In his sermon 'What Kind of Slave are You?' based on Romans Chapter 6, Scott Brown explores the profound metaphor of slavery to explain the doctrine of salvation (soteriology). He emphasizes that everyone is either a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness. The sermon elaborates on the transformation that occurs at salvation, where one is set free from sin and becomes a slave to righteousness, leading to holiness and everlasting life. Brown stresses that salvation is not based on emotions but on the truths of the gospel. He outlines the five imperatives for believers to attain victory over sin: reckoning oneself dead to sin, dethroning sin, withholding the body from sin, standing in grace, and presenting oneself as a slave to righteousness. The sermon also addresses the misuse of the term 'slave' in translations and underscores the importance of sound doctrine in shaping a believer's life. Ultimately, Brown calls on believers to rejoice in their new identity in Christ and to live lives marked by holiness and obedience.

Open your Bibles to Romans chapter six, Romans chapter six, find verse 14, Romans six, verse 14. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?

Certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, that you are that one's slaves whom you obey? Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness 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. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.

For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, So now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and the end, everlasting life.

And then finally, verse 23, which is the summary of the entire chapter. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father, please, we so desire that you would come and help us to understand your will, to understand what all these things mean to us in everyday life, even at the moment now from this moment forward.

Lord, come and shepherd your flock today. Amen Please be seated These these verses continue to elaborate on the doctrine of salvation What it means to be saved. This is the the theological category of soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation. In these verses though, we find a new metaphor. The apostles use many metaphors up to now to explain what happens in the new birth.

But the new metaphor here is slave. And he mentions that word eight times in the text. And both the believer and the unbeliever is categorized as a slave. And of course the most important question before a text like this is whose slave are you? But there's this continued elaboration on the doctrine of salvation.

There's so much confusion today about what it means to be saved, but the apostle Paul clears it all up in these chapters that we've been studying. And of course this is Soteriology, soteriology. Kids, listen, write this down. Soteriology, this is a new word. Maybe it's a new word to you.

But it's a word, it's one word that comes from two words. Soteriology comes from two Greek words. Sotere, which means savior or deliverer. So the sotere part is savior and ology, Soteriology, the last word is logos, and the word means a statement or a study of something. So soteriology is the study of salvation.

Got that? Soteriology, write that down in your notes, you kids. So, these verses introduce a new metaphor, the metaphor of slavery. When we get to chapter seven, there'll be another metaphor. It's a metaphor of marriage to try to explain what has happened in salvation, but we focus here.

It's very important that we understand what it means to be saved. One of the problems that modern Christians have is that they live in the midst of a very emotionally driven culture. And we judge our salvation by our emotions, by the ups and downs of our emotions. And everywhere you turn, you're charged to pay great attention to your feelings. When in fact there are many facts about salvation that are actually meant to inform the feelings.

If you let your feelings run your life, your life will be run off a lot of cliffs. But if your life is driven by truth and you begin to inform your mind with truth, your feelings will follow in a right direction. And so it's very important that we understand we live in a culture where feelings are king, that they determine everything. But what we found in Romans is that the doctrine of salvation has been communicated in many, many ways all through this, all through our studies in the book of Romans. And you know, salvation is more than just believing facts.

It's more than praying a prayer. It's more than claiming that you are forgiven. There are actual things that God has said and done that secure salvation. Now every verse in this chapter details what a wonderful savior Jesus Christ is. And this is, I believe, why the Apostle Paul started out his letter by saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God unto salvation.

And what we found in our studies in Romans so far is that the Apostle Paul is such an encourager, he can't stop encouraging the saints about what God has done. Over and over and over again with every verse in these six chapters that we've been in, The Apostle Paul is trying to encourage the believer for what God has done, and it's so thrilling. Well, if you have an outline in front of you, I just wanna quickly review chapter six so you can kinda see the flow of thought here. And first of all, let's just look back very quickly. In verses one through 10, you have what has happened to the Christian we call these the indicatives of the Christian life realities in other words verse 2 we died to sin verse 3 we were baptized into Christ number verse 4 we were buried with him we were raised from the dead.

