Join us for a deep dive into one of the most intriguing sections of the Book of Romans. Our discussion centers around how the law relates to sin and why this insight is pivotal for experiencing true freedom in Christ. With illustrative analogies, we uncover how guilt and shame, often perpetuated by the law, lead us to further sin. Yet through the Gospel, an alternative emerges—one filled with hope and liberation in the kingdom of grace, where believers can find solace in God’s unwavering love and forgiveness.
So, as is typical with Paul, he comes up with a surprise. He’s always coming up with surprises, actually, in this teaching in the book of Romans. We’re on chapter 6 of Romans, and we’re talking about freedom from the identity and the power of sin. And Paul says in verse 13, “…do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead.” We talked about that last time. concentrating on being alive, not simply being dead to sin, but alive to the new life we have in Christ, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. So then he says, “…for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, or rather under law, but under grace.” Now that’s a very interesting introduction to something totally unexpected. He suddenly talks about law when he’s been talking about sin all the time. What’s the connection and why does he do this? But first of all, notice that in verse 14, this verse I just read, he says, sin shall not have dominion over you. Once again, we see this idea that Paul is regularly alluding to, and that is the kingdoms. The kingdom of Adam, which is sin and death, and the kingdom of Christ, which is righteousness and life, justification. So you see, when Paul talks about sin, he’s not simply talking about what we do, but about whose kingdom we belong to. Sin shall not have dominion over you. And notice that he says, it shall not have dominion over you. So that that means that the dominion of the kingdom of Adam is broken. If we are slaves to the dominion of sin and death, well, you can’t simply choose to walk out, can you? If you’re a prisoner as a result of crime, you can’t say, I’m not going to be a prisoner anymore. You’re a prisoner whether you like it or not. And when Paul says sin shall not have dominion over you, he is implying that the kingdom of Adam has been broken. But it’s been broken more than by simply breaking it. It has been broken by the introduction of a new alternative kingdom. You see, when we are in the throes of an addiction, we just see no alternative, do we? We have this addiction to either drugs or alcohol or pornography or whatever, and we say to ourselves, I’m stuck. I can’t get out. There’s no alternative. I just can’t resist this thing. But what the gospel introduces is an alternative. And it is an alternative not introduced by suddenly changing your behavior because you’re trapped, but it is introduced by faith. Faith teaches the mind that what you’re doing at this moment, you can pause over and and you can switch gears. You can move into the kingdom of grace. You can say, right now, I’m living as under the kingdom of Adam, but I don’t have to. Right now, even if it’s only five minutes long, I’m going to switch gears by faith, and I’m going to declare myself in the kingdom of Christ. Now you try that. And you will find that if you can do it for five minutes, you can do it for maybe five hours, or at least half an hour, and then an hour, and then two hours, and five hours. You see, the kingdom of Christ introduces this wonderful alternative. We are not stuck like the Israelites in captivity to Pharaoh as slaves. Once Moses came along and introduced the alternative of freedom, then those Israelites began to realize that the authority of Pharaoh was broken, that they did have liberty to walk away, and they did just that. It’s amazing. Christ’s kingdom introduces an alternative to the world. The world sees Christians as rather stupid and naive. And the reason they do that is that they see only one world. You know that the word secular comes from the word world, this world. That’s the only world secularism sees. And so the idea that there’s a kingdom beyond this world, the idea that there’s something outside of it that’s beautiful and rich and not subject to sin and death, sounds preposterous. But we Christians have introduced this. We haven’t introduced it. Jesus, of course, did. When Jesus came into the world and started talking about the kingdom of his Father… and eternal life, and an existence without sin but full of joy in the presence of God, it sounded wacko. But you and I have been given the faith to believe it, and therefore we see an alternative. And that’s why we can believe that sin shall not have dominion, because the new kingdom has opened the way. to walk out of the old kingdom. And the old kingdom of sin and death does not reign anymore. Sin shall not have reigning power or dominion over you. So remember, if you’re stuck in an addiction, keep telling yourself, There’s an alternative. Even if it’s for only five minutes, an exercise of faith that says, I choose this moment by faith to live in the kingdom of Christ. And even if you stay there only for five minutes, you’ve had a touch, a taste of what it’s like to be free. You can do that again. And so we have this statement, for sin shall not have dominion over you. And then the next part is the astonishing part. Well, I won’t say it’s astonishing, but it’s just peculiar. He says, for you are not under law, but under grace. Read the verse again and see how contradictory it seems to be. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Wouldn’t you rather expect it to say, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under sin, but under grace? But he doesn’t say under sin. He says you are not under law. Why does he say that? Well, first of all, we need to recognize that this is a kind of unexpected moment to introduce the law. It’s verse 14 of chapter 6, but there are 23 verses in this chapter. So halfway through, is it just about, he’s introducing law. Well, he’s going to introduce law in the whole of chapter 7. It’s all about law. Why does he introduce it here? I’m not sure. I’m not sure why Paul introduced it early on at this point. Except this.
