Full Weight - Romans 6:15-23

Copyright May 12, 2024 by Rev Bruce Goettsche

Hip surgery is an interesting experience. Your hip joint is chiseled out, your bone is sawed off, and then a metal joint is put in, which involves a spike hammered into your femur. The doctor tells you that you can put full weight on this new joint as soon as the surgery is completed. Meanwhile, your body and your head says, “No way is that going to happen!”

After my first hip surgery, I had to stay in the hospital overnight because they didn’t have a physical therapist available to come up and check me out. When I asked to get up and move, the nurse said, “Walk very gently, like you are walking on a raw egg.” Apparently, she didn’t believe the Doctor either.

This story illustrates what we are reading in Romans 6. We have been told at the end of Romans 5 and the first two sections in Romans 6 that we have died to sin and should not live in it any longer. It is the same as the Doctor saying, “your new hip can bear full weight.” The struggle we look at today and the next couple of weeks is the tension between what we are told and how we respond. We hear Paul, but every part of us seems to simply dismiss what was said as being impossible. I think this is why Paul really seems to focus on this concept. We hear what Paul is teaching, we just don’t think there is any way for us to live the kind of life we are being called to live. So, let’s dive in, starting in verse 15.

Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not!

We No Longer Have to Live the Way We Used to Live

This has been Paul’s argument leading up to this point. Christ broke the bonds of sin that held us captive. We no longer have to live a rebellious and sinful life. There is a better way!

Imagine you have been locked up for a tortuous prison stay. Every day you are hassled and wonder if this day will be your last. You survive only because you keep your head down and try blending into the shadows. Then one day, you are pardoned. The misery is over; the fear can be cast aside, and you are free.

Now, here is the question: Does it make sense to remain in prison after you have been pardoned? Why would anyone choose to remain in a place that has brought you such misery for such a long time? It doesn’t make any sense.

Yet, isn’t this what we do time and time again? Because of Jesus, we have died to sin. Through His life, death, and resurrection, we have been pardoned. We don’t have to live this life any longer yet it is what we do. Living this sinful life is what is familiar and oddly comfortable for us. We know how to live this way. But this kind of thinking is just as foolish as the prisoner who has been miserable refusing to leave prison after the pardon because change is hard. It demands a new approach, a new way of looking at things. But remaining comfortable is not the answer.

We Must Choose Who We Will Serve

Let’s go back to any kind of joint replacement surgery . . . The question is: do you want to get better? Do you want to have a pain-free life? To get there is going to take some deliberate work. One of the toughest things, I would think, of being a Physical Therapist is listening to all the complaining of people saying: “It’s too hard,” “I don’t want to do it!” “It hurts.” The therapist knows without the work, you will never reach the goal of pain-free living. Listen to Paul’s words.

16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. 17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. 18 Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.

19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.

For most of us, we resist the notion that we are slaves to anything. We have this illusion (or maybe delusion) that we are free. We make our own decisions. But that notion is a sales pitch of the Devil designed to draw us further from the Lord. It is called “bait and switch.” You hold out this promise of freedom and what you get in return in a slavery that robs you of the life created you to live. We are all serving someone. We are either serving the Lord (righteousness) or the Devil (sinful indulgence).

We understand how some people and enslaved by drugs or alcohol. But we can be enslaved to lots of things. Many of us are bound to our emotions and our desires. We are enslaved to our lusts or what we perceive to lead to a sense of emotional well-being. Paul says we are slaves to whatever we willingly obey. Liars are enslaved to their lies and have to keep coming up with new lies to cover their old ones. We can be enslaved to our anger and give it control in our lives. We can be slaves to the rush for material wealth and status. In the process, we can alienate our families, compromise our health, and become people who are obsessed with the material. This makes us superficial. We can be obsessed with a worthy cause, such as caring for family, giving our children the best, pleasing our spouse, or fighting some injustice. You can be enslaved by politics or your loyalty to your country. You can be enslaved by philosophical or even theological ideas.

The bottom line is that apart from the supernatural work of Christ, we are all slaves to sin. We are catering to whatever enslaves us. If these things coincide with what God wants for us, that is great! But that is not serving the Lord! If we are not serving Him allthe time, we are not really serving Him at all. We have to choose who we will serve.

