Romans 6:19–23Scripture
If you've been following along with us, we have been looking through the book of Romans, and each week in our groups we dive deep into what we're learning, and we're going to continue in that this morning in Romans chapter 6, verses 19–23. And I've actually entitled this message
Point 1Repentance is a complete about face
This morning "About Face." It's a military term, to where you, I don't even know if I can do it anymore, it's like, somehow, anyway, I used to be able to do it when I was young and had on military boots. But it's a term about going one direction and turning around and going the exact opposite direction. It's the same term that the Bible talks about as far as repentance. It's doing that 180. Yes, 180 turn. Is that half of 360? Okay. And so it's doing that complete turn and going the other direction. That's what repentance is all about. But this morning let's focus on a portion of Scripture that we noticed, that throughout chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Romans, Paul has made it clear that our justification is by God's grace. Now, this is good news for us. We've been learning this, that we cannot save ourselves or work our way into God's good graces by attempting to be as good as possible. Not that I ever tried to be as good as possible as a young man, or even as a middle-aged man, or I'm trying a little harder as an older man, but you know, it's not part of what I believe. A lot of people really do try to be as good as possible, but the good news is that it's not something that we can attain anyway, because we can never be quite good enough to stand before God and say, well, Lord, because of the goodness of my life, or because I was better than somebody else, and therefore you must be impressed with me and open the gates of heaven.
But Paul's been making that point that I just made in almost every way possible, that God does that work. He does it by grace and we receive it by faith. Now, I could go off into a whole tangent on what faith means, but I will control myself, the whole thing about blind faith and just faith, okay. But now what Paul does in chapter 6, and according to our text, he tells us something more: that our lives are no longer bound to our past. I was talking to somebody recently and they mentioned something about, when we break from the past, we're supposed to leave the dead carcasses back there, that we don't need to be dragging them along with us into our newness of life as Christians, but we do tend to do that. I did it for years.
He's given us, the Lord has given us, something that sets us on a new course of life. Would you guys start that clock back here, please, so I'll know how long I have to preach?
And the longer it takes them to start the clock, the longer I get to preach. So who said please? That's what I figured.
But many will see Paul's message about forgiveness and redemption from our bondage of sin and not understand that God cares about how we live today, or that his grace can transform our present-day life. Now, this is a major concern, because many Christians, I do believe, do not understand that
Salvation is more than just a ticket into heaven, but it's an empowerment to change our lives, to affect our lives in a good way.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 4:05
According to a research outfit called LifeWay Research, they stated, and this is a recent survey, that 9 in 10 Americans who attend a religious service at least monthly, this blows my mind, nine in ten who attend a religious service at least monthly believe the biblical accounts of Jesus's resurrection.
Ninety percent of the people in the survey believe that Jesus rose from the dead, and they go to church. Okay, I just, that blew my mind.
But despite accepting the biblical accounts of Jesus's resurrection, many Americans see little connection between Jesus's rising again and their daily lives. I'm going to give you just a second to think about this for you. In your day-to-day life, how much does Jesus affect your life?
Oh, come on. Okay, I know people don't like to respond, I understand that. But despite accepting these accounts, and the thought that we go to church, we accept the biblical story of Jesus dying and rising again from the dead and even going into heaven to represent us before God as an intercessor, we don't see him primarily as being involved in our life. You know how we usually see him? A genie in a bottle, someone we can go to when our life isn't going right, someone we can go to begin to pray that the circumstances of our life that are not favorable to us, so therefore we go to him saying, Lord, do something here and fix my circumstances. And we can even get down to the point sometimes where we want God to change the will of a person we know. You ever done that? Oh, Lord, change my husband, he is not favorable to me right now. I thought I would get specific there. But with that thought all in mind here, let's go to verse 18. Even though I know that we're starting in 19, but I want to jump back a verse. In verse 18 of our text, let me read it: "and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." In this verse Paul has introduced the phrase "slaves of righteousness," and he expands on that in the passage we're going to be taking a look at here in a minute. And the reality is that
A believer's life differs from an unbeliever's. I'm going to let that soak in for a second. A believer's life is supposed to look different than an unbeliever's life.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 7:34
We can get into the whole thing about what it means to put on Christ, whether it's just something we try to add to our busy lives, which ends up looking like just going to church on Sunday and we call that good. But that is not what the Bible teaches.
