Who Do You Belong To?

Introduction

Hey good morning everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Kevin and my wife and our 11 month have been serving overseas in the Middle East for the past couple of years. We are currently back stateside because we ran into some visa issues with our son. You wouldn’t guess it looking at him, but he is a hardened criminal who has been kicked out of our country. SO were back in the states for a few months before we can head home.

I have the privilege and joy of getting to preach this Sunday and next Sunday as a part of your series, The Gospel Truth. And my hope and prayer for you over these couple of weeks, and really throughout this series, is that the Gospel of Jesus Christ, this good news of our savior, would be so evident in your life that you and those around you would glorify God more and more. That you would not be ashamed of this Gospel because it is the power to save you.

I have this weird habit of wandering whenever I go into any store. Especially the grocery store. I don’t know what it is, but I like walking around and looking at everything. My wife usually has a list and a plan and wants to get in, get what we need, and get out. I like taking the scenic route. You know, seeing whats new in the QFC.

I’ve always been a wanderer. And honestly, if I had to decide, I’d probably say that in life wandering is often the better way. You get to experience more, find something you might have missed, maybe meet new people or run into old friends. But ever sense I was a kid, I would wander and often that wandering, much like it does today, would take place in a store.

But there is also a down side to wandering. Sometimes wandering is accompanied unfortunately by getting lost. I remember more times then I’d like to admit, my mom would have to call for my name over the loud speaker. “Would Kevin please make your way to the front of the store.” “Would Kevin please come to checkout counter 3.” Today with my wife, instead of the loud speaker, she just calls my phone thankfully… it would be a little more embarrassing if she had to use the loud speaker. Probably more embarrassing for her.

I remember being little and finally finding my way to the front of the store and my mom exhaling the breath she was holding in and saying to the cashier, “there he is. That ones mine.”

I belonged to my mom.

Belonging to someone is often an uncomfortable idea for us today. We like to be free. We like to have autonomy to decide for ourselves where we go and what we do. To belong to someone means that we are not our own, but that rubs us the wrong way because we are independent, masters of our own fate. I get to decide for myself what I believe and why. My truth is my truth.

But The Gospel Truth is different. And the Gospel Truth is the ultimate and eternal truth. And the Gospel Truth says that being a follower of Jesus means that you belong to Christ. And if you belong to Christ, then you must obey Christ. In fact, You belong to who you obey and you obey who you belong to.

And so, before we go any further, I must ask, Who do you belong to? Who do you obey?

The Apostle Paul writes to the church in Rome that they belong to Christ and because they belong to Christ, their lives should look different. In the first half of Romans 6, Paul tells the church that just because there is grace doesn’t mean that they should continue in habitual sin, rather they ought to walk in newness of life. And in the second half of Romans 6, Paul uses a metaphor to illustrate who we belong to and what we are going to see as we open up the text and read it is that our faith in Christ means that we live as slaves to righteousness. That we live in obedience to God.

If you have your bibles with you, open them up to Romans 6:15-23. I’ll be reading the ESV. Would you please stand for the reading of God’s word?

Romans 6:15–23 ESV

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 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? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 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.

Body

1. The Question Reiterated (15)

One of the first things you may have noticed is the that Paul asks a question in verse 15. And the question here is extremely similar to the question in 6:1. Paul is basically asking the church if they should continue to sin? I agree with what Grant Osborne says in his commentary on the text:

In verse 1 the potential error was sinning more to experience more grace, while here it is sinning freely because grace has replaced law.

Just because the believers are not under the law, does not mean that they are free to do whatever they want. They are not free from the law to be law breakers. Paul here is addressing a potential misunderstanding that now, because we have forgiveness of sin freely given to us by Christ, sin is no big deal. I fear that many of us often have a low view of our sin. But don’t misunderstand. The language of the text is clear and serious. Sin leads to death. Should Christians allow sin in their lives? The answer is a resounding no! If you belong to Christ then you ought to root out sin as if you were a doctor ridding a patient of an infection.

