Which dominion is yours
Romans 6:14-16 · Jim Pool · Aug 27, 2006
Romans (2005-07), No. 46
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492600182748

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Continuing on in chapter 6 of Romans. Last week Vern took us through verses 11, 12, and 13. For those of you that weren't here, I think that Vern did a fabulous job with that section. So I would encourage you just to listen to the lessons online. All these lessons are put online and you can listen to them that way or get the tape upstairs and certainly avail yourself to grab the notes from last week as well. So this morning we're going to be looking at verses 14, 15, and 16. And so let's just start out by reading through these verses 14, 15, and 16. 14 says, For sin shall not be master over you.

For you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? May never be. Do you not know that when you present yourself 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?

So we're going to be going through these verses here this morning. And what happens is he takes this, he presents this thought in 14. Sin is not going to be master of you for you're not under the law, but you're under grace. And then in 15 and 16, he goes into this idea here of being to the one that you present, you are a slave to the one that you present yourself to. He's building upon the point that he brought out in verse 13. Let's go back to 13.

So therefore, 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. So what he says, he builds upon that a little bit.

He says, don't present yourself to this, but present yourself to this. And if you present yourself to this, you're going to be a slave to this. And if you present yourself to this, you're going to be a slave to this. takes the point of verse 13 a little bit farther in 16 than he did in verse 13. That's kind of the way we're going to see this thing play out here.

So, starting off here in verse 14, it says, follows through with verses 11 through 13. 14 is saying that sin will not be master over you, or I think as the KJV reads it, sin will no longer have dominion over you. So I think that's kind of just a synopsis, a summary of what we see here in verse 14. Review here. These are points straight out of Vern's lesson from last week. I thought this was well worth our review as we got going here this morning.

So he pointed out that as we count upon the revealed spiritual facts, we will not go on presenting our body as instruments under the command of the usurping ruler who will do unrighteous acts, acts contrary to who we are in Christ with those military assets. Review again.

So how much better to worship the risen Lord with whom we are now seated by presenting ourselves to God as military assets for His righteousness. So, Vernon was pointing out, we don't want to be presenting ourselves to instruments of unrighteousness, but let's present ourselves to the Lord as military assets for His righteousness. And here he brought this out too. The choice of faith is going to be for us as believers not to present ourselves as military assets for the sin nature's spiritual tyranny, but as military assets of the righteousness of God.

And we're going to see that play out again here when we come down to verse 15 and come down to verse 16. So, again, the person who is following through with what 11, 12, and 13 pointed out as far as God's revealed truth, verse 14 is going to be a reality in their life.

Sin shall not be master over you. Okay? For you're not under the law, but you're under grace. As we see that sin will not be master over us, this word master is also used in verse 9. Let's look back at verse 9 here. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, I'm reading verse 9. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death is no longer master over him. So therefore we see master used in verse 9 and master also used in verse 14. So, is death the master over Christ? Obviously, absolutely not. No, in no way, shape, or form is death the master over Christ. So, is sin the master over believers?

No, we need to point out there positionally, it's not, and it is not to be conditionally. So the same thing being said there of Christ, sin master over him, or death master over him, and sin being master over us. Okay, got to get an introduction here to what's going on. Okay, so the idea here of master is to exercise influence upon or to have power over. So when we see in verse 14, sin shall not be master over you, we're talking about the idea here that sin is not going to be exercising influence on believers or having power over believers. That's what we're talking about here, sin being master over.

So, if believers are by faith, walking in the truths revealed in verses 3-13, then this will be true in their lives. Sin will not be exercising influence in our lives and sin will not be having the power over our lives. But Christ will. We walk in by faith in our new life with Him.

That's what we see coming out. So why will sin not be master over us? Why is this true? Just give me some of your thoughts about that. Kind of a simple question, but it's good to see where we're at with it. We talked about identification with Him, because that's who we are in Christ, and if it's not master over Him, it's not master over us either. That's right. We've talked about that a lot in the past. What's true of Him is true of us. Sin's not going to be master over death and sin isn't going to be master over him. Therefore, boom, it's not going to be master over us. It doesn't have to be master over us. And that's true positionally, for sure. That's right.

And then conditionally, you know, as you grow and become more intimate with him, As we grow in private sphere, I think it becomes obvious over a period of time. For some people, it's their whole lifetime. For other people, it's a shorter period of time. It depends on the person. But then I think you start to see that initially as well.

