Doctrine First

OK, so here’s another in a long line of surprising revelations about myself: I tend to do things differently. I’ll take a moment to let you process that blockbuster revelation.

I’m a great-grandpa who’s never changed a diaper. I was a newspaper editor without a journalism degree. I told Annette that I loved her shockingly early in our relationship — and I’ve spent the ensuing 25 years learning what that really means. (I’m still learning, by the way.)

I earned a master’s degree as a college dropout. I became a pastor when most folks are starting to think about what it would look like to retire.

Simple solutions have never been attractive to me. The easy path has never been my first choice. Tried-and-true approaches to finding happiness and satisfaction in life have never been all that appealing to me.

My life has been a long exploration of forgotten trails, overgrown service roads, and the occasional dark alley.

Now, as with many of the stories I tell you about myself, I should stop here and say that I don’t present this way of life as an ideal.

Most of it wasn’t a result of any wisdom or planning on my part. And some of those dark alleys led to places I’d never wish for ANY of you to follow. I’d make a terrible life coach, except for being able to say, Hey, don’t do what I did.

I’m simply telling you this so that you’ll understand what I mean when I say that I do things differently.

This all came to mind when I was firming up my preaching plan for the remainder of the year and entering the information into my Bible software.

What I realized was that, by the time we’re done with this series I’ve called “Sin, According to the Experts,” we’ll have spent 16 weeks studying the topic of sin.

Don’t tell ME we never talk about sin at Liberty Spring Christian Church!

Now, most pastors will tell you never to do a series that lasts more than six or eight weeks. But remember that I do things differently.

God hasn’t put me here at Liberty Spring to be a motivational speaker. He hasn’t put me here to stoke votes for some political party. He hasn’t put me here to be a standup comedian (even though I AM the funniest person I know).

I firmly believe that God brought me to LSCC and led you to make me your pastor so I could help you learn to love and trust Jesus more and to DEMONSTRATE that love and trust in how you live.

And the way I said that last bit is important. I’ve always tried to teach DOCTRINE first and to let that doctrine come straight from God’s word.

Only THEN do I try to teach how that doctrine should change the way we live. After all, what we BELIEVE shapes the way that we live, not the other way around.

In the context of this series on sin, I hope to have driven home some important points about sin, along with some even more important points about God’s grace.

We’re all sinners, because we’ve all inherited the rebellious nature of Adam and Eve. And like their son, Cain, we’re all subject to jealousy.

Just like Noah, we’re all tempted to give up on our faith at some time or another. Like the people of Babel, we want to ascend to heaven and seat ourselves on the throne of God — to be in authority over ourselves, instead of being under HIS authority.

Like Abraham, we try to take matters into our own hands, sometimes compromising our integrity in the process. Just like Samson and David, we want what looks good to us, even if it’s been forbidden to us.

Like King Hezekiah, we have a tendency toward pride. Like Judas and Peter, we all betray or deny Jesus when we give into temptation or fear.

And like Ananias and Sapphira, we love for people to think we’re better or more spiritual than we really are.

For this sin series, I could’ve presented a series of moralistic messages denouncing the evils we see in the lost world all around us.

There certainly are plenty to choose from. And that’s just what a lot of churches these days DO when it comes to talking about sin.

If you haven’t placed your faith in Jesus, sin is surely a problem, but the solution isn’t to be a better person. Rather, the solution is to trust in Him and His sacrifice at the cross for you and in your place. HE will make you a better person.

WE can’t do anything about the sins of the lost world. The only way the lost world will be delivered from sin is through faith in Jesus.

But what we who are followers of Jesus DO have control over is our OWN sins. And I hope the sinners I’ve highlighted during this series have brought each person here under conviction regarding your OWN sin.

Equally, though, I hope this series has given you a fresh appreciation for God’s GRACE. In each of the episodes we’ve looked at during the past several weeks, we’ve seen that God’s grace has been greater than man’s sin.

And that’s GOOD NEWS for we who are still sinners.

But as I was thinking about all this a couple of months ago, near the beginning of this series, it occurred to me that I couldn’t leave this series without spending some time talking about what we should DO about sin.

The short answer, of course, is that we should flee from it. Run the other direction. Resist the devil.

But those actions rest on the important doctrine of how we RELATE to sin as followers of Jesus. And when it comes to that doctrine, there’s no better place to look in the Bible than Romans, chapter 6.

So, today and for the next five weeks, we’ll have a mini-series on Romans 6 to conclude our larger series on sin.

But first, let me remind you of an important rule of Bible interpretation. Chapter 6 follows what? And chapter 5 follows what?