So when we are confronted with the temptation to sin, we have two options:

2. Two options (16)

And to clarify this point, Paul uses the metaphor of slavery. You can belong to sin by obeying it which leads to death or you can belong to obedience which leads to righteousness. He states again for the church, You belong to who you obey and you obey who you belong to. So when you are confronted with sin and you obey it, you are living and acting as a slave to sin. When you confronted to sin and you flee from it you are being obedient to righteousness.

It would do us well to know what righteousness is. John Piper, in talking in a general sense about a biblical definition of righteousness, gives two options. He says:

One is reckoned to us — counted to us, imputed to us…… — through faith, which comes from God as a gift in the moment that you receive it by faith. That would be because Jesus has done that righteousness. He has performed that righteousness, and his is counted as ours. The other use of the word would be righteousness that we ourselves are acting out or living out in our daily lives.

To say it another way, If you belong to Christ then you were made Righteous by Christ in the moment that you believed and put your trust in Jesus. His righteousness is placed on you as a child of God. There is also the outworking of the Holy Spirit in your life enabling you to do righteous good works for God’s glory. Make no mistake, imputed righteousness must come first for without it we find ourselves fulfilling the words of the prophet Isaiah when he says in Isaiah 64:6 “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”

The righteousness that Paul is talking about here is not that imputed righteousness from when we first believed, rather it is the the imparted righteousness, the work of the Holy Spirit through us to do righteous acts for the glory of the Father and the advancement of the Gospel. John Piper goes on to say:

…the effort that we make by faith through the Holy Spirit to put to death sins and become more and more practically righteous is not the basis of our right standing with God. It is the consequence or effect of our right standing with God.

This is also the difference between Justification and Sanctification that Billy talked about last week.

Recently, Rachel and I have been using a tool called The New City Catechism to read theological truths to John at night before we pray and put him to bed. Obviously, John doesn’t understand most of what we say, but we’re doing this in order to create healthy rhythms as a family were we can live in obedience to Christ. If you’re not familiar with a catechism, its a church tool used to educate followers of Jesus in the doctrinal truths. It is often given in question and answer format. One of the questions in is, “What do justification and sanctification mean?” and the answer is, “Justification means our declared righteousness before God made possible by Christ’s death and resurrection for us. Sanctification means our gradual growing righteousness, made possible by the Spirit’s work in us.”

That church, is the Gospel Truth. That is why Paul can praise God in the following verses that they who were made Righteous in Christ can now live righteously for Christ.

3. Slave to Sin, slave to righteousness (17-20)

They once were slaves to sin but now are slaves to righteousness. Why? Because they were obedient from the heart, as verse 17 says. It was not just that they started doing good things and were then counted as belonging to Christ, rather it is because they believed and obeyed in their heart that they belong to Christ.

My mom could confidently say that I belonged to her, not because of anything I did, but because I came from her. And in the same way, we belong to Christ, not because of anything we did, but because we have died to ourselves and now have life from Him, we have come from Him. That obedience to Him flows from our hearts.

That is the true Gospel. That is, as Paul says in v. 17, the teaching to which they were committed. Did you catch that? Paul does not say, to the teaching commited to you. Rather, he says they were committed to the teaching. That is to say, we are created and moulded and subjected to this Gospel Truth. Our lives hinge on the Gospel not the Gospel on our lives.

And so, it is by that Gospel that we are freed from sin and can be slaves to righteousness.

Now in our modern time, its important to note that slavery is a term that invokes imagery of the slave trade. Slavery is negative and bad. So why does Paul use it as a metaphor? Well because, as verse 19 says, of our natural limitations. Most scholars agree that Paul uses this metaphor to explain who we belong to because at this point in time something like 90% of Rome were slaves. Many of the Roman christians hearing this letter were probably slaves. And so they would have understood that the life of the slave is one of obedience to their master. When you are a slave, you don’t belong to yourself. That fact would have been painfully clear to the early church. And Paul is getting at the reality that in life no matter what, you are a slave. You are either a slave to sin or you are a slave to righteousness. There is no in between. There is no middle ground. There is no third option.

