Our New Master, Grace
Romans 6:14 · Mike Doyle · Oct 8, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 044
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932552718

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

And what's interesting is, I don't know, hopefully you've noticed, since we started into chapter 6, the information that we're told in chapter 6 changes. We went from forgiveness of sins, S-I-N-S, to believing that God took care of the source of our sins, which you'll see it singular in the Bible, sin, the principle of sin, and some things that happened.

And one was, the most important thing, is that when Christ died unto sin, we died with Him. We were buried and resurrected. So if I go back and start at 11, he says, Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus, or to reckon that to be so.

Verse 12, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, But present yourself to God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. And then the verse we're going to cover today, we're only going to do one verse today. The verse is, For sin, the principle of sin, shall not be mastered over you.

And here's the reason. You're not under law, but under grace. So in my study this week, you know, sometimes you study along and then you take a break and then you think about what you're doing and then you come back to it. And especially on the subject of grace, It's just, we'll find out today, there's so much that goes into it. I think I could stand up here three Sundays and talk just about the word grace. Because it's such an integral part of what the Lord is doing. So what I decided was, we'll attack it from this.

We now have a new master. And that master is grace. It's no longer sin. It's no longer freedom from sin so I can just do what I want. I went from one master to another. I went from the master of sin to the master of grace. And so, that verse 14 says, sin will not be master over you. Not anymore. for you're not under law but under grace. So we've got to connect law and master and law and grace.

So if you back up a little bit and go to Romans 5.17, it says, for if by the transgression of the one who was Adam, death reigned, keep in mind this word reigned, through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life through the one Jesus Christ." And then in 521 we found out that sin reigned in death, so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Then 6.12 says, therefore don't let sin reign in your mortal body, so obey its desires. And don't go on presenting your members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Present yourself to God as those are who? What's the status? I'm alive from the dead. And my members of instruments of righteousness. So that's kind of where we are.

And it's one of those, the information that's just so far in the first 14 verses of chapter 6 is a lot of information that you don't hear very much about in Christian teaching today. And I don't know if it's because it's not understood, or it takes away from the prevailing thinking of Reformed theology, which is law-based, or it's just ignorance, or it's just lack of understanding of what it's really saying to us. So when God tells us sin's not to be our master anymore, He gives us a really good reason. He says, because you're not under law, but you're under grace.

So the five key words there are sin, the principle of sin, sometimes referred to as a sin nature. We have studied the principle of sin for several weeks. And it gives us an understanding between sins, the things that we do, and the source of those sins, singular sin, our sin nature that we receive from Adam. And master, that sin nature is a master over us.

You know, I like to say, well, I never committed a sin I didn't want to do or I didn't like. Well, that's true. I didn't. But it's because the master of sin said, this is what we do. But I was under a lordship, maybe I was under ownership of an authority, a supremacy over me, and that ownership was sin. I was under it. I was beneath it. It controlled me.

And it's interesting that the law is the one thing that makes sin abound. So if I'm under law, I'm also under sin, and I have a master, and all law does is cause me to want to sin more. You know, the old, old adage, you take a one-year-old or a two-year-old child, and you put something on the table, and you say, don't touch this. What's he going to do? He's going to head right for it. That's how the sin nature works. The law says, don't do this. And if it didn't say anything, I would have passed it by. But because it said, don't, or it said, do this, there's this master in me that keeps me from complying. Or maybe I just go do it anyway.

The one thing that is so little understood is that grace, the word charis, which we're going to spend all of our time talking about today, is also a reigning principle. I can be under this thing called grace, and it totally can change how I function. One more thing about this verse.

Notice the two words for. for sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace." The first one announces a divine decree that sin's lordship over us has ended. The second one reveals a happy condition of things in which such a release is possible. Or you can say that we're not under a legal principle anymore.

The first one demanded my duty, my obedience, And if I obeyed, I was rewarded. I was blessed. If I didn't obey, if I didn't comply, I would be cursed or there would be punishment. Under grace principle, the blessing is first conferred and then the fruits follow.

As Chester McCauley says, we don't realize until we have studied grace that it is the most powerful motivator there is. I'll say that again, that grace is a bigger motivator than law ever was. Grace is. And hopefully we'll get that across this morning as we talk more about it. Now, the Greeks used the word grace, charis, in a lot of ways. The stem word came from a word that just meant to give pleasure, anything charming, anything attractive or beautiful.