We have to be careful about taking stories or verses — or even chapters — of the Bible out of context. That’s why I love our Zoom Bible studies.

We go verse-by-verse — and sometimes word-by-word — through a book so we can understand the central argument the Holy Spirit-inspired author is making. I want us to see how each verse and each story support that argument.

So, in order for us to truly understand chapter 6 of the Book of Romans, we really need to have at least a loose understanding of chapters 1 through 5.

Therefore, you can think of today as an introduction to the main part of our mini-series.

If you’ve got your Bible with you this morning, it might help to turn to Romans, chapter 1, because most of the verses I’ll quote don’t appear on your handouts.

Now, Paul was a very logical thinker, and he writes in a very logical, well-ordered way. In chapters 12 through 15 of this letter, he lays out for us some standards by which we should live.

But remember that what we BELIEVE determines how we’ll ACT. And so, he begins, back in chapter 1, with basic Christian doctrine.

In verse 16, he describes the gospel that he preached as “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.” And he says that the gospel of Jesus Christ reveals the righteousness of God.

What we NEED, Paul says, is the righteousness of God, because on our own, we’re UNrighteous. We’ve rejected the truth about God in our sins.

We’ve rejected His authority over us, and we’ve rejected the reality about Him, even though it’s evident all around us in His creation.

Just like the people of Babel, sin made fools consider themselves to be wise. And so, we’ve substituted all manner of idols to worship, including our own goodness, instead of worshipping the one, true God.

Paul says we’re all guilty of this, and we all deserve God’s wrath because of it

And God’s response to this rebellion by mankind was to give us over to our sins. He allowed sin to do what sin does — to destroy.

And as God turned us over to our sins, ungodliness — the absence of God’s righteous character — soon became full-scale wickedness and depravity.

Then, since this letter was written to a church that would’ve included both Jews and Gentiles, Paul spends time in chapters 2 and 3 explaining how BOTH groups are guilty.

The Jews in that church had been raised to understand that they were chosen by God and blessed by Him with the Mosaic Law.

But Paul says they ALSO needed to understand that the Law actually CONDEMNED them, because even those who MIGHT’VE kept the Law outwardly had violated it in their hearts, where it really mattered.

And, as he says in chapter 2, verse 24, the Jewish people’s lack of obedient faith had caused the name of God to be blasphemed among the Gentiles.

That’s exactly the opposite of what the nation of Israel had been called to do. They’d been CALLED to be a nation of priests, drawing their neighbors TO God because of their faith in Him.

So, the Jews are subject to God’s wrath because of their failure to demonstrate His righteous image in them by their obedient faith.

But the Gentiles don’t get a pass here. Quoting from the Old Testament, Paul writes in chapter 3:

Romans 3:10–18 NASB95

10 … “There is none righteous, not even one; 11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; 12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.” 13 “Their throat is an open grave, With their tongues they keep deceiving,” “The poison of asps is under their lips”; 14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness”; 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood, 16 Destruction and misery are in their paths, 17 And the path of peace they have not known.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

In other words, as Paul says in verse 23, ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

But don’t miss what he says at the end of verse 20, because it’s important to what follows: “Through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.”

You see, God didn’t give the people of Israel the Mosaic Law as a way for them to be saved, to be reconciled to Him. He gave them the Law to expose just how sinful they were.

And as evidence of just how depraved people are, the people of Israel were actually attracted TO sin by the very commandments God gave them to keep them OUT of sin.

It was like the wet paint sign that makes you want to touch the wall and see if it’s wet. Or the keep off the grass sign that makes you want to take off your shoes and tramp around in the yard.

So, mankind is unrighteous, and we’re subject to God’s wrath because of our unrighteousness. And not even God’s chosen people, Israel, are excluded from His judgment.

Instead of fearing God — in other words, treating HIM with reverence and trusting HIM for salvation — they’d feared the Law.

They’d kept the commandments, with various levels of success. And, with some notable exceptions, they’d counted on their own righteousness to EARN them a place in God’s kingdom.

Paul gives Abraham as the key example of one of those exceptions. In verse 5 of chapter 4, he quotes Moses from the Book of Genesis, saying ,“Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”

Paul says it was Abraham’s FAITH in the promises of God that justified him, that caused him to be brought into a right relationship with God. It wasn’t his own righteousness.

Rather, it was God’s gracious choice to count Abraham’s faith as if it WERE righteousness. Abraham trusted in the promises of God, and God credited this unrighteous man with righteousness.

Much like a bank transaction, God transferred His OWN righteousness TO Abraham.

And because God’s righteousness had been imputed or attributed to Abraham, God could now make a judicial decision that would save Abraham from judgment. This man was now justified before God. He was now in a right relationship with God.

