Grace Abounds

The message is from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church in Piketon, Ohio. He is reading from the sixth chapter of Romans, discussing the concept of grace and the believer's relationship with sin. He emphasizes that grace does not give us license to continue sinning, but rather we are called to live in newness of life. He explains that our righteousness comes from Christ, not our own deeds, and encourages believers to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God. He cautions against misinterpreting this passage to promote legalistic bondage or the idea that one can lose their salvation. Instead, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the work of Christ and the complete forgiveness and grace we have received. The following message is brought to you by the people of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. For more information, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org. And now, here's Pastor Jason Booth with the message. Turn with me in your Bibles to the sixth chapter of Romans, Romans chapter 6. And we're going to bounce around a little bit, but I'm going to read a main passage from the sixth chapter. And as we do, we trust the Lord will bless our time together in His Word. We do want to say greetings to those of you who will be joining us via the Internet. Several thousand people per week on all of our social media channels do join us. And we thank you for that. That is a big encouragement to our local assembly that we are able to reach out with the gospel to so many around the world. And we thank you for tuning in on whatever network or whatever social media channel or outlet that you are using. And so, we will continue to post as the Lord gives us the strength and the means. And we encourage you to share these messages far and wide as they go forth. The Word of the Lord found in the sixth chapter of Romans, beginning in verse 1, the Word of the living God. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey their passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. And if you would please look at chapter 7 verse 4. Chapter 7 verse 4. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. And so the message today, obviously, is a very popular portion of Scripture. And I want to take my time, just for a little while, to explain the verses, to perhaps exegete these verses in a way that will help you understand what the apostle is writing here. And also, I may add, what he is not trying to say. And perhaps we'll begin with the negative considerations this morning. This passage of Scripture has been used as a cudgel, as a club, over fellow Christians for centuries by those who misunderstand it or who have misappropriated this text for some sort of law-keeping righteousness. But this text says nothing of the sort. And you've heard it said in common parlance, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! And it's said as a predicate for trying to defend this idea that you could lose your salvation as a Christian. Now, I know there are those in this room who have heard this text quoted in this very method and way. It's dangerous to quote this passage out of context. Because let me tell you, at no time is the apostle Paul attempting to put back on God's people a yoke of legalistic bondage. And what he is teaching here, and we begin in verse 1, and we'll just start here. He says, What shall we say then? Say to what? Well, back up a couple verses and you'll get the gist. He says in verse 20 of chapter 5, Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So that as sin reigned in death, grace might also reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And it was this crescendo statement that grace reigns now. And where sin did abound, grace did much more abound. He says in verse 9 of chapter 5, Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. Paul is putting all the onus on the work of Christ, the perfections of Christ, the glorious, perfect sacrifice of Christ as that sweet-smelling favor unto God, and that we have been justified by His blood. One man's trespass brought sin into this world. And another man's perfect sacrifice delivered God's people from those trespasses. And so in this great crescendo of grace reigning over sin, of grace abounding over all the unrighteousness, of grace trumping the requirements of the law because Christ satisfied God's wrath. The Bible says in verse 9 of chapter 5, We have been saved from the wrath of God. That's a glorious notion. That's a beautiful thing. Hallelujah, forevermore we are saved from the wrath of God by the perfect, sinless sacrifice of our obedient Savior, Jesus Christ. And so verse 21 of chapter 5 says, As sin reigned in death, grace might also reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now Paul begins to answer some of the philosophical questions that perhaps are going to be raised as a result of such a teaching. And he says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? The question here isn't, Shall we sin in the hope that grace will just sort of come up and just sort of clean as we go? That's not what he's saying. What they were asking here is this, If grace abounds over sin, and grace did much more abound, Shouldn't Christian people try to sin as much as they can so that grace may abound? You see, he's dealing with the objection here that, If I sin more, will I get more grace? That's what he's trying to teach in this passage. He's not trying to tell you that you're going to lose your soul if you sin. Because let me help you with something. You sin every day. He's trying to teach people how it is that we are to reckon our existence. And I'll show you that here in a second. He says, What shall we say? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? He says, By no means. How can you who died to sin still live in it? There's no life in sin. And you can't sin more to get more grace. That's not how this works. You have experienced, if you know Christ in the full pardon of your sins, You have experienced His grace in full measure. At least as full as it can be on this side of the veil. You belong to Him. His grace abounds. His grace, the Bible says, reigns in righteousness. Leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ. So where does this righteousness come from? Is it from your deeds? No. It is righteousness through Jesus Christ. You will falter. You will sin. But the scripture here is telling us, Reckon yourselves dead to sin. Know that your life, your righteousness doesn't come from your sinful deeds. Know that more grace from God doesn't come from your sinful deeds. And as you are tempted in this world, You will grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord As you reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to righteousness. What does this mean? The scripture goes on here to say, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death In order that just as Jesus was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, We too might walk in newness of life. Now, what is this newness of life? First of all, Newness of life. Our focus of where righteousness comes from Has changed since Christ entered the scene. You think about this. Many people will go around and try to compare their lives to their neighbor. They'll say, you know, I'm as good as the next guy. I'm as good as the lady down the street or the fellow up the road. I know I'll be okay. If I just do enough things that are good, Then God will see me on into heaven. And here the scripture says, We have been crucified with Christ, Baptized into His death. And for what purpose? Well, Christ was raised by the glory of God. And we too believe that one day we will be raised by the glory and power of God. And so we walk in newness of life. The newness of life that we walk in is we no longer compare ourselves to one another. We no longer count the deeds that we perform as righteousness. But we look and seek only the righteousness of Christ. For He is our righteousness. The Bible declares He's our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The scripture tells us that we're not under the law, but we're under grace. And it says that in verse 14. Sin will have no dominion over you. So the scripture then calls us into a life of discipleship. Not to live a certain way as to garner more righteousness. But rather to maintain focus on where our righteousness comes from. So when temptation comes our way. And you know what I'm talking about. Whatever it is that leads man into the ditch. The scripture tells us that we've been united with Him in a death like His. We'll certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him. In order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. So that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. And yet we battle with sin every single day, do we not? What's the battle though? If we're battling with sin, are we not fighting against it? Are we not putting up a struggle? Are we not doing what the scripture tells us to do? It says for one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. And it goes on to say, verse 11. So you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. And here's where the reckoning begins here. Listen, you will fight with sin every day. If you weren't going to fight with sin, then Paul wouldn't have written any of this. You're going to fight with sin every day. But you've got to reckon yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ. Where does your righteousness come from? Where does it come from? It comes from Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ alone. The scripture says consider yourselves dead to sin. And alive to God in Christ Jesus. And then what do we do as we consider ourselves dead to sin? You know, we know what sin is when it rears its ugly head. We confess our sin. We tell the Lord about it. We share with one another our own faults and our honest failures. And we tell each other, hey, you know, I'm going through it. I made some decisions that were just stupid. And I need to be put back on the straight and narrow. As straight and narrow as it gets on this side of the veil. The Bible talks about how we can pull one another up out of the ditches of life. And put people back on the road. And I think the reason we've got to be sure to pull our neighbors up out of a ditch in this old world, Spiritually speaking, is because we'll be in the ditch next week. And we'll need somebody to pull us out. But the scripture says in verse 12, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their passions. And so now we see in scripture an implicit call. Explicit call, rather. To fight that good fight against those things that are demonstrably wrong. There's nothing at all wrong with a Christian standing firm and saying, I don't want to do that. That wouldn't please my Lord. There's nothing at all wrong with that. Especially if you understand where righteousness truly comes from. Now, if you're going forth keeping a list of do's and do not's as a buttress to the righteousness you think you have from Christ. Your portion of righteousness that you've got to present to Him. Then you've failed in apprehending what is the true righteousness in this universe. Christ alone is our righteousness. What does He call us to do? He calls us to live in the light of that sovereign grace. And what does that living look like? He loves us. And it's