And if you look at Luke 4.22, in a discussion about the Lord Jesus, it says, wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth. What he's saying is the words were beautiful. They were attractive. They were charming. He used the word charis. He used the word charis in another way. He used it as a favor done for somebody.

And that's kind of the way I think we use it today. If Aristotle said, he gave a definition of grace and it kind of fits it, something conferred freely with no expectation of return, and finding its source in the bounty and the free-heartedness of the giver." That's a pretty wise saying for a guy that lived 4,000 years ago or however long he lived. In other words, if I did a favor for you under this definition, It would be something I did out of my heart with no expectation of return from you at all.

I just did it because I wanted to do it. But I know how you think. If I call you up and say, come on over to dinner, what's the first thought in your head? We've got to invite him back. You can't just accept it. And that's what God is saying. Look, I'm offering you my grace, and the only thing you can do that makes any sense is to accept it with no payback. No payback. And so, if you...

If you take a look at Acts 7.10, it's a good example of this, referring to Joseph and Pharaoh. It talks about Pharaoh extending grace to Joseph, and delivered him out of all his afflictions and gave him favor, grace, and wisdom before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, made him governor over Egypt and all of his house.

The word favor there is charis. So to get a handle on this word, it's easy to kind of understand the concept. What's difficult is to actually live under this and understand this is a principle that God expects us to live under. Now, the third way that they used it is a response to a favor done. If you do something very favorable to me, how am I supposed to respond? Thank you. What is thank you? Charis. Same word.

So 2 Corinthians 8.16 says, but thanks be to God. Charis. Why? Who puts the same earnest care for you into the heart of Titus. So those are many ways that this word is used in the Greek.

So we can see that the motivation for Christian living is a grateful heart and no rules. And you're saying, oh, I'm free to do whatever I want. No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you don't need rules to tell you what to do in order for God to bless you.

You get that? God has already blessed you and you will respond to Him because He has. When grace is understood, it brings forth, thank you. When you wake up one day and realize that I've been saved by grace, how do you respond? To God. What do you say to Him? Thank you. Thank you. What else can you say? Thank you.

So. Like we don't do that, do it around here, so it's probably not a good example, but Macaulay used the example of taking up a collection. Right there, we don't do that here. But what's interesting about it is that if we did take up a collection, when the time came to take it up, The proper way to say that, well, now it's time for us to collect the thank you. Because that's what the word means.

Thank you. So, because it is an unmerited favor, it never puts the giver of grace under obligation. Do you see that? We've never put God under obligation. He just did it. But with the way we think, oh, I've got to live to show God I'm so thankful. No, you don't. He knows. What He wants you to do is to come into the fullness of it, and to think it will be automatic. He knows you didn't deserve it. Maybe you didn't know that, but He sure did. It's a part of the character. Now, if you look at Grace and Paul, in Acts 20, but I hold not my life to be of an account as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus."

What's the ministry? To testify to the gospel of the grace of God. The gospel is a totally gracious message. John Darby said, Paul has a special place in God's program of grace to expound the gospel and show that it is a grace system. The good news of the gospel is totally on a grace basis. We look at the simple fact of what grace is. It has no limits. and no bounds.

But we be what we may, and we can't be any worse than we are. I love that phrase. In spite of all that, what our Father is towards us is love. Neither our joy nor our peace is dependent on what we are to God, but what He is to us. And that's what grace is. So in all the teaching that we do, in all the teaching and all the reading that you do, it should be right here in this focus.

I am living in a position of what God is towards me. He's not expecting me to do anything in return to show Him or to show Him why I might deserve more grace. But Reformed theology, that's exactly what they do. You have to do this in order to get that. The denomination I came out of in Catholicism, they even had grace redefined in a bunch of little jars. You want sanctifying grace. You want this kind of grace or that kind of grace. Here's what you have to do to get it. Well, wait a minute. If it's grace, why do I have to do anything? It's freely bestowed, freely bestowed.

So if you notice that Paul, there are two factors about grace in the epistles. This word charis is mentioned by Paul 155 times. I should take that back. The term grace is used 155 times in the New Testament. Paul uses it 130 of those times. So every epistle begins and ends with grace. He starts out with grace and he ends with grace.

