Christ Life In Us Romans 5:17-18 No Longer Slaves To Sin
Romans 5:17-18 · Mike Doyle · Dec 14, 2025
Christ's Life in Us, No. 15
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261941551862

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

Good morning. You know, sometimes when you do what I do, do what Roger does, you know, you study and you think, I got it all together. And then you go back and a whole new idea hits you. Well, that happened to me this week. Last week, we were studying through verse 15 and 16. And as Jim read, do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience that you slaves you are to the one whom you obey, either sin and death or obedience resulting in righteousness. Last week I think I talked about this as being something that we should consider as our Christian life, but this week I found out that half of this verse is a principle.

So let me show you what I mean. Notice the word someone in the one. The word someone and the one, they're just neutral. They're not masculine, feminine, they're just neutral. So it can be anyone. Or this someone can just be anything, anybody that you're under the control of, you're a slave to or a servant of.

So he's not talking about surrendering to the sin nature. which is kind of the focus I worked on last week. But he's really stating a principle. So we talk a lot about principles around here because we see them. Someone, notice the arrow, someone, someone, the word someone and the one are neutral. So we're talking principle, not sin nature. You okay, you see, you tracking with me so far?

So, here is who we were under the principle of sin. Now, what we're gonna hopefully learn today, we, every human being that ever came on the planet, is a slave to something, a servant to something. The whole idea as I'm an independent free agent is ridiculous, Have you ever, I mean, people say to me, well, I have free will. I say, well, go jump off the building. I want to see you fly. Or, you know, wave at me on the way down. So being a slave to sin, of the principle of sin is Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, we talked about last week.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins. True. in which you formally walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. All you gotta do is read the news this morning and you can see how the sons of disobedience operate, especially all those sons of disobedience at Brown University or in Australia. Among them, we too all formerly lived in the desires of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest of the world. This is the servitude that every human being is under when they come on the earth.

What's the big lie? If this is true, then if you're going to try to convince me that this isn't true, what are you going to tell me? I have free will. I can do what I want. Well, the reality is, before I was saved, I'm this. People say to me, well, boy, you must have hated your sinful life. No, I liked every minute of it. I was a slave to it, I agreed with it, I wanted to be, I didn't realize I was a slave.

So there's a principle involved here. The truth or the proposition that serves as a foundation of a system of belief or behavior or a chain of reasoning, that's one of the definitions that I found. There are biblical principles. And you know what a principle is, it's a law It's a set of truths or a law that constantly function the same way every time. I just gave you the example, gravity. Does gravity function the same way every time? Yeah, you can do things to go against gravity, like an airplane flying, and actually gravity works there because it lifts the plane up.

So, principles are how we live. And in science, in engineering, in any field you wanna study, there are principles. And that's really what people are looking for in their education. What are the principles of what I'm studying? In other words, what is the constant function of my pursuit? Something that I can rely on that is gonna do the same thing every time. Well, there's a principle of sin, It does the same thing every time.

This morning we were talking about the love of money. It isn't the money that's the problem, it's the love of it that's the problem. And you know what? It functions the same way every time. The principle is this, if I love money, what am I going to do? I'm going to go after it. And I can be really poor and still have a love for money. I can be super rich and still have a lust or a desire for money. So the sin nature has principles under which it functions. And so does the word of God. And sometimes, that's what I've learned this week, that the verse, half of this verse from last week, really was talking about a principle and about slavery.

So, If I said to you, real simple difference, what's the difference between a master and a servant? It's a really tough question. A master makes the demands, a servant carries them out. Real simple, principle, principle. So if I have a master, and every human being has a master, whether it's sin or not, sin is the master, and I'm the one that carries out the demands of the sin nature.

If I carry out the demands of another, I'm a servant of another. Bob got off the practice this morning, and he was telling me about his eye, and I said, well, listen, if they fire me from here, I can be your chauffeur. He said, I don't think I want you as my chauffeur. I must be a bad driver. So this is the principle of this whole passage. And that is, don't think in terms of right and wrong. Think in terms of a principle.