His love that constrains us. He says, hey, I love you. Don't go do that. I love you. Don't do that. Don't do that. You know, when you've got your paycheck in your pocket and you're looking to go down to the pub and you think, well, I'm going to drink every dollar of this paycheck up. Well, hold on. I think the Lord might just say something to your spirit in that moment and press on you to say, no, no, no. That's a bad idea. Don't do that. Why? Because the Lord doesn't want you to shirk your family. That's a good idea not to go down that way. And He might, through His own providential care, if that's a weakness in your life, He might just say, all right, well, I'm going to lead you down this way. And through the Holy Spirit and through His providence, He might lead you away from that and help you battle with that temptation. I mean, after all, we all suffer from the temptations of this flesh and the weaknesses of this flesh. And so we don't put ourselves in situations that would lend themselves to excess and losing our ever-loving mind. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being a human being. And all of the things that come with that, all the enjoyments of this world that God has blessed us with, most of us can go and sit in front of a giant lake someplace and see that beauty and enjoy it immensely. We don't even know why we enjoy it. But we love beauty when we see it. And as Christian people, whose spiritual understanding has been opened all the more, we have a responsibility to delight in God's creation and to give Him glory and praise for all that He has done and all He has blessed us with. But beloved, this world and this life is a struggle. It's okay to admit that. I don't come to God as a perfect champion of all the things He would have me do. You know why I don't? Because I am a sinner and I need a Savior. But the Scripture here says that I can reckon myself dead to sin, dead to those controlling influences, dead to those things that kept me separated from God, because I am alive in Christ. So the battle, as it were, begins. As you count yourself reckoned righteous in the eyes of God by the blood of Jesus Christ, alive to God, now the struggle begins. Have you ever struggled to sin before you knew the Lord? It never was. It never will be. Why? No one cared. But the life we live now, we live by the faith and grace of the Son of God. And now we see what manner of man we are. And so the Bible says it's a fight. It's a struggle. It's not that your soul isn't kept safely and firmly in the hands of God. That battle was won on Calvary's truth. So many times people look at discipleship and look at Christian formation and Christian maturity as salvation. But they're not the same thing. Salvation is the finished work of Christ. Sanctification is the finished work of Christ. Your sanctification isn't tied up in your taste-not, touch-not, handle-not actions in this world. Your sanctification is a status wrought by the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. But in your day-to-day life, don't think this book doesn't call you to tell the truth, to love your neighbor, to love and tend for the brethren, to tend to the orphans and the widows, to keep yourself unspotted from this world. The Bible calls us to a lot of those things. They're not very popular preaching points, especially in sovereign grace churches. But I'll be the first to tell you, God doesn't want you going out there and living a life of flamboyant sin. No. You don't need to go looking for sin, beloved. It'll find you. You still live in this world. Sin's going to be there. The Scripture tells us here, Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. So, don't go looking to let sin reign in your mortal body. Go ahead. Put up that righteous struggle. The Bible says, The Lord will go with you. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. He won't put temptation on us, that's more than we can bear. The Bible declares that as well. So, reckon yourselves alive in Christ. That's what the Scripture says. Why? Because His blood has covered our sin. And in this day-to-day world, we don't go looking for more cool and creative ways to sin, so that grace may abound all the more. That's not how we do this. We rather look to the Lord and say, God, help me be as pleasing to you as you would have me be in this old world. And Lord, I know I'll fall short, but I cling only to Christ as my righteousness. I seek only to try my best as a child who would draw a picture for a father. I seek only, Lord, that you would accept this refrigerator art life of mine. And Lord, make it pleasing as you sanctify all what I do in the blood of Jesus. Reckon yourself dead to sin. Know that sin has no real dominion over you. And when you struggle with sin, and you find yourself being accused by the accuser, the one who said, oh, you're not even a Christian, you remind them that grace reigns. Grace reigns. The Bible tells us this. I can't be judged by the law. I've been released from it. And yet the Scripture says this in verse 15. Are we to sin because we are not under the law but under grace? I don't believe the law has any authority over me. None at all. It is not binding to me. Why? Because Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to them that believe. Hallelujah. But am I supposed to sin all the more now because I'm not under the law but under grace? Paul says, by no means. If you're reading from the King James, I think it says, God forbid. That's a strong denial. So if I'm not under the law, how can I still be called not to sin? Well, the Scripture says here, Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. Now I'm speaking, he says, in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. So