For us today, it goes against what culture teaches. We like to believe that we are neutral and we get to decide if we want to listen to sinfulness or to righteousness or to whatever our own way is. But that is simply not the case. You are either living for sin or you are living for Christ.

Have you ever tried driving a car up an icy hill? We lived in Portland for a couple of years when we were first married and one of the worst parts about Portland is that when it snows the whole city shuts down. They don’t salt their roads so if you don’t have a good car that does well on ice, its a rough time for you. I remember learning quickly when driving that if you come to a hill and you do not keep moving forward up the hill, it is not that you stop and stay in place, as soon as you stop, you start to slide back down. If we aren’t moving forward in faith, it is not that we become stationary where we are, it means that we are moving backward in slavery to sin.

We are slaves no matter what. The question is not if you are a slave, the question is who are you a slave to?

Again Grant Osborne writes:

The difference is the hostility of the old master versus the love and grace of the new. The first ends in death, the second in eternal life.

That is why Paul urges the church to instead of giving themselves to be used by their old master, to give themselves to be used by God for righteousness sake. And they will then be moving forward, up the hill of sanctification. As you live in obedience to Christ, you will see the Holy Spirit enable you to live righteously more and more. That is the process of sanctification. Growing into the image of Christ. Looking more like Christ.

I just got back from a few days in North Carolina visiting my older brother Max. He is about 4 years older then me. He’s the brother that, growing up, I looked the most alike. We had similar styles partially because I’d often copy his. He is the one who got me into skating and playing bass. Still to this day, Rachel can tell when I’ve talked to Max recently because I sound more like Him. I’m not too proud to admit that I sound like him and not the other way around. He is my big brother. So it is me sounding like him. Sometimes even still, my mom can’t tell us apart on the phone.

The more time I spend with Maxwell means the more I sound like him and others can tell. And so to, the more time you spend with Christ in His word and with His people, the more you obey from the heart His teachings, the more you will sound and look like Him. And others will tell.

Paul reminds them in verse 20 that their allegiance to Christ was not always the way they lived. In fact, before in their slavery to sin, they were free from having to live righteously. But, as we see in the closing verses, the result was death.

4. Result from Sin, Fruit from righteousness (21-23)

The result of their former sin, the things they were ashamed of, was death. There are things in our lives that if we kept doing them would lead us to death. But we have been set free from those things and in the process we belong to God. The fruit that we now produce is the fruit that leads to sanctification which ultimately leads to eternal life in Christ.

Paul is being painfully clear in this passage by stating over and over again. Obedience to sin leads to death, and that was your former way of life. Sin was your former master. But through Christ you now can be obedient to righteousness from the heart and that will lead to a live of sanctification, being made more into the image of Christ, and the result is eternal life with Christ.

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Conclusion

One of my good friends recently shared an artist with us named Sam McCabe. He has some great songs and in one of his songs he has this line where he sings: We don't choose who we are, we just chose who tells us.

When we obey sin we are choosing to let sin tell us who we are and when we obey righteousness we are allowing God to tell us who we are.

You belong to who you obey and you obey who you belong to. So who do you belong to?

In the process of preparing the sermon, I was asked the question, If we are followers of Jesus then why do we still sin? I think if we are honest, many of us have asked that question. And really, I think the answer is simple. We still sin because we live in a broken and fallen world. Sin is all around us and we are weak. We have been made new but we are still being made new and will fully experience that newness when Christ returns.

