Victorious Christianity – Romans 6:15-17

 On May 26, a 101 years ago, a baby was born into the family of Clyde Morrison. Clyde and his wife decided to name the little boy Marion. Little Marion grew up and moved away from Iowa, eventually becoming a national hero. General Douglas MacArthur said that Marion was the model of the American soldier, even though he was never a soldier. Eric Bentley thought that he was the most important man in America, even though he wasn’t a decision-maker or peace-maker. Politicians, like Ronald Reagan, imitated his manner and used the same phrases that he used. Now, I don’t really know much about the man, except for what I have read and the little that I’ve seen. But historian and writer Garry Wills wrote a book about Mr. Morrison. In that book he said that this man who condemned others for refusing to fight in Vietnam, got out of serving in World War II, so that he could focus on his career in the movies. And even though many of his movies were about cowboys, Marion hated horses. He is synonymous with the Wild West, but he was actually from Winterset, Iowa. And with a name like Marion Morrison, he had to change it – to John Wayne. If not actually being one (I can’t say that he was) John Wayne is at least a picture – of an hypocrite. And certainly a major part of the business of Hollywood is hypocrisy. Those actors and actresses are rarely the people whom they portray on the screen.

Similarly, everywhere we go we find people who claim to be Christians. Some go to church, while some others prefer to worship in front of a 90″ TV screen. Some read Bibles, or books purported to be Bibles, and some say they read the words of God in the face of the clouds or in the smell of a fish. Some really impress us with their kindness, morality and spirituality. And then there are some professing Christians who impress us with their vulgarity and barbarity. When we bend down to smell the fragrance of Christ in their lives we choke on the dust of world. Hypocrites are everywhere, including within the pages of the Bible and as members Baptist churches. But at least in the Bible they are condemned, tarred and feathered.

This entire chapter is a punch to the jaw of the hypocrite. “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” Can we possibly justify spitting in the face of God, just so that He can forgive us again and again? God forbid! We are supposed to be dead to sin. Live like a dead man, incapable of sinning any longer, verse 11. Don’t let any kind of sin be king of your life, verse12. Tell that cigarette that it cannot tell you what to do. Those wicked, lustful thoughts will not sit upon the throne of your heart. And that old greed, or envy, or pride must not dictate my feelings and attitudes.

Verse 17 may be rather obscure and may not be often preached, but it’s pretty helpful to the child of God. It defines what Christianity was to the mind of God’s Apostle, Paul. And it gives to us tools to analyze some of the Christian’s problems today.

Notice the place where all of us began: “Ye were the servants of sin.”Now lets not play ping-pong with this idea. When Paul says, “Ye were the servants of sin,” he is not thinking about someone else. Under the direction of the Holy Spirit, he was writing of you and me; and himself. In chapter 3 of this same book he said, “ALL have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” In chapter 5 he said, “Death has passed upon ALL men, for that all have sinned.” Before meeting Christ, no one can say, “I am NOT a servant of sin” – we are. There was a little girl who was talking to her pastor one day. “Don’t you ever get nervous up there preaching?” “Well, that depends what you mean by nervous.” “Like today, didn’t you get nervous preaching about sin, when there were so many experts listening?”

It shouldn’t upset anyone to hear that the preacher called him a sinner. This is not a matter of name calling; nor is he singling out someone and forgetting another. “There is not a just man upon the earth that sinneth not.” And, sinners are the only people whom Jesus came to help and to save. “He came not the call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” He came not to heal the healthy and whole, but only the sinfully diseased. All men, women and children are sinners. But only those who will acknowledge that fact can be helped by Lord. The people who first received this letter from Paul, knew that, so those words didn’t shock or anger them.

