08 Grace and Slavery to Sin (Romans 6:1-14)

SPEAKER_00: Okay, we are in Romans chapter six today. I love this chapter. I've been saying that every week, haven't I? It's a great book. What can I say? I'm gonna move this so I can see my notes. All right, let me set the stage where we are. This is one of these passages that you really want to keep in the context of the book because he's speaking largely in metaphor, and people come up with different interpretations based on the metaphor because I think largely they haven't put it in the context of where he is. So let me just review where we are. This should be you you should probably be able to do this by now. In the first four chapters, or the first one through five, he argues that everyone is sinful. And no one can keep the law, so not the religious person, the pagan, or the moralist. Because the law requires that we keep it with our whole heart, all the time, all of it, um, and there's no way then that we can be justified because we fail. We can't do that. So about three, it's like twenty-two or twenty-three, he announces that there is a way to be justified, and that's through faith in Jesus Christ. And then in three and four, he argues that everyone who has been justified has been justified through faith. And he uses Abraham and David as an example. In chapter five, then he sums that up, his argument to this point, and he answers the question so what? If what I've been saying is true and we've been justified by faith, what does that mean for us? And he says, the main thing is we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Um so we exalt or rejoice or boast because we know that we will in fact be saved from our sinfulness and be made holy. And then in the second part of the chapter, he argues another way and says that grace prevails over wrath. So it's not that God had these two 50-50 options, wrath, mercy, which one should I choose? And he flipped a coin. The idea was his mercy, and his grace was the prevailing, overwhelming, abounding force, and it triumphs over his judgment. So that's where he's come to this point. Now, in chapter six, he's gonna start something a little bit new, and that is he's gonna do basically a question and answer format. So it's like the class took a coffee break, and now we've come back, and now he's taking questions. And he's gonna do that from six to eight, and then nine through eleven, he's gonna talk about what's the role of the Jews in all this, and then it's not until twelve that he's gonna give us, okay, here's practical what you should do with your life kind of implications. So the questions he's dealing with, and we're gonna deal with in the next four weeks, are not really the questions of clarification like a sincere and eager disciple might ask. They're questions that um his detractors would pose, people who said disagree with him. So the the idea behind the questions is okay, Paul, if what you're saying is true, then that means X, and we know X isn't true, so your gospel isn't true. And that's the nature of the questions that he's going to be answering. So the first one is, shall we sin that grace might increase? And the spirit behind the question is, okay, Paul, if what you're saying is true, that means we ought to keep sinning, and we know that God wouldn't want us to keep sinning, so your gospel isn't true. Now, you might say, well, wait a minute, Romans is written to believers, why would he answer these kinds of questions? The the Roman believers wouldn't pose them, would they? And I think that's true, but this is, remember, he's still in a didactic section of the book. He's still trying to build a case and an argument. And as these people go out and share the gospel that he's teaching them, these are the questions they're going to get uh raised, will be raised to them. So he's trying to prepare them. Okay, if you teach this gospel, here are the questions you're likely to get, and here's how you answer them. And I think that's very useful today because I find in my life these are the same questions that come up. They may not be in the exact same words, but the spirit behind them and the main point are often still raised today. And it makes sense because they're really the most logical questions. They're the ones that once you hear the what he said in one through five, you think, well, okay, but what about this? So that's what he's doing in chapter six. And he's gonna continue this kind of QA section through the end of chapter chapter eight. So what I want to do today is I'm gonna give you the overview of the passage. So we're gonna spend about the first ten minutes saying, here's the here's the question, why it's a question, here's the argument, and then I'm gonna go back and go kind of verse by verse or section by section. So I think it's easier, since he's speaking largely in metaphor in this section, to know where we're going first. So he starts in 6.1 and he says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might abound? And that's the question he's asking. Um, so the paraphrase would be something like, Okay, Paul, if what you're saying is true, what what you're telling us is that we ought to go out and make ourselves more wicked, because the more we sin, the more God has to forgive, and the more he shows us forgiveness, the more he's glorified. And we want to glorify God, so shouldn't we just go out and keep sinning? Um and his phrase, what shall we say, then, is kind of like our idiom, we might