we don't go looking for more sin as a way that grace may abound all the more. Rather, we count ourselves dead to sin. We fight against the temptations that this old fallen frame puts us in. And we say, Oh God, be merciful to me. And we never take our eyes off of the righteousness that is Jesus Christ. We're not under the law, we're under grace. Hallelujah forevermore. That's a true statement. I don't want to minimize that. But we don't use grace as license. We call sin, sin. But if you go out and sin, is your salvation in danger? No. Christ finished the work. Now will there be repercussions in this old world? Oh, you better believe it. Countless other times. People have survived gunshot wounds in this world, right? But if you have them take off their shirt, they've got gnarly reminders of where that bullet entered and perhaps where it left. Maybe nerve damage and everything else. Walking with a limp, what am I getting at? There are consequences in this old world. You go out there womanizing. Don't be surprised if you take a billy club to the back of the head when her husband catches you. There are consequences. You go spending all your rent money on prescription drugs or down at the gambling hall. Yes, Christ is your righteousness. You know what? It shouldn't even be controversial that a minister of the gospel could say that from a pulpit. Your righteousness isn't tied up into whether or not you go gambling. But don't think for a second that when your rent is due, that the money is going to magically appear in your mailbox. There are consequences to riotous living, to reckless lifestyles. And God's people will be chastened by a loving Father. He won't cast you out. But don't be surprised if He puts you, through providence, if He puts you in a position where you are utterly miserable in this old world. And thanks be to God, He loves His people. He'll go and He'll leave the 99 in the fold and go out and seek and save His wayward ones. Thank God. He is a good shepherd. But we're not to go looking for sin. Our Savior put sin to death on the cross. The Bible says this in verse 4 of chapter 7. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. What fruit? Well, let me tell you this. Christ bears fruit. Through His people, we're used as tools in His hands. The good works that we do as Christian people, they're not good in and of themselves. I mean, sure, as men go, we're okay one with the other. I mean, as men go, a lot of things are okay, right? But what I'm talking about here is this. The works that we do that are acceptable in the sight of God are acceptable in the sight of God because they have been sanctified wholly by and through the blood of Jesus. So when we give a cup of water in the name of Jesus to someone else, is it a good thing that we give the cup of water in God's eyes? Maybe not. Because what if you're just wicked? But if you give a cup of water in the name of Christ and you belong to Him, that good work is sanctified by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. That's why the scripture says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that's not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works that the Father hath prepared beforehand that we should walk therein. So we're dead to the law. We're alive to Christ. We will sin. Let's not go looking for sin. And no, don't think for a second that grace reigns all the more because you sin all the more. As a matter of fact, the scripture calls us to fight that good fight of faith. Know that your righteousness is Christ alone. I'm going to say it again for the people that aren't going to hear me. Our righteousness is not wrapped up in our doings or not doings. Works don't make righteousness. But people who are saved by and through the righteousness of Jesus Christ will look to Him to escape the pitfalls of this world. We'll look to Him. We'll say, Oh God, be merciful to me. I don't want to sin like I used to sin, Lord. And if you notice in your own life, there are certain pitfalls that maybe existed in your own life that don't exist anymore. Why? Because God in His goodness has made a way of escape for you even in this world. There are some of you who will battle with the same temptation until the day you die. But the fact that you understand that there are temptations, the fact that you're battling with them, all of these things point to one thing. You know where righteousness dwells and you don't seek after salvation by your own works. Now, is this an easy passage? No, it's not that easy. It's hard because people want a clean cut and dry kind of thing. They want a preacher to say, Yep, if you sin again that grace may abound, but you're actually just not saved. Other people want to say that you build on your sanctification by living some life of holiness as though you can have a personal holiness. This pastor doesn't believe that you can have a personal holiness. Do you know why? The only holiness this book speaks of is the holiness of our Lord Jesus Christ. And He is perfect. Thanks be to God. We're dead to the wall. You don't know what good news that is unless you begin to unpack it in your soul. We are dead to the law for Christ's sake. That's awesome. And now, what is the law we serve? The perfect law of liberty. The love of Christ constrains us. So go forth, do as God would have you do, love your brothers, tend to one another's needs, be patient along suffering, and as you fall into sin, even still, trust the Lord and His righteousness alone. His grace has availed for you. You have just heard a message from Pastor Jason Booth of Redeemer Church of Piketon, Ohio. To learn more about the good news of Jesus, please visit RedeemerPiketon.org.