Devoted to Whom?

Today is a day of celebration at Liberty Spring Christian Church. Last week, we celebrated the growth of this body when Seth and Colleen Fekete officially joined our fellowship.

What a blessing it has been to get to know Seth and Colleen and their 27 wonderful children. OK, six. Six kids. But I’ll bet it SEEMS like 27 some days.

Anyway, I have to tell you what an honor it was to hear the testimonies of faith from this wonderful couple. Their stories of brokenness and healing were powerful reminders to me of God’s redeeming work through Jesus and through the Holy Spirit.

And what an encouragement to us all to know that the Lord led them to Liberty Spring. God isn’t finished with this church. He still has a plan for this body of believers to be part of the kingdom work He’s doing here in Suffolk and around the world.

And the celebration continues today, because we’ll begin our service this morning with two baptisms.

A few weeks ago, Brycen and Gavin Fekete approached me, asking about baptism. I met with each of them separately and asked them to tell me what baptism meant to them.

I asked them who Jesus is to them. I asked them what He’d done for them. And then, we talked about how their lives should be different now that they’ve followed Him in faith.

I heard their answers and concluded, to the best of my ability to know, that they’re truly repentant for their sins against God. They seem to me to have made genuine commitments to follow Jesus in faith that he alone provides a way for them to be reconciled to God.

And so, it’s my honor this morning to baptize them into the body of Christ, His Church.

Now, we know that baptism is only the outward sign of an inner change. There’s no power to save in what we’ll do here this morning.

Instead, this is a public announcement by these two young men that they now identify with Christ, that they are HIS through the faith they’ve placed in Him.

And we do this in front of the gathered Church as a reminder that He is STILL drawing sinners to Himself. He is STILL working His plan of salvation in the midst of all the brokenness of this sin-stained world.

What we do here today is a visible and powerful reminder that grace WINS!

Brycen and Gavin, would you please come to the front?

Now, if you’ve spent much time around these boys, you know that one of them is very quiet, and the other… well, not as much.

And I knew this about them. In fact, when I met with them a few weeks ago, I asked, “Which of you would like to see me first?” Without hesitation, Gavin spoke up. “I will!”

So, Brycen’s came in after I was finished with Gavin, and we were talking about the logistics of this ceremony.

I said, “I know you’re quiet, and your brother likes to speak up first, like he did a few minutes ago. Of course, he’s not here with us now, so I wonder now who’d like to be baptized first.”

Brycen paused for just a second, perhaps wondering if Gavin was going to answer from the other room. Then, he said, “OH! I will!”

As Jesus said, the first shall be last. OK, Gavin, go back and sit down, and we’ll come back to you in a minute.

Now, Brycen, I told you I’d ask you a few questions today. Are you ready to answer?

Excellent.

Brycen Meyer Fekete, do you acknowledge that you are a sinner, and that you can do nothing to earn God’s favor by your own merits?

Do you acknowledge that God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, is God’s only remedy for sin?

Do you acknowledge that placing your faith in Jesus is your only way to be saved from the just penalty for your sins?

Do you acknowledge that by identifying with Christ through faith — in other words, by trusting in Him and Him alone for salvation — that you’ve died to sin and been raised to newness of life in Him?

Do you then commit yourself to living a different kind of life because of your faith in Jesus and the new life you have in Him?

Excellent. Now, go ahead and step into the water.

Brycen Meyer Fekete, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

DUNK

Buried with Christ in the likeness of His death, and now raised with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection. Welcome to the family, brother!

Now, Gavin, I have the same questions for you. Are you ready to answer?

Excellent.

Gavin Davis Fekete, do you acknowledge that you are a sinner, and that you can do nothing to earn God’s favor by your own merits?

Do you acknowledge that God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, is God’s only remedy for sin?

Do you acknowledge that placing your faith in Jesus is your only way to be saved from the just penalty for your sins?

Do you acknowledge that by identifying with Christ through faith — in other words, by trusting in Him and Him alone for salvation — that you’ve died to sin and been raised to newness of life in Him?

Do you then commit yourself to living a different kind of life because of your faith in Jesus and the new life you have in Him?

Excellent. Now, go ahead and step into the water.

Gavin Davis Fekete, I now baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

DUNK

Buried with Christ in the likeness of His death, and now raised with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection. Welcome to the family, brother!

Now, let me pray with you both before you go and change. Could I get the deacons and the family to come and join me here, please?

