Steve Hopkins discusses how believers have been raised to walk in newness of life and should no longer permit sin to reign over them, as they are no longer in bondage to their sinful impulses. He emphasizes that true salvation leads to growth in holiness and conformity to Christ, and that a life of sin is fruitless and leads to death. Hopkins encourages listeners to reflect on their past lives before Christ and to acknowledge their former lives as worthy of condemnation and feel ashamed of themselves, while acknowledging that by God's grace, those who trust Christ have been made free from sin and the fruit of that is holiness.

Welcome back to Burnett Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the book of Romans.

Good afternoon. Turn with me in your Bibles, if you would, to the book of Romans once again, where we will be picking up with Romans chapter 6. And if you would stand with me for the reading of the word of the Lord. Let's read verses 21 and 22.

Let's read together the word of the Lord. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin and become servants to God, you have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life.

Let's pray. Father, we ask you once again, God, for your help as we open your word. Lord, that even as you've given your people eyes to see and ears to hear, Lord, that you would so grant a work of the Holy Spirit to open the meaning of the text before us this afternoon. And give us, Lord, understanding and change us, Lord, more into the image of Christ Jesus, who died for our sins and rose again. For we ask it in his holy name. Amen.

Let's be seated.

So we're now coming to the place at the end of Romans chapter 6 where the apostle is wrapping it all up. He's wrapping up everything he's been saying since verse 1. And when we started out in chapter 6 and verse 1, what he's wrapping up now is that question he asked from the beginning. And he's now kind of in its various forms dealing still with that question all the way to the end. He's about to wrap it up.

But he began, shall we continue in sin? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? If we're justified, and we are, justified by faith, by the grace of God alone, not on the basis of any of our own works, if that's true, and whenever we sin as believers, when sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, then he started off, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

You remember the apostle Paul's response was, God forbid, he said, how can we who have died to sin even consider going on in sin? No truly regenerate person would ever consider something so absurd. How can we possibly go on living in that which we have died to? We died to sin's power to condemn us. We died to sin's power to enslave us. When Christ died, we died with him. And when he was raised from the dead, we were raised to walk in newness of life. We are in union with Christ by faith, have been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life, how can we go on in sin?

He went on, as we went on in chapter six, to talk about our old man, and how our old man, our old self, was crucified with Christ, that we might no longer serve sin. And how the sin-dominated man died. The man that was dominated by sin died, and a new man was raised. How can we possibly go on as though these things were not true concerning us? Do you remember that?

We can't. We can't. By virtue of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection, we've died to sin's condemning power, we've died to sin's enslaving power, we've been made alive unto God. And because this is our new reality and our new identity, we should reckon that to be so concerning us that is so concerning us. And not only that, he went on to say, not only should we reckon that to be so concerning us that is so concerning us, but we should also live like it's so concerning us. No longer permitting sin to reign.

Sin isn't going to have dominion over us. Why are we going to allow sin, from which we've been delivered as that dominating force in our life, why would we go on permitting sin to reign in our mortal bodies as we did before we came to Christ? Because sin ruled over us like a tyrant, a king and a master and we its willing servants. We're no longer under sin's dominion, Paul went on to say. We're not under the dominion of sin. We're no longer under sin's dominion, compelled irresistibly to obey its dictates and enlist our members or employ our members in the service of unrighteousness.

We're no longer under compulsion as we were in the unregenerate state of man after the fall, not able to not sin. We're no longer under compulsion to yield ourselves as sin's subjects or employ our members, our eyes, our mouths, our hands, our minds as instruments of unrighteousness as we did before Christ raised us from spiritual death, out of the graveyard of spiritual death, as Sproul puts it, and made us alive unto God. We're no longer in bondage to our sinful impulses, which is what Eric was talking about earlier. We're not in bondage to those sinful impulses anymore. We've been set free from the prison of sin's slavery and are alive from the dead.

And remember I said in commenting on this, if that's not you, then you're still in the unregenerate state. If you haven't been set free from the prison of sin's slavery, you're still a slave to sin. I love my sin. When temptation comes, I yield, I give way, I hide my sin. I keep it out of the sight of others. I love my sin. I go on in my sin.,That's the spirit, the state of unregeneracy. But we're alive from the dead. And those who are alive from the dead, who've been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life, now have moral ability to do the things of God. And we have the indwelling spirit of God within us to fight against indwelling sin. The indwelling spirit against indwelling sin. And we can now enlist our members in the service of righteousness where before we could not.