That's right. That's right. So as we're walking by faith and we're growing in the Lord, becoming more intimate with Him, our condition becomes more and more in line with our position. Any other thoughts? Jim, you're going to go there. This is the incredibly important distinction between That's right. Exactly. It's just like black and white. It's like sun and darkness. It's such an incredibly important principle for us. That's it. Right on. There we are. You got it.

So, why will sin not be mastered over you and why is this true? Because we're not under the law, but we're under grace. That's the next phrase in your verse there. So, as Bob pointed out, what a tremendous principle This is, for we are not under the law, but we are under grace. So really there's two statements there. Sin will not be master over you.

Number one, because you're not under the law. Point one. Point two, because you are under grace. You're not under one, but you are under the other one. Okay, so let's develop this a little bit. For we're not under the law, Right now, not under the law. It's not something that, well, you might not be under the law later on down the road. It's right now. This is in the present tense, active right now.

You are not under the law right at this moment. So, what law is this referring to? You're not under the law. What law is this talking about? The Mosaic Law. That's right. Go back to John. Chapter 1. And in verse 17, great verse here, great verse. John chapter 1 and verse 17.

For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. They're showing the difference between law and grace. The law was given through Moses. We're talking about here in Romans, talking about the Mosaic Law, as Laban pointed out. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. What a tremendous statement that is. We won't spend time on it this morning, but the idea there that grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ, the idea there of realizing those two things because of Him.

Alright, go back to Romans. So the idea here that we're not under the law, we're under the Mosaic Law. The idea here of the law, the best definition that communicates to me is the law is man working for God. Think about it, that's what the Mosaic Law was all about.

They had to do this, they had to do this, they had to do this, and therefore they would receive blessings. Man had to do something before they were acceptable to God. Man had to do something before they could or would receive blessings. To me, that's one of the best definitions, simplest one, and communicates to me the best.

So all is simply man having to work for God. Where grace, on the other hand, is simply God working for man. There's the night and day, the darkness and light, they can't coexist. So, we're not under the law, we're not under the mosaic law, we're not under this principle of man having to work for God. Why? Because we have died to the law. Let's look at this over one chapter in chapter 7. We're going to get into this in much detail. Maybe in October, I don't know, depending on how the schedule plays out here. So, chapter 7, verse 4.

Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bear fruit to God. For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which are aroused by the law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter." So look at verse 4 there, the second phrase. You also were made to die to the law. So when Christ died on the cross, we know that we also died with him. The principle we've been looking at for now about six weeks in detail. Through our death with Him, we were separated from the sin nature. Not only were we separated from the sin nature, but we were also separated from the law.

So we are not under the law. Exactly right. Not just the law, but any law. Yes, exactly. It's easy for us to say, boy, we're not under the Mosaic Law, and we all could give a hearty nod to that, but what you're bringing out, Margaret, is that it's easy for us to put self-imposed laws upon ourselves. We're not under those either, and we should not be putting ourselves under any kind of self-imposed law, which is easy to do. But some people would. I mean there would be people who would be feeling really guilty about that. About what? Not going to church? Yeah, sure. There was a period a couple months ago where you guys didn't see me a lot, and you know what? Seven out of eight weeks, we weren't in church. I wasn't keeping track of that, but after a while I was like, Man, how did that happen? Well, we were out of town for a while, and then I rode in three bicycle things three weekends in a row. Next thing we knew, we went to Cortez with our family. And next, wow, holy cow. But was it because we were backsliding?

No, it wasn't any of that. That's just the way our schedules happened to work. But something started to trigger in my mind, wow, I wonder. You know what I'm saying, that self-imposement of feeling bad or feeling guilty or condemned as Romans 8 talks about, when there's no condemnation, that kind of thing. And I was like, you know what, no, that's becoming a... That's what we miss. Yeah, that's right. It was crazy, but we had a good time. We were walking with the Lord and I had a good time riding bikes three weekends in a row with our family in Cortez and Maryland.

So, we're not under the law. We're not under this principle of having to work for God. We're not under this principle of having to perform for God to receive blessings, or to receive acceptance, or anything along those lines. Praise the Lord for that. Not only the mosaic, but self-imposed, or religiously imposed, or culturally imposed, any types of those kinds of laws. We're not under anything like that.