Verse five, we were united with Him. He just goes on and on and says what God has done, that the old man was crucified and that we have been freed from sin. That's the first ten verses. And this really comes as sort of a conclusion of a section after spending five and a half chapters of just talking like that about what God has done to save your soul with not a single command in the first five and a half chapters of Romans. And then finally he comes down and begins to issue commands.

Okay, here's what you do about it. And that takes us to verses 11 through 14. And he talks about how the believer has victory over remaining sin. So he moves from the indicatives to imperatives. Okay, here's what you do about it.

And last week, we engaged in what I called five things you must do to accelerate victory in yourself in your sanctification. Because salvation is something that God does, sanctification is something that man gets involved in. And so this is the involvement. And just in these verses, you have these five things. First of all, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin.

In other words, you still need to start thinking differently. Sin, I'm dead to you, I don't want you anymore. Secondly, dethrone, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Turn away from that taskmaster. You have a ruler that wants to rule over you.

Sin is like a commander and it wants to get into the castle of your life and move the members of your body for sin instead of righteousness. To turn the members of your body, your ears, your mind, your hands, everything into an instrument of unrighteousness. That's what the devil wants to do. So you must dethrone him. And second, and thirdly, you withhold the members of your body, verse 13, do not present your members as instruments of righteousness.

In other words, you know, your mind, your tongue, your eyes, your hands, your feet, everything is for the glory of God. Refuse to submit any part of your body to end as an instrument of unrighteousness. And then finally, stand in grace, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace." In other words, you're under the reign of grace, be filled with the grace of God, be filled with the Spirit of God, and recognize that you are a recipient of grace. And you have access to that grace in which you stand every minute of your life if you're a believer. So he's in these verses in verses 11 through 14 he has these five imperatives and then and then he he goes back again to indicatives and what it means to stand in grace, what it means to not be under law, but to be under grace.

And so he turns back to the indicatives. Now, the method that I wanna use this morning is I just wanna go from verse to verse. You have an outline in front of you that gives you headings for each verse in this text. So I'm just, I don't have a formal outline but I'm just going to walk verse by verse and try to give some explanation of each one of those verses. These verses bring before you the most important thing about your identity.

You really need to know who you are. And I pray that when you leave this room, it will be so clear to you who you are and whose slave you are. And there really are only two kinds of people in the world and the Bible is here to help us to categorize ourselves, to understand the forces that are at work in our lives, because they have implications not just for this life, but also for all eternity. So These verses reveal the most important thing about who you are. And it doesn't have anything to do with your job, doesn't have anything to do with your age, it doesn't have anything to do with your marital status or your social status.

It really has to do with the way that God has characterized you and how he's categorized you. So the key word of the theme that surrounds all of this is the word slave. You know, Jesus said in Matthew 6 24, no man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. So this binary proposition that you are a slave of one kind or another.

And so the miracle of conversion is that you, is that your life changes and you become a slave of another. So in this metaphor of slavery, It's very interesting, translators over the years have translated the word slave and turned it into servant or bond servant. They've actually toned down the force of the word. John MacArthur wrote a book on it called Slave. He says that there is a terrible miscalculation and a deception among translators as they mistranslated this word and they used the word bond servant.

But a slave is owned. A slave has no freedom, a slave is a possession, the slave is not like a servant, a servant has choices, but a slave has no choices. And that's the metaphor that he's using here. Well, let's walk through this exposition and we'll begin in verse 14 and we'll just take these verses one by one. The best news for a sinner is found in verse 14.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Now, this is a declaration, this is a truth, this is not a command, this is not something that you do, this is something that God has already done. When you were saved, sin no longer had the same dominion over you that it had before. He is not saying stop sinning. He's not saying stop letting sin reign over your mortal body.

He's saying for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace." So this is a promise of deliverance from the bondage of sin for the Christian. This is a truth. If you're a Christian today, rejoice in what God has done. You know what that was like. He broke the power of sin in your life.

And he's actually answering an objection why the sin does not have dominion. Verse 15, what then? Shall we sin because we are not under law or under grace? Certainly not. He's actually answering a cynical objection.

People are saying, okay, Paul is preaching cheap grace. You're saved, you can send all you want. Well that's just a cynical objection to what the Apostle Paul is saying. He says certainly not. This is the strongest form of objection in the Bible And what he's saying is that sin will not have dominion over you if you're a believer.

