On this edition of How It Happens, Colin Cook continues his teaching in Romans 6, explaining that being “freed from sin” means believers no longer belong to the kingdom of sin and death brought in through Adam. Instead, through Christ, they are owned by God, held in His love, and brought into the kingdom of righteousness and life.
Colin connects this truth to the deep isolation often found in addiction, shame, fear, and guilt, showing how the gospel speaks directly to the soul that feels adrift. He also points back to Romans 5, reminding listeners that faith redirects the mind,
So, a number of observations need to be made about chapter 6 of Romans, freed from sin, before we move on to chapter 7, the intriguing chapter 7. I think one thing that I would make a point of today, which I might have failed to make clearly yesterday, was that Romans 6 reveals ownership. You and I… are owned by God. We are God’s property. Your soul does not drift around the universe in isolation. One of the great traumas of the world, one of the great neuroses of the world, I think, is the feeling that people are driftless. Nobody owns them. They belong to themselves, and if their self is not very healthy, then they belong to a very unhealthy person themselves. Those of you who’ve experienced addiction know very well that not being owned by somebody is one of the major ingredients of addiction. Addiction leads to isolation. Well, isolation may well have started addiction, of course. Many people in addiction, whether it’s drugs, alcohol, sex, food, gambling, whatever it may be, many people in addiction have felt unattached to their families. They have felt disconnected. There was woundedness in their childhood, maybe an absent father, an a dead father, an alcoholic father or a drug-addicted mother, whatever, the child somehow pulled away from that relationship of family and began to live a life on his or her own. All of that, of course, leads to terrible, terrible isolation. And the drug of choice becomes their companion, their comfort. They take on the drug as if it were a person, as if it were their friend. Even cigarette smokers will tell you that when they try to stop smoking, they feel they’re losing a friend. And so isolation is one of the core ingredients of addiction. And that is exacerbated by the true isolation, which is the world’s separation from God. As you know, this book of Romans starts off with telling us, well, in the middle of the first chapter, that that human beings are detached from God. They’re in suppression of God, denial of God. And that denial comes from guilt and shame and fear, of course, that we feel, and the fear that since we’re guilty and ashamed and afraid, then God cannot possibly love us. And so this idea of the soul adrift in a void and vacant universe is a terrible, terrible experience. But here comes Romans telling us that we are slaves. I know, it sounds like an odd figure of speech, doesn’t it, or an odd idiom for the idea that we belong to somebody. But this is talking about, as I said yesterday, a love slave. You and I are not slaves in the sense of being destroyed and decimated and damaged emotionally and physically by a vicious, hard, cruel master. No, we have been slaves in the household of the king. And we enjoy his fellowship, for in his presence is fullness of joy at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. We enjoy his fellowship so much that we want to live with our slave master forever. This is a love-slave relationship. I remember the story, and I can’t remember the details of who this was, but a well-to-do slave master bought a slave on the trade market and then released him from his shackles. He had been screaming at the slave master, I’ll never serve you, I’ll never serve you. And then the slave master released him from his shackles and gave him papers and told him he was free. And the slave, could hardly believe his ears, looked long into this man’s eyes and finally bowed before him, grabbed his ankles and said, I will serve you forever. That’s the nature of our freedom. You and I have been freed from sin, not in the sense that we don’t sin anymore, but in the sense that we are no longer judged by sin. We are no longer identified as sinners. We are no longer condemned by the law that says sin shall bring death. And that is so releasing, so freeing, that we want to serve the one who has set us free, Jesus our Savior. Now, of course, the idea of being freed from sin means not freed from individual sinful acts that we might have failed in or might have willfully done in an act of rebellion. It means that we are freed from the sin kingdom of Adam. When Paul says in chapter 6 verse 1, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Why does he ask what shall we say then? Well, because he’s following up on what he had previously said in chapter 5. Well, what had he previously said in chapter 5? that the kingdom of sin and death that Adam brought in has been countermanded and triumphed over by the kingdom of righteousness and life that Jesus brought in. And so you and I no longer belong to the kingdom of sin and death. We belong to the kingdom of righteousness and life. And as a result, We do not continue in that sin kingdom. It doesn’t mean to say that we never sin anymore, but it means to say that we will not grasp the mental state anymore and the ideology and the surrounding corruption of the idea that the broken kingdom of Adam still rules. What is that rulership? Well, it’s the endless condemnation of God. the judge who will cast us away from him. It’s the endless belief and continual belief that whatever goes wrong in our life does so