say, so what am I saying, or so what does that mean? It's the same kind of thing. Um and should we keep sinning that grace may abound? So I'm gonna go back to my remember from chapter one, my wonderful hand analogy, just to explain this point. So I think it helps. Remember my, what is this, my left hand? I have to know my right from my left here. My left hand is us, right hand is God, and we start out face to face in fellowship with Him. This is before the fall. What happens at the fall is we turn our backs on God and we say, okay, I don't need you anymore. I'm gonna be God, I'm gonna decide what's right and wrong, I'm gonna do it my way. Um, and that is that's the choice to sin, the choice to fall. At this point, remember from chapter one, God turns his back on us. He says, You want sin, you got it. And here Paul has all that language of God gave them over or abandoned them to sin and death. So this is God's wrath turning his back on us and saying, All right, now you're trapped. Now you're in the custody of sin and death. What happens at the cross is Jesus' death on the cross solves this problem of God's wrath. So it pays the penalty for our sins such that God can turn back to us. And the force behind the question is this is amazing. The fact that God solved our problem while our backs were turned is an amazing act of grace. Remember, Paul even says this in chapter 5. Right at the point when we were weak or right when we were helpless, he died for us, when we were enemies. And the section in five about if you know if it takes this much love to love your enemy, how what does it take to love your your child? He's saying, We were enemies. So this is this amazing, overwhelming um act of grace. So, why shouldn't we stay here? Because this is wonderful, this is showing this wonderful aspect of God's character, and so we should just keep sinning because it shows this overwhelming aspect of God's grace. What Paul's gonna say is this problem is only part of what grace is about. Yes, grace solves the problem of God's wrath, but grace does one more thing. It solves the problem of our sinfulness, and it makes it so God can turn us back to Him. And that's a second aspect of grace you don't want to forget. So part of the gift is not just forgiveness, part of the gift is solving the problem of sin itself. So his answer is basically if part of the gift is to turn us back to God, why would we keep our backs turned? Why would we live as if that's not true? We would make a mockery of the gift, because part of the gift is to draw us back to Him. And if we live as if that's not true, then we're mocking the gift. And that's really the passage in a nutshell. You didn't know it was so simple, did you? So the spirit of the question is basically why shouldn't we keep our backs turned? And Paul's answer is because part of the gift is to turn us back to him, and you don't want to ignore that. All right. So that's really we could stop there, you can go to your small groups, but we're not going to. Because, you know, I have the microphone. And my time isn't up yet. So we're gonna look at how he gets there and look at the language of the passage because it can be confusing. And the point I want to make is remember where we are in the context. He's argued up to this point that we're justified by faith and not by keeping the law, and now he's taking kind of questions or objections to the gospel. He is not at this point trying to teach to give us a how to walk day-to-day in your lives kind of answer. He's not really going to start that till chapter 12. And I think people misunderstand this passage if they come to it taking it out of context, just looking at 6 1 through 14 alone and say, okay, what does this mean about the next five minutes and my sinfulness? That's not what he's trying to answer. And to try to make this passage teach us how to deal with sin moment by moment is not his point, and I think that's where we can go astray with it. All right, so let's look at his answer. Verse 2 by no means, how can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? So his answer is by no means is this wonderful Greek phrase, it's like absolutely not, never be, not it, not even close. Emphatically, no, it's very strong. And how can we who died to sin still live in it is really the summary of where he's going. And it's basically this point. We have been turned back, so why would we continue to live as if our backs were turned to God? Um so part of the gift was to restore the relationship with God. That's probably a better way of saying it than turning us back. It wasn't just that God forgave us, it's that it restored our relationship to Him, and why would we live as if that relationship was still broken? Now, I think that's something we we miss because when we come to faith in Jesus, we often learn, well, Jesus' death paid the penalty for our sins, and so the cross took away that penalty, and that satisfies our death to justice, and that's like you know, a legal, like a get out of jail free card, you know, we've we've been sprung. And the problem is for many of us our understanding stops there. It is true that the cross guarantees our salvation in that it guarantees the penalty has been paid, but there is more to it, and that's really Paul's point. It also guarantees that we will be saved from sin itself. So it is not just that our penalty was paid, so it's not as if God said, Okay, you're out of jail, now go back to a life of crime. You