And then he speaks of the cost of discipleship here in this verse. To be a Christian is to receive the grace that gives you the desire to do the will of your father. You didn't have that before you were saved. But today we're surrounded by what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace Cheap grace he spoke of in his book the cost of discipleship and he says that Cheap grace is the kind of grace that doesn't change your life. That cheap grace is, I'm quoting him now, grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without obedience, grace without holiness.

That's cheap grace. On the contrary, it says costly grace on the other hand is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him. He's saying that costly grace, true grace, real grace is grace that costs you your whole life, that brings your soul in the desire to have everything in your life to be an absolute subjection to Jesus Christ. Now you know that you don't do that and you can't do that, but it's a change in your life where that is what you want and you're not satisfied with yourself because you see remaining sin in your life. And then we come to this inescapable reality in verse 16 if you're following in the outline Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey You are that one's slaves whom you obey whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness.

So what he's saying, here's the inescapable reality. What you present the members of your body to tells you who you are and that determines life and death. What you do tells you who you are. Do you not know that whom you present yourself slaves to obey, You are that one slaves whom you obey." And he returns to this language of presenting. We encountered this in the previous verses.

He returns to this idea of presenting yourself or yielding yourself. Verse 12, verse 13, and now in verse 16, he does the same thing. And he uses this word, servant or bond servant, accurately translated here as slaves. You know, here's an example of how this word was used in Romans 1-1, Paul, a bond servant of Jesus Christ. It should be Paul, a slave.

You remember when we were in the book of Revelation a couple of years ago, Revelation 1,1, the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants should be slaves. I preached it that way as slaves, that God gave his slaves, because the only true Christians are slaves of Jesus Christ. And all are slaves, No one is absolutely free. Neither believer or unbeliever is absolutely free. Now the world is always trying to convince us that there is freedom in sin, that if you have freedom in Christ, that means you're free to sin.

But the Bible actually says that sin is slavery as well. There's no such thing as freedom in sin. There's more and more bondage, increasing bondage. We'll read about that in the verses ahead in sin. But the believer is no longer free and the unbeliever is not free.

That's what the text is saying. Now a slave is not his own. He does not clock out. He's always going about doing the will of his master. He's always at the disposal of his master.

And on the contrary, you know, a servant does clock out. He's in and out like that. One of the commentators mounts, he says this, freedom is not the exercise of unlimited spontaneity. It means to be set free from the bondage of sin in order to live in a way that reflects the nature and the character of God. You know, people are very fond of categorizing one another.

You have conservatives, you have liberals, you have centrists, you have Marxists, you have Islamists. But when you boil it down, you really only have two kinds of people, which actually can be boiled down to one. You only have slaves, slaves of something. Because every person is a slave of sin or a slave of righteousness. And then you have this remarkable change.

Look at verses 17 and 18. 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. Now notice, Paul is rejoicing here. He's giving thanks. He's so full of encouragement and he's saying, don't you see, you see don't you that you're no longer slaves of unrighteousness?

Do you see that? And I think in these two verses there are three really thrilling things. And the first is, but God be thanked. In other words, God is the one who does the work. It's a God who saves your soul.

Jesus said no one can come to me unless my Father who sent me draws him. Jeremiah 32, 40 says, I will make an everlasting covenant with them and I will not turn away from doing them good. I will put my fear in their hearts so that they will not depart from me. Paul is, he's saying, God be thanked. It was God who turned your heart.

What a blessing. You know, when I said that God turned your heart, there were all these heads that were bobbing up and down in this room. Praise the Lord. You know what that's like. And then the second thrilling thing here in these verses, it's internal and it's real.

It says, look at the words, you obeyed from the heart. You saw your sin and you saw that God was good and you wanted his kingdom. He became your great, he became your treasure And you realize that the things that you were looking for were not treasure, they were trash. And you turned to the living God from dead idols. And that's what becoming a Christian is.

It's turning from sin with the heart. It's turning from all sin. It's desiring to divorce from all sin. And it's turning to God and it's turning forever and it's turning that no one can snatch out of your hand And The third thing about this it wasn't it wasn't a turning to some vague spirituality It was turning to that form of doctrine. That's really important.