We were once the slaves of sin, but we're no longer under His dominion. Nor will, the Apostle Paul went on to say, will we ever be brought back into absolute subjection in the prison of sin's slavery ever again. Never again will we be brought into absolute bondage to sin. It's not gonna happen. Praise God, it's not gonna happen. Can we fall into sin? Sure we can, but we're never going to go back to that place where we were in bondage to sin and could do nothing but sin. We'll never go back to that state again.

We're not under the law, he goes on to say. Which could never save us, by the way, but only threaten us and condemn us. We're not under the law with its requirement for a perfect obedience as the basis of our standing before God. The basis of our standing before God is our justification, our justification in God's sight based upon Christ's righteousness imputed to us, received by faith. It's the basis of our standing before God, not something that we do or don't do.

We are no longer enslaved to sin. We're not under the law with its requirement for perfect obedience as the basis of our standing before God, but we're under the liberating power of grace. The grace of God in Christ who fully atoned for our sins and kept the law of God perfectly in our place. What then we read, shall we sin because we're not under obligation, we went on to that. We're not under obligation to keep the law perfectly in order to be saved, but are under grace and license for sin, so we go ahead and sin now. We're not under obligation to keep the law perfectly in order to be saved, so shall we go on and sin? He keeps asking these questions. It's all kind of part of this first question that he began in verse one.

God forbid, same answer. God forbid, no. Shall we return to Egypt and willingly ask them to put the chains back on our wrists and upon our ankles after we've been freed from our enslavement to Pharaoh? Shall we return to Egypt and willingly subject ourselves to the tyrant from whom we have been freed? God forbid. Do you not realize that whoever you yield yourself, servants to obey, his slaves you are, Paul went on to say, don't you realize that? No, not going back.

And then he goes on, but God be thanked. We read that in our last session. God be thanked that though we used to be, we once were formerly the slaves of sin by God's grace. He says, though you were, that was your state before. You were enslaved to sin. You were in the prison of sin. Sin dominated you. It ruled you. You were under the requirement of the law to keep it perfectly or be threatened with eternal damnation and condemnation. You're not anymore. God be thanked that though you were formerly the slaves of sin under its power, under its dominion, that by the grace of God, by God's grace, you obeyed the gospel call to repent and believe. And being then made free from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness.

And then we looked at this. What's all this talk about servants and slaves and masters and all this stuff. We looked at Paul's answer to that question in verse 19, where he says, I've been speaking after the manner of men. I'm just talking to you in a way that you can understand. I'm going to use, I'm using and will continue to use figures that will help you grasp the reality of what has happened to you. Talking about Christians, believers that have been raised from death to life, that are no longer in bondage to sin. He said, what I've been doing is speaking in human terms, figures that are familiar to you, figures like masters and slaves and servants and all this because of the weakness of your flesh and comprehending spiritual things. That is on account of the effect sin has on your understanding and it has an effect on our understanding. An effect that affects our ability to grasp spiritual things clearly and precisely. So Paul's saying, what I did is, and what I'm doing is, I'm continuing to speak to you in familiar terms so you can better understand.,And what I want you to understand in using these figures of masters and rulers and servants and bondage and all this stuff is that even as in your past life, as former slaves of sin, you yielded your members, you employed your members, you enlisted your members, you willingly gave your members, your eyes, your mouths, your hands, your minds, your feet, as servants to sin and impurity and to iniquity, unto iniquity, ever increasing unrighteousness, even so now, he says, even so now, now that you've been freed from your bondage to sin and no longer are enslaved by your lusts and desires that are contrary to God and his law, now that you have moral ability to do the things of God, yield your members, yield your members' servants to righteousness and to holiness, now enlist and employ your members in the service of God and righteousness leading to ever increasing progress in your sanctification, that is, growth in holiness and Christ's likeness.

Paul's saying, even as you, in the unregenerate state, you employed your members in the service of sin when you were in the bondage to sin and bondage to sin and grew increasingly worse and worse, now that Christ has set you free from your former master, freed you from your former master, do the same with regards to righteousness. Surrender your whole self, he said, to God to be ruled by him and enlist your members, like you're the general enlisting them in the army, enlist your members in the service of righteousness unto ever increasing holiness.

When we were the slaves of sin, we obeyed sin as our master and went from bad to worse, but now, having been freed from sin's dominion and rule and having become the servants of righteousness, we should employ our members in the service of God and of righteousness unto ever increasing holiness and become more and more conformed to the image of Christ and that's exactly what happens with someone who's truly been saved.