The law was given to Israel and it was never given to the church. I mean, that's a principle that we dispensationally, we know to be very true. And so, boom, the law was never intended to be applied to the church. It certainly is misapplied now for those that don't rightly divide the word of truth. But it was never intended to be given or lived out to the church or by the church. Let's look at a couple of other verses here to develop this point, as it's very critical, as Bob pointed out, this idea of not being under the law.

So, Galatians 3. Galatians talks a lot about not being under the law, but being under grace. So, let's read through some of these verses. Galatians 3, and I'll start in verse 23. There's a lot more in here than what I'm going to read, but for the sake of time, we're just going to pick out a few of these verses. 3.23 tells us that But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore, the law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor." Now does the KJV, what word does it use for tutor? Schoolmaster. Okay, now let's make note of this.

A schoolmaster or a tutor is someone who instructs you in something. It's kind of your instructor. If I got a tutor because I have a hard time in science or math or reading or whatever it might be, that tutor or schoolmaster is instructing me in something. So let's just take a little note of that mentally, tuck it away. A schoolmaster sounds like a stronger word than a tutor. Yeah, than a tutor.

A tutor is sort of like someone you hire or... The schoolmaster is here kind of like this. The tutor kind of comes along and sits down and helps you along the way. So, before faith we were under the law, but now that faith has come, we're no longer under the tutor, we're no longer under the schoolmaster. So, no longer under that law, no longer under the tutor or the schoolmaster. Very clear. Okay, let's look over at chapter 4 as well. verse 21. I'm going to read all the way down through verse 5. Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the bondwoman and one by the free woman. But the son by the bondwoman was born according to the flesh, and the son by the free woman through the promise.

Now the son there born of the flesh represents the law and the son there born of the free woman represents grace this is allegorically speaking for these women are two covenants one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves and she's Hagar now this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem for she is in slavery with her children but the Jerusalem above is free She is our mother, for it is written, rejoice, barren woman, who does not bear.

And that's Sarah. Break forth and shout, for you are not in labor. For more are the children of the desolate than of the one who has a husband. And you, brethren, like Isaac, are children of the promise. And there is grace, the representation of grace. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the spirit, so it is now also.

But what does the scripture say? Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be in error with the son of the free woman. So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman. For it was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. The two are contrasted there and compared. Now, what I find interesting is in verse 30. It says, what does the scripture say?

Cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman. So what we see there is that law and grace cannot coexist. They can't, well you know it's going to be 50% law and 50% grace. No. It says cast out the law and let's go with grace. And that's what we're seeing here. Sin shall not be master over us. Why? Because we are not under the law, but we are under grace. Let's not mix them up. Let's not try to mingle them. Well, this part of my life, I'm going to walk in grace. And this part of my life, I'm going to walk in the law. I really feel more comfortable with the law in this area of my life. But over here, I'm comfortable with grace.

No, that's not what we're talking about. If that's the way that we're walking in our lives on a daily basis, we're not going to be free from sin. We're going to be still enslaved to sin because we're walking in the law, under the law. The concept of grace is applied to our initial salvation. In other words, being free from the penalty of sin seems easy.

The grace that extends us in terms of our future salvation, about us spending eternity with the Lord, seems easy. that the grace that acts the Christian life, they have. That's a tough concept. That's right. People struggle with this. Not that I have a victory here. The issue is that grace that extends for every minute of every day, the opportunity to live by faith, is a grace people can't touch very well. We grow by grace.

Sure. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Sure, yeah. That's right. Different concept. Okay, so we looked at this one. This is the one that we're not under. We're not under the law. Praise the Lord for that. And let's trust the Lord to continue to teach that, what that means in our lives on a daily basis. But we are under grace. And again, right now, under grace. Present, active, right now. It's not something that is in the future that we're waiting for, but it is right now, we are under grace. Okay, God working for man, as opposed to? I ain't working for God. It's absolutely, absolutely different.

If I was an employee of Roger, I would be working for Roger. Whatever he told me I needed to do, therefore I needed to do it. He's given me this long list of things to do every day. I'm working for Roger. Now, all of a sudden, what if Roger's working for me? Well, isn't that an absolutely completely different situation, relationship between Roger and I?

Yeah, that's what we're talking about. We do not have to be working for God, but it's God working for all of us here and now. Okay, so we're under grace, God working for man, and so we're under, in essence, this umbrella, we're under grace, this umbrella of grace, we're under all the positional truths that it is that God has done for us. And so it's hard to capture that. That's such a huge thing that we would need to stop and start the class of whatever it is, 30 some odd things that happened in salvation that they've done here at the church. We need to stop right now and start that class for a year to really cover all those points, but we're not going to do that. We're going to take about five minutes and talk about it, okay? So, God working for man.