And it didn’t hurt the feelings because those people had already been set free: They WERE, past tense, servants of sin.There are a great number of “weres” in the life of the redeemed sinner. They WERE all the children of wrath, and WERE children of disobedience. They WERE once even the children of their father the Devil. That is the reason that they WERE servants of sin. Because the lusts of their father they often did, as Jesus said in John 8:44. He was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in truth. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for his is a liar, and father of it. When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth he said, “And such WERE some of you, But ye ARE washed, but ye ARE sanctified, but ye ARE justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

This is what real Christianity does, I mean True Christianity, it frees slaves. Jesus gives victory over alcohol and tobacco addiction, better than AA or the nicotine patch. The Lord Jesus can free the man who is the slave to anger, arguing or gambling. There is no sin from which the Saviour can’t free the willing Christian. Colossians 1:13 says that Christ has delivered us from the power of darkness. In other words, the Lord has snatched us out of the danger. When blasphemers meet Christ, they are freed from their filthy mouths if they want to be. And genuine Christians want to be. When adulterers are redeemed the chains of their sin melt off their hearts. Pride evaporates, hatred is consumed, self no longer dictates the life of the child of God.

The so-called Christianity that only means joining or going to church twice a year is a plastic imitation compared to the real thing. Real redemption means emancipation – freedom from sin. And it means freedom to serve the Lord.

And what is THE MEANS of that deliverance: “Ye obeyed from the heart.”This may be one of the most important declarations found anywhere in the Word of God. In fourteen simple English words and just eight in the Greek, we have the message of the evangelist. We have in these words a refuting of a ton of heresy about salvation. We have right here a little window into Heaven’s side of salvation. But more important, practically, we have a revelation of what man must do to be saved from sin. What is the requirement of the slave of sin? Obey from the heart the gospel that was delivered unto you.

In these few words we see that the whole man must be involved in receiving redemption. When I was in Bible school, my theology professor wanted to prove the personality of each person of the Trinity. He did so by saying that personality is proven when we find three things: emotion, will and intellect. A rock has no will of it’s own – so it has no personality. A dandelion may have will, but it has no intellect – it has no personality. A Pomeranian however may have stubborn will, limited intelligence and cry like a baby – it has personality. And like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, each of you have personality – will, intelligence and emotion. And each of these things in you must have a part in receiving Christ. Salvation is not just an emotional thing, nor just intellectual.

For example, we notice that Paul speaks of that “form of doctrine.” The word “doctrine,” which terrorizes so many people, simply means “teaching.” And it’s with teaching that salvation is brought from Heaven to the hovels of the slaves. The commission which Jesus gave to his local church was: “Go ye, therefore, and TEACH all nations.” This is extremely important: the place to begin in receiving God’s eternal life is the head. I know all the scriptures which say, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The first great heresy in church history was the idea that god-hood came through the mind. I know that we are saved by grace through faith. And saving faith is not something that can be learned through books. But in what, or in Whom, are required to put our faith? Would any of us ever know if someone didn’t guide us into faith in Christ Jesus? There must be a reaching into the ignorance of the sinner, before he can put faith in Christ. There must be an implanting of the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. There must be a grasping of the fact that he died FOR ME, upon that cross. We must realize that our faith must be entirely upon Him for our spiritual rescue. These things undeniably involve understanding, and thus the mind.

But there must be a lot more than intellectually acknowledging certain facts. There is a definite emotional response to those facts, an engaging of the heart. Paul said, in 10:9 – “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth, the Lord Jesus and shalt BELIEVE in thine HEART that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Years before we were married, Judy Lynn Price knew intellectually, that I wanted her. But did that satisfy her? Not on your life. She was not satisfied, until there was an emotional commitment of my heart to hers .Intellectual acknowledgment of the fact of salvation’s plan may only seal the doors of Hell behind some people. To despise learning is foolishness, but to hang our souls on it is presumption. There must be an engaging of the heart through faith.

And then, in addition to that, there must be a deliberate step of the will. These Roman Christians chose to OBEY the command of God to truth Christ – the substance of Paul’s doctrine. As twisted as some preachers make the word to become: these people made a decision for Christ. You are not a Christian until you CHOOSE to repent of your sin and to put your faith in the Lord Jesus.

The deliverance of these people came about through the use of their minds, emotions and will.

But even in those who are delivered, there always seems to be some degree of incompleteness.This is what Paul was trying to convey to the people in Rome 2000 years ago. Despite once being emancipated from sinful slavery, there still seemed to be chains around their hearts. This doesn’t mean that Christ hadn’t saved their souls. If their faith and repentance were genuine, then the Lords’ redemption was genuine too. Oh, but their lives were far from perfection. Paul asked them for a very good reason: “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” He exhorted them, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey it.” “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin.”