So grace is one of those things that I think we have to study it. We have to investigate it to kind of figure out how does it work? Now, Grace and Paul, Grace is the system under which we live. So if this is the new system, it'd probably be a good idea to find out how it works. You know, we went to Italy last summer, different country. They do things a little bit different. helped us to figure out, well, how do they do things around here? When I became a Christian, I thought, well, I better look around and see what these Christians do. What's the system they're under? So grace is the system under which every believer is to live.

And you could ask a question, why does Paul have to tell us that we're under grace? Why does he have to tell us that? Because if we're not taught it, we will never get it. Do you realize that until you're saved, you have never ever run into a situation of biblical grace? Where someone did something, saved you, without ever expecting you to respond in kind.

And so what's grace designed to do? What's the number one thing grace does? In this verse, If I am not going to have sin be a dominion over me, then how is it going to happen? Grace prevents sin from reigning. Do you see that? Grace is the thing. Not you trying harder. Not you praying more. Not you doing spiritual push-ups. It's grace that keeps you from sinning. It's not a license to sin, but it's a system to prevent sin. That's a really tough concept to bring it in and say, wow, I'm not going to have sin as a master over me, and I've got to figure out how that goes. How does it go? It's grace that's how it goes. There are two things that Scripture tells us about being under.

We're either under sin, Romans 3.9 says, What then we are better than they know, and know wise. For we before laid the charge to both Jews and Greeks that they are all under sin. You remember when we were back in chapter 3, we talked about every single human being is born under sin. Sin has dominion over them.

You don't have to send your two-year-old to sinning academy. It comes with the two-year-old. It comes with humanity. He knows. She knows. What we need to find out about is, oh, under grace, I need to find out about that. Because as long as I lived under sin, grace was not part of who I am, what I experienced, where I lived, or what I did. If it's the system that I live under, I have to figure out how do I find out about it? One is in God's Word, especially Paul's epistles. If I'm going to understand grace, I've got to find it in the Word of God, and I have to examine it. How does it function? What does it do?

This is one of those things that I was listening to Chester McCauley. He made this statement and I ran the tape back a couple times to make sure I heard what he said. He said, there is no more rotten and filthy to the core with sin than a person who's a legalist. I heard that and I thought, I better run that back and make sure I heard what he said. Why? So I asked myself, why is that? How can he say that? How does he know?

His answer was, when you get to Romans 7, we will see that the law activates sin to its peak. Law is the impetus of sin. A law-based believer thinks he's so good, and that's what makes him a major sinner. The bigger sins, as far as scripture are concerned, are among the legalists, because of their mental attitude, even though it doesn't look like that. A man told me one time, he said, you know, there's these sins, and then there are sins. He said those deadly ones that you don't ever know about, like pride, envy, all those kinds of things that nobody ever knows that they're really going on.

But there they are. And that's what makes a legalist a big time sinner. So Two things we have to learn. One is stay away from the law. And two is find out about grace as much as you can. Sinful acts are motivated by law. And wherever there's sin, what does sin produce? It produces death, separation from God. Second part of this is say a grace is comprehended or grasped in Jesus Christ.

Romans 5.15 tells us, for if by the trespass of one the many died, much more did the grace of God And the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to many. But who is the man of grace? It's the Lord Jesus Christ.

Did He just say He was gracious? No, He carried it out. He died for us. Graciously. And you know what? No Christian has ever said to me, hey, the Lord called me up ahead of time and said, is it okay if I die for you? No, He just did it. He just did it. Should it be in anticipation? Should grace be in anticipation of what God is going to do for us in the future? The answer to that is no. God isn't going to do anything for us. He's already done it.

Our job is to find out what it is. When we find out what it is, we find out about grace. So where does grace abound? Where does it overflow? In Christ Jesus. As we find out about it, what He has done in His Word, it sort of shocks you. How? I can't believe God is this gracious. Can't He sort of let off the grace a little bit so I can now... He's full on grace all the time. Can grace be dynamic? In other words, does it have the power to control me? I said before that grace is the most powerful motivator there is.

If you take a look at Titus 2.11, which in a couple of weeks we'll be studying these verses in Sunday school, it's really interesting.

He said, For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men. Watch this next part. Instructing us to the intent that denying ungodliness and worldly desires or worldly lusts, we should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world. So if you've been trying real hard your whole Christian life by a set of rules to accomplish, live soberly, righteously and godly and you haven't achieved it, you know, you're studying the wrong stuff. Grace is how this happens. Grace is the thing from God that will cause us under grace to live righteously, to live soberly, and to live godly in this present world. Grace is the thing that will do that.