Who I give myself to, I'm a servant of that one. And it can be anything. anyone, any circumstance, okay? Now, I'm having fun with my notes because I've decided I've got a lot of stuff in my notes I want to talk about, so I'll keep looking down. In this verse, you see, the principal part of this verse is when you present yourself to someone as a slave for obedience, you are the slaves to the one you obey. That's the principal. See that? But it changes. The focus changes right in the middle of this.

Believers have two choices. You can either submit yourself to sin, or you can obey, or obedience, or you can listen under. If you submit yourself to sin, there's a consequence. What's the consequence? Death. If you submit yourself to obedience of God's word, What's the result?

Righteousness. And probably the best way to discuss practical righteousness is the fruit of the spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, kindness, meekness, self-control, all of those things are righteousness. I'm right with God and that's what he would cause me to believe.

So, both result in a master. You see how that principle works? I'm either gonna be under sin and be separated from God, the word death means separated, or I'm gonna obey him, and I don't mean spiritual pushups, I mean I'm gonna listen, and I'm gonna pay attention to, and that results in righteousness. Sin, obedience, That's my two choices. In everything we do, that's it. The Lord Jesus said, truly, truly, I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. So you read a verse like that and you think, nah, not really. But the Lord Jesus said it.

So, what do we find? We're hopelessly taken up with the struggle for freedom. Freedom from something. unless we are aware that we have been cut off from the slavery of sin and self through having died on the cross. The first 10 verses of this chapter, that's all it's about. I was crucified with Christ. I was buried and I was resurrected to newness of life. Well, what does that mean? Basically it means I got cut off from being a slave to sin. I have a choice now. I didn't have one before, but I have one now. But I have to know it.

Until we know we are alive from the dead, until you know that and rest in it, you can't yield to him as such. You can't let yourself, a non-believer can't say to the Lord, I'm just gonna do what you wanna do. because he's not under the Lord as a servant. He's under sin as a servant.

We don't yield to become free, but because we are free in the risen Christ. I'm gonna say that again. We do not yield to Christ because to become free. We yield because we are already free in him. And it's because we have died to the old nature and we are alive and free in the new nature.

So the Lord tells us in Romans 6, 1 through 10, that's exactly how or what he's done, not only by paying the penalty for our sins, but crucifying me and you with him on that cross for the sole purpose that I don't have to be a slave to sin anymore. And it goes all the way back to 521 where the principle of what he's after is that grace would reign. Where sin reigned unto death, that grace might reign. Grace isn't gonna reign if everybody that is still alive and under the servitude of sin, okay?

The thing about being a servant or a slave, like the sin, is you can't get free yourself from the principle of sin. You can't do it. And we'll see later on in the next verse, we're going to cover why you can't do it. A lot of people try, but we're not talking about good and evil. We're talking about sin and righteousness. They're different.

Sin brought to fallen man the inability to do anything else but sin. If I do a really good deed, I sin because I'm so proud that I did a really good deed. Although contrary to my conscience and contrary to reason, human reason, and I have this desire for liberty, in spite of the terror inspired by the tragic examples about them, in other words, the consequences, death, despite the awful warnings and the expectations of personal impending ruin, those are always there. What does man under sin do? He continues to sin, and he's in bondage to it, and he can't get free in and of himself. So, do you not know that when you present yourself to someone as slaves for obedience, the slaves you are, the one to whom you obey?

And here's where it changes. Notice it says, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness. So from a statement of a principle up to the word obey, we're talking about the principle. Going forward, when the word either comes in, we now have a moral quality. I'm supposed to do something. Either I'm gonna become under, stay under sin, or I'm going to obey, or I'm going to listen under what God has to say. The believer can yield to sin, or he can yield to obedience. Either one means I have two options of action that I can do. A non-believer cannot do this. And I think a lot of times we think, oh, sure I can. No, you can't. No, you can't. You don't even see what's there. There's a transformation that goes on, and that's what the next two verses that are really the main verses for today. Paul says, thanks be to God. Boy, Lord, I really thank you.

