes upon that which is
pure and lovely and virtuous, where once you gave your ears
to listen to gossip and vile, filthy language and lawless screeching,
screaming in a cacophony of hellish sounds from the pit. You now
say, My soul, purified by the blood of Christ, will not be
stained by lawless, drugging, whoring, filthy men and women
who spew out the disposition of their souls in the lyrics
and in the manner of the music they create. No! I'm a slave of righteousness. I give my ears to whatsoever
is pure. whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever
is virtuous, whatsoever is of good report, I give my ears,
my members, I give my hands to purity in all of my relationship
with those of the opposite sex. Where once my thoughts were,
how can I with my words and my touches get them under the sheets Now my thoughts are, how can
I conduct myself in such a way that it will be evident that
I recognize my body as a temple of the Holy Spirit? I am not
my own. I've been bought with a price,
and I'm committed to glorify God in my body, which is His! This is real stuff, folks! This ain't
airy-fairy, get religion and just flop around and ooze around. No, no. Paul said, your servitude
to sin was real. Your servitude to righteousness
is real. It's evident. And it is exclusive,
for Jesus said in Matthew 6, 24, no man can serve two masters. Either he will love the one and
hate the other, cling to the one or despise the other. Who is the old master? Sin. Who
is the new master? God. Obedience and righteousness. Third question under this first
head, how and when did the change of masters take place in these
Romans? And if it's going to take place
in you, if it has taken place, it will always be the same way.
Look at verse 17. having described what they once
were, verse 17, but thanks be to God. Now that's the first
thing you've got to understand. If the change ever takes place,
God's going to get all the credit. You can't break your own servitude. He that commits sin, said Jesus,
is the bond slave of sin. and the devil gloats over all
of his hordes of slaves and says, they are mine, I have them, and
they can't free themselves. Along comes the mightier than
the strong man, who binds the strong man and spoils his goods. Thanks be to God. That's what
this whole epistle has been about, how God has intervened in human
sin to find and to implement a way of salvation that will
not only grant the forgiveness and the pardon of guilty, hell-deserving
sinners, but will snap their chains and make them the sons
and daughters and loving slaves of God through Jesus Christ. How did it happen? Look at verse
17. Thanks be to God that whereas you were slaves of sin, You became
obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you
were delivered and being made free from sin, you became slaves
of righteousness. How and when did the change of
masters take place? Paul says it took place when
some of these Romans, he says, became obedient from the heart
to a form of teaching, not that was delivered to them, but unto
which they were delivered. Look at your Bibles, and if it
doesn't have that translation, it's not an accurate rendering
of the tenses of the verbs. It's not obedient from the heart
to the form of teaching delivered you, active, no, but unto which
you were delivered, passive. Paul says there came a time in
the lives of you Romans when a form of teaching, which is
a beautiful synonym for the apostolic gospel, the apostolic gospel
that has form and has shape, the very gospel he has been expounding
in this letter, that speaks of human sin and human guilt and
human depravity and human helplessness. When we were without strength,
he wrote in chapter 5, when we were sinners, when we were enemies,
and in that gospel there is a form of teaching that declares man's
sinfulness, man's helplessness. It declares that in love and
pity, to a helpless, sinful, hell-deserving race God sent
His only begotten Son. God commended His own love to
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And it is this form of teaching
that declares the God-Man Christ Jesus came, took upon Himself
all the liabilities of His people. lived the life of obedience we
should have lived but did not, and then died under the curse
of the broken law. And God raised him from the dead
to validate that the price he paid was adequate. He was raised,
Paul says in 4.25, for our justification. That's the form of teaching that
came to these Romans that focused upon human sin and guilt, divine
intervention in the person and work of Jesus. The necessity
of repentance and faith for Paul says that the gospel that he
preached throughout the entire world, though we have no record
that he had been at Rome to found the church there, the gospel
that got there was the apostolic gospel testifying to Jews and
Greeks' repentance toward God, faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And that form of teaching, the
vigorous, God-centered, apostolic gospel, Paul said, it came to
you. And you know what happened? By
the power of the Holy Spirit, you were cast into the mold of
that gospel. The contours of your thinking
began to be shaped by the gospel. The contours of the disposition
of your heart toward reality began to be shaped by that gospel,
the contours of your ethical and moral choices about what
you do with your eyes, what you do with your ears, what you do
with your brain, what you do with your hands, what you do
with your feet, how you live in families, in society, in the
world, everything about you began to be shaped by that gospel. And he said when that happened,
that's when there was a change of masters. Look at the text.