Religion is not something we just put on.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 7:57
So let's read our text this morning, beginning in verse 19. It says, "I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." There is no condition so sad and so hard
Point 2Sin enslaves us far beyond bad habits
As that, as a slave to sin. And I think many times people don't even realize that they are enslaved to sin.
It could be a habit. That's how we view it. See, we take a look at sin and then we begin to put actions or habits to it, and to bring it, you know, bring definition to it. It's like, I've got this habit that I can't seem to quit. But at the same time we try to lie to ourselves and to other people that want to try to help us with this bad habit we got in our lives, and we'll say things like, well, I can quit anytime I want, the problem is I just don't want to. Not realizing that we're actually
Enslaved to something far more serious and far more devastating than just a habit.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 10:03
I want to share a story with you this morning. A tyrant once ordered one of his subjects to make an iron chain of a certain length. The man brought the work, and the tyrant ordered him to make it longer.
So he continued to add a link to the link of this chain until the cruel taskmaster ordered his servants to bind the worker with his own chain and cast him into the fire. But there's a tyrant out there today that's even harder than that. He's called the devil.
He treats his slaves in the same way. At first that chain of sin is light and easy to bear, but day by day he bids his victims to add another link and another link, and the servant of sin grows more hardened and daring and reckless in his evil ways, and he adds sin to sin, and then the end comes.
Pastor Shawn was talking recently about the increased speed, it seems like, sin is beginning to be manifest in the world around us, and like this cascading effect, and of course he also talked about how grace does the same thing in our lives. But this is how sin works. It begins easy, and it's just, maybe we're just young, and it becomes easy to handle, to control. It's like when I was younger, I was, like, smoking pot for the first time.
There is a truth to the fact that they said it's a gateway to harder drugs.
Sin is very exacting, a very exact requirement. In fact, as slaves of sin, our bodies become the instruments of unrighteousness and the lusts of the flesh are obeyed. The prodigal, in the so perhaps you know the story of the prodigal, because we're going to take a look at that in a minute, because the prodigal son in the parable presents the condition of someone under the tyranny and carnality of sin. I'm going to take a look at that here. We're going to read out of Luke 15.
A little bit of a story, perhaps you're familiar with it. Luke 15:11 through 24, I believe, 24. Listen to these words. This is another story, it's a parable of the prodigal son, and he said, this is Jesus talking, and he said, "There was a man who had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.'" And you know what's interesting in this, he didn't want to wait till his dad died before he got his half of the inheritance. That's rough. "And he divided his property between them." That's even worse, he agreed.
"Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.
And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything." Remember that little part: no one helped him. "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate."
The son, in his pursuit of happiness and in the process of time, he found himself wallowing in a pigpen.
Now, there's a purpose to the story, but I want you to please notice the terminology used in this story, because in verse 17 he says, "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!'" And then in verse 19 he says, "I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants." The whole purpose of what we've been studying here in Romans, in chapter 6, and we're going to be going more into chapter 7, is that we are enslaved to someone, whether it be the devil and sin or to God.
We don't understand freedom, which I'll begin to look at here in just a minute. His perspective had changed concerning what the world had to offer. A young man who gets his inheritance, that he decides to go out and party, was the old party hardy in the world, spends all of his inheritance, spends everything, and he's gone, finds himself having to go get a job, and that job was not a favorable job.
And he begins to realize how good he had it as a son to the father. And this is what Paul is talking about so much, is that we can be set free from our sin and we begin to be put on a new track, a new way of life, a better way of life, but yet somehow we still have our lives tied to those old dead carcasses that we're dragging along behind us, and from time to time we turn around and we begin to pay attention to them, and we begin to yearn to go back to that old way of life and that bondage to sin. It may just be a little sin, something I can handle, something I can control, and then we find over a period of time that it has taken control of us again. Verse 19 of our text says, "For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification."