In John 1.17, John said, For the law was given by Moses, Grace and truth came through Christ Jesus.

That's how it showed up. You could say if a person is disappointed by the display of Christ Jesus' person in the Word, it shows that that person is a legalist. Why? Because he hasn't grasped the grace yet. Because grace came by Jesus Christ. Next principle, grace is the way God operates. Do you ever think about sometimes, you know, well, God always answers my prayers. Well, not really. If you go to God under a law base and say, Father, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And then he's not listening because he doesn't operate under a legal system. He operates totally under a grace system.

Ephesians 2 tells us But God being rich in mercy for His great love with which He loved us, there's a motivation. Even when we were dead through our trespass, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. And He raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. that in the ages to come you might show the exceeding riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith and not of yourself. It's a gift of God. The gift here is the salvation. If you comprehend those verses, It's like Romans 3 talks about, it shuts your mouth. What can you say about that other than thank you? There's nothing to be said about that kind of information.

So if God is operating under the principle of grace today, and only on the principle of grace, wouldn't it make sense for me to figure out how grace works? To investigate grace? Is it possible not to realize that God operates under grace? Yeah, it's possible. Because if I'm not taught, if I don't find out about grace, then I don't know anything about it. Because there's nothing in the background of a human being before he's saved that is gracious, especially as an operating principle.

So how many people would produce a grace system for salvation if they were left on their own? Let's say Roger and I decided. God said, now, Mike, Roger, I want you to go away for a month, or maybe five years, or whatever long it takes. I want you to come up with a program for salvation. Would we come up with grace? Never. Never. Every other religion in the world is not grace-based. It's always based on something you have to do in order to get God to notice. And that's not grace, that's law.

So, my job is to believe Him. So what is personal faith? It's just taking God at His word. When He says He's gracious, it's like we studied in 6.11, reckon. I should reckon that God is gracious. I know that He is. I'm persuaded. So is it possible to grasp grace and salvation, but not grasp it in a Christian life? Sure, it's possible. Again, if I'm not taught, how am I going to get a hold of it? How am I going to understand?

I can't live the Christian life much past the birth truths for some time until I begin to realize that God's grace extended to the fact that He crucified me, separated me from sin, buried me, and rose me in Christ and seated me in the heavenlies. Then I begin to get an idea that, oh my goodness, the Lord is so gracious. Not only did He forgive my sins, but He totally recreated me. And I can stand before a holy God now and not be considered sinner.

You know, there's that big church out there behind Costco that says sinners welcome here. You'll never see that sign in this place. Because you guys aren't sinners. You're not. You're saved by grace. You're in Christ and you're what He is. And that's a gracious thing.

So, Galatians 5.1 and 4, It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm and don't be subject again to the yoke of slavery. What is he talking about? Law. You have been severed from Christ. If you are seeking to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace. You move right out of the grace system into the law system. There's no middle ground.

So, I've already said that God doesn't speak to us in any other terms, any longer other than grace. So, we get to look at the grace circle now. And I got my little pointer thing here. I want to walk you through this. If you look at this, right here, God's grace starts, He first loved me. True? Yeah. So as I move down this way, there are results of God's grace in loving me. What's the first result? I love Him. Why? Because He first loved me. As a result of His love and grace, we love Him.

1 John 4.19. And then at the bottom of the circle, our obedience to Him is a result of His loving us. And we love Him back. So what do we do? We'll do what He says. We'll obey Him, because we love Him and He loves us. And then out over here, going around the circle, guess what? He rewards us for loving Him, for obeying Him, because He first loved us. You have to complete the circle back to here.

If you don't, you don't understand what God's all about. Think about a system. where God does everything, and He sets it up so that the first thing I'm going to find out is that He loves me. The God of the universe loves me. How do I respond to that? I love Him back. Did I love God before I was saved? No. And then I find out, well, if He loves me and I love Him, What do you want me to do, Father? And He starts to show me about grace. He teaches me how to live under grace. He shows me the results of all of this is to just live under Him, whatever He wants. And then when I do, guess what happens?

I get a reward. Do I deserve the reward? No, it's grace. It's totally grace. So what He's going to do, when you think about this, what's He going to do? He's going to reward all of us for something He did. But you're going to get rewarded for it. That's how grace works.