The turning was to a form of doctrine, to a pattern of teaching, things that were taught, and it's taught by the word of God. In other words, it wasn't just a vague spirituality. It had meaning and content. You turned toward the doctrine. Doctrine is just teaching.

People who say, I only want Jesus, I don't want doctrine. Jesus is the communicator of doctrine. But he uses this word form of doctrine. Think of a form of pressing an image into something. This word was used in the minting of coins.

You would take a press and impress on the coin the face of Caesar. And This is the imprint of the teaching and the teaching has an imprint on you. Whatever teaching you receive makes an imprint on you. It forms you and that's why preaching and teaching is the central matter of a local church. We We're seeking to form you, to imprint you.

When you leave, there should be an imprint on you. And if you're under teaching, you will have an imprint of that teaching. That's what God desires to move you from one position to another, from one visage to another, from one way of living to another. That's what he's talking about. And you become like the teaching, not a vague spirituality, oh I love Jesus.

No, it's actually a way of living. This is why our church embraces a historic confession of faith, the 1689 Baptist confession of faith, because it's actually a form of teaching. It's actually a way of living. It's not just a bunch of dead doctrines, they call you to live in a particular way. So it's not a vague spirituality.

Titus 2.11 says, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us, same word as doctrine there, that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age. Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. And then continuing on in this idea, this remarkable change, verse 18, and having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. So the believer's no longer in bondage to sin. And it's very interesting because Jesus says, if you know the truth, the truth will make you free.

And you shall be free indeed. This kind of slavery actually does set you free. The other kind of slavery destroys you. And this kind of slavery, it magnifies the grace of Jesus Christ In this kind of this is slavery is different. It makes you a son Not an employee It makes you a beloved son It gets you adopted into a family.

You get an inheritance. You're no longer an orphan. In this kind of slavery you become God's treasure in this kind of slavery. You're his precious possession and in this kind of slavery You no longer have an Evil slave master like Pharaoh who abuses all of his subjects. But it says here that you became slaves of righteousness and so you're not running towards sin anymore.

You know, this is actually the heart of all transformation in families, in churches, and in cultures. And when there are believers in the culture, the culture changes. And this was so dramatically demonstrated in the Roman Empire, because the Gospel started to spread in the Roman Empire, and it spread all over Europe, and it actually transformed life in Europe because people's lives were changed. And the sexual debauchery of the Roman Empire was almost completely reversed with the spread of Christianity. And the real sexual revolution in the Roman Empire was the Christian sexual revolution.

And There was a reversal of the evil sexual revolution and the corrupt sexual ethics of Rome Changed by the spread of the gospel laws changed Throughout Europe in 331 Constantine ended the corrupt doctrine of unilateral divorce in the Roman Empire. Abortion was forbidden when Christianity began to spread all over Europe. Forced marriages ended. Sexual licentiousness was constrained. And marriage became between a man and a woman, and it was evil to commit adultery, totally contrary to Roman law and practice.

Slaves could be emancipated by a church ritual because Christianity spread. And Christian sexual morality became the norm in the Western world, and it has prevailed. And it's being reversed again in the Western world, all around us. We've seen that. You know, when the apostles went to Thessalonica, there's this fascinating scene there where the Jews start going to the government officials and they start complaining because people's lives are being changed.

And they said, those who have turned the world upside down have come here too. Because the gospel turns the world upside down because in the gospel the power of sin is broken because in the gospel the people of God they don't want to sin anymore and when they do they grieve about it and it breaks their heart But the truth is they have been set free from the bondage of sin. You know, pray for our own town, right here in quiet little Wake Forest. You know, the town has just announced that on October 5th, there's gonna be a gay pride parade right in front of my office, downtown Wake Forest. That's pretty close to home.

And so we're encouraging people to write letters about sexual morality in Wake Forest. We don't think it's appropriate to celebrate theft. We don't think it's appropriate to have a parade celebrating murder. And we don't think it's appropriate to have a parade celebrating murder, and we don't think it's appropriate to have a parade celebrating sexual immorality. So, We're encouraging people to show up at the town hall meeting next week and just speak the truth of God.