know, what kind of salvation is that? You know, if you could save us so we could continue to be evil, wicked, selfish people. Well, that's no good. That's what we want to be saved from. So his argument is it's not just that you've been gotten out of jail, it's now you have a life that's possible that wasn't uh possible before. Now you have a hope of the glory of God that you never had before. Now, let me be clear on that. In no place does the Bible promise that this transformation from ungodliness to godliness is going to happen instantaneously. It never promises that. On the contrary, it promises that this is going to be a long, gradual, step-by-step process. Actually, I suppose there is one point when Paul talks about we'll be changed in the twinkling of an eye, but he's talking about when the last trumpet sounds, we will be changed in the twinkling of the eye. That's the context of that. So this side of heaven, it is not instantaneous. And scripture never promises that this transformation is okay, now you're holy. In fact, and Paul's going to go on in seven and eight to make this really clear that it has not happened yet, that we are we are moving that way, but we don't have it yet. So when we look at our lives and we see all these, you know, flavors of selfishness, it's tempting to say, well, how can Paul claim we've died to sin? I I mean, all I have to do is look at yesterday and I see that I'm sinful, my family's sinful, and we're still there. So how can he say, how can we die to sin and still live in it? The promise that he's talking about here is not that we will have victory over every battle of every sin in our life. The promise is we've won the war. Eventually we will win. The war is the victor in the battle has been declared, and sin is going to lose, and we are going to win, and that is an absolute guaranteed fact. Now, in the next five minutes, sin may defeat me, but that doesn't negate the truth that the power of sin has been broken in my life by the cross. It just means that the power of sin hasn't been, or the power of it being broken has not yet been fully realized. It's ha it will happen, it's coming, but it's not fully realized in my life. So his argument is that the cross guarantees not just your the penalty for your sin has been paid, but that ultimately you will be saved from sin itself, the power of sin in your life. So, or to go back to my hand analogy, it guarantees us the possibility of life. When our back was turned, we had no hope. We had whatever sin or choice we faced, we really had no hope that we were going to come out of it. Now we have hope. And we have hope that we will have life, or as Paul says, the hope of the glory of God. So Paul's saying, well, should we continue to sin that grace may abound? No, because part of grace is restoring this relationship. All right. Um let me look at the metaphors a little bit. What does he mean when he talks about dying to sin? What he's continuing, I think, through hearing this metaphor is the one he began in chapter one, when he talks about we've been handed over to sin and death and handed into their custody. And that is we were sin was our master and we were its slaves. We were legally bound to sin. What that has been broken, and we've had a new master. And I think he uses the word dying to sin because that's how a slave got free. No one could own a dead slave. Once a slave died, their master had no uh say over them. So his metaphor is um we have died to our sinful master, and we have been raised to a new master, and that is God. So as long as we are alive, sin was our master, or as long as we were in his metaphor, but through belief in Jesus, we metaphorically died, and now sin is no longer our master. So, how so we who died still live in it? He's asking, how could you live as if sin was still your master when it no longer is? Okay, do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? This I think is the question: don't you know that part of God's grace is to remove us from sin's power? Being baptized into Jesus' death is the idea that we have been, just as Jesus literally physically died, so we have metaphorically died, and when we died, we s sin ceased to be our master. So the only way you could think that you'd want to continue to pursue sin is if you didn't know that part of grace was to remove us from that. Now again, I don't think he's addressing the momentary everyday struggle. He's not saying in the next five minutes am I going to sin. He's looking at what's the tenor and direction of my life. When all is said and done, where am I headed? Whose child am I? Am I still a child of sin or am I a child of God? What controls me? What's my hope? So he's not saying, you know, he's not trying to give some key to how can you win the bat the next skirmish in the war. He's trying to make the point the war has been won, the victor has been declared. So baptized into Jesus is a metaphor for coming to faith. Baptized into his death is, I think, a metaphor for the the fact that part of trusting him is to trust him to free us from sin. So it's the opposite of what happened in Romans 1, where in Romans 1 he says God abandoned them or gave us over into the custody of sin and death. Now he's saying we've been brought out of that custody. Um that power has been broken. And I don't think he really needs it to be any more complicated than that. Other his point is we're no longer abandoned to sin and death. We have hope but we didn't have hope