We Must Remember That Choices Have Consequences

20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

A Doctor or a Therapist may say to a recalcitrant patient, “You can do the work (or take the medication) and get better and have a good rest of your life, or you can refuse to do the work and not get any better than you are right now, and likely decay further. It is up to you. This is basically what Paul is telling the Romans and us.

Paul says the result of the life we lived under sin has led us to feelings of shame, regret and ultimately, eternal doom. Shame turns us inward. It eats away at us and poisons our ability to enjoy things we would have enjoyed otherwise. It may turn us into people who think of ourselves as defective (leading to depression and despair) or make us hide behind talk of being victims (leading us to a sense of entitlement and looking to blame everyone but us).

It is hard to believe there is anyone here who does not look back on some things they have done and feel a sense of remorse or shame. You likely wish you had made many different choices than those you made. People were hurt. You may have scars today (literally and figuratively) because of choices you made. There may be debts you are still paying off, and there are likely ripple effects of the sinful choices you made revealing themselves in many different places.

But there is another alternative: we can gladly serve as a slave of Christ. This is the highest honor we could know in this life. On Memorial and Veterans Days we honor those who served in the military and remember those who paid the ultimate cost for our freedom. All these soldiers considered it an honor to serve their country. But serving Christ is a far greater honor.

As we serve the Lord, we discover a better way of living. We are forgiven and made new. The shame is cast aside, and we are open to God's forgiveness. His way is different, but we discover that the rewards of serving the Lord are great in this life because we discover that it is what we were made for. The way of the Lord is the right way to walk. It is fulfilling. It leaves no regret. And it brings the smile of God. Ultimately, and finally, the way of Christ is the way that leads to eternal life . . . a gift of God that is incomprehensible in its beauty.

The Struggle

We can hear the words that we don’t have to live the sinful life anymore and can choose who we serve and the consequences that come from that choice. But there is a very real problem isn’t there? How do we change from serving our sinful nature (which comes so naturally) and start serving the Lord, which is completely foreign to us? We tend to hear these words and just dismiss them because they do seem impossible to actually do. They seem theoretical and not practical at all. We need to change that idea. Here are some truths I hope help us in that regard.

First, Christ has already freed us from our bondage to Sin. If we go back to our illustration of surgery, the Doctor has already repaired what was wrong it is our job to make the most of the healing that has been given to us. There is nothing for us to do to be free of the power of sin . . . we are ALREADY set free through the work of Christ.

If we put our trust in Christ, the hold that sin has on us is broken. We don’t HAVE TO live that way any longer. Is it really possible to live a god-honoring life? Our experience tells us it is not. But the Bible tells us our Lord was tempted in every way that we are, and yet He was without sin. He will show us the way if we listen to and follow Him. We are given the Holy Spirit to guide and empower us as we continue in our lives. We have what we need to live a more righteous life . . . it is just hard.

Second, we must make the choice to live for Him a conscious choice. Paul tells us that we are the slaves to the One we obey. Our slavery to the sinful nature came easily. We make these choices instinctively. We have lived this way all our lives and, let’s be honest, it is comfortable. We were born into this slavery. Consequently, living as a slave of Christ is something we will have to consciously pursue. We need to remind ourselves over and over that we are new creature in Christ. The old needs to pass away so the new can come.

There is a story told among the Cherokee Indians… One evening an old Cherokee Indian told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between 2 wolves. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, false pride, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, kindness, generosity, truth, compassion and faith. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed the most.”

Rick talked about this at the end of his sermon last week. We feed one wolf or the other by the things we watch, what we read, the people we hang out with, the messages we tell ourselves, the things we allow to trouble us, and the paths we choose to take. We need to work to make these conscious choices; otherwise, we will always default to the choice that gives the immediate payoff, and that is almost always the way of sin.

I hear that getting your knee replaced is much tougher than your hip. After you get your new joint you must have physical therapy to get movement back into the knee. You must work with a therapist who will have to break those adhesions that are in your knee . . . and that is not a pleasant process. All our lives we have believed pain was bad. So, if something hurts, we recoil from it. But to get mobility in your knee you have to tell yourself a new truth: the pain of therapy is necessary to be able to live with a healthy knee. You must work THROUGH the pain.

This is true in all of life. If someone had a serious stroke, they have to re-learn things. They need to open new pathways in the brain, and from what I understand, it is painfully difficult. Imagine having to learn how to walk again or talk. Imagine learning to eat with a utensil again. In some respect, this is what we are doing as a follower of Christ, and it will be a struggle. But to overcome a stroke, a person needs to say every single day . . . the goal today is to make progress.