On the streets of Burnet when I preach, I preach it all the time, there's evidence in true salvation. You're not saved by your works, you're saved by Christ's works alone and his righteousness imputed to us alone, but when God does that work in the heart, in the life of a person, the work he begins, he continues. He says, I'll continue it until the day of Christ Jesus. There's going to be growth and holiness and conformity to Christ. Yes, incremental, you've heard me talk about some people running with arms wide open and others like myself, most of their life crawling on their hands and knees over glass, but you will be conformed to the image of Christ if you are in him.

You will be made more and more like him. Before we were in Adam and dead to sin and slaves of sin, there was the progress of sin. How many have heard of that? Progress of sin, there's progression in sin, you progress in sin, you get worse and worse and worse and worse, but in Christ, having been freed from sin's dominating power, we are now given ability, spiritual ability, to cooperate with God. We didn't cooperate with God in our salvation, he saved us. It was the monogistic one work of God. His power, his work, his spirit, I saved you. In sanctification, there's cooperation. We cooperate. Eric talked about it, you can choose to cooperate, you can choose to not cooperate.

We can cooperate with the spirit of God who indwells us and enables us to obey. Paul says, now, yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. And then we ended our last session with verse 20, where we read that before Jesus freed us from our old master, we were free from righteousness. What? To be free from righteousness is not to have any. We were free from righteousness. We were without any righteousness.

And he followed up, and I'll get back to that in a moment, but he followed that thought up in verse 21 with an important question. The last question, by the way, that he asks in chapter six, basically, what did that get you? What benefit were you getting back then from the things you're now ashamed of? Because every one of us had a former life in sin, of which we are now ashamed if we're truly a child of God. And if we can't find that line somewhere, I'm not saying the day, the hour, the whatever, but the old me and the new me, we really need to be going before God and saying, you know, was I ever changed? And I know John the Baptist was filled with the spirit from his mother's womb, okay? But most of us aren't John the Baptist. And sometimes we have a hard time, you know, especially growing up in homeschool families. What was my previous life? You know, sometimes you just ask your parents, was I ever a little self-centered brat? Yeah, yeah, you were. I don't remember that. Yeah, I remember it. Did I ever practically send myself to sleep every night? Yeah, you did.,Yeah, but when you were the servants of sin, he says, what fruit were you getting then? What is the fruit that you can point to that came from your former life in sin? What benefit or advantage can you point to? What gain from being a slave of sin and free from righteousness, having no righteousness? What fruit can you point to? What benefit were you deriving then from those things of which you're now ashamed to even talk about?

Matthew Henry says, bring up the accounts. We might say, bring in the ledger. Let's just put it down on paper. Just jot it out. Just here's my life. Here's my life before Christ. Bring up your profit and loss statement. It's all loss from your former life in sin. What profit can you point to from the ledger of your life before Christ? What fruit were you getting then? Answer, none. What advantage did you have by the service of sin? Charles Hodge puts it, none. The end of those things is death, says Paul, eternal death, which we'll look at more next week.

But there was no benefit derived from the service of sin. And if God had not interrupted your former life, it would have ended in death. Understand that? God intervened. Praise his holy name. God intervened for me. He interrupted my life. And I praise God that he did. All we have now to show for our former life in sin is shame. That's what the Apostle Paul is saying. Shame. Bad memories. Stuff we don't even want to talk about.

But allow me for just a moment to digress for just maybe two minutes, and we'll pick up again where we left off. I want you to think about something. Not only was there no fruit or benefit or advantage in the service of sin when we were in the unregenerate state, when we were slaves of sin before Christ redeemed us, but think about this. What profit or advantage can we point to with regards to any sin since God saved us? Think of anything? The answer, once again, has to be none.

I say it to my family all the time. Sin is misery. Oh, it doesn't come saying, I'm misery. But it's misery. And every one of us knows that from experience. Proverbs 14.23 says that in all labor there's profit. But where's the profit in sin? Has any sin ever profited anyone the least? Do you get frustrated or irritated with someone in your home, your brother, your sister? None of you children ever do that, right? Never get irritated with your brother or sister? Never been irritated, no. Your son, your daughter, your husband, your wife? Maybe you respond with impatience or unkind words. To what profit? To what advantage? None. If you become bitter at someone, I'm talking about post-conversion. You become bitter, maybe even at your spouse, and then you live in that bitterness for a few hours or a few days. Looking back, could you honestly say, that was time well spent. What benefit? Sin is just misery. If we're honest with ourselves, we'd have to say, that was miserable. Nothing but loss, loss of peace, loss of time. Oh, how much time is lost. When we're in that state of irritation, and we've all done it. We've all been there. Loss of time, loss of joy, loss of fellowship, for sure. Sin is misery.