SPEAKER 02 :
Paul is going to teach us in Romans 7 that the power of sin comes from the law. Well, how can that be?
SPEAKER 01 :
I thought the power of sin came from sin. I thought the power of alcoholism came from alcohol. I thought the power of drug addiction came from a certain chemical that you keep pumping into your body. I thought the power of pornography came from our lustful tendencies as human beings in a fallen nature. But no.
SPEAKER 02 :
Paul is saying that the power of sin comes from the law. Well, how so?
SPEAKER 01 :
Because the law introduces a sense of right and wrong, and the law introduces from that right and wrong the experience of guilt and shame and fear. When the law comes into our minds and is taught to us on the tables of stone, when the law is taught to us as a breaking of our conscience, then we are introduced to having done wrong, guilt. And that makes us afraid of God, who is likely to judge us for our guilt. And that makes us afraid. And that fear also introduces shame because we have betrayed our God and we have done wrong and been dishonest towards him. Now, that guilt and shame and fear that come from law, that is what causes sin. Because once we are guilty and afraid and aware of our guilt and fear and shame, we want to hide from God. And when we hide from God, we darken the soul. Because God is our light. God is light to the soul. Without that light, we are darkened, and in that darkness we are alone, and we have no comfort, no warmth, no light, no brightness of soul. And so what we want to do is turn back to God. But no, that’s exactly what we don’t want to do, because we’ve been introduced with guilt in relation to him, and fear, and shame. And so there seems to be no alternative. We come to that alternative word again. And the only thing left is to sin a little bit more in order to forget the guilt and shame and fear that we now are controlled by. That guilt and shame and fear is so painful, so dreadful, that we escape into sin so that The cause of sin is not alcohol or chemicals from drugs or lust. The cause of sin is guilt and shame and fear, an uncomfortable mind that we cannot tolerate and that we therefore choose to escape from into more sin as an escape. But you see, once we know the gospel, that God isn’t an ogre out there pointing a finger at us and prodding our chest and saying you’re wrong and frowning at us. Once we see that our God is love and that our God has sent his Son to take the sacrifice for our sins, then we see an alternative. The alternative, even if we practice it for only ten minutes or five minutes, is to recognize that God is our comfort, that God has forgiven our sins, that God does not charge our guilt against us. And so, we’re in the midst of our lustful addiction, drugs or alcohol or pornography, and we say, Father, I see an alternative. It’s you. You are my light. You are my life. You are my joy, and your presence is fullness of joy. I dare hardly claim it, dear God, because I feel so guilty, but you tell me I can claim it without any works to my credit. And so I do. I bask in you for a moment, dear Lord, and I praise you that you are merciful towards me. And you may go on talking to God in this way for five minutes, say, and you realize what a liberty you have. It’s an amazing thing. Sin has no dominion because there is an alternative dominion, an alternative kingdom, Jesus Christ and the Father. And what a liberty that brings to us. Thank you very much. and each program costs $39 per 15 minutes, or about $200 for a week’s programs, which is about $850 to $900 for a month’s programs. If you would like to make a one-time donation or monthly donations to support the program, please do so by sending your donation to FaithQuest, P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado, 80160. Or you can make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for your notes of good cheer. And I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