We've seen it in the context of verses 3 through 10 that we died with Christ, we were buried with Christ, we were raised with Christ, we are walking with Him, we're seated with Him, and that we have ascended with Him. So that's, if we're talking about, we're under grace, God's working for man, there is a few, tip of the iceberg, of things that God has done for us. Incredible stuff, positionally, that He's done for us mentioned there. Let's go over to Romans in chapter 8. I'll read through a couple of verses here. Talking about the fact that we are under grace. Not under the law, but we're under grace. Romans 8, verses 1-4.

There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. We've been set free, notice that, been set free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And as an offering of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh."

Now look, what the law could not do, God did. Now if that's not grace right there, see, we're not having to work for God, God's working for us. God did it because the law couldn't do it, because we couldn't do it, therefore God did it. We're not under the law, but we're under grace, okay?

Verse 4. In order that this all happened in order that the requirement of the law might not be fulfilled in us I'm sorry the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh But according to the Spirit I'm notice there in verse 4 we'll get to this this might be December I don't know but in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us It doesn't say that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled by us But it might be fulfilled in us. There's a huge difference and we'll get to that detail in December whenever we get to that verse so One more place. I want to look talking about this idea there of being under grace and Bob this this goes exactly with what you were pointing out a couple minutes ago Titus in chapter 2 I Love this passage and I I'm not sure necessarily that we understand it all that great, and this ties in with what you were saying. So, Titus chapter 2, verses 11-13.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age. looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus." An incredible verse here that we would be in our best interest to stop and dissect sometime, but we're not going to here this morning.

But just briefly, notice that the grace of God has appeared, okay? It's come to all of us, okay? By grace through faith have we been saved, okay? So it has appeared to all of us, and now it's brought salvation, So we're saved, okay? Now notice, instructing. So the grace of God is what is doing the instructing. So tie that in with what we looked at earlier. Do you happen to know what voice that's in? I don't. I didn't look that up. Anybody can help us out with that?

And also it's saying to all men. So in 11, isn't it saying that's to the whole world, all men? Sure. It has us in there, it's instructing us. No, but verse 11, bringing salvation to all men. It's brought it to all men, but only some receive. There's a difference. But it's there for all to partake. That's right. Those that believe. It teaches us, not all. I'll try to look that up for you.

So the grace of God is one that's doing the instruction. Now, remember the mental note we made earlier, what is doing the instructing under the law? It was this tutor, or it was this schoolmaster, as the KJV brought that idea across. So no longer are we under this schoolmaster, or under this tutor, which was doing the instruction, but now we are under the grace of God, which is doing the instructing in our lives. I mean, try to get our minds and our hands and our arms around that, that the grace of God is what is instructing us.

Now notice, it says it's instructing us to deny two things. To deny ungodliness, and to deny worldly desires. And that's in the negative. So, to deny these, and then to live in these three ways mentioned here. To live sensibly, to live righteously, and to live godly. So, we're not under the law to deny godliness or to deny worldly desires. We're not under the law to live sensibly, to live righteously, or to live godly.

But we're under grace. Grace of God has appeared so that these things will be able to happen. Now, what's our part in the whole thing? To walk by faith. To continue to believe upon Him. To actively believe on Him. To be walking by faith. And the grace of God is going to be instructing us in these things. It would seem like this is pointing to the Holy Spirit here. In the Christian life, He's the one that convicts us. He's the one that shows us where we stand on a moment-by-moment basis.

So in a way, even though it says the grace of God, it's sort of like it's implying that the Spirit of God is involved in that and pointing out you're walking the wrong path. We're convicted of that, as believers. We're convinced of that probably is better. Jim, to extend this, you may be going there, but I just can't help but say this.

This really takes us positionally where we need to be by this act of faith that we have, this graceful abound. And by the way, when we look for that blessed hope, in other words, we're looking at the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming, who gave himself that he might redeem us from this.

The process of ultimately, in verse 12, teaching us to deny ungodliness is hanging out with Him. There's no legal principle. This is all grace. And as we get preoccupied with Him and respond to that by faith, this happens. It's God working for us, just like you said. How beautiful is that? That's right. We're under the principle of grace.

And there's the freedom to live the Christian life. Freedom. Not law. Freedom. Yeah, right on. I like that one and boy, I haven't spent as much time looking at it as I should. It's one of those things you always kind of bring in to help support something else.