Because wherever the gospel goes, culture is transformed. This is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But okay, so he's using this term, this illustration, this metaphor of slavery, but in verse 19, he says something really funny. I don't want to miss it. He says, I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.

It's almost like he's almost apologizing. I'm sorry I'm using this term slavery. Slavery was absolutely horrific in Rome. The treatment of slaves was just horrible. And he's using this extreme illustration.

And he's trying to help the Romans understand how radical and dramatic salvation is, what it means to be saved. But of course, I think he's acknowledging all illustrations break down somewhere. And that's true about any metaphor. You can see how, oh, this metaphor doesn't fit here or there. But the Bible is so full of metaphors.

I have a book in my library that talks about the metaphors in the Bible. It's a really thick book. They're all over the place and the Apostle Paul has probably used 50, I'm just guessing, in Romans so far. But he's kind of making an apology for the metaphor of slavery because he realizes slavery is actually a defiling and debauched thing in Rome. And so I think he's just sort of saying, don't take the illustration too far.

That's what I think he's saying. And then in verse 19, he brings this startling reality for the believer, for just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness That's what you used to do and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness So now present your members of slaves to righteousness Now Here's what I don't want us to miss in this verse. If you're a slave to sin, you're getting worse and worse and worse. That's what he's saying. The more uncleanness, the more lawlessness.

That's what he's saying. Now Notice something else. He actually speaks of uncleanness and lawlessness. Uncleanness is internal. It's internal defilement, internal impurity.

Lawlessness is what you do, it's outward. It's part of your deeds. So inwardly and outwardly you get worse and worse. That's the bad side. More uncleanness, more lawlessness, that's the problem of touching sin and turning any member of your body over to sin.

You just get worse. But on the good side, he says now, but so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness. And I think he does the same thing. But now you used to present your members as instruments of uncleanness, your mind, your ears, your eyes, your feet, your hands, but the whole storyline of your life has changed And now it's for righteousness and holiness. That's the transformation that takes place in the believer.

And you stopped putting things in your mind that you no longer wanted there, and you stopped watching things that you used to watch, and you stopped listening to things that you used to listen to, and you stopped going to places, and you stopped hanging around people that you shouldn't have been hanging around with. That's the change. But the slave of sin gets worse and worse. The slave of righteousness gets better and better. That's what he's saying in that verse.

And then there's this painful reality in verse 20 and 21. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. In other words, when you were without Jesus Christ, righteousness put no pressure on you. You did not care. Freewheeling was just fine for you.

You were freewheeling regarding righteousness. You were playing fast and loose with righteousness. You were playing games with righteousness. And so as a result, you existed independent of righteousness. You were free to do whatever you wanted to do.

You were cut loose from scruples. You were, you kept following your own truth and you were unconstrained by righteousness. And so you were set free from the boundaries of truth. But then the apostle makes this amazing statement in verse 21, okay, what was that, how was it freewheeling for you? How is that working for you?

He says, what fruit did you have in the things of which you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. What fruit did you have? And of course, the answer's obvious. It was bad fruit when you look back at your life without the righteousness of God taking over your life.

Now what he's saying here is that there are two kinds of slaves. Everyone bears fruit. Everyone bears fruit. Everything bears fruit. Jesus said a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit.

Everyone has fruit. You don't ever have to worry about that. You will have fruit. Lloyd-Jones says, you have it. You have the fruit.

He said, you have your fruit, you've got it. This is true of every Christian. There's no such thing as a Christian who does not bear fruit. You cannot be a Christian without bearing fruit. And the Christian, like in John 15, he bears fruit, more fruit and much fruit.

So, but that's true of the unbeliever as well. You get fruit. But he's saying here that What kind of fruit did you have in unrighteousness? You know, sin is the most damaging thing in the world. And We should do everything we can to turn away from every known sin Maybe some are going through your mind now.

I hope so turn from them One of the I think one of the early martyrs in the Scottish Reformation, James Guthrie, he wrote about sin. Here's what he said about sin. And frankly, children, you know, you who are thinking about your life ahead, and you think that there's pleasure in dealing with sin and tampering with sin. You think that there's any freedom in sin. If you think that godliness is depriving you of anything.