It is the same way when it comes to sin. We must keep working to make progress. We are not only fighting sin, we are fighting against our love for that sin! It is an addiction we must work on with great diligence. If we do not do this consciously, we will never progress. Maybe we should put up little notes around our homes that quote Joshua 24:15, “Choose this Day who you will serve.”

Third, we need to see this new life as of primary importance. It has to be THE priority of our lives. This is where we often get into trouble. We are distracted by all kinds of other priorities. Every one of these things argues that it should be of primary importance. It may be a job, a hobby, an organizational affiliation. Satan wants to keep us busy doing “good things” so that we never get around to doing the best things.

R.C. Sproul wrote,

What draws us to obedience and righteousness is not duty but love. It is gratitude. If we grasp the magnitude of grace – we should be willing to crawl over broken glass to honor and pursue Him. (St. Andrews Commentary on Romans)

Sproul’s point is twofold: First, we have not fully grasped how great this salvation provided by Christ really is. We were lost. We had no hope of the situation changing. Others may have thought well of us, and we might have tried to convince ourselves that we were good. . . but deep down, whether we admitted it or not, we knew the truth. You may have felt like everyone had given up on you and written you off. You may believe there isn’t much hope for you. Please hear me . . . you are wrong! God sees you. He loves you. He wants you to find rest in Him. By putting our hope and trust in Christ, we are forgiven . . . forgiven for ALL of it . . . and now we are empowered to live a new life. Our status becomes “child of God!” That makes us of superior value to the Creator over all that is.

Sproul's second point is this: if we have any inkling at all of the nature of the gospel message, we will live to bring Him honor and praise. The problem is, we aren’t really sure what that means. This is where having a solid theology is helpful. If we understand who God is, we will be better equipped to know what we should do.

· Because God created all people in his image, they have dignity. We should treat them accordingly.

· Because God is compassionate, we are sympathetic rather than judgmental or condescending toward the poor and the weak.

· God created the world and entrusted it to mankind; therefore, we care for it.

· Because our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we care for our bodies so that we can glorify God in them.

· God is the God of truth, so we should be people who tell the truth.

· Our Lord was compassionate and saw and loved even those the world ignored. So, we should do the same.

· Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice for sin. Therefore, we should not live under a cloud of guilt or attempt to atone for our sins.

· Since Jesus intercedes for believers, we need not worry about praying perfectly. He presents our needs to the Father.

Conclusions

I leave you with two final thoughts. First, before we will ever be serious about our spiritual commitment to Christ, we have to see the truth about the road we are on at present. We keep trying to tell ourselves that we are doing OK. We are having a good time. We are doing our own thing. We are not enslaved to anyone. But . . . that is not the truth. We ARE enslaved. We are enslaved to our desires, to emotional stimulation, to our causes, and even enslaved to our need to keep lying to ourselves about our lack of enslavement. Everyone is serving someone or something. We must ask the hard question: where are our choices leading us?

If you have never made the decision to come to Christ with your arms open, asking Him for the forgiveness and new life that He offers, I hope you will choose to do so today. It really doesn’t matter much what you say, as long as the bottom line is this: “OK Lord, I’m in. I trust you. I believe you when you say Jesus died in my place. Please come and make me new!”

You may resist saying this. You may believe the life you are living is going to lead you to a prosperous and happy life. Well, even if that is true; even if you CAN dodge heartache and disease . . . where will you be when it is time to die? 80, 90, 100 years of bliss in this life is nothing compared to forever. And who says that all these years of indulgence is better, sweeter, and more satisfying than walking with the Lord for a single day? I regret many things in my life. But I have never ever regretted anything done for and with the Lord.

Second, we need to get to work. It is so easy to put the things of God on the back burner. We listen to all the other voices making demands on our life and because the Holy Spirit is not shouting at us, we put our spiritual growth off to another day. If we want to live for Him, we must give Him the place He deserves in our lives. It may mean re-orienting our priorities and making time for Him. Jesus told us, “Seek FIRST the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and the other things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33) It is time for us to believe the Savior we say we believe in.

Ultimately, it all comes down to this: we will never be able to truly walk with Christ until we are willing to put all our weight on Him.