No one's ever benefited, either before or after their conversion by sin. There's been entire volumes written on this one three-letter word, sin. One of my favorites is The Sinfulness of Sin. Ralph Venning, I think it was, one of the Puritans, it's required reading as the children grow up. The Sinfulness of Sin, it's about so thick, Puritan paperback. It was originally entitled, The Plague of Plagues. I guess that was too harsh of a title, so they changed the title and modernized it. Sinfulness of Sin, Plague of Plagues. It was published right before the great fire of London that just wiped out London in the 1600s, at any rate.

Sin, you can't just sin, I think I said this a couple weeks ago, you can't just sin horizontally. I was just talking about relationship type stuff. You can't just sin horizontally. Only sin on the horizontal level is a vertical sin as well. In sinning against a family member or a church member or any person in the world, we sin against God primarily. David said, against thee, thee only have I sinned and done that which is evil in your sight. And he didn't mean that's the only one I've sinned against. He's saying, it's against you, God, primarily that I've sinned. And we have to see every one of our sins that we commit against others as primarily an offense against God himself. Certainly we grieve others when we are angry or bitter or envious or whatever, but more importantly we grieve God.

As I said, I digress. So the Apostle's saying, back to our text, what advantage did you have in the service of your old master's sin? The Apostle uses the word fruit here. What fruit did you have? What kind of fruit did you get from those things wherein you lived before Christ? If we're honest, we'd have to say rotten fruit, painful fruit, miserable fruit, sad fruit, and in the end, death. The end of those things.,It would have been eternal death if God had intervened by his grace. It would have ended in death eternal under his wrath for all eternity.

Funny isn't it? Not funny funny. Funny isn't it how sin, I'm just going to digress again for a moment, it never appears as misery on the stage, does it? Never appears that way. It never comes up and says, I'm going to bring you shame and misery and pain and sorrow and heartache and I'll wreck your relationships and in the end I'm going to kill you and then you'll reap my wages in eternity in hell forever and ever and ever. Never comes on that way.

No. Sin always comes on in disguise. One of the Puritans used to say if sin wasn't an ugly thing, it wouldn't wear a mask. Hebrews 3.13 says, speaks of the deceitfulness of sin.

But again, what did sin produce for you when you lived in bondage to those things of which you're now ashamed? There was no benefit from the service of sin. All we have to show for it now is shame.

In our former lives before Christ, Paul says, these are things of which we are now ashamed, as well we should be. Are you ashamed of your former life before Christ? True believers are. The Apostle is saying the things we lived in before we came to Christ are things of which we are now ashamed. We lived in deception. We lived self-deception and deceiving others. We lived in things that now we're just completely ashamed of.

Some lived in fornication, sexual relations outside of marriage. Some lived as liars and thieves. The Apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 6, I talk about this on the street all the time, such were some of you, you used to be this, you used to be extortioners, you used to be liars, you used to be thieves, you used to be those engaged in homosexual acts, you used to be effeminate men, he left all those things. He used to be sexually immoral, and the word is translated from the Greek word pornea, from which we get the modern English word pornography.

You used to be a porno guy, you used to do all, you used to live that way, but now you've been cleansed, you've been changed, you're no longer what you once were, and you're ashamed of those things, here he's saying. You're ashamed of the life before Christ. You're not still living in those things. It's not that you can't fall to something. And God puts more and more distance between it as He chastens you, as the Good Father does, as the Holy Spirit convicts you, as you're conformed more and more to the image of your Savior, the one who suffered for that very sin and died for it.

We're now ashamed. But Paul goes even further with this thought in Philippians chapter 3. Some of you will know where I'm going with, as I say that, because there he talks about his good works and being ashamed of his good works before Christ.

Okay, here's a new one. Wait a minute. You mean I should be ashamed even of the things that I did that were beneficial to others and people thought were good before I came? Yeah, well, he talks about his good works before he was in Christ, how he kept the law in the sight of men blamelessly. That's the word he uses. In the sight of men, he was blameless in the keeping of the law. Nobody was faulting Paul for anything. People thought Paul was a good guy. You might know someone like that. John Bunyan wrote, you know, about a man in Pilgrim's Progress. He said, quote, he lives in the city of morality near the town of civility. I'm good. You try to give him the gospel, you go, I'm good, no, I'm good. All right, I'm good. You're good? I never met anybody like that before. Let's walk through it, you know. Let's talk through it and see.

But Paul's outward appearance of righteousness satisfied even the sect of the Pharisees of which he was a member. And that's a hard thing to do. You don't satisfy those Pharisees without having some really good outward appearance of righteousness.

But how does Paul view this former life of morality and civility before Christ rescued him? He goes on to say that he counts all of it, his life before Christ saved him, including all of his good works and all of his law keeping as loss and as dung. That's the word he uses. It's a four letter word in scripture, dung. Paul's righteousness before Christ he views as nothing more than a pile of human waste. Which he says. It's not my word, it's his word. He's saying it stinks. All my good works, all my righteousness, it stinks. And I'm ashamed of it. That's what he's saying.

All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags to merit anything before God. Is that the way you view your life before Christ? A dung of filthy rags? Other men, you know, the Pharisee in Luke 18 prays to God and says, oh, thank you God, I'm not like other men. Ha ha. Especially that guy over there, you know. And he lists all of his good works. I tithe, I do this, I do that, or whatever. Jesus said that guy didn't go home to his house justified. The repenting guy did.,Calvin comments here, indeed the godly, as soon as they begin to be illuminated by the Spirit of Christ and the preaching of the gospel, freely acknowledge their past life, which they lived apart from Christ, without Christ, to have been worthy of condemnation. That was worthy of condemnation. And so far are they from attempting to excuse it, that on the contrary, they feel ashamed of themselves.

When we were outside of Christ, all the fruit on our tree was rotten, even the stuff that didn't look rotten. Even the best of our finest deeds bore the stench of death and self-righteousness. We weren't living for the glory of God. Lord, I'm going to take this, what you've given me, and I'm going to use it for your glory and give it to the poor. No, we just, we go and give it. God's not in the picture. That's evil. Don't even acknowledge that God gave you what you gave someone else. God's not even in the picture. That's wicked. Things that we should be ashamed of.

It puzzles me when I read Paul saying in 1 Timothy that he was the chief of sinners. We should all, when we read that, we should all think, the only way the apostle Paul could have been the chief of sinners is because I wasn't born yet. As I say, you know, we may say that, well, I don't really remember my life of sin. Ask your parents about your early life when you were self-centered and practically sinned yourself to sleep every night.

As we close, John MacArthur comments here, one of the marks of true salvation is a sense of being ashamed of one's life before coming to Christ. That's one of the marks of someone who's truly saved. Whether the previous life, he goes on, was marked by sordid immorality or great propriety, whether it was marked by heinous crimes or sacrificial service to others, by extreme selfishness or extreme generosity, it's a life about which the true believer can be nothing but ashamed, no matter how it may appear before the world. The life apart from God is a life apart from righteousness. Close quote.

And the end of it all is eternal death we'll look at next week when we go forward. But thanks be to God, by God's grace, we who trust Christ have been made free from sin, free from sin's wages, free from sin's penalty, free from the domination of sin in our lives, free from sin's dictatorship to command our obedience, and having been set free, the apostle says we have become servants of God and of righteousness, and the fruit of that is holiness.

The fruit of what God has done in our lives as his work in sanctification continues to be built upon his monergistic one work of justification in our lives. It goes on and on and on, and the fruit of that is holiness. There's ever-increasing sanctification and growth in holiness and Christlikeness, and the end of that is everlasting life.

But where do we begin? It all began with grace. It all began with grace. God's grace leading us to Christ, who alone could deliver us from the penalty of sin and free us from our bondage to sin, our former master. And it all took place on that hill of Calvary 2,000 years ago, when the Son of God, Son of Man, suffered and died for our sins. He who never sinned bore our sins and our shame, died in our place to reconcile us to God and free us from the penalty, the tyranny of sin. Praise God he did.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, we want to give you all the glory, God, not only for our justification but also for our sanctification. We know apart from you we can do nothing. Apart from Christ we can do nothing. Oh Lord, we need your work. We need your Spirit, God, to be working in us, and we pray that you would work in us by your Spirit. You would, Lord, just conform us more and more to Christ's image, make us more and more like Jesus every day.

And help us, Lord, to live in gratefulness for what you've done for us. Help us to live in thankfulness and gratefulness that you raised us from that graveyard of spiritual death, gave us spiritual understanding, made us believe, caused us to repent. Help us, Lord, to give you the glory knowing that there was nothing good in us, nothing, nothing good in us.

But there had to be an alien work which you did, God, coming in from the outside and interrupting our lives, and we praise God that you did. We thank you that you did. Help us to thank you and praise you, God, for that great work which you've done, that work of grace in saving miserable sinners like us, God. Help us to thank you and praise you, even as we will be thanking and praising you for all eternity. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.