What? That though you were slaves of sin, that's what you were, you became obedient from the heart. to that form of teaching which you were committed. And we'll talk about the committed part in a minute. Having been freed from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness. So do you see the example there? We're looking at a situation where I have been freed to do what?

To become another slave. So you were the servants of sin, you became the servants of righteousness. The emphasis is not that we are servants, the emphasis here is that who are we servants of? We're always servants, one or the other, that's it. So, There's a new servitude that's laid out for us in these two verses. I'm not a slave to sin anymore. I'm a slave to righteousness. I'm still a slave or a servant. What we once were, past tense, was a servant of sin. What we are now, present tense, we're a servant of righteousness. You see how that goes together? How we used to act and how we now act. So we've got the application of the principle. Maybe I'll give you an example. Hopefully this... I put an arrow here. This is a lifespan. And I'm physically born at this point of this arrow. Can you see that all right?

And then up here, I'm spiritually born from the time of physical birth to this time of spiritual birth, what have I been doing? Who have I been serving? Well, in my life, it was 35 years. I was a servant to sin for that 35 years. But now I'm finding out, as a believer, I'm no longer a slave to sin. I don't have to. That's the thing. Not being a slave to sin is I don't have to do it. I have a choice. Non-believers don't have a choice.

You know, we read the newspaper, or we watch the news, or however you get your news, and we think all those really bad people that do all this really awful stuff. Before you were saved, you were one of them. You were one of them, and you might have been really well-dressed and looked good, and people thought you were a really honest person. You were a slave to sin, because that's what God's Word tells us. So this tells us, this example shows us what went on in our life between the time we were born physically and the time we were born spiritually. What went on there? I was a slave to sin that whole time. Now, what choice did I have? I had no choice. I was a slave. Slaves don't have free will.

But thanks be to God. Now, some of your Bibles will say, for the form of teaching to which you were committed or delivered, A lot of verses, like the King James says, that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you. That sound good? How about if we said it this way? That form of doctrine unto which you were handed over to. That's the correct reading. I was handed over, you were handed over to the doctrine. It wasn't handed over to you. The verb is plural. All of you were delivered over to a new doctrine, the doctrine of righteousness.

Put it this way, how many of you, you don't have to raise your hands, a lot of you and me were in the military. And there was this day when you got inducted. And every man or woman who's ever been in the military, they remember that day. Because I was in the Marine Corps, and the way they look at it is this.

You now belong to me. You don't belong to the society anymore. You don't belong to your mom and dad anymore. You belong to me. And this was a guy about this big with one of those smoky bear hats on, just mean as they can be. You're mine. That's what induction is. That's what the premise is here. I have been delivered over like someone who gets inducted into the military.

If you haven't been in the military, you probably don't realize this is an interesting experience, especially if you go from a room like this where you raise your right hand and you do all this stuff, and then you get on the bus and you go to boot camp. and it stops at boot camp and you have to get off the bus and it's like you just got landed on Mars. What is this place all about? What did I do? I remember thinking, I got dropped off at Parris Island and these drill instructors are screaming. I'm thinking, oh no, I should have joined the Air Force.

And here's a good example. The Israelites were delivered over to Moses and the law. It was not only that the law was delivered by Moses to them, they themselves were delivered over to a legal dispensation, to a mold of doctrine, which had the 10 commandments as its foundation and the 10,000 things or 630 things of the law spoken in accordance with it. That's one thing the Jew knows, that he has been delivered over to the law. It isn't that the law got delivered to him.

We Americans think that we're the center of the universe and everything comes to us so that we can make decisions about it. We don't ever think about maybe we're servants. So, delivered to. The distinction is vital because people conceive of the gospel as something delivered to them to live up to or to lay hold of by their own wills.

I'm gonna go to seminary, I'm gonna learn all about this and then I'm gonna do it. Rather than as a body of truth which they as believers have already been blessedly handed over to. The Lord took us through that cross out of a slavery to sin and placed us in an environment of grace. See that? We're slaves of grace.

Obedience of faith can be nothing else than walking in the light of the facts divinely revealed. William Newell said that. Obedience of faith. And that's what the obedience is all about. I learn who I've been delivered over to. I trust him and I rest and I believe him. That's the obedience of faith.