And for this reason we think we can take hold of the good benefits of being called the children of God while wallowing around in the world's pigpen, just like this young man did. Oh, I'm a son of the Father, I have a rich inheritance that he has given me, he has provided for me everything that I need in this life, and then he goes out, and under his own wisdom and his own desires of the flesh, more than likely desires of the heart, and he goes and he begins to invest and spend his time in that pursuit of his happiness and ends up in a pigpen, and one day woke up and said, what am I doing? The good part of this story that is not told is that he had a father that he could return to in repentance, but not so much as a son but as a servant. Lord, I've come to my right mind, I want to turn, I'm going to turn and go come back to you and I'm going to serve you, because I'm tired of serving the slop of sin.
Verse 20 of our text: "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness." To put that simply, in other words, the righteousness of God was not active in our lives. When you hear the word "righteous," what comes to your mind? Perfection.
That's not what it means, that I must live some thoughtless life before God and he, it's like he's got his thumb upon my life and if I make a mistake he's ready to squish the life out of me. That's not what it means. See, as sinners, our lives oppose God.
We are the children of a fallen father, as sinners, and belong to a depraved or deprived, corrupted race. Now, okay, before you attempt to figure out what I meant by that, let me explain. Jesus, at one point in his ministry, was talking to some Jews who had spent their lives believing that their salvation was earned by obeying a set of laws and ordinances. Well, we've got to do this, we've got to do that, we can't do this, we can't do that, can't drink our coffee out of a dirty cup. You know, I say, later for that, my coffee cup has got good ground stains all around it. I wonder how many of you went, ooh, gross. There's one, two. I do wash it, okay, from time to time, and if I don't, my wife will throw it in the dishwasher and then I got no choice but to get it all stained up again.
So anyway, all right, that was not in my notes. John chapter 8, verses 31–34 is about the story of the Jews here. "So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him," I catch this, who believed him, they were not unbelievers, "'if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' They answered him, 'we are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone.'" See, this is how they viewed freedom.
"'How is it that you say, "You will become free"?' Jesus answered them, 'Truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin.'" Right out of the mouth of Jesus Christ. It's the same mentality of freedom that we have today. See, the Jews, they thought they were free because of their religion, or because of who they believed in, like Abraham. We believe in Abraham, we were Abraham's seed, we are his children, we come from the stock of Abraham, so therefore we are free, we have never been in bondage to anyone or enslaved to anything. But it's no different today. We have things such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly, and freedom to petition the government, for all the good that does you. But we have these freedoms, and together these five guaranteed freedoms in our nation supposedly make the people of the United States of America the freest nation in the world. But that's not the kind of freedom that Jesus is talking about. According to the words of Jesus, we do not understand true freedom.
Let's take a look at some more recent statistics. In 2021, and this came out just about three weeks ago, a Gallup poll revealed church membership in the U.S. Has fallen below 50 percent for the first time. Interesting. Let's look at verse 44 of John chapter 8.
This is Jesus's response to these Jews who said we've never been enslaved to anybody. He tells them, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies." Now, this sounds a little harsh, doesn't it?
Today, if you were to talk to somebody like that, what would happen? Racist. What are some of the other terms?
Or maybe we shouldn't say them out loud, you get canceled. Well, that's true, Facebook's always there.
It isn't unusual for people, now I'm going to defend the Jews a little bit here, because it is not unusual for people, including these Jews that he was talking with, to defend their position based on their personal knowledge. Personal knowledge. So here's what Paul has to say about it in Romans 5, we've already went through this in the previous chapter, in Romans 5, verse 12: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all have sinned." Sin does not produce anything good. It brings shame to our lives.
Verse 21 of our text: "But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?" Let me backtrack just a little bit.
The Jews, everything that they were saying was based on personal knowledge, but sin, and Jesus is telling them, you're slaves
Point 3Sin's only fruit is shame
To sin.
Sin does not produce anything good, but what it does produce is shame.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 26:15
We've all experienced it.
Think back. What have you ever done that brought shame to your life? Now, I'm not talking about stealing candy bars in a local store when you're three years old, perhaps checking out of the grocery store and your debit card pops up and says, no money.