God be thanked that when you were the slaves of sin, you became
obedient from the heart. Almighty God did that work promised
in the New Covenant, taking out the heart of stone, giving a
heart of flesh, a heart that yearns to please God. And when
God did that, he said, verse 18, being made free from sin,
you became slaves of righteousness. Sin's domination was broken when
you were cast into the mold of the gospel. That's how the change
occurred, when they submitted from the heart to the gospel
in its marvelous provisions and in its flesh-withering demands. when they embraced the gospel
indicatives. That is, they believed what God
said about His Son and about His death and His resurrection
and the pardon of sins in Him. But then they obeyed from the
heart the gospel imperatives to repent, stack arms, stop living
in the God business. Get out of the God business.
You weren't made to determine right and wrong and good and
evil. Stop it. Bow to the God who alone has
the right to determine good and evil and right and wrong and
truth and error. They obeyed that gospel imperative
to repent, to get out of the God business, stop running their
own lives, and to believe, to throw themselves in the desperate
death grip of faith upon Jesus Christ alone for salvation and
for life. That's when the change occurred. Now, let me say by way of application
under this first heading, it's evident that just as Paul assumes
all of the Christians at Rome were by nature slaves of sin,
he's assuming that they are now all the slaves of God, of obedience,
and of righteousness. He has no two-tiered concept
of Christians some who were sold out and surrendered in their
serious disciples, and some that are still dabbling, one foot
in the world, one foot in the path of self-determination and
self-will and self-interpretation of right. No, no! He said, just
as truly as you were sold out slaves to sin, you are now the
sold out slaves of God and of obedience and of righteousness.
And there ain't no middle ground, folks. No middle ground. Paul says you were, but you now
are. And he didn't put a parenthesis.
That is some of you. That is many of you. He said
no, all of you. If you're the real thing, there's
been a change of masters. And that change of masters is
real. And that change of masters is
not unknown to the person who has experienced it. You were,
but now you are. And when he wrote that, there
was nobody sitting there when the epistle was read for the
first time, scratching his or her head and said, whoa, whoa,
whoa, excuse me, Mr. Elder, read that again. It sounds like Paul is saying
that every one of us who's part of the church here at one time
was a slave of sin, and now we're the slave of righteousness, and
we're not. I'm not so sure about that. No. When these things were
read, there was a whole assembly of people who sat there saying,
oh, God, thank you. God be thanked, yes, when Paul
says in verse 17, but God be thanked, yes, Lord, how we praise
you. We remember what it was like
to go around with our clanking chains, bound in slavery to sin
and to the devil. But we know now what it is to
have our chains broken and to be free and have a gracious,
blessed, sovereign master. to have the living God, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost as our master. A change of masters described. Now then, very quickly, secondly
note, the change of practice affirmed. The change of practice
affirmed. Here we're back to our text,
verse 22. But now, right now, having been made free from sin
and become slaves to God, now notice the tense. You have, present
tense, little Greek word, echete, you are having, as present continuous
experience, you are having your fruit unto sanctification or
unto holiness. Here is the change of practice
affirmed. Notice, this is not a command,
it's not an exhortation, but it's a statement of fact. It
is an affirmation that in the life of every Roman Christian
to whom this letter came, having experienced the change of masters,
they are experiencing a change of practice. Now, two questions
to this part of our text. What is this fruit unto sanctification,
and in how many Christians is it found? Question number one. Paul says you are having your
fruit unto sanctification. What is this fruit unto sanctification? Well, it is something being produced
in their lives as a tree or plant produces fruit. And what is that
something? Well, look at verse 19. I speak
after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh.