PRAY

OK, that’s just wonderful! Amen?

THIS is how the true church grows. It doesn’t grow by people who come to visit once in a while. It doesn’t grow by outreach events designed to get people in seats. It doesn’t grow by having slick praise bands that play all the newest contemporary Christian music.

All those things are valuable for attracting new people into this building. But the true, universal Church grows when lost people turn to Jesus in faith.

And when people of faith either take the step of obedience in baptism or present testimony of already having been saved, then the local church grows, too.

In the church of Scripture, there was no such thing as a member who’d not been baptized as a true follower of Christ, and there was no such thing as baptizing someone who was not then a member of the church.

So, when you see these young men again after the service, please welcome them into the family of God and welcome them as members of this church.

Now, go get yourselves changed and stop dripping on the floor!

We’re going to sing a couple of songs, and then we’ll have our message. Let’s get the singers up here on the platform while I reset the camera. Everybody, please stand.

Today, we’re going to talk about devotion. We’ve been working our way through Romans, chapter 6, to conclude this series I’ve called “Sin, According to the Experts.”

And in recent weeks I’ve told you about some of the things that I wasn’t willing to devote myself to — playing the piano was one of them. I’ve also told you about something I gladly devoted myself to — a career in the newspaper business.

What I never expected was that I’d become even more devoted one day to being a pastor — to being YOUR pastor. I LOVE being your pastor.

Even when things are hard — and there surely have been some hard times for all of us — I’ve never doubted for a moment God’s calling for me to be YOUR pastor. And I’ve devoted myself to this calling.

You don’t have to worry about me looking for greener pastures. You don’t have to worry that my eye might be wandering to some bigger or wealthier church.

I’m here until the Lord is done with me here. And I think He’ll make it clear to ALL of us when He’s done with me here. To use a term that Jesus used in John, chapter 15, this is the place where I’ll abide.

And that’s an important term for us to remember as we look today at verses 15 through 19 of Romans, chapter 6. That’s because these verses are about devotion.

We who were once devoted to sin as slaves of sin have now — through true faith in Jesus Christ — become devoted to HIM as slaves of obedience.

And our devotion to Jesus should make a difference not just in our lives and our lifestyles, but also in the very choices we make from one day to the next.

Let’s read these verses together, and then we’ll unpack them a bit.

Romans 6:15–19 NASB95

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.

Now Paul starts this passage with a similar question to the one he asked at the beginning of this chapter. But it’s not the SAME question.

In verse 1, he asked, “Are we to CONTINUE in sin?” There, the question was whether the fact that God’s grace is greater than our sins should mean that we follow a lifestyle of sin.

This was an objection he anticipated from the legalists among his readers. They’re the ones who think we earn God’s favor through our own righteousness.

Legalists are huge fans of the Law. They tend to believe that we contribute to our own salvation by KEEPING the Law, by doing righteous things and avoiding unrighteous things.

So, the objection to the doctrine of salvation by grace alone through faith alone that Paul addressed in the first part of this chapter was this: Since man’s increasing sin under the Law resulted in God increasing His grace toward man, why shouldn’t we just go on sinning so that God’s grace could increase even more?

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen Paul explain why that should NEVER be the conclusion of those who’ve turned to Jesus in faith.

We WERE slaves to sin. But now that we’ve DIED to sin with Christ Jesus, we’ve been FREED from sin’s dominion over us. As followers of Jesus, our bodies of flesh have been done away with.

Sin no longer has the power of death over us. Now, we are alive to God in Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit to TURN from sin and become weapons of righteousness to God.

We’re no longer under Law, which only ever had the power to condemn us, anyway. Now, we’re under grace, by which God stoops down to bless us and make us what we were not. To make us free. To make us righteous. To make us alive.

But in today’s passage, Paul answers a question he anticipates from a second group. He figures this group is worried that removing the guardrail of law will result in people sinning more, because they’re no longer kept from it by the law.

The objection he seems to be anticipating is this: If God, in His grace, pardons sin so freely, then why would we ever need to be careful NOT to sin.

Why not take a day or two off from righteousness once in a while if God will forgive us, anyway? Can’t we sin “just a little,” once in a while?

In the first half of the chapter, he was talking about continuing in sin, a lifestyle of sin. Here, he’s talking about individual acts of sin. He’s talking about the choices we make every day when we face temptation.

And so, in verse 16, Paul reminds us that every one of us — whether followers of Jesus or not — serves one of two masters.

