On this episode of Faith Quest, the teaching continues through the closing verses of Romans 6, where Paul explains what it means to be set free from slavery to sin and made a servant of God. The message unpacks the contrast between the kingdom of Adam, marked by sin, death, shame, and despair, and the kingdom of Christ, marked by righteousness, holiness, joy, and eternal life. Rather than seeing holiness as cold or lifeless, listeners are encouraged to see it as the fruit of belonging to a loving Father who gives life, beauty,
We’re almost at the end now of Romans chapter 6, and Paul, as I think you recall the last time we covered this, is now moving into a new figure of speech, and he’s talking about being freed from the slavery to sin and freed to slavery to God. It’s a peculiar kind of figure of speech, one might say, but the fact is, of course, he’s talking about that love slavery we have. He’s not talking about slavery in a negative sense as he does in the book of Galatians. Here he’s talking about slavery in a positive sense, in the sense of ownership. We’ve come to love our slave master, just as it speaks of in the book of Leviticus, and so we want to stay with him forever. This is the good news of the gospel. Listen to this. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness, leading to lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you then have in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves to God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. Now don’t be afraid of these verses. These verses talk about ownership. You’ve heard me talk about one of my pet interests, which is astronomy. You’ve heard me tell you that when I was a boy, it was thought that there was just one galaxy, and that galaxy was what we lived in, in our solar system, and that was it. Then came along the James Webb Telescope. Well, actually, before that, another telescope, which I’m forgetting for the moment the name of. But the James Webb Telescope has now revealed that there are at least two trillion galaxies, and those galaxies contain 100 to 300 or 400 billion stars each. And the estimate is that there are way more than 2 trillion galaxies, possibly 20 trillion. This is just so overwhelming that there is a trauma almost in astronomy. It used to be called the golden age of astronomy just a few years ago, but now it’s reckoned as an age of confusion and astonishment that there could be so many galaxies.
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Now, the world looks upon this as simply meaninglessness.
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If you are to look up, for instance, on YouTube, you will find a number of videos on how all of this is a void. It is a meaningless profusion of creation because there’s no way we can contact these galaxies. There’s no way we can reach out to these stars and live long enough to do so or safely enough. And so most of the world considers that all of this is just a chance, and we’re in the middle of a chance, and it has no meaning. But we as Christians know very differently. We know that the creator of the universe, the almighty creator, is a personal father of all that he has created. He names all these stars by name and galaxies by name and not one is forgotten. And he has come in Jesus Christ to reveal how personal he is towards us. And so, we as Christians have this absurd belief that we belong. We belong to God. We are owned by him. And this is what Romans chapter 6 is all about, and especially as we read this idea that we have now been set free from the power of sin, from the claim of sin, from the identity of sin, and given and counted righteous in Jesus Christ, so that we now are no longer slaves of sin, but we’ve become slaves of someone else, a beautiful slave master who takes care of us, who loves us, who enables us to be free, who enables us to know that we can be creative just like he is creative in our small little ways. And we have this home in God. And so what we need to understand when we are listening or reading this chapter 6 of Romans in regard to freedom from sin is that we have been set free from the sin kingdom of Adam and that sin kingdom, remember, presents a God who is destructive and full of judgment towards us and a kingdom where everything will go wrong and there is nothing but death in that sin kingdom and whatever we attempt to do will ultimately fade into ashes. All of that sin kingdom, that sorrow, that grief, that pain, we have been removed from. God has delivered us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his Son, into the kingdom of light, so that we have a heavenly Father, And we are loved, and we are his love slaves. He’s not out to destroy us as Satan was. He’s out to build us, to bless us, and to turn all of our griefs and sorrows into instruments of joy, instruments by which we grow closer to God. That’s what being in God’s kingdom is all about. So, our faith needs to speak into our struggles. We have a struggle, say, with addiction. And we say, Father, I have always seen this addiction as my enemy, as something that is preventing me from growing up as a Christian, as something that is separating me from you. Now, Lord God, I see the struggle with addiction as in the kingdom of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of righteousness and life. And I thank you, therefore, for the struggle that I have because it pushes me closer to you. It causes me to embrace you, to look to you for help, to see my helplessness so that I can believe that you are my helper. O Lord God, this addiction has drawn me to you over the years. It has led me to seek you, your mercy, because I have known that I have no goodness and righteousness in myself. Do you see how this works then? Now when Paul speaks about, let’s see what it says here, what fruit did you have in the things of which you are now ashamed? Now he’s asking that question, Just after having said, For whom? For when you were slaves of sin you were free in regard to righteousness. In what sense were we free? Well, we had suppressed our conscience. We didn’t care. It didn’t matter. We’d just sin and enjoy ourselves. Let’s eat and drink. But the truth of that statement is, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Paul, remember, is saying to us, look, you were free in regard to righteousness. You sensed no obligation to it. You didn’t have any guilt. You were just buried in your addiction. You’d lost all conscience. And yet, when you look at that so-called freedom, what was the result of it? Well, here he says, what fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed, those things that you thought you were free to enjoy? For the end of those things is death. Now look, he’s not sending out threats to us here. He’s simply letting us know the natural consequences of the kingdom of Adam, the kingdom of sin and death. Without God, all our thoughts turn downwards. They turn to the negative. They turn to destruction. They have no life in them. We believe that whatever will go wrong will go wrong. We believe that whatever can go wrong, I should say, will go wrong. And we have this dour misery about us. And so we bury ourselves in our various activities and our addictions so that we can’t think about the future and the ultimate destiny of this life of sin and death. But now we are freed from all of that. We realize that the ways of life without God end only in death. They’re just lifeless. They cannot do anything else but end in death. But now what do we see? What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. Don’t be afraid of that word holiness. It doesn’t mean dour, miserable, starchy Christianity. It means joyfulness. It means love. It means light in your life. It means that the things that you do now are not buried heavily under the weight of guilt and shame. It means there’s a joy to our lives. I remember reading recently, watching a video about a young ten-year-old genius boy in Japan who researched butterflies and discovered and has proven that butterflies have memory and that that memory stretches from the chrysalis stage right into the butterfly stage. What a lovely thing for a ten-year-old boy to discover the joys of nature and to discover that God has made wonderful things. That’s part of what we discover. We don’t do it in such a brilliant way as he did, of course. But we now see beauty in little things, in the joy of a sunrise, the joy of a sunset, in the beauty of green grass, in the beauty of flowers. This is not effeminate thinking. This is godly thinking. It is recognizing that we are children of a king who has given us an eternal garden to live in. This is what we are. Now we, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death. Sin, all that we did before, it gave us a wage. It brought us down. It doesn’t mean to say we don’t sin anymore, but we come under the truth that we’re no longer in the sin kingdom of Adam that produces only death. We are now given the gift of God. What is that gift? Eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Notice how that eternal life comes through Jesus Christ, not through our works, not through endless, tireless gritting of our teeth to make sure we get into the kingdom, but the gift of Jesus Christ, believing in that gift that we have been given, The gift of eternal life through Christ, who through his death took our judgment and through his resurrection brought eternity to us. Let’s live in it by faith every day until the kingdom comes. If you feel moved by the Holy Spirit to this appeal, then would you please act upon it? I would like to find a number of people who would consider them partners of this program by donating $50 a month. It would be wonderful if I could get 10 new partners or 20 new partners at $50 a month. It would so keep the budget of… the Ministry Faith Quest, from the edge of the cliff. Please, if you would consider it, send your first donation to Faith Quest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80150, 80160, sorry, or make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thank you so much for all your support. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