And it all starts with one pronouncement, God so loved. That's where it starts. Now, I must admit that when you are confronted with this, John Darby says, there is nothing so hard for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace. And I agree with that.

To continue practically conscious that we are not under law but under grace. It is by grace that the heart is established. But then there is nothing more difficult for us really to comprehend than the fullness of grace. That the grace of God wherein we stand. and to walk in the power and consciousness of it, it is only in the presence of the Father that we can truly know grace, and there it is, our privilege to be.

The moment we get away from His presence, not in fact, there will always be certain workings of our own thoughts within us, and our own thoughts can never reach up to His thoughts, about us to the grace of God. John Darby, I thought, boy, that's really a great, that's why I showed it there, because it just, when I read that, I thought, wow.

So, but here's our problem. He's told us in the last few weeks through the verses we've studied that we're dead to sin. How many of you feel dead for sin? How many of you do you feel dead to sin? We don't, because sin is still there raging, doing its thing. Our old man seems to be anything but crucified.

But the path of true faith is always one of agreeing with what God says under grace. Reckon, reckon. A couple of principles of grace. I was born by grace. As a new Christian, we are able to understand that we are born again on the principle of grace, the unearned free gift of God.

And your heart is filled with the love of the Lord Jesus. He's my Savior. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord, for by grace you are saved through faith and that not of yourself. born of grace. I'm conformed by grace. As a new believer, it was important that I realize also that God saved you in order to conform you to the image of Christ.

That's why He did it. The Lord Jesus is the express image of God. It is through Him that God realizes His original purpose. Let us make man in our own image. and to live by grace as a new Christian. Moreover, we were to understand that our new life is to be lived on the same principle as your new birth.

That's grace. As ye have therefore received the Lord Jesus Christ, so walk in him. I'm to walk by grace. And here's where it takes time. Slowly and painfully, we learn to be dependent upon our Heavenly Father. He has ordained and laid out His plan for our life. And as we grow spiritually, we will be walking in the path He has chosen for us. For you are God's workmanship. created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

He decided. He did this by grace. So, and I'm to serve by grace. We're going to have to learn that our service is also recorded to the principle of grace, regeneration by grace, growth by grace, and service by grace. Our Father has promised to provide us with all that we will ever need for whatever He calls us to do. There will be enough for us and for others also. God is able to make all grace abound towards you, always having all sufficiency in all things about every good work, that you may abound in every good work. It's deeply significant that even to us, new creatures in Christ and recipients of the Holy Spirit, it is definitely announced to us that we are not under law. If it were true, we would be in bondage and helpless, and we would still be stuck. So I thought that I would, I don't know if you can see this. Yeah, I guess you can.

One of the places I would recommend that you go and look at some of the principles of grace and just captures it really quick. If you have a copy of Newell's Romans in your house, a commentary on Romans after chapter 6, Newell does a whole thing about grace. And I just put a few of them down here that really help explain in a quick glance.

He says, the nature of grace. Grace is God acting freely according to His own nature as love. with no promises, no obligations to fulfill, and acting, of course, righteously in view of the cross. Grace, therefore, is uncaused in the recipient. Its cause lies wholly in the giver, in God. Grace also is sovereign, not having debts to pay or fulfilled condition on man's part to wait for.

It can act towards whom? and how it pleases. It can and does often place the worst deservers in the highest favor. I raise my hand for that one. Grace cannot act where there is either dessert or ability. In other words, did I deserve it or do I have the ability? Grace does not help. It's absolute. It does it all.

There being no cause in the creature why grace should be shown, the creature must be brought off from trying to give God cause for His grace. The discovery by the creature that he is truly the object of divine grace works the utmost humility, for the receiver of grace is brought to know his own absolute unworthiness and his complete inability to attain worthiness, yet he finds himself blessed on another principle outside of himself. And lastly, therefore, flesh has no place in the planet of grace. This is a great reason why grace is hated. by the proud natural mind of man. But for this very reason, the true believer rejoices, for he knows that in him that is in his flesh is no good thing. And yet he finds God glad to bless him just as he is.

Let's close. Father, how we thank you for your grace. We can never stop learning the extent of your grace because it lines up perfectly with the person that you are, the God of all grace. We thank you for loving us and saving us and causing us to grow and allowing us and causing us to be conformed to the very image of your son. And we pray in his name. Amen.