We belong either to sin or to obedience, either to Satan or to Jesus. We’re dedicated to one or the other. We’re DEVOTED to one or the other.

And obligation always follows dedication. Obligation follows devotion. Because I’m devoted to you, my obligation to this church is to shepherd the flock well, to love you and to help you learn to love Jesus and one another.

Likewise, for those who haven’t turned their lives over to Jesus in faith, their obligation is to sin, resulting in death. But for we who’ve devoted ourselves to Christ, our obligation is to obedience, resulting in righteousness.

Now, this righteousness Paul talks about here is IMPARTED righteousness. This is the righteousness we have because we are being made more and more like Jesus, because of our sanctification.

Previously, he’d talked about IMPUTED righteousness. That’s the righteousness we have because God declared us righteous when we first put our faith in Jesus.

Imputed righteousness is God’s sovereign and gracious work in us. We receive the righteousness of Christ entirely because of God’s grace.

Imparted righteousness, on the other hand, requires our participation. It requires us to choose, from one day to the next — sometimes, even, from one moment to the next — to yield ourselves to Jesus as slaves for obedience.

Remember that we’re either slaves of obedience to Christ, or we’re slaves of obedience to sin. So, now, look at verse 17.

Whereas we were unwilling slaves to sin in our lost state, we’ve become slaves to righteousness by choice. Each of us made a choice to change masters when we turned to Jesus in faith.

Each of us chose to yield to Him, or at least we should have. That’s the reason I asked the question during the baptisms this morning about whether these young men were committed to living different lives now as followers of Jesus.

True, saving faith is more than just agreeing to a set of facts about Jesus.

In fact, saving faith has three components. They’e Latin terms, but they’re pretty easy to understand. Notitia is knowledge or understanding about the object of one’s faith. It’s taking note of certain facts about Jesus. But that’s not where saving faith stops.

Assensus is a personal choice to agree with the object of one’s faith. We assent to the fact that we’re sinners unable to save ourselves. We agree that the only way we can be saved from the punishment we deserve is through faith in Jesus’ life and finished work at the cross. But that’s not where saving faith stops, either.

Fiducia is the commitment to be somehow changed by the object of one’s faith. It’s a term we recognize from economics, one that we use when we describe the fiduciary responsibility banks have, for instance. We keep our money in the bank, TRUSTING that the bank will keep it safe.

Fiducia, then, is faith that inspires some action — some change — on the part of a believer. It’s faith that causes a person to devote themselves to Jesus, to BE slaves of obedience to Him.

And the fact is that even true followers of Jesus fail in this kind of faith from time to time. But those failures should now be exceptions to the rule, not the rule.

“Dedication to God is voluntary, not automatic for the Christian. If a believer does not truly dedicate himself or herself to God, he or she will continue to practice sin.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), Ro 6:18.]

Simply knowing the truth will not set you free. You also have to WALK in the truth. You have to TRUST in the truth.

And the truth is that if you’ve devoted your life to Jesus in faith, then you, as Paul says is verse 18, have been FREED from sin to become slaves of righteousness.

This goes back to last week’s question about WHOSE you are. All of us belong either to the devil or to God in Christ Jesus.

We’re either slaves of sin and Satan or we’re slaves of righteousness in Christ. And if we’re no longer slaves of sin, why do we keep answering the phone when it calls?

So, it turns out that sanctification — becoming more and more ike Jesus — isn’t an automatic process, as Paul makes clear in verse 19.

When we were lost, we deliberately gave ourselves as servants of sin and the devil. Now that we’re saved through faith in Jesus, we must make a similar, deliberate choice to give ourselves to Jesus as slaves to righteousness.

And this is a continuing choice. It’s a choice we have to make every day — even every minute of the day — because the moment we stop CHOOSING Jesus, our flesh comes back and draws us back into sin.

But look at what Paul says here. The flesh is weak! Remember that we who turned to Jesus in faith have the power of the Holy Spirit within us.

We’ve got the power of God Himself in us to help us turn from our temptations. Furthermore, we have the promise of God from 1 Corinthians, chapter 10:

1 Corinthians 10:13 NASB95

13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.

So, we have to recognize that when we give in to temptation, we’re making a choice to do so. We’re choosing to give in to the weak flesh. We’re choosing NOT to take the escape that God has given us.

When we give in to temptation, we’re choosing our former master over over Jesus. That’s why I said, back at the beginning of this series, that we sometimes act as if we love sin more than we love Jesus. If that weren’t true, then why would we go on sinning?