Here's some words I have for you from James Guthrie. Sin is a debt, a burden, a thief, a sickness, a leprosy, a plague, a poison, a serpent, a sting, everything that man hates it is, a load of curses and calamities, beneath whose crushing, most intolerable pressure the whole creation groans. Who painted the temptress that steals his virtue? Who is the murderous that destroys his life? Who is the sorceress who first deceives and then damns his soul?

Sin. Who is the icy breath that blights the fair blossoms of youth? Who breaks the hearts of parents? Who brings old men's gray hairs down with sorrow to the grave? Sin.

Who, by more hideous metamorph, oh I'm sorry, who casts the apple of discord on household hearths? Who lights the torch of war and bears it blazing over trembling hands? Who by divisions in the church rends Christ's seamless robe? Sin. Who turns the soft and gentle heart to stone?

Who hurls reason from her lofty throne and impels sinners mad as Gadarene swine down the precipice of the lake of fire, Sin. If you think for one second that there's any good freedom in sin, you're deceiving yourself. Turn away from every sin, every known sin. He says what fruit did you have? What fruit did you have from unrighteousness?

And then in verse 22, the results of slavery to God. But now having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness and in the end everlasting life. So there's fruit in holiness, that's internal, and there's fruit externally in everlasting life. And then we come to the summary of the whole chapter, this is really the crescendo of it all. Verse 23.

I believe the apostle is summing up all of his arguments from the very beginning. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now there are two things here I want us to see. Two words, two really important words. Wages and gift.

Those two words. The wages of sin is death. A wage is something that you deserve. A wage is something that's owed you. You deserve death if you're a slave of sin.

You deserve it. And all of the angels in heaven will rejoice when you are cast into outer darkness because you deserved it. That's what the Bible actually teaches. But there's the gift. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It's not wages. It's a gift. It's a gift of God. It's a gift of the free grace of God. It's a gift of the compassion of God towards sinners who repent of their sins and believe on his name.

And he transforms their lives and he makes them slaves of righteousness. That's a gift. That's the greatest gift anyone can ever receive is to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ and to get what you did not deserve. Well, what shall we say? Romans chapter six, it shows us what it means to be under grace and out from under the condemnation of the law.

And it teaches us how to struggle against remaining sin. You know, the chapter began by saying that you stand in, chapter five began, that we stand in grace. And when you stand in grace, you have a new master. When you stand in grace, you have a better master. When you stand in grace, you have a forgiving master.

When you stand in grace, you have a new master. When you stand in grace, you have a better master. When you stand in grace, you have a forgiving master. When you stand in grace, you have a kinder master. He's understanding, he's a good master, he's an all-knowing master, and he's an all-powerful master.

This is the slavery to Jesus Christ. And this is the critical and fundamental declaration of what it means to be a Christian. This is the reality of the new man, that he is a slave of righteousness. And it means that if you're a Christian, it means that something snapped, something changed. You wanted to glorify God, you wanted to serve him, you wanted to cast off sin, you didn't want to hold anything back, you wanted to follow Jesus Christ, you wanted to be like Christ, and you knew you needed the grace of Jesus Christ to have any of that and Grace is when grace is taken hold It has enslaved us and you know there's nothing that you can do about it.

You belong to God. You were buried. You died to sin. You were crucified with Christ and raised up to eternal life. It's something that God did and There's nothing that you can do about it, and none of your emotions going up and down can change any of it, because Jesus Christ saves sinners.

And now, He moves them out of Egypt into the promised land. That's what he's doing with you. I'm here to encourage you. I'm here to say, look what God has done. I'm here to say, cast off any dispondency, any unnecessary dispondency about your imperfections and your weaknesses and your lack of heart toward God.

Because if you're saved, this is what has happened to you. And I want you to just stand in grace with all the rejoicing that you can have today to recognize what God has done. And that is a snapshot of soteriology, sotere, salvation, logos, the doctrine, the doctrine of salvation. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all. Praise the Lord for such a gospel.

Let's pray. Father, Thank you for giving us language that we can understand to help us to understand your will, to walk in your ways, and to be a slave of such a kind slave master. Oh Lord, thank you for making us your servants, your slaves, your subjects, your children, your adopted ones, your inheritors. Amen.