I don't know if that would be a shame or just pure irritation, irritating. But at a deeper level, when you have been a victim of abuse or mistreatment, or when the worst about you becomes known. So let's have a confession this morning. Everybody stand up and tell us the worst thing about you.
I'll go first. I'm glad nobody stood up, actually, because I was going to have to say, sit down. Those things that we like to keep hidden.
But what exactly was Paul talking about here? The dictionary definition of shame goes something like this: shame is the painful emotion caused by a consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. Oh, here I go. A condition of humiliating disgrace or disrepute. I don't know if you understand this, beloved, but the characteristic of sin here is, and the character of sin is being arraigned in all periods of time. In our text he talks about the sin and that's the fact in the past, or that it was unfruitful, I said, what fruit did you have, or for the present time, it's disgraceful, you are now ashamed, is what he's saying, or for the future, it's destructive power, because the end of these things is death. So he's talking about sin and its effect upon our lives in the past, today, and forever. That is some serious stuff right there. Sin kills us a little each day, and along the way it begins to bring feelings of bad emotional, oh, okay, let me put it this way: do you suffer from bad emotional traumas, or have you suffered a bad emotional trauma in your life? We say, well, how can that be sin? I know you're waiting for an answer, right? And I could get into this whole thing about lack of faith in God and not allowing God to heal us and put our trust in God, and maybe, and that's true to an extent, but sin demoralizes us. It drags us down into a depth, into the pigpen scenario, where we seem like we're just wallowing around in all the defeats of life, and we can't seem to let go of the past, and so there's that connection to the past and we can't seem to release that and let go of that so we can move on into what God has for us in the future, and we just seem torn and anchored in the sins of the past, or as I like to say it, because of my own life, the failures of the past.
There can be any number of areas that we feel like we have failed, and we allow that to become a weight of depression, an anchor to drag us down, even as Christians. And what Paul is talking about here is that when we are set free from sin it no longer has dominion over us, and we are able to release it so we can do that by faith and begin to pursue God. The first mention of shame is interesting. It was in relation to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Genesis 2:25: "And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed."
Until they disobeyed God, then shame came.
Shame is connected with disobedience to God.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 31:17
Shame is living in our lives when we are living a sinful life. It's there.
Point 4Freed from sin, we become slaves of righteousness
Shame and fear were and are the results of sin. But the good news, in part, is the transformation of doing that by faith. We find this in verse 22: "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." This, beloved, is the good news: we no longer have to, we are no longer bound to sin,
We're no longer under the dominion of sin once we make that turn about in our lives and in our faith and what we believe, and we anchor ourselves to God.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 32:06
Anchor, why? Because the Bible says that Jesus is that unmovable rock. He is a something that we can anchor our lives to. This 22nd verse that I just read brings before us the conclusion of the struggle that Paul has been tracing more or less throughout the sixth chapter, that is, the transition from the old to the new, the outcome of that change of masters, the outlook that we now have for a bright future. These are also the three times or dispensations of a Christian life, which I find very interesting because it deals with our past, our present, and the future. The past is something that we look back to which has passed and gone, if we will allow it to be gone. The present is something that we now look at, now in the present experiences of our life, free from sin to live for God. And the future is something that we look forward to as a final result: eternal life.
But we need to know the difference, because I do believe, and I know there's some personal experience, that we can get confused about the difference between those three: the past, today, the future.
The past, Romans 6:3, we just studied it, the first part of Romans, the same chapter: "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" Verse 6: "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved." Verse 9 of the same chapter we're in right now: "We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him." And it's because we are buried with him in his death and we have been resurrected with him in his life, death and sin no longer has dominion over us. We need to know the difference between the past and the now.
Romans 6:16, just a little before our text this morning: "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?" Do we not know that? Has that not become a part of our mental capacity, that something that we just know, or is it still a struggle with us? Is it still hard for us to accept these facts?
He uses the example of being enslaved, which the people he wrote this letter to understood, because it was a reality of theirs. They understood slavery in the flesh. They had masters who told them what to do and where to go and how to live. But in our, he is redirecting them to something new. He is telling these people now, however, he states, present yourselves as slaves to righteousness. Paul is saying that we who have known the bondage of sin must now present ourselves as slaves to righteousness. Give the members of your body over to slavery to righteousness. Do we know that's required?