Okay, let's move to verse 15. Back to Romans. Okay, we go to verse 14, now let's look at verse 15. What then shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? May it never be. Okay, that's it. Now look at this, back to verse 1 and 2. Look at the similarities of these verses. Now verse 1 and 2 says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin, that grace may increase? May it never be. Okay? So look at how these two verses start off. Look at the similarities of them. What shall we say then in verses 1 and 2? Are we to continue in sin? Verse 15 says, shall we sin? And then they both end up by saying, may it never be.

I just thought that was pretty incredible here. And so what's happening is that we've got another rhetorical question, again in verse 15. And the obvious answer is no. So Paul is anticipating the question or people beginning to abuse grace and say, boy, yippee, I'm not under the law, so I can just continue to go out and sin all that I want. And so Paul says, absolutely not. The KJV says, God forbid, or may it never be. Same thing that he's driving home the point in verses 1, 2, and 3.

We mentioned this earlier, sometimes it's hard for people to see and understand that grace is a greater motivator in the Christian life than law. That's tough, and we were batting that around a little while earlier. But scripture reveals that grace is the true motivator of the Christian life, not the law. And some are afraid that they will sin more because they're not under the law. They feel more comfortable under the law. It gives me, it seems to give me in ways more definite barriers and more definite confines in my life so that it seems like I'll sin less because I'm under the law.

But actually that's completely opposite. It's completely wrong according to what the Bible has to say. We'll get into that more in Romans chapter 7. The truth is that sin shall not be master over us, because we are not under the law, but we're under grace.

We might feel this to be true sometimes. We might feel like this might be the case. But you know, the fact of the matter is, that's wrong. And this is right. Sin will not be master over us, because we're not under the law, but we are under God's grace. I think too, it's unbelief. Because if you're putting that law on yourself, you're not trusting the Lord that he is going to perform in you what he's already said and done. That's right. It's unbelief. That's all it is.

If you are putting yourself and you say, well, if I don't have these constraints, I'm going to sin. So I have to have the constraints. Well, then your faith is minuscule. And the result of that, as Newell so clearly says, would be disappointed with yourself. There's a lack of performance reflection. That's right, depending on yourself.

As I looked at this, and I looked at verse 15, in light of verse 14, I was going to myself, good grief, listen to what Paul is writing, because he is anticipating the thought of the people. So, verse 14 says, sin will not be mastered over you. And so verse 15 says, shall we sin? I'm going like, good grief, what are these guys talking about? You know, why even, you know, shall we sin or we shall not sin because we're not under the law but we're under grace? And then, shall we sin?

I mean, it was just such a... Such an opposite, I was like, man, that Paul would even have to write that is just an amazing thing to me. But he's anticipating the potential misinterpretation of what he writes. Okay, let's see here. A couple more minutes left. Okay, not too much time. So, verse 16. Okay, go to page 4.

Okay, do you not know? If you go over to verse 3, it also mentions this idea here of do you not know? And we talked about this quite a bit in the past 6 or 7 weeks. Verse 3 says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death? So there we see the similar phrase Do you not know? And verse 3, we talked about it already.

It's talking about the present spiritual knowledge which they had because they were taught it as believers. They knew it. Present tense. They had been taught that spiritual knowledge as believers. Now verse 16, if you notice, it's in the perfect. So it's knowledge which they had in the past as unbelievers. So therefore, they would know it to be now. They would now know it to be true. It's past, yet it's carrying on into the future. That's what we see coming out there.

So, what knowledge is this talking about? Let's say, do you not know? He's saying that in verse 16. What knowledge is Paul referring to here? What he's talking about is their own cultural and legal knowledge of slavery in Rome. Because we see that talked about here in verse 16. Nearly 50% of the population of Rome and the peninsula of Italy in the first century were slaves. So Paul is using a cultural example which their readers could relate to. Simply put, that's what's going on here. So the people of the time could also sell themselves into slavery, and one reason to do this would be to get out of an unpayable debt.

Again, if I owed Roger this unsurmountable amount of money that I'm new, that I would never be able to pay. I didn't have a good job to be able to pay this guy off. All my life, I would never be able to pay this guy off. To get out of that, I said, Roger, here I am. I'm going to become a slave to you for the rest of my life so that I won't owe you any more money.