Abraham’s faith that God would do what He said He would do, regardless of how unlikely it must have seemed to everybody else, resulted in his justification.

Likewise we who follow Jesus have placed our faith in His finished work at the cross. We’ve believed in His resurrection from the dead. We’ve trusted in God’s promise of eternal life for those who trust in Jesus for their salvation. And our faith in these things results in our justification.

We receive a full pardon from God for our sins against Him. It’s as if they never happened, because at the cross, the sinless Son of God took upon Himself their guilt and their punishment.

Now, having described Abraham’s justification as an example of what faith in God through Christ Jesus accomplishes, Paul talks about the benefits of this justification in chapter 5.

“We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” he says in verse 1. “We exult in hope of the glory of God.”

We’re no longer enemies of God. We’ve been saved from the wrath of God. We won’t face the judgment of those who continue to reject God, those who reject His grace, those who reject His love.

This is all part of what he means when he says we exult in the hope of the glory of God. By HIS grace, through faith in Christ alone, we are no longer condemned, as Paul puts it later, in chapter 8.

And to show the matchless character of God’s grace, Paul concludes chapter 5 with a comparison of Adam and Jesus. Through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, he says, and death reigned.

But as he says in verse 15, “much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many.”

And then, verse 19: “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so, through the obedience of the One, the many will be made righteous.”

Maybe that reminds you of a hymn we sing here once in a while: “Grace, grace, God’s grace — grace that is greater than ALL our sin.”

And from the beginning, from BEFORE Adam and Eve committed that first act of rebellion in the Garden of Eden, from BEFORE God ever said, “Let there be light,” this was the plan.

As Warren Wiersbe put it: “Grace was not an addition to God’s plan; grace was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning. God dealt with Adam and Eve in grace; He dealt with the patriarchs in grace; and He dealt with the nation of Israel in grace. He gave the Law through Moses, not to replace His grace, but to reveal man’s need for grace. Law was temporary, but grace is eternal.” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 529.]

Then, near the end of chapter 5, Paul says something startling: “The Law came in so that the transgression would increase.”

It’s that Wet Paint sign we talked about a few minutes ago. The Law exposed our most hidden desires to sin, and the fact that we then satisfied those desires shows us just how depraved we are.

But then, Paul says something wonderful: “But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” In the Greek, the sense is that grace SUPER-abounded. The more we sinned, the more grace God showed us.

And this should be comforting to all of us, because it means that no matter how sinful we are, God’s grace is STILL greater. There is nobody whose sins put them outside the power of God’s grace.

Which raises a couple of questions that Paul deals with in the next chapter.

Romans 6 NASB95

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! 16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. 22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now, let me just say that I’ve spent many hours over the past seven weeks memorizing this chapter so I could present it to you dramatically this morning.

I wanted to feel what Paul must have been feeling as he dictated the words to his amanuensis, his secretary.

I wanted to really understand the internal structure of his argument so I could present it with what I pray was the right emphasis and inflection. I didn’t keep track, but last night I figured I must’ve spent between 40 and 60 hours on this project.

And I tell you this, not because I want your praise, but because I want you to know the power of spending large amounts of time in one passage of Scripture.

I want you to understand the power of meditating on God’s word, of treasuring it in your heart, as opposed to blazing through it in order to accomplish some arbitrary goal.

I’d rather know that you spent a half-hour a day allowing God to truly speak to you through one chapter of His word than to know that you spent that half-hour churning through as many chapters as you could and giving Him no chance to speak to your heart.

Memorizing long passages of Scripture is one sure way to do this. And I can promise you that the rewards for the time you’ll spend doing it are far greater than the struggle you’ll have in doing so.

But even if you’re not ready to commit to major memorization projects, I DO want to encourage you to spend MORE time meditating on God’s word. You’ll NEVER be sorry for the time you commit to that.

Now, we’ve done the introduction to Romans, chapter 6, today, sp we can get right into the text next week. We don’t have time to today to tackle more than we’ve already done.

So, in keeping with my do-things-differently style, I’m not going to give you a bunch of life application lessons to conclude this sermon.

I simply want to encourage you to read this chapter this week. Don’t just read it once; read it several times. Read it carefully. And take some time to really HEAR what God is saying through the Apostle Paul.

Listen for the contrasts Paul makes: between slavery and freedom, between death and life, between sin and righteousness, between law and grace.

Listen for what he says about what it means to be united with Christ, to be identified with Christ. Listen to what he says about GRACE.

We like to sing about amazing grace, but this chapter shows us just how amazing it really is.

Take some time this week to meditate on these things. And if that time causes you to burst into a song of praise, all the better.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see!