before. Okay, verse 4. We're going to look at four through seven in this section. Therefore, we've been buried with him. Well, let me read the English Standard Version that's a little smoother. We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we had been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him, in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been set free from sin. And now if we have died with Christ, we believe oh, let's stop there. Let's stop at seven. So if I was going to paraphrase four through seven, he's saying, just as Jesus physically died and was physically raised from the dead, so we metaphorically died to our old master, which was sin, and we have been metaphorically raised to a new master, which is God. So he's emphasizing now not just the death but the resurrection, the point being the relationship has been restored. We have been turned back to God. So it's not just that the penalty was paid, but now we have this newness of life. Sin used to be our master, now it's God. Now remember the point he's trying to argue. The context is if your gospel is true, Paul, shouldn't we continue to sin? He's not answering the question, as a believer, will I continue to sin? He's answering a theological point, should I continue? Isn't this a a um logical implication of your gospel? And he's saying, no, because we have been raised to this newness of life, we have a life now that might ultimately is not ultimately controlled by sin. So verse 5 re-emphasizes that point. He's basically saying, why would God forgive us our sins but leave us trapped in them? So if we have been united in his death, we shall certainly be united in his resurrection. Why would he free us from the penalty and leave us trapped in his sins? Just as Jesus was raised to newness of life, don't you think God's going to raise us to newness of life to give us hope where we didn't have hope? Now, this old self, new self is often a confusing metaphor, and let me see if I can go through that one. I think my old self, he means nothing more than the me who was trapped in sin. So the me who had no hope. The change is not between my old self and my new self, the change is not my abilities, the change is my relationship to God, and that's key to remember. The old me was trapped in my sin because God had his back turned to me. The new me is no longer trapped because God's back is no longer turned. So I'm still the same person. I have the same weaknesses, the same likes, the same dislikes, I have, you know, the same scars, the same background, the same experiences, but now I have hope, and I had no hope before. So there's a sense in which nothing about me has changed, and there's a sense in which everything about me has changed. So if just to give you a this isn't a very good analogy, but it's the best I could think of. Imagine, you know, we're back in the Civil War days, and the Union soldier rides in and says, the war is over, the emancipation proclamation has been signed, there is no more slavery, and I'm standing there a slave, and I might, you know, throw my hat in the air and say, I'm a new man. Well, nothing about me has changed. I'm the same, got the same gray hair and the same scars and the same limp or whatever, the same problems. On the other hand, I have hope I didn't have before. I have a possibility I never had before. I have there's a sense in which everything has changed because now the direction and the ultimate goal of my life can be radically altered. And that's what Paul's metaphor is here for the old man, new man. Um what has changed is my relationship to God. So I don't think he's claiming that our new self will no longer struggle with sin. The promise of new life is not a guarantee that I will never sin again. The problem of the promise of new life is a guarantee that I have hope. And that's that's the claim. So the change between my old man and new man is my relationship to God and the fact that now I have hope where I had no hope before. So when I was trapped in my sins and I faced moral struggles under the law, I have no way out. I can just keep trying, try harder, try harder. I'm still gonna fail, nothing's gonna change. Once Jesus comes into my life and he solves the problem of my sin, not only the forgiveness. But also the fact of my sinfulness, now I have hope. Now, when I face those battles, it doesn't guarantee that I'm going to win everyone, but it guarantees that I'm moving in the direction of righteousness. And God is going to use all of that to make me the person he wants me to be. So I have hope where I had no hope before. Now the confusing thing you might ask is why does Paul use such absolute language? Why does he all throughout this section he talks about old man, new man, one's destroyed, one's dead, one's crucified, it's gone. And I think that trips up a lot of people when you come to the passage because he is using absolute declarative kind of black and white, it was this way, now it's this way, or that way, kind of language. The problem is, all you have to do is live one day, and you can see we still sin. I mean, every Christian for 2,000 years has had a problem with sin. So it's we can't look backwards and say, oh well, after the cross, we, you know, our sin is magically washed away. Um so if he's not claiming that we will no longer struggle with sin, what's he claiming? Well, one commentator is this is actually kind of a famous analogy, but he used the analogy that the old man is like a