Despite the fact that Jesus said, “If the Son, therefore, shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” Despite the deliverance that grace provides, the vast majority of Christians still wallow in sin. How many Christians are miserable, depressed and failures at the business of glorifying the Saviour. They are faithless, grumpy, sinful, carnal creatures. They give no clearer note of praise for Christ than a tuba filled with mud.

But why? What is the cause of this failure?It’s because of our terrible shallowness in obeying from the heart the teachings of Christ. Some people have the idea that the gospel is only a message of forgiveness. “If I understand those words, believe that, and receive this, then I am a Christian.” These kinds of people are missing the immensities of the Gospel. They know nothing of the glories and victories of Christ. They are fleas sitting on the tip of the dog’s tail, drinking a bit of blood, but not knowing the feast. Receiving Christ means the implantation of the Saviour Himself in the sinner’s soul. So many “Christians” don’t behave like Christians, because all they originally wanted was deliverance from the pain of their guilt. In wanting only that they got nothing at all.

So many Christians are miserable because they fail to see that 100% of the person must be 100% involved. For example, some people have rarely engaged anything more than their emotions in their Christian life. They think that because they genuinely cried over their sin, that makes them spiritual giants. I think that Judas also genuinely cried. So many periodically get very excited about religion, and thy think that it proves they are Christians. They get misty-eyes and swoon at a beautiful stained glass window or an ornate cross. They want, like Peter, to walk on water, when they refuse to simply stand on the rock. I have been in meetings where the preaching was almost hypnotic and the appeal overwhelming. To the front of the church went soul after soul, many of whom had been there often before. But some people when asked why they went forward couldn’t really give a good reason. They were only caught up in the emotion of the moment. We have multitudes pleading for the emotional thrill of gifts of the Spirit, but who refuse to engage their minds to discern between the true and the false. Others refuse to engage their wills in the service of the Lord.

And there are yet others who sit down and mentally think out and cooly decide, I’m going to be come a Christian. These only engage their wills, but haven’t had the Holy Spirit play any part in their choice. I have worked with “evangelists” who pushed themselves into stranger’s homes. They have presented some form of the gospel and then wrung from their hosts a few words: “Dear God, I am a sinner, please forgive me of my sin, for Jesus sake. Ps, please don’t forget to take me to Heaven.” Some of these “new-converts” then begin to go to church and maybe even temporarily give up a sin or two, but it’s not too long before they are miserable or just bored, and they fall away. Why? Because their whole being wasn’t engage when they professed to receive Christ.

What is the lesson to all this?First, the professing Christian must know HOW he became a professing Christian. I am a child of God because the Lord in His grace showed me first that I was not a child of God. Then He revealed through His word, what the death of Christ really meant. As the Saviour felt the whip, the nails, and the sword – it was for my benefit. The blood that splattered around that cross was shed because of, and on behalf of, my sins. His death on that cross was vicarious, it was as a substitute for me. Then the Lord showed me that by simply reaching out by faith to Saviour, His righteous life would be shared with me. So with Holy Spirit-caused grief over my sin, I put my trust for eternity in the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ. I was obedient from the heart to the teaching of Paul and the Saviour.

Secondly, the Christian should know WHY he became a Christian. The Lord has redeemed me, in order that this rescued life might be spent for His Glory. He died to save this heart, but also these hands, and feet and mind and tongue. Every part of my life has been touched by his grace so that no part of this life might be mis-spent. When it is misspent, it is out of sin and rebellion.

Believe me Christian, if your understanding of these two things are incorrect then your life will be filled with failure and spiritual depression. The stranger may THINK that he sees a wonderful flower from the garden of God. But when he gets in close, he’ll find that you’re only an actor from Iowa.

And even more serious, if you can’t find the words of this text in your own heart, then there is also the possibility that you have been spiritually deceived. Are you really looking to the sacrifice of Jesus, the Lamb, to cover the stain of your sin?