For as you presented your members servants to uncleanness and iniquity
to iniquity, even so now present your members as slaves to righteousness
unto, and here's the same word, unto sanctification. It is when our members are functioning
as slaves of righteousness that the product is sanctification. That is a life marked by being
separated unto God, doing the things that are pleasing to God,
the mind now thinking God's thoughts after Him. the tongue speaking
the truth and that which is clean and upright and helpful and edifying,
the eyes looking upon that which pleases God, the feet going where
the law of God demands they should go and not going where the law
of God forbids they should not go. This is fruit unto righteousness,
the exact opposite of what Paul describes as giving our members
practically, really, day by day, hour by hour, to the service
of sin, we now present them to God and to the service of righteousness. So that this fruit unto sanctification
is not something you feel when you're having your devotions,
It is not something you feel in the midst of a religious service
and you feel good and you've got all of these. No, no. It
is the practical outworking of a life that is committed in the
details of that life to pleasing God and to pleasing God in the
light of His revealed will in Holy Scriptures. And in how many
true Christians is this found? Look at the passage. in all of
them, but now, being made free from sin and become slaves to
God, not some of you, all of you ought, it's an affirmation
of reality. You are having your fruit unto
sanctification. My friend, if you're not having
the fruit of your life unto sanctification, you're still a slave of sin.
It's just that simple. If you've become the slave of
God, here's the proof of it. you are having your fruit unto
sanctification. Just that simple. And it touches
all the facets of your life. So that if someone were able
to get inside your head with a notebook during the past week,
recording your thoughts, if someone were able, without you knowing
it, to follow you wherever you went, Listen to every word you
spoke on the phone in private. Sit with you and observe everything
you watched on television and didn't watch. Everything you
watched on the internet and didn't watch. And at the end of the
week, had to tally it all up. They'd come to one of two conclusions.
That you were living as a slave of sin, iniquity unto iniquity,
or fruit under sanctification. When thoughts of uncleanness
entered your mind, they would record that you were grieved
and pained and you confessed to God what no one else knew
about. And you mourned, oh God, those
filthy thoughts, those envious thoughts, those jealous thoughts.
Oh God, forgive me. That's fruit under sanctification.
Even your bitter remorse when your thoughts are not righteous. It's what you do with them that
shows. You see, the person who is under
the lordship and the servitude of God is not merely concerned
with externals. A life righteous enough for other
people to say, yeah, your Christian profession is credible. No. They
are not servants of their peers, not slaves of the opinion and
acceptance of their fellow church members. They're slaves of God. And they know in the language
of Hagar, thou, God, seest me. And wherever I am, I know he
sees me, and I want to please him, and I want to be his bond
slave in the secret chambers of my thoughts, in the isolation of a widower's
house, where no one is present but God. I have had some of my
most wonderful affirmations that I'm no hypocrite since my wife's
body was carried out of my house. And the loneliness and the pain
of that separation to find myself turning to my God and to the
things that please Him when no one knows but me and my God I said, Lord, I'm no longer the
slave of sin. I'm Your slave, and I'm glad
I'm Your slave. And, oh, my Master, I want to
please You in the most crushing hours of my loneliness to turn
to nothing that would cause a frown upon the brow of my Savior. But
if I'm too young a person, come on, get honest! Get honest. Where are your thoughts? Where
are your desires? You are having, present tense,
your fruit unto sanctification. That's the tenor of your life.
That's the drift of your life. That's the floor of your life.
Not perfectly, but purposely. Not always evenly, but really
and truly. But then finally, not only the
change of masters described, the change of practice affirmed,
but thirdly and finally the change of destiny promised. Look at
the text. But now, being made free from
sin and become slaves to God, you are having your fruit unto
sanctification and the end Eternal life. The telos, the end. What comes at the end of a life
where there's been a change of masters, issuing in a change
of practice? Eternal life. Now sometimes the
Bible speaks of eternal life as a quality of life possessed
here and now. I have given unto them eternal
life, and this is life eternal, that they may know Thee, the
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent. But there
are times when eternal life is pointing to the consummate, glorious
finish of all the work of God's grace in the hearts of His own,
and it's obvious that that's what Paul is referring to here.
Now, that's the present age, free from sin and slaves to God,
Now you are having fruit unto sanctification and then the teros,
the end, eternal life. What was the former destiny?