But I think when people are asking that question, more often then not, they are really wanting an answer to what can I do about my sin as a follower of Jesus? And so, as we close out today, I want to offer a few different steps for how to address sin in your life:

First we need to Reflect on our lives and see what sin is already present. Do you have some inconsistent sins that creep up here and there? Can you look into your life and see were you are struggling and giving in to sin? It might not be major habitual sins. Perhaps you don’t struggle with a pornography addiction. Perhaps you don’t have a substance abuse issue. Perhaps you don’t have major anger issues that are tearing apart your life. But can you reflect on your life and see what some would call little sins here and there? Maybe you obey anger occasionally when you are driving and that jerk in the white tesla cuts you off. (I hope nobody here drives a white tesla…). Perhaps when you go to eat delicious food you cannot control yourself and obey gluttony. Maybe you obey the world’s way more subtly when you worry about having a bigger house or a better car or are chasing a promotion thinking that status will make you better. Ask the Holy Spirit and those who know you well and reflect on your life to root out sins in your life.

Second we need to recognize just how bad that sin is. I think many of us, if we are honest with ourselves, downplay the sin in our life. We give in a little here and there because we don’t really think that our sin is a big issue. We say to ourselves, “That driver deserved it when I cursed at him.” And we end up obeying sin. Or we say, “It’s just one more piece of cake. It’s not that big of a deal I’ll just not eat as much tomorrow.” And we end up obeying sin. Or we say, “It’s not that big of a deal that I snapped at my kid, they didn’t clean up their mess when I told them. My anger was justified.” And we end up obeying sin. We need to recognize that all sin in our life leads to death. Remember, We belong to who we obey and when we constantly obey sin as Christians, then we are constantly going back to our old master. And so recognize just how terrible and deadly our sin is. There is no such thing as a small sin. The wages of sin is death.

Third, we need to Repent of those sins. We need to repent of those sins to Christ and we need to confess to others. In obeying righteousness, we must obey His command to confess our sin regularly. He gives us His Holy Spirit so that we can do just that. We confess our sin to Christ so that we can live in the freedom of obedience to Him. We confess our sin to one another so that we can walk in accountability to that freedom. Repent of sins to God and confess your sins to one another so that your brother or sister in the faith might lovingly walk with you.

As a small practical note on this point: That is why it is so important to be an active member of the local church. In our western and individualistic culture, it is so easy to hide ourselves away from others. To put on a show so that others think we have our stuff together. But Christ calls us into unity and relationship with fellow believers so that we might be fully known and fully loved and we might be able to in community walk in obedience to righteousness.

That is why it is so important to be a member of the church. And I say that not referring to going through the membership process of LifeWay, though you should do that. I say that to mean, be an active participant. Don’t just attend on Sundays when your available and the games not on. Attend weekly, serve with others, join a small group. Be in relationship with other believers who might walk with you and who you can walk with through the process of sanctification.

And finally we need to Replace those sins and lies with righteousness and truths from God’s word and obedience to God’s commands. It is not enough to just know scripture, we must allow scripture to impact how we live our lives. I cannot just know that I ought to love my neighbor as my self, I must actually live out the action of loving my neighbor as my self. I cannot just know that I ought practice self control and go on doing whatever I want, I must actively “I discipline my body and keep it under control” as Paul says to the Corinthians. I cannot just know that I’m supposed to share the Gospel with those who have not heard, I must actively seek out opportunities to point those around me to Christ. We must replace sin in our life with obedience to and the truths of God’s word.

We will not be perfect this side of heaven. But we can strive for righteousness daily as we obey Him. In fact, followers of Jesus must obey righteousness and live for Him in all that we do. When you find yourself having gone some time without obeying righteousness, when you find yourself obeying that old master, simply repent of that sin and turn to Christ. Start new with Him. His mercies are new every morning.

If you are truly in Him, if you have truly been made righteous through Christ, then you will be unmistakably marked by belonging to God. His righteousness is on you and it is through His Holy Spirit that you can live righteously. And when your race is finished and you find your way home, he will undoubtable say of you, “You are mine. You belong to me.”

Let’s pray.