And it can't be anything else but walking in the light of that divinely revealed truth. Once I know it, that's why we spend so much time here learning about what this truth is. Now, in salvation, God constituted the believer according to this chapter, verses one through 14, inwardly, inwardly, why? So that he would react to the doctrines of grace by nature, the divine nature in such a way as to receive and obey them.

Here's the problem. Everybody born from Adam is what I would call a natural man. We're earthly men. We function and based on earthly principles and laws. When you meet the Lord Jesus and you become spiritually alive, now you're a spiritual man or woman. And you have two natures and you now have a new set of principles. And this new set of principles is called grace. So I have been delivered over and you have been delivered over to an environment where grace is the reigning principle, not law. In other words, I don't have to work to get favor from God.

I already have the favor and because I do and I understand the favor, I obey. See that? We were talking about it this morning. Courtney said the most important thing is that you love God and that he loves you and you know it. And when that happens, you don't have any trouble obeying.

So we're delivered into the teaching or the doctrine, the word didache, in that we were constituted in salvation so that we would obey. The spiritual man or woman listens under and obeys the doctrine that has to do with grace, because it fits them. Paul thanks God that we're, whereas before salvation, we were slaves to sin. We were in salvation, however, delivered, handed over to the teachings of grace so that we become slaves or servants of righteousness.

That's God's whole purpose. And if you kind of get your arms around that, it makes it really easy. If you're still trying to do in the natural world what is required in the spiritual world, you're struggling. There's no rest there. So, and here's how it happened. That but you obeyed from the heart that form of teaching into which you were delivered.

So why would he put the word heart there? The Bible describes the human depravity as in the heart. Because sin is a principle which has its seat in the center of man's inner life. and it defiles the whole circuit of action. I find it interesting that when we start to talk about from the heart and you start looking for that word in Paul's epistles, you see it a lot. And so on the other hand, I got this from the Laidlaw Bible Dictionary, on the other hand, scripture regards the heart as the sphere of divine influence.

The Holy Spirit has invaded your heart. The heart is lying deep within, contains the hidden man of the heart, the real man, and it represents the true character. But your life is hidden with Christ in God. So I found some, and I'll just go through a few of them.

The heart is the seat of physical life. The heart is the moral nature of the spiritual life. It's the seat of grief. It's where joy is. It's where the desires are. It's where the affections are, the perceptions, the thoughts, the understanding, the reasoning powers, imagination, conscience, intentions, purpose, and faith.

All of that is in the heart. So when he says, you have obeyed, listened under, believed from your heart, the form of teaching that you were delivered over to, it changes the whole way you look at everything. See that? That's why the heart is so important to us. It changes everything.

So, and having been freed from sin, You became the slaves of righteousness. You didn't go from free from sin to do whatever I want. So you have to ask yourself, what is freedom? Simplest definition of freedom is this, it's a change of masters. It's not do as I please. It is, I now have a new master. And that's comforting to me, because if I'm left to myself, I'm gonna mess it up. No problem.

Verse 17, you were the slaves to sin, and now you're free from, when you were there, you were free from righteousness. So if I'm a slave to sin, I'm free from righteousness. Okay, you got that part? But now, I'm free from sin, why? So I can become a slave to righteousness.

All the time, a believer, is a believer one or the other? Actually, he's both. Always think in terms of if I'm free from one to be a servant of the other, that I'm never free to do what I please, because that means I'm a slave to sin. Only the sin nature would say to itself, you can do what you want.

That isn't what freedom is. So what we are now, is freed or slaves, we're both. Freedom is a change of masters, it's not free from anything or everything. The greatest myth, we want to liberate everybody from everything. Everybody in the world that's got a cause, this is the cause. We want to free everybody or liberate everybody from anything that they have that's a problem.

And we're going to use your money to do it. Under grace is equal to grace slavery. Servants of grace. Imagine, God in his grace, we use a Macaulay definition here, it's the unlimited, unmerited blessings from God based on the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. That's what the definition is.