Do we understand that requires a hard about face in our lives?
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 36:33
There is no fence-sitting in Christianity. There's no gray area.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 36:45
What the apostle is saying here: pursue righteousness, pursue God. Why? Because the righteousness we receive from God is life.
Hey, let's look again at verse 22: "But now that you have been set free from sin, you have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." The righteousness that we receive from God is the fruit of what and who he is, what sanctifies us and connects us to eternal life.
The fruit, he says, that we now have right now as believers in Jesus Christ is life, is salvation, which sanctifies us. The apostle was saying it's a package deal. Sanctification equals life. The fruit we receive from God is life by way of salvation. The two greatest blessings we receive from God's grace are our justification and our sanctification. What does that mean? Well, justification means acceptance and forgiveness
Point 5God gives a new heart and new spirit
That comes from God. Sanctification means holiness and righteousness, which, by the way, also comes from God.
But how do these blessings of God take place in our lives? I just looked up at the clock. Can we rewind that? How do these blessings of God take place in our lives? Ezekiel 36:26 says these words, and I will give you, listen, really listen here, because this is how it is accomplished in our lives. Ezekiel 36:26: "And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." What he is saying here is, I will do something new, something you have not experienced before. I will give you a new heart, not something that we have earned by trying to be extra good on Sunday. I will give you something new. I will give you a new heart. I will put within you a new spirit, something you have not possessed before. Why? Because our spirit was dead, we were dead in our sins.
"I will remove the heart of stone," literally the hardness of heart that is formed within you, and I could go on for 10 minutes about how we tend to, out of a hardness and the woundings of our heart, how we begin to put up the walls of defense, and if I don't stop I will spend 10 minutes on that. He says, "I will give you a heart of flesh,"
Or a fresh heart, something new, something fresh, something that can once again hope for a brighter future.
Starting today, the fruit that we receive is from the heart of God, it is the outcome of his character, that's who he is.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 40:29
Looking again in verse 22: "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life." This new heart and new spirit lead us to sanctification. First Corinthians 1:30: "Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption." It's almost like I feel like I'm preaching a salvation message.
We can only stand before God because of what he has done and is doing. He is our righteousness, he is our sanctification, he is our redemption. Or, as Evan Hopkins, a mid-19th-century minister, I like going back to the old guys, he said this: Christ is, in the past, the day of our believing, our righteousness, in the present he is our sanctification, in the future our redemption. Sanctification literally means to be set apart for special use or purpose, that is, to make holy. Therefore sanctification refers to the state or process of being set apart, in other words, made holy, as a vessel filled with the Holy Spirit of God. That's who we are if we are anchored and connected and enslaved to righteousness, which is God. The most common use within Christian theology is in reference to the change, it's talking about sanctification, the reference of the change brought about by God in a believer, beginning at the point of salvation and continuing throughout the believer's life. There are those in the theological world that believe that sanctification is a one-time thing. There are others that believe it's a lifetime process. I tend to believe it's a lifetime process, it helps me stay, keep on my toes. Romans 12:2 explains what it means to be set apart for a special use or purpose, because according to the Word of God, you have a use and purpose in life as a Christian.
Unbelievers cannot say that, because they really are not useful to God or in God's plan for the world, for humanity. They live their lives, again, that's a little harsh, but God has a plan for us.
The world, you know what is the world's plan for us? Besides paying taxes, raising our kids so they can pay taxes. Anybody want to add anything to that? Okay, I made it all about the money, didn't I? Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." Ephesians 2:10: "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." What does this mean, works? How does it, and it's our labor, it's what we do, it's how we live, it's how we act, that's our deeds. So how does this affect our day-to-day lives? And this is really what I was coming to for the last half hour, says I'm one minute over. How does this affect our day-to-day lives, the fact that Jesus resurrected from the dead to be seated at the right hand of the Father? How does this affect our day-to-day lives? Everything I've been saying talks about how God has done all of this, the righteousness, sanctification, eternal life, that we could be a part of that and we could become a vessel by which his Spirit can live and move through us.
