Continued from the last blog....
So, if we are not under the law and therefore don’t have to focus on it, what will keep Christians from sinning? Since we have been set free from the condemnation of the law, can’t we just start sinning as much as we want? Well, let’s say you live in an imaginary country where speeding is not against the law. Should you drive 80 miles per hour around hairpin turns in rainy weather, just because you know you can do it without breaking a law? Of course not. Just because something is legal, doesn’t mean that it is beneficial.
But Paul had to field similar questions when he was addressing the Romans.
“14. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. 15. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? 17. But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. 18. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” Romans 6:14-18 (NKJV)
The reason that God can trust us enough to remove us out from under the law is that He also removed us out from under the dominion of sin at the same time. We were all born with that original bent toward sinning. It was the natural thing for us to do because that was our nature as sinners.
Verse 14: But we are no longer under the dominion of sin. In other words, sin no longer has power over us. We can never again use the excuse, “I just couldn’t help it.”
We often readily accept the fact that our salvation saved us from the penalty of our sin. We will even accept the fact that one day in heaven we will be saved from the very presence of sin. But how often do we fully realize and live out of the truth that we have already been redeemed from, set free from, released from the POWER of sin on a daily basis?
You may say, “but it sure feels like sin has power over me.”
Well, if so, it’s because you are not fully living out of the truth of Romans 6:14. When I am at the beach on vacation and I hear that a hurricane is coming my way, I head for home because a hurricane comes ashore on a beach! Now, does that hurricane still have all its power even though I leave the beach? Sure it does, but it no longer has power over me!!
If I live out of the truth of Romans 6:14, I will realize that sin still has all the power it ever had, but it no longer has power over me, because I no longer live under the law where sin’s power dwells. And when I feel the temptation to sin, I must believe with faith that I no longer have to choose to sin.
Verses 15-16: These verses prove that sin is a choice. If you present (willingly give) yourself as a slave to obey something, then you will become a slave to obey whatever that something is, even though you are not required to do so. Why would you want to willingly subject yourself as a slave to sin when you have been set free from it?
Sin is always destructive and God loves us so much that He doesn’t want us to be destroyed by it. That’s one of the reasons why God set us free from its rule over us.
Paul said that all things may be lawful for Christians, but not all things are beneficial to them. (I Corinthians 6:12) God doesn’t do anything harmful to you when you sin, but SIN itself always does. Romans 8:1 says that there is no condemnation left for sin, but it doesn’t say that there are no “consequences” for them.
When the Holy Spirit convicts me of sin, it is not to rain down condemnation on me. Instead, it’s to say, “Here’s an area of your life where I want something better for you. You are settling for less than the best here. This is going to hurt you if you don’t let Me take it out of your life.”
Verses 17-18: What keeps us from going back into sin once we understand that we are not under law, but instead under grace? Well, these verses are clear about that. Though we were once slaves of sin, we became slaves of righteousness and became obedient “from the heart.” Do you see where our motivation for obedience originates? Not in our knowledge of and adherence to the law, but “from the heart.”
At the point of our salvation, God exchanges our sinful hearts for pure hearts into which He implants His Holy Spirit. And it is out of that new heart, filled with the Holy Spirit, that our obedience springs forth. You may feel that Christians can’t be trusted to be obedient without God giving them a set of rules to follow and the accompanying punishment that goes with breaking those rules. But God is not placing His trust in Christians when He releases them from bondage to the law. He trusts His own work in us. He trusts the new heart He has placed in us. He trusts Christ who lives within us.
Let me just ask you something. When you truly focus on Christ and what He has accomplished in your life, do you really want to go out and sin? Is the deepest desire of your heart to be rebellious or is it to obey God? I believe that when we fully realize the heart change we have experienced, we will be obedient “from the heart” and we will never experience bondage to sin or the law again.
“But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” Romans 7:6 (NKJV)
The point of being set free from the law is not that we “can” sin. It’s that we no longer “have to.” We don’t have freedom so that we can do whatever God’s law forbids. Instead, we have the freedom now to be obedient because we are enabled to do so and we have a desire to do so. We are not motivated by the regulations of the written law that only produces condemnation and gives sin strength. We are now motivated by the desire of our pure hearts.
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