That would happen back in the cultural time of the first century. So the idea here of presenting, do you not know that when you present yourself as someone a slave, I think the KJV uses the word yield. So presenting oneself made them a slave to whomever they presented themselves to. If I'm going to present myself to Roger to get out from under this huge debt, I am now going to be a slave to Roger.

Present means to place a person or a thing at one's disposal. I'm now at Roger's disposal. Page 5. Okay, what are the spiritual aspects of this presenting or yielding? To present oneself to sin or to disobedience, or to obedience, I'm sorry. That's what we see here.

You can present yourself, look at the end of the verse there, either of sin, which is going to result in death, or of obedience, resulting in righteousness. So, when presenting or putting oneself at the disposal of sin, the result is death. You're putting yourself at the disposal of the sin nature, in essence, and so therefore the result is going to be death. And this is equivalent to walking in the sin nature. One could say, here I am, sin nature, do with me what you want, and the result is going to be spiritual death, a slave to sin and death, which is what verse 16 talks about.

Now, we pointed this out, I think, last week, that we're not talking about loss of salvation here. It's critical to point that out, and we know that. We're talking about broken fellowship with God, which was brought out last week. We're talking about the Holy Spirit being grieved. God is not glorified, obviously, and the deeds of the flesh are manifested.

When I present myself to the sin nature, I'm now a slave to sin. Those things are going to be happening in my life. Okay, so when presenting or putting oneself at the disposal of obedience, The result is righteousness. I'm putting myself at the disposal of the life of Christ. By faith, I'm putting myself at the disposal of the life of Christ. Now, what does it mean to put oneself at the disposal of obedience?

That's what it says there. I find that to be very interesting. present yourselves either of sin or of obedience resulting in righteousness. Now, obedience sometimes is a word that we don't like to talk about because we think that it comes across legal.

But notice two verses in Romans which I think help to explain this for us. Obedience simply means to actively trust in God's revealed truth. Now look at Romans chapter 1. Look at Romans chapter 1 and verse 5. Through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for his name's sake. So notice we see there the obedience of faith. So what does God want us to do? He wants us to be walking by faith. He wants us to be actively trusting Him on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis. And I think when that's happening in our lives, we're being obedient to Him.

And therefore, the life of Christ is going to be manifested. That's right. That's right. And where the option comes is, am I going to put my faith and trust in the Lord, or am I going to put my faith and trust in the sin nature? And I think Vern did a great job explaining that to us last week. Yeah, good. That's right. That's right.

And notice the bookend back to Romans 16. I think this is well worth pointing out. 1626. But now it is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the Eternal God, has been made known to all nations, leading to obedience of faith. It's interesting that he put that in in verse 5. I think, yeah, verse 5 of chapter 1, and then next to the last verse in chapter 16. Interesting kind of bookends.

He talks here about the obedience of faith. As one can say, here I am, sin nature, we also can say, here I am, Lord, do with me what you want. And the result is righteousness. Slaves to righteousness and to God, equivalent to walking in the Spirit. Righteousness of God is manifested through the Spirit. We're in joint fellowship with God, therefore God is glorified. Let me just do a real quick summary here. Believers have changed masters. We're born out of the slavery of the sin nature into the slavery of righteousness, the new nature, the very life of Christ.

So, here, are we going to present ourselves to sin, to the sin nature? Here's the option. What are we going to do? Present ourselves to sin, to the sin nature? There's going to be the results. We talked about that earlier. Or are we going to present ourselves to obedience, of faith, our new nature with Christ, and there's the results. We've already mentioned those also. I think to keep it in perspective and to keep it balanced. We need to remember what Vern talked about last week regarding presenting.

We're not talking about, I'm exercising my will independent from faith, independent from God, therefore I'm going to yield. We're not talking about that. We're talking about, by faith and dependence upon all that God has done for us, I'm going to yield myself to this and not to that. So the question is, how do we not yield ourselves to that?

It's faith, dependence upon God, and what? our co-crucifixion with Christ, which is what we're talking about in Romans 6. I know we kind of cruised through the end there, but hopefully that helps to set an understanding for us. Okay, let's pray. Lord, thank you for all that it is that you've done for us. Thanks that you've positioned us with you. You've given us everything pertaining to life and godliness, and you've blessed us with all spiritual blessings. And Lord, I just continue to pray that we would all walk by faith and dependency upon you and be occupied with you on a moment-by-moment, day-by-day basis. And just pray for Vern as he gives us a sermon out of Isaiah this morning. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.