Ephesians 4:22 through 24 says, "To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." I'm going to return to verse 19 here, where Paul commands Christians to present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. In other words, we are to stop acting like unbelievers, or we need to get our act together, take your pick. I like the second one. Why? Ephesians 5:27: "So that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish." The whole purpose of what the Bible talks about, being washed in the Word, is to cleanse us and to present us before himself without spot, without blemish, the perfect bride of Christ. And sin destroys that. Sin is what brings the blemishes, it brings the scars, the ugliness to our lives.
I am deciding whether or not to finish out my third point. I think I will go a little further here.
Romans 6:23, talking about eternal life: "But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit that you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Eternal. This right here is why I decided to go another couple of minutes. A biblical Bible dictionary, I can't pronounce it's a definition, it's a Greek definition of the word "eternal," means without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be. This has always blown my mind. We tend to think that eternal life starts when we physically die. Not so. Ephesians 1:4: "Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love." We need to grasp the meaning of this, because we're chosen for a specific purpose. Before the foundation of the world he chose us, a purpose that he designed and provided, and by which he provided the means for his accomplishments. This means by which this is, okay, the, it means by which this is, the, I feel like slapping myself, the means by which this is accomplished is in and through Jesus Christ and worked out by the Holy Spirit in our lives. John 14:6, Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." You know what else he is? Revelation 1:8 says, "I am the Alpha," Jesus speaking, "I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." That's who else he is.
Okay, let's try this one on for size. John 15:5–6: "I am the vine," this is Jesus speaking, "you are the branches. Whoever abides in me," remember, let's take, remember back to the beginning of the message where he's talking to the Jews, he says, if you abide in me, "I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." Remember the text from John 8 near the beginning of this message, where he was talking about the same thing: "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." True freedom comes when we abide in Christ, buried with him in his death and resurrected with him unto life. Hebrews 8:12, I'm trying to kind of rush through this a little bit: "For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more." Contemplate this for just a minute. As we abide in him and we are connected to him, we are anchored in him,
He remembers our sins no more, which means there is no past.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 51:13
I like to believe that it means that it was like we never sinned. Now, gentlemen, your wife might remember
Your sin from 40 years ago, but God doesn't. That should give you hope.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 51:39
Wives, the same truth applies here.
When people seem to want to bring up the pastor's, so God doesn't remember that, because I am his child.
When people want to bring up your failures in the past or your lifestyle of the past, and we want to hang on to that ourselves,
Remember, God doesn't even remember it. We do.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 52:19
Okay, so let's teleport back to the Garden of Eden, when Adam and eve were allowed to eat the fruit of every tree in the garden except the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If you ever stop to think that the tree of life was included in those they could eat the fruit from until they disobeyed God and ate the forbidden tree's fruit, they were then cut off from the tree of life. Okay, now let's teleport to the future, where the tree of life shows up again in Revelation 22:1–2. For the wages of sin, it says in Romans 6:23, is death. "The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." I don't know if you caught the shift from verse 22 to 23, where Paul says, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and its end, eternal life. The fruit that leads to eternal life. He makes a shift now in 23. He says, "But the free gift of God is eternal life." Not only is it now a fruit of who he is that's operated in our lives, it's literally a gift.
Jesus Christ was our gift of righteousness. I want to finish today, I skipped some of that, but I want to finish today with one Scripture, a Scripture of encouragement, Philippians 1:6.
"I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."
I am convinced that the work that has begun in you, God is fully capable and willing and will complete it, as needed. That's our hope for the future right there, besides eternal life, to get to spend all of eternity with one another, with Jesus Christ, with the Father, the big family of God that we like to talk about.
But on an individual level, God sees you as a child, just like our story of the prodigal son.
The father saw him as his son, but the father also understood a slave mentality, that we enslave ourselves to righteousness, we serve righteousness, we live out our lives in righteousness, forsaking the sins of our past, forsaking the dominion that sin had over our lives and releasing that and making that turn around to serve God in his righteousness. It's a decision we have to make, and for some time, sometimes I believe it's one we have to make every day when we get up of a morning. I will serve, I will do what is right today.
I will not turn around and go back to the sin that God set me free from.
Pastor Bruce Boydston · 56:34
I will make that decision today and I will serve God.
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