dead dog, and the dog is dead, but he's not gone. So I still drag him around on the leash, but he's dead because the problem has been solved. But if you kick him, he doesn't bark, he just still exists. So when we sin, it's because we're still dragging around our dead dog. Well, I don't know about you, but my dead dog barks. And he bites too. You know, give me a chance, and I'm gonna bark and bite, no problem. Um so that analogy doesn't work for me. The problem with it is who's gonna break the lease? I mean, now I've added something. I said the death of Jesus is not enough. Jesus' death killed the dog, but somebody's got to come along and cut the leash. Well, who is that gonna be? Um, it can't be me. I know I can't do it. Um, although most people who follow that kind of theology would say you can, and they give you, you know, the keys to victorious Christian living or the things you need to do to cut the leash. But think back to Romans 5. If it's up to me to cut the lease, how can Paul argue in Romans 5 that our hope will not disappoint because God loves us? Paul seems to think it's up to God for that lease to be cut. So if I have to learn on my own to break the leash or to break this problem of sin, then now it's on my shoulders and it's not on God's. And now I have a problem because I don't know that I can do it. I it's not guaranteed if it's in my hands. Because I know that, you know, I'm still struggling. I'm still, you know, I would sell my birthright for a pot of porridge given half a chance. This is, you know, if I'm honest, that's who I am. So if it takes some other miracle to get me out of that situation, I'm in trouble. And I don't think Paul would agree with that. Because all through, remember back to chapter five, he argued, your hope is an absolute guaranteed because God loves you enough to get you there. And if he loved you enough to die for you while you were his enemy, then he certainly loves you enough to get you to your inheritance. All right. Um, there's a couple more, so that's old self, new self. Oh, body of sin is the other interesting phrase in there. In order that this body of sin might be brought to nothing. That um body was a slang term for a slave. So we you know how we talk about, oh, a babe or a hunk or something. Well, in the Greek world they would talk about a body and they meant a slave. It was a kind of a derogatory, kind of like in the old south, people would say boy, you know, for a slave. It was that kind of slang. And I think what Paul's using here is that slang term to say the sl that this slavery, this me who is a slave to sin, would be brought to nothing. Some people don't think he's using the slang term, they think he's just meaning the literal physical body. Either way, I think you come to the same place. The me who is controlled by sin is gone. The me who was controlled by sin no longer exists because what's changed is my relationship to God and the fact that I have hope. How are we doing? I want to try to end a little early today to give you more time for questions because there've been such great questions. So bear with me if I speed through this. I do want to leave a little more time for questions. Okay, verse 8. Let's look at 8 through 10. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, and the life he lives, he lives to God. Again, he's making the same point. He's saying, just as Christ's physical death was followed by a physical resurrection, likewise our metaphorical death to sin is followed by a metaphorical resurrection, so that we now have life under God and we have this hope of the glory of God. Now, eventually we know that there will come a physical resurrection for us as well, but I don't think that's what he's got in mind here. His point here is death is no longer master. Just as death no longer had dominion over Christ, so sin no longer has dominion over us in the sense of the war will we will not lose that battle. The war has been won. God has declared that we are going to win this in the long run. Death is no longer our master. So the resurrection proved that physically and literally that death was no longer Jesus' master, and the picture for us is sin is no longer our master. Part of the gift of grace is freeing us from that custody of that tyranny. So we have hope, not that we're perfect, not that we are completely holy. He's gonna, again, as we get into seven and eight, he's gonna make that really clear, but that we have this new destiny. We have possibilities that we never had before, we have access to the Spirit of God that we didn't have before, and now he we have a hope of being freed. So in 11 through 14, he sums this up, and I think his point in this, it's an exhortation, but I think his point is if you want to know what the implication of my gospel is, here it is. The implication of my gospel is not go out and sin boldly. The implication of my gospel is so you also consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ. So I think he's just driving the final nail home, saying, Um, here's my conclusion, here's what my gospel implies. So 11 through 14, so you also must consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for un for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Again, the dominion aspect is being emphasized. So his conclusion is if you want to understand the implications of my gospel, it's this part of the gift of grace was to set you free from that problem of sin, not just the penalty of it, but the fact of