Servants of Righteousness

Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- May 22, 2005

When Christian Herter was governor of Massachusetts, he was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes (and no lunch) he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.
"Excuse me," Governor Herter said, "do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?"
"Sorry," the woman told him. "I'm supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person."
"But I'm starved," the governor said.
"Sorry," the woman said again. "Only one to a customer."
Governor Herter was a modest and unassuming man, but he decided that this time he would throw a little weight around. "Do you know who I am?" he said. "I am the governor of this state."
"Do you know who I am?" the woman said. "I'm the lady in charge of the chicken. Move along, mister." 

 When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary that human ears have ever heard. “… seek first the kingdom of God … .” Even the most spiritually-minded of us argue the exact opposite, saying, “But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed.” The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.
  “… do not worry about your life …” (6:25). Our Lord pointed out that from His standpoint it is absolutely unreasonable for us to be anxious, worrying about how we will live. Jesus did not say that the person who takes no thought for anything in his life is blessed—no, that person is a fool. But Jesus did teach that His disciple must make his relationship with God the dominating focus of his life, and to be cautiously carefree about everything else in comparison to that. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Don’t make food and drink the controlling factor of your life, but be focused absolutely on God.” Some people are careless about what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, having no business looking the way they do; they are careless with their earthly matters, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship with God first, and everything else second.
  It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into absolute harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.

In his letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul is seeking to teach them something about obedience. When we are true believers, the Life of God is within us. The Love of God must constrain us so that we seek His Kingdom and His righteousness as the first priority of our lives. And it should move us to obey the Word of God and the Gospel of Christ from our hearts. Head and not heart is simply not enough.

What is the difference between obedience and compliance?

Remember several weeks ago I reminded you of the story Jesus told of the Father and his two sons. He asked the first son to go do what he wanted. The son said OK! But he didn’t go. The other son refused and the later on changed his mind and went to do what his father had asked of him. Who, Jesus asked, was the obedient son? The one who did what his father asked him to do , of course.

When we consider the difference between the two sons, we should realize that there is another way to please our Father>>>it is to answer, “I will go.” And then do it. That is the willing obedience of a heart that seeks after God and His Kingdom as the first priority of our lives.

Why do we see people in their disobedience? Before he is regenerated an individual is a slave of sin and his fallen, Adamic nature desires to remain in that fallen condition.

And while we don’t hear much about it, did you know that the it is a divine fact that the quantity or quality of sinful behavior of an unsaved man does not change his status as to being unsaved?  A murderer who has killed one man, is no farther away from God than the man who has killed ten men. By the same token, the unsaved man who has never committed murder is no closer to God than the murderer of ten people.

The status of an unsaved person is not affected in any way by the degree of sin which he commits; he is the bondslave of sin. We cannot expect righteousness of him and God certainly does not.

If you want to know how you should live as a believing Christian, just ask a non Christian. They will tell you and they have a pretty good idea of how a Christian should live. The world simply expects us to live up to the standard of  God’s Word…and to be obedient to it.

If some one swindles an elderly couple it is a terrible thing. The world is not surprised when an unbeliever does it. However, the world expects us as Christians to live up to the Word of God.

Our text tells us that committing sin brings no benefits. Take the Mafia chieftain who wears a 2 or 3 thousand dollar suit and eats at the best restaurants. The causal observer may form the opinion that crime pays. However is quite different when he is cut down by
by an enemy mobster or someone paid to eliminate him. He goes into a Christless eternity. Nothing gained by sin is worth the price.

Man has never been his own master. He is either the slave of sin or the slave of God. There is no alternative. Those are the two choices before men. Man wants to think there are alternatives to these, but there are none and it makes men mad. The unsaved are held captive by Satan.
 
John 8 makes all of this quite clear:   verses 32-36. Whoever sins, John shows us, is the slave of sin.

The only person who has freedom is the person who has passed from death to life by faith in Jesus Christ.

Galatians 5:1 tells us:  “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of salvery.”

Paul writes to us, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

We need to understand that there is a great difference between sin and sins. Sin is generic, but its fruit, sins has a different manifestation. God never punishes the individual sins of an unbeliever.  God judges only the heart.

When  Adam sinned, the soul died.

Every man is born with an Adamic nature. Every man is born with the nature of Adam and God deals with that nature. All men are alike when it comes to their sinful nature regardless of the quantity of their sins. And the Bible does not teach that Hell is the fate of those who commit sins.

The Bible clearly warns of eternal punishment and eternal separation from God, based on the nature of the unsaved man or woman….not on his or her individual acts of sin. The Born again believer is free from eternal punishment because Christ bore the guilt of his sin and his Adamic nature. Just as good works do not save us, bad works do not condemn us.

The unbeliever in his Adamic nature is without Christ. He is in a state of spiritual death here and now. He does not collect the wages of his sin only after he dies physically. The reason for this is that death is an existence and it is his existence right now. He is dead right now, even while he lives physically.

The Greek word for wages in our passage of Scripture was used for some of the rations the Roman Soldiers that were their pay. They did not get a regular salary, pension or benefits, but were paid out of the booty they collected, or the slaves they sold. They received salarium, salt money. It is the word that gives us the word salary. They also received opsonion, their fish ration. It is this word that is used here as the wages of sin.

The rations of sin is death. It is not paid in a lump sum but is measured out day by day because it constitutes a state of living.

In contrast to the rations of sin, the Gift of God…the Grace Gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Lets see if we can put these two thought together and by doing that see the contrast between them:  As part of the rations of death an unbeliever’s mind is filled with unsatisfied questioning, but the believer’s mind is filled with quiet satisfaction in knowing God. The unbeliever continues to question his ultimate destiny and he spins off all kinds of theories about his origin. On the other hand, the believer rests in the fact that God exists and that God has a purpose for him and that in Christ he has come to the point of accomplishment of that purpose.

The unbeliever goes where he knows not.  The believer knows that he has arrived and that his destiny is to be with Christ.  The believer and unbeliever have sharply contrasting views of the future. The unbeliever is afraid of death while the believer has been freed from the fear of death.

For the true Christian, eternal life is not in the future. It exists in us now. It is true that thee is an inheritance waiting for us (1 Peter 1:4,5)  but it is also true that we have the fruit of that eternal life within us right now.

The implantation of eternal life within the believer is not the changing of the Adamic nature within us. It is the creation of a new life principle within us. If any man be in Christ he is a new creation.” (John 1:13)  This new birth is a work of God.

The implantation of eternal life within the believer does not change the Adamic soul. The carnal mind is still at enmity with God.. The natural heart is still at enmity with God. (Romans 8:7). The human heart is still deceitful and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9) Any one who thinks the Adamic nature can be eradicated is deceiving himself.

The entrance of eternal life into the believer, sets up an opposing claim for our allegiance, for the spirit of man is now released and restored to its proper place. The will is now free to make moral choices within the will of God.

Our text speaks to Believers and tells us that our days of slavery to sin have ended and the Holy Spirit is reigning. The human spirit is now free, the divine image is restored, the captive will has been liberated. Under these conditions full obedience and victory in Jesus Christ are not only desired but expected.

--Dennis Gleason