So how would you like to be under that? How would you like to live under that? How would you like to be a servant of that definition? I do. I would love to be all 24-7. There's where I am. Again, being a slave in itself is not service. Though as such I am a Christ's slave, honoring him and showing him forth under the most trying circumstances, service is not the fact of being a slave or of being a good one, but the fact of acting for Christ in the position in which by God's provision, providence, I am set.

J.V. Stoney said that. wherever he has you, whatever you're doing, again, I keep referring back to Sunday school, because we talked about that, we're to be satisfied with the food that we have and the clothing that we have and where we are and whatever circumstances God has us in, we're to be content with that.

Because that's a really good place to be. You know, you draw that, and I drew it here one morning. You put a dot on a piece of paper, and then you draw a big circle around it, and the dot is you, and the big circle is God's sovereignty, and to get to you, it's gotta go through God's sovereignty. So everything that goes on in your life as a believer is by God's providence, everything, including the bad stuff.

The true Christian's righteousness is never doing a thing because it's right, which is prideful, independence, or deification of self, but because they are God's will for me. That's what he wants me to do. If you're a dad, if you're a mom, if you're a husband, if you're a wife, wherever you are in your environment, God puts you there to do his will. We must obey for practical righteousness. If I'm going to be righteous in my character, I must listen under and believe what God has said to me. I'll complete the change from all that we were to the righteousness which expresses itself in present standing of the believing one. I'm righteous, you're righteous, God made us righteous, and then his work is to let that righteousness or that life that he put us in to come out in your daily life.

Now, this is the last part. And again, I found this with J.B. Stoney, and I thought, well, I like that it doesn't mean, J.B. Stoney sometimes can be really hard to understand, but I think this is fairly easy. put together this thing called grace and practice. And so it gives a list. It's like an ascending ladder, a ladder of grace.

The first step is we believe that Jesus was sent of God. That's salvation. And second is that in the fullness of his work, we are justified. In other words, we have standing before God because we believe Him. Now is where step three and four is where and beyond it gets to be a challenge. The third step wrong is we make His acquaintance. You understand what that means? We make His acquaintance, personal intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Fourth, we come to see Him in heaven. and we know our association with him there and his power here where he is not. Fifth, we learn the mystery, the great things we are entitled to because of being in his body. Sixth, we are seated in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. not when we die, now, right now. And lastly, we're lost in wonder and in praise and the knowledge of himself. This is beholding the glory of the Lord Jesus face to face. When you and I get to leave here and go and behold him face to face, lost in wonder will be what we do.

There is practice accordingly that fit this. And it starts with the third step of the ladder of grace, acquaintance with Him. Devotedness is the practice following on acquaintance. If you meet the Lord Jesus Christ in His word personally, you become devoted. Not because you decided you can't help it. You're devoted. The next is from that devotion comes a testimony.

How do you live your life? Is it righteousness? And is it sin? No, I'm not going. I'm dependent on the Spirit of God to live his life through me. Next, I renounce renunciation of the traditions and the rudiments of the world. I'm not from around here anymore. I'm a heavenly spiritual person. I live from there.

Since you'd be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, for Christ sits at the right hand of God. Set your affections, your minds, your will on things above and not on things of the earth. And why do you, does Paul encourage you to do that? because you died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. Next, entering into the nature of the body and the house as each is in God's sight. In other words, where do you have you? What are you doing? And lastly, coming down from your position to act a heavenly man here in every circle that you're in, every circle that you're in. You know, Miles Stanford had a great saying. He used to say, it took a while to understand what he meant. He used to say, keep looking down for your life is hid with Christ in God.

Don't look up, look down, look from where you're seated. Look from where you are, and then you see things differently. We've just discovered that drones give you a much better view than being on the ground. Imagine the view from heaven. Imagine. Let's close.

Father, how we thank you. Boy, what you've done, not only for us, but to us is spectacular, and it takes our lifetime to even begin to scratch the surface of the grace that we live under and the grace that you called us to live in. We thank you. We recognize that the more we spend in your word, the more we find out about the incredible grace and glory that you have besowed on us. So my prayer today is that each one of us would grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And I pray in his name, amen.