because God is poking us in the chest and accusing us of being wrong and you’ll never amount to anything and what’s wrong with you, you can never do anything right. Straighten up else you’ll ship out. That’s what the sin kingdom is all about. It’s about judgment. It’s about grief that has no end. It’s about loss being a result of sin and guilt and punishment. We can’t live like that. Paul has said in this chapter that that sin kingdom brings death. When you were a slave of sin, you were free from righteousness, he said. What did he mean you were free from righteousness? Well, you didn’t care about the good life. You didn’t care about caring for others and about holding yourself together with some respect and not abusing yourself. You didn’t care about hating people. You didn’t care about taking advantage of others so that you could ascend the ladder. No, you didn’t care at all about that. All of that, though, results in sin and death. That is not a statement of God will come along and kill you. It’s not a judgment statement. It’s a statement about simple facts, that the sin kingdom of Adam is a deathly kingdom and it will kill you, so get out of it. Well, how do we get out of it? We live in this body. We can’t escape this world. We get out of it by faith that redirects the mind, that tells the mind to shut up when it keeps screaming at us, you’re no good, you’ll never amount to anything and God hates you. The mind of faith, or rather the life of faith, redirects the mind and tells the mind what to think. I mean, for instance, an average day or an average week looked at from the flesh is pretty chaotic, isn’t it? A day wears you out. You come home from work. You’re tired as heck. You want to just eat and go to bed, but you try to stay up long enough so that you don’t oversleep and wake up in the middle of the night. And then you worry about your colleagues at work and how they don’t like you or how they’re out to get you or how they are trying to better themselves by degrading you. Or you’re worried about your finances. You just don’t have enough money to meet the budget at the end of the month. Or then you get some news about your health, and it’s bad news. And all of these things pile on top of one another. Then your relationships, you’ve just broken up with your girlfriend or something, and you’re alone and you feel terrible. If you see all this as in the kingdom of sin and death, then I tell you… It won’t be those things that will harm you, it will be the state of your mind that believes that they are all judgments or abandonments of God. But if you see these things in the light of the kingdom, the kingdom of righteousness and life, then these things will move you closer in fellowship towards God. You say, but how can I know, Colin, that they are part of the kingdom of life? Well, look, don’t forget what we’ve already studied, for goodness sake. Romans chapter 5 says, And not only that, but we also glory in trouble. or glory in tribulations. Now, the word glory here means we congratulate ourselves. Literally, it means we congratulate ourselves. We say, lucky me, I’m just going through trouble. Now, I know that sounds utterly ridiculous and stupid, but faith does something that the mind simply cannot comprehend. It says, I look you in the face. You look bad to me. You look pretty dangerous and awful. You’re bringing trouble to me. But I will rejoice that you have been battered and overcome by the victory of Jesus Christ. And what is coming to me is God’s grace, my Father’s grace, through your sickness towards me. This is how we do things. We are defiant with our faith. Faith is bold. If you’ve forgotten how bold faith is, then read the book of Hebrews. The reference to boldness comes across frequently in the book of Hebrews. We come boldly before the throne of grace, seeking for help in time of trouble. How can we be so bold? not from a scared, guilt-ridden, shamed mind, but from the boldness that faith in Christ gives us, that he has become our judgment so that we are no longer judged, and that he is our resurrection so that we will not stay in death or this deathly state, but we are living in the resurrection of Christ. in the knowledge that Christ has brought us access to the Father and took the wrath of his own Father upon himself. God took his wrath upon himself so that you and I need never suffer it. This is what we do. And so if you want to have more clarity about what Romans 6 tells you, then go back to the beginning of Romans 5 and you’ll find out. congratulating ourselves, how absurd, congratulating ourselves in the troubles that come to us. Look, I’m preaching to myself as well as you. I don’t feel congratulatory when trouble comes to me. But when I correct my mind after wallowing in my own sorrow for a while, then I get it. And then I bounce back. That’s what faith will do for you. It will give you bounce-backability. Thanks for listening today. Colin Cook here. You can hear this broadcast on the radio at 10 in the evening, repeated at 4 in the morning on KLTT AM 670 in the Denver and Colorado and surrounding states. But you can also hear it anytime on your smartphone. Simply download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. And if I may say, would someone, just one or two, at least two or three and maybe ten, consider becoming a partner at $50 a month to help this radio program and the Ministry of Faith Quest to keep going? Please send your donation to online, make your donation online at faithquestradio.com or send it to P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Thanks so much. See you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