So, for followers of Jesus, sin is a choice we make. It’s a choice to assert our own will rather than God’s will. It’s a choice of unrighteousness rather than righteousness.

It’s a choice of those things that bring destruction and chaos and pain into the world rather than the things that bring llife and shalom into it. It’s a choice to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than the Tree of Life.

It’s a choice to trust the deceiver rather than He who is TRUTH. It’s a choice to wear the image of Satan rather than being made into the image of Jesus. It’s a choice to go back to our former master, instead of being devoted to our new master.

And choices have consequences. There ARE no little sins. For the believer, all sin damages our fellowship with God and interferes with God’s plan for us, which is to make us into the image of Jesus. To make us LIKE Jesus.

And when we as believers choose to sin, we expose ourselves to the same problem we had as non-believers — namely, the fact that lawlessness produces further lawlessness.

It has often been said that “sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

So, as Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, “Do not give the devil an opportunity.” If you give him an inch, he’ll take a mile.

And before you know it, instead of looking like Jesus — instead of this sanctification that’s God’s purpose for all who follow Jesus — you’ll look just like the lost world.

We talked about this from another perspective yesterday at Autumn Care. We looked at the passage in John, chapter 15, where Jesus says He’s the true vine and calls His disciples to bear fruit by abiding or remaining in Him the way branches remain on the vine.

And I reminded everyone that Paul also talks about fruit in Galatians, chapter 5. Remember the verses?

Galatians 5:22–23 NASB95

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

These are characteristics of Jesus. These characteristics demonstrate we’re being sanctified — that we’re being made into His image — if we abide in Him.

When we choose to attach ourselves to Jesus as deeply, as firmly, and as steadfastly as the branch is attached to the vine, we can’t help but be changed by the life and nourishment that flows from Him to us.

But when we let go — when we’re enticed by all the things the world says should be ours to have — that’s when things go wrong.

Impurity and lawlessness are just waiting for the chance to bring us back under their control. Waiting for the chance to put our FLESH back in control, so we’ll once again submit ourselves as weapons of UNrighteousnes.

Waiting for us to give ourselves back over to the deeds of the flesh — that other list Paul gives in Galatians, chapter 5. This is a bigger list, and it’s not comprehensive.

But Paul rightly says that we all recognize these things for what they are: “immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these.”

DO you recognize them? Do they sound familiar to you? Were these the kinds of things that characterized your life before Christ?

Don’t you remember how destructive they were to you, to those around you, and to the fellowship with God for which you were created?

So why would you go back to those things, even for a moment? Why would you devote even one day to those things again, when you’ve been devoted to Him who devoted His life and death to YOU?

Abide in HIM. CLING to Him. Grow closer and closer to HIM. Choose to be so devoted to HIM that when people look at YOU, they see Jesus.

Listen, the only sin you have any control over is your OWN. That’s why I don’t stand up here and preach against the sins of this lost world. I EXPECT sinners to act like sinners.

But I also expect saints — we who’ve been declared righteous by God’s grace — to ACT like saints. That’s what it means to be devoted to Jesus.

It means to be so dedicated to Him that you couldn’t imagine going back to your old ways. It means being so dedicated to Him that YOUR character looks like HIS character.

And the only way to achieve that goal — which should be the goal of every Christ-follower — is to abide in Him. To cling to Him when it seems hard AND when it seems easy. To hold onto Him so tightly that the devil never has an opportunity.

This week, I want to encourage you, if you’re a follower of Jesus, to devote yourselves anew to Christ and His righteousness.

Rededicate yourself today to making Him Lord over every part of your life. Whatever part of your life you may have put back under sin’s control, give it back to Jesus today.

You can come down to the front and pray. I’ll pray with you, if you like. In doing so, you’ll be making, much as these young men did earlier, a public statement that GRACE WINS and sin is defeated.

But maybe you’ve never taken that final step of faith. Maybe you know all the facts about Jesus. Maybe you’ve even agreed that you’re a sinner and that His death, burial, and resurrection are the only way for you to be saved.

But maybe you’ve never taken that final, saving step of faith by devoting yourself to Him. By allowing what you KNOW to transform what you ARE. By letting yourself be CHANGED through the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

If that describes you, I want to invite you to come and talk with me during this next song. Let me pray with you, and let me tell you how true faith in Jesus can make you who you were always meant to be.