Look at 21b. What fruit had you at that time
in the things whereof you are now ashamed? For the end, telos,
same Greek word, the end of those things is death. The end of those
things is death. The things whereof you are now
ashamed, when you think of them you are filled with shame, as
we heard in the previous hour. And though they have been repented
of and turned from, any thought of them renews the shame. The
end of those things is death. And where is life found? At the
end. At the end, of a life that has
experienced a change of masters and a change of practice. Not
at the end of a life where anyone has raised a hand, prayed a prayer,
tipped their hat to Jesus and said, I'm fixed up, I'm in. No. John Owen said, and his words
came back to me so powerfully in preparing for this morning,
two of the greatest damning errors in the world are these. Number
one, that people think they will attain heaven in the end who
are strangers to the new birth. People who think they will attain
heaven at the end who are strangers to the new birth. For Jesus said,
except a man be born again, he cannot see, he cannot enter the
kingdom of heaven. But then Owen said there is a
second damning error and it is this. People who think they've
experienced the new birth who are not pursuing a life of holiness.
People who think they have experienced the new birth who are not pursuing
a life of holiness. The end, eternal life, the end
for whom? Those in whom there has been
a change of masters issuing in a change of practice and the
end for them is eternal life. Oh, but someone sits here and
says, oh, but Pastor Martin, that is salvation by works. Look
at verse 23, "...for the wages of sin is death, but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." This
salvation is a free gift, but my friend, the gift works. Paul didn't think this was teaching
salvation by works. He follows up this very statement,
change of masters, change of practice, change of destiny,
for. Why is it this way? Because the
wages of sin is death, and no matter what you profess, if you're
living under sin's mastery, you're going to get sin's payday. Sin as a master has his payday,
and it's death. You serve that master, you get
paid by him. But the free gift of God is eternal
life in Jesus Christ our Lord. And when we embrace him in the
death grip of faith and are united to him and we are cast into the
mold of the gospel, we not only have a change of destiny, we
have a change of masters issuing and a change of practice culminating
in the blessed reality of the change of destiny. Isn't it amazing
how people saying they believe their Bibles can come up with
these horrible, soul-destructive doctrines of the carnal Christian
that you can live dominated by carnality and all you do is lose
a bag of yo-yos in the last day. You see, what the Apostle gives
us here, some of you may have already thought of it, the Apostle
gives us in straight, plain, language, what Jesus gave us
in a beautiful pictorial imagery. Remember what Jesus said? Enter
in by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate, broad is the way
that leads to destruction, and many are they that go in thereat,
because narrow is the gate, compressed is the way that leads unto life. You want life? You've got to
get through the gate. And if you get through the gate,
you're going to be on the narrow way, the compressed way, but
it's only the gate and the way that lead to life. Change of
masters, change of practice, change of destiny. There's a
beautiful agreement in the Word of God. And if you sit here this
morning and you know nothing of that change of masters, my
friend, I plead with you, I plead with you, Go to the Lord Jesus,
who alone can break the chains that bind you. One of the passages
that has been so precious to me in recent days is Isaiah 61. The Spirit of the Lord God is
upon me. He has anointed me. To do what? The Lord Jesus has been anointed
by the Spirit. To do what? To open the prison
to them that are bound. as well as to bind up the broken
heart. In times without number in recent
days, I've just said, Lord Jesus, I can't fix it. It's broken. It's shattered. All the pieces
are scattered on the floor. I can only gather up the pieces
and hold them up and say, Lord Jesus, you do what you were anointed
to do. You take my broken heart and
you mend it. And He's been doing it. And in
the same way, I beg some of you this morning, go to the Lord
Jesus with all your chains and all the bars that hold you in
the prison house of sin and say, Lord Jesus, I can't break the
chains, I can't burst the bars, but You were anointed to do that
for helpless sinners like me. Lord Jesus, magnify Your grace
by doing it for me, And he will, for he said him that comes to
me, I will in no wise cast out. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, how we pray that
you will take your word and by your Holy Spirit make it effectual
in every heart, of every man, every woman, every boy or girl
gathered in this place today. Thank you for this text that
is so clear, that sets before us the change of masters that
you effect whenever you lay hold of a sinner, the change of practice
that issues by the power of the indwelling spirit, the change
of destiny that awaits us. O Lord, Strip away the delusion
that some are in. Comfort those who need to be
comforted. Encourage those who need encouragement. We trust you to seal your word
to our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit, to the praise
of your blessed name. Amen.