it in your life. And because we've been justified by the cross, sin is no longer our master, so don't live like it is. So the logical conclusion of my gospel is not pursue sin, but strive after holiness. And I think that's his conclusion. Um for you're not under law, but under grace. He brings it all back to justification. Now, what he's gonna well, what's coming. So let me bring this let me just see if I can summarize it all back. And actually I want to summarize what we've learned in five and six. Because I think there's one more aspect of the cross that we sometimes miss. So the first aspect of the cross is that it Jesus' death pays the penalty for our sins. The second one is what we've been talking about today, and that is that it deals with the problem of sin itself, that it will no longer have dominion over me. So God didn't give me this get out of jail free card to throw me back into a life of crime. He got me out of jail so that he could make me a righteous and good and holy person. Now, again, that's not instantaneous, that's a long process. But there's one more implication, I think, of the cross that I want to highlight, and it comes from this section, but also what we talked about in chapter five. And I think it's probably the most significant point of all, and that is Jesus' death on the cross guarantees our full salvation. We can't miss it, we can't fall short of it, we can't hinder it, we can't stop it, we can't get in the way. Now, by full salvation I don't mean just our justification, just the penalty for our sins being paid, but the fact of sin in our lives. We have absolute confidence that one day all the effects of sin and godliness and ungodliness will be removed. You know, that all the wrongs will be put right, all the tears will be wiped away, all the hurts, the wrongs, the frustration, the bitterness, all of that will be put right one day. And we will be transformed from wicked, ungodly people to godly, righteous people. And the cross guarantees it we cannot miss it. So there is no dead dog on a lease we have to worry about that maybe or I may or may not, you know, break the lease. And I think it's we tend to accept pretty easily that Jesus' death paid the penalty for our sins. You know, he went to the cross claiming he was going to do that, he took our place, um, he died, and I think the once for all is no more death is necessary. This sacrifice was was the one. And when God raised Jesus from the death, he from the dead, he declared that he had accepted that sacrifice, that that was good. So we have this guarantee, and it I think that's pretty clear in scripture, and we don't argue with it. But the fact that it guarantees the rest of our salvation or our eventual glorification, that we still have problems with because moment by moment, day by day, we're faced with these moral choices, and sometimes we choose right, and sometimes we don't. And we tend to think that if I'm choosing right more often than not, then I'm making progress, and if I'm choosing wrong more often than not, then I'm stuck in my sinfulness, and there's something I've got to do to get unstuck. And therein lies the problem. There is nothing you can do to get unstuck, it's all in God's hands, and He will get you there. Um so I might say, well, I know the cross guarantees the possibility for me to be a godly ch person. It breaks the mastery of sin and it makes me free to choose righteousness if I really want it. But it only makes righteousness possible. It doesn't guarantee that I'm going to want it enough. And there are a lot of people that think that way, and some denominations that teach that. I don't think from what we've learned in five and six that that's true. Because in five, he remembered the argument, you will not be disappointed in your hope because God loves you. Paul is assuming it's on God's shoulders. He's then he makes the point, further point, that grace abounds over wrath. And if God loved you enough to save you while you were under wrath, and grace is this overwhelming, abounding force, then don't you think he loves you enough to get you the rest of the way? And that is great news. Because I don't know if if you're like me, I know that there's something down inside of me, deep down that wants righteousness, that longs for it, and and hates the fact that I'm sinful. But at the same time, I know that there's something deep down inside of me that at any given moment would give it all up, you know, and maybe some fit of unbridled passion. I'd toss all this out the window and do some horrible um, you know, who knows what. I'm capable of it. I'd be kidding myself to deny the possibility because I'm not faithful, I'm fickle, and I'm not wise, I'm foolish, and it would not be surprising at all for me to reject all this and some for some momentary pleasure. I mean, look at the heroes of the faith. You see Peter denying his Lord, you see David committing murder and adultery, you see Solomon committing great sexual sins, you see all these people who had, you know, a closeness to God that I only dream about, and they failed. So how do I know I'm not gonna do the same thing? And what Paul is telling us is the cross guarantees that you will not ultimately lose. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how terrible the temptations or the struggles, you will get there. And that's the incredible news. Why? Because God loves you, because grace abounds over sin, and because part of the gift is not just paying the penalty, it's restoring the relationship. It's giving me hope where I had no hope. So that's amazing good news. The question then is how do we respond? Well, first, obviously, we ought to be profoundly and utterly grateful because God didn't have to save us, He uh He owed us nothing, and yet He did everything to make our salvation possible. But the other question I think is should we continue to sin because we're forgiven? No, because you know the very thing that your heart desires you're going to get. So if my heart's desire is to say, win a gold medal in the Olympics, and you said, you know what, you're gonna get there. I have a crystal ball, I've seen the future, you're gonna win the gold. Would I then say, Great, I'll sit on the couch and watch TV? No, because if what I really want is to win that gold medal, I'm gonna try all the harder because now I can practice with joy and with purpose, knowing that my efforts are not in vain, that I'm going to make progress and I'm going to get there. Um so the analogy, the point I'm trying to make with that analogy is you can go out and fully engage in life and all its ups and downs, knowing you're going to win. Yes, it's going to hurt at times, yes, you're going to face struggles, yes, sin will defeat you, but it won't ultimately win. So if you're trapped in a bad marriage, if you if you have a rebellious, you know, um broken relationship with a child or chronic health problems or terminal financial woes or you know, a boss from hell, what how do you face those situations? How do you get through? And Paul's saying, you get through because you know you have hope. That no matter what happens, God is in control, no matter what the next five minutes bring or the next five years bring, God has promised to use that to bring you one step closer to the very thing your heart desires. So He's going to get you to godliness no matter what. And you can face all of that with, you know, certainly some fear and trepidation, and yes, it hurts, and you get um you you're tempted to despair, but even then you don't face it as one who has no hope because now you have hope. And I think that when the Bible talks about the peace of God that pass surpasses all understanding, that's I think what they mean. This confidence that no matter what, God is going to get me there. I can't lose it, I can't mess it up, I can't stop it, I can't break it, I don't have to pray for some other miracle to come along and save me. God has already done everything necessary to get me there. So when he says, even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God, he's saying, know that you have hope. Know that the war, even though it's not over yet, you're still fighting the battles, you're going to win. That's the way to live your life. So face it with confidence or fear and trepidation, I guess, but knowing that God is on your side. So don't go on pursuing sin. Pursue righteousness, knowing that there's a God who's watching you every step of the way and is going to get you to the end. And sometimes he uses those struggles, he uses our failures to bring us to that next step. You know, if you're if you have some sin in your life that you've prayed to be released from, and and it just the answer, you know, you're saying, well, I want my answer by Friday. You know, and God says, Well, ten years. You know. Um, that's it's not because he's no longer loves you or he uh has forgotten about you, it's because this is what's best. This is the tool he's using to make you a person of faith, to make you a person who loves him. I mean, you know, look at Abraham. He got these promises of of he would be a great nation, and it was like four hundred years later that they actually started coming true, except for Isaac. So what God's timetable is not our timetable. You know, we we want answers in five minutes. We've got you know instant email and instant internet, and everything's fast, and we want, you know, I prayed five minutes ago. Where's my answer? And God just doesn't work that way. Sometimes the answer is wait and wait again and wait longer. Um but it doesn't mean he doesn't love you, it doesn't mean he's forgotten you. It means this is part of the plan. Yes, it's hard, yes, it involves struggling, yes, it often involves pain, but you will win. That is guaranteed. Sin will not be master over you, for you are not under the law, you are under grace, and that's our hope. So let me pray to close this and then I'll give you some question time. Lord, thank you that you are a God who loves us so much, and we pray that um in the days ahead, in the weeks ahead, and the years ahead, as life gets hard or crazy, or things happen that we don't understand, or struggles come along that just seem overwhelming, that we would come back to this and know that um you're a God who solved the problem of our sin, both now and in the future, and that we can face those battles knowing we're not alone, knowing there's a point, knowing there's a reason, and knowing that your hand is behind it. And we pray too that we would be able to reach out with this truth to a hurting world who seems so lost and and feeling um lost in the waves of all these new age philosophies, that we could show this love and this confidence. And I pray that you'd be working these truths into our hearts and into our lives so that they're not just theology, but they're the way we see the world, we see ourselves, and you would write them on our hearts. In Jesus' name.