Sunday, September 7, 2008 
Scripture reading: Romans 6: 15-23
15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, 18and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.* For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Sermon Title: "NO WAY- NO HOW!" Sunday, September 7, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: In the first part of our
reading Paul makes a clear affirmation that there is,
indeed, no one who is righteous, absolutely no one.
The truth be told, left to our own devices, we're not
a particularly enjoyable group of folks. He describes
that in graphic terms by referring to our lips and our
threats as open sepulcher, and our feet being swift to
go towards very negative things.
The text is just filled with lots of negative
imagery, and yet he also then says, Who can possibly
deliver me from this? And his rhetorical question is
answered by his own affirmation: Thanks be to God.
Jesus Christ delivers me.
It is that hallmark passage that speaks to the
term, "justification by faith" meaning the work of
Christ on the cross and how we are "covered" by that
work. Even when we are less than perfect, God's love
is effective in Jesus Christ on our behalf.
Now we come to the second half of that equation.
I think we function in the notion if we are Christian,
we're going to be in good shape, but Paul was very
clear, he said the good news is you don't have to be
socially healthy to go to heaven, but it makes the
trip a whole lot more fun.
Now in the same way we could say you don't have
to be flawless in your performance as a Christian to
go to heaven, that's what the "covering" is about, but
Paul also understood that there is a response that is
incumbent upon believers that sometimes, quite
frankly, we don't take all that seriously. It's
called justification by faith. You know, God has
justified me, and so it must be okay for me to be
pretty much a mess in my personal life. I can just
fall back on expressions like, well, it's just the way
I am, get used to it.
So in our text today Paul begins by asking a
preliminary question, Shall we sin because we are not
covered under law but under grace? Jesus paid it all,
as the old song goes, and so therefore, I can do
whatever I want to do. I can be as immoral as I want
to be. I can be as impersonal as I want to be. Paul
understands that that could be the direction that
people's thoughts would go. Paul says, Shall we sin
because grace is there and we are not under the law?
In another location he says, If you do it, you're
driving nails in the hands of Christ over again. We
never seem to think about it in that way when we give
ourselves an easy out, and we adopt the, "well, it's
just the way I am" kind of attitude. We may actually
even acknowledge our limitations verbally, but we
don't deal with them seriously. He says, Don't you
know when you offer yourself to someone to obey him as
a slave, you are slaves to the one that you obey?
What a dramatic thought. We can actually
voluntarily choose to recommit ourselves to Satan.
Think how weird that is. Imagine yourself in the kind
of situation where finally you have extricated
yourself from the most unhealthy relationship you have
ever had, and once you're actually free, you turn
right back around and say, please, can we have this
relationship again, that's exactly what he's
describing.
The key to Paul's understanding here is to
recognize that he's not talking about in the sense of
human failures that sometimes overtake us. Paul is
talking about sin in the sense we willingly surrender
ourselves back to our adversary saying, I know this is
wrong, but to be honest with you, I'm more comfortable
with the wrong than I am with the new. Call Christ to
say no to those things.
Many of us here in the sanctuary have all kinds
of things in our lives we know on a very pragmatic
level we ought not to do. You know, for me I was at a
restaurant where they had this incredible bread
pudding, and they brought it to me in a big crock.
When I say a big crock, it was like bread pudding for
four. The voice in the back of my mind said, Marvin,
that bread pudding is for four. On another level I
was saying, Praise God, a single serving.
We have lots of things that we have a really hard
time saying no to, and yet that is what's called for
in our life. We did it because our comfort zone with
doing it was greater than our comfort zone with simply
saying no. That kind of surrender is going back and
laying ourselves once again at the feet of our
adversary and saying this is where I want to be.
In Verse 19 Paul basically is saying you've got a
choice to make. We make the choice, but it's a
cooperative process. The Holy Spirit speaks to us,
tugs at our consciousness and shapes us, but the work
of God is ineffective unless we're willing to say yes
to the tug of the Spirit's voice in our heart and say
no to the things that would defeat us.
Let's not go back and yield ourselves again to
the adversary. Let's hear the Spirit when the Spirit
places a check upon us and to live in such a way that
we truly do as Paul stated, to walk in a manner that
is wealthy in grace that Christ has given us. In the
name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
Amen.