Romans 6:20-23

• 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
• 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
• 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
• 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Introduction: Last week's sermon covered Romans 6:10-23, but I was unable to get to my third point. I was talking about things we need to understand with our minds, in order to live for the Lord successfully.

First, I pointed out that we need to learn to "reckon ourselves" to be one with Christ, in His death and life. We need to understand that we are therefore dead to sin, but alive unto God.

Second, I said that we need to see our bodies for what they are. They are mortal, corrupt, and inclined toward sin. Our bodies are our enemies as far as holy living is concerned. And yet paradoxically our bodies are the only tools we have for serving God. So we are to offer our bodies to God as living sacrifices, and offer our members: hands, feet and tongue, to do the Lord's will.

I was unable to get to my third point last week, so I will take it up today. In order to grow in sanctification we need to get a thorough understanding of the nature of sin. So that's our topic for today: Getting An Understanding of Sin. What do we need to know about sin?

I. We need to know what sin is.

This is not difficult, because the Bible tells us what sin is. In I John 3:4 we read..."Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law."

Sin is missing the mark, or falling short of God's standards...Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God..."

And we also read: "Whatever is not of faith is sin." (Romans 14:23)

People in the world have their own ideas about sin, and we need to beware of adopting worldly viewpoints...

• "an action that is or is felt to be highly reprehensible
• "Sin lies only in hurting others unnecessarily. All other ’sins’ are invented nonsense." Robert Heinlein
• "Sinning actually means to "miss the point of human existence." Eckhart Tolle
• "Sin means to live unskillfully, blindly, and thus suffer and cause suffering." Eckhart Tolle
• "Sin to waste your life by not living to your full potential - your true purpose."
• "Sin is simply any act that is unjust or immoral."
• "What is sin? Being out of alignment with my values." Barak Obama (March 27, 2004 interview with Cathleen Falsani, Chicago Sun Times.
• "Sin is any act or thought that robs myself or another human being of his or her self-esteem." Robert Schuller
• Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

So what is sin? 1) Transgressing God's Laws. 2) Falling short of God's standards. 3) Whatever is not of faith. In other words, whatever is not God-centered and God-motivated. Selfishness. Putting ourselves first, without thought for God's will in our lives.

II. We need to understand the result of sin.

Romans 6:23..."The wages of sin is death."

The result of sin is always the same: death. Sometimes literal physical death. Always spiritual death (separation from God AND true death in the spirit...an inability to respond to God righteously. Calling upon a spiritually dead person to love God and do right is very much like beating a dead horse. You will not get a reaction at all from the horse; and the reaction you get from the spiritually dead person will NOT be good.

The result of sin was made evident at the beginning of human history, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 2:17 "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

And Adam and Eve DID die spiritually, the second they ate the forbidden fruit. And their bodies immediately became mortal and corruptable and began to die.

The penalty for breaking God's law was usually death. Consider the Ten Commandments, and the penalties.

The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV)

• 1 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
• 2 You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
• 3 You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
• 4 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
• 5 Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
• 6 You shall not murder.
• 7 You shall not commit adultery.
• 8 You shall not steal.
• 9 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
• 10 You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

Only two of the ten commandments do not come with the death penalty: Don't steal; and Don't covet. The penalty for theft is remuneration, and being sold into slavery if you can't repay. The penalty for coveting is not mentioned. But coveting usually leads to theft, or murder; so the penalty would be the same.

"The soul that sinneth, it shall die." (Ezekiel 18:4, 20)

Punishment for sin is inescapable. Galatians 6:7-8 says..."Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

III. We need to understand the awful offensiveness of sin.

We tend to forget or block out from our thoughts bad things. We forget the trauma of a car accident. We forget the pain of child birth. We forget the pain of surgery and recovery. We also forget the awfulness of sin.

Consider the newspapers and the awful news that is reported there of serial killers, murderers, rapists, kidnappers, embezzlers, fornicators, child pornographers, cruelty to helpless animals, terrorists crashing planes into buildings, thieves and liars, idol worshippers, wife abusers and so on and on. We forget quickly, so think for just a minute about these things.

People constantly accuse God of cruelty when we hear what the Bible says about Hell and damnation. We say God is unfair, but who is really unfair? We say God is unjust, but who is really unjust? We say God is unloving, but who is really unloving? Has not God promised forgiveness and salvation to ALL who will repent and come to Him for forgiveness?

• Proverbs 8:17 "I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me."
• Jeremiah 29:13 "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."
• Matthew 7:7 "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."
• Acts 17:25-27 "Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us."

The awfulness of sin made God destroy the human race in Noah's time...Genesis 6:11-12; 5-6

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.

The awfulness of sin made God Himself die on a cross to redeem us.

IV. We need to understand that God has called us to STRUGGLE with sin.

Romans 6:22 says that we have been "set free from sin," but we need to understand the limitations of that statement. It is true in two ways:

• 1. We have been set free from the complete power of temptation. Before you became a Christian you had both a sinful body, and a sinful spirit; and no capability of saying "NO" to temptation.
• 2. We have been set from from the penalty of sin. Jesus died for YOU. All your sins are under the blood. "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1)

But we have not yet been set free from our sinful corrupt flesh, a lifelong source of weakness and temptation. And we have not been set free from Satan's power to tempt us. Our condition is illustrated by Job and by Jesus Himself. Satan tempted Job. And Satan tempted Jesus. And sometimes we fail and sin, due to our flesh. So, God has called us to STRUGGLE with temptation and sin. In this life you will never be free from that struggle.

Some practical advice about how to fight temptation:

• 1. Put on all the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-18).
• 2. Practice living the positive Christian thought life (Philippians 4:4-9)

Conclusion: Here then is last week's third point: In order to conquer sin in our lives, we need to get a good grasp on sin...The identity of sin; the results of sin; the awfulness of sin; and our duty to struggle with sin.

In all of this remember that God's grace is greater than our sin. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen