Back in the day, when I was in high school, we called it “Initiation.” It was the time-honored tradition of breaking in the new crop of freshman. At Martin Luther Academy, where I went to High School, freshmen were called Fuchses, and for the first week of the school year, we dressed up the fuchses, and marched them around and made them perform all kinds of menial tasks, like shining the upper classmen’s shoes, or fetching their books or carrying their lunch trays. If you are an FVL grad of the little more distant past, maybe remember a similar tradition called “Slave Day.” Freshmen were paired up with seniors and made to do all sorts of foolish things like push a penny down the hall with your nose; wear scuba gear to class all day. Do we have any of you remember those days?
Now, whether you actually experienced something like Slave Day or not, I don’t think it’s hard to put yourself in the shoes of those freshmen, on the eve of Slave Day. They’re all wondering who they’ll have to serve. Will they get a good master or a bad one? When the pairings finally came out, you can just about hear them asking each other, “So, whose slave are you? And whose slave are you?”
My friends, you realize that’s more than just a question asked by some first year High School students. It’s also a question which God asks each one of us today. In fact, it’s the theme for our sermon today, namely, Christian,
Whose Slave are You?
As we take a little closer look at these words from Romans, chapter 6, we’ll uncover two key truths:
- By nature, we are slaves of sin
- By grace, we are slaves of God
Now, if I were to ask you, how many of you see yourself as a slave—as either a slave of sin or a slave of God?, I would expect that a whole lot of us would say, “Actually, I don’t see myself as a slave of either. I’m not a slave of sin. I don’t have to do whatever sin tells me to do. I can choose to do the right thing. But I’m not a slave of God either. It’s not like I’m forced to do God’s will. No, I’m free to make my own choices. I’m not a slave to God and I’m not a slave to sin either. I’m a free man or a free woman.”
But actually, that’s not true. The Bible says that everyone is a slave to something or someone. There is no such thing as pure neutrality. How did Jesus put it? “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 13:20). In other words, it’s one or the other. We’re either serving sin or we’re serving God. In fact, that’s the point that the Apostle Paul makes here in our text when he writes, Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey–whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Let’s take up the first alternative, the idea of offering ourselves to be slaves of sin. Tell me, are there times when you feel like sin is controlling you? Times when you’d like to be free, but you keep falling back into that same old sin? You feel like a dog on one of those retractable leashes. You know what I mean? The dog goes bounding ahead. He thinks he’s absolutely free. But wait, he’s not. That collar kind of reels him back in. He’s still under the control of his master.
Isn’t that what sin does to us all? It controls us. It makes us slaves. In fact, isn’t that what Jesus said in John 8:34? “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Actually, in the original language, Jesus is a little more precise. The verb form he uses expresses not a one-time action, but rather an ongoing activity. It might be better translated, “Whoever keeps on sinning is a slave to sin.” Those who keep going back to the same sin are proving they are under the control of that sin. They are slaves to that sin.
The question is, is Jesus talking about you or me? What’s the sin that you would love to be free from, but you just can’t stop going back to? Maybe it’s lying. You want to be honest with people, you want to tell the truth, but every time the truth might make you look bad, or get you in trouble or have people think less of you, you are quick to cover it up, to hide behind a half truth, or tell an outright lie.
Or maybe the sin that you keep going back to is the sin of using pornography. You try to explain it away: “Everybody looks at porn. It’s harmless. I’m not hurting anyone. I can stop any time.” But you don’t. You promise “This is the last time”…but it’s not. It’s like something else is controlling you—whether it’s lust, or gambling, or shopping, or worrying. Whether it’s the bad attitude we keep sliding into, the laziness that we grow comfortable with, the bitterness that we can’t let go of. If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that we’re all slaves of one sin or another. We are all under the control of sin in one way or another. We must all admit with St. Paul, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. (Romans 7:19).
Why is that? Why can we never completely stop sinning? Because by nature, we are all slaves of sin. In other words, from the time we were conceived until the time we breathe our last breath, we will always have a sinful nature, controlled by sin. That means that before our baptism there was an invisible tattoo stamped on our back side that read, “100% slave of sin.” In fact that is still true of every unbeliever to this day. They’re all slaves of sin. In fact, here in our text St. Paul describes the Romans Christians when they were in that same position of unbelievers. He writes, When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. And again, You used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and ever-increasing wickedness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?
My friends, do you realize that what Paul is saying of these Roman readers—before they were Christians—is still true of our sinful natures today? Or to put it another way, what those Romans were—is what we by nature are. But here is the more important thing. What those Romans became—is what we, by grace, have become. It’s our new identity. Listen to how Paul describes the change in the Romans. He says, But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. Hmmm. That’s some difficult English. Even though the Greek there is clear enough, the English translation is a little wooden. A little freer translation might be, “Thanks be to God, that even though you were all slaves of sin, you believed the gospel, in other words, God worked saving faith in your hearts.” The emphasis there is not on what the Romans did, but on what God did for them. Notice how Paul goes on to describe these Roman Christians with passive verbs. You have been set free (notice, they didn’t free themselves. They didn’t decide to become free. No, God is the doer, God is the agent of action). You have been set free and have become slaves to righteousness.
My friends, isn’t the same thing true for each one of us? By nature, we were all slaves of sin. By nature, we couldn’t free ourselves from the control of sin. But what did God do? In the ultimate expression of love and mercy, God sent his own son into this world to set us free from the guilt, from the punishment and from the control of sin. But now maybe you’re thinking, “Okay, I understand how Jesus has set us free from the guilt and the punishment of our sins. But from the control of sin? How does that work? Well, look at it this way. When Satan whispers in your ear telling you to do this or do that, as a Christian, you can now say to him, “Satan, you can’t tell me what to do, because you don’t own me anymore. Yes, I realize you used to own me. I used to be your slave. But then Jesus bought me back with his blood. Jesus paid the ransom price to set me free from your slavery, Satan. Now, I don’t have to do what you tell me to do. I am free from your control.”
But again someone might say, “Okay, I understand that I’m free from Satan’s control. But does that mean that I’m automatically a slave of God? Can’t I just be a free person? Why does Paul say that now you have been set free from sin and become slaves to God? Well, first of all we’ve already said that there is no such thing as a pure free agent. Everybody is controlled by something or someone. But secondly, think of your American history. When Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, millions of slaves in the southern states were suddenly declared to be free. They were no longer under the control of their old masters. But do you know what some of those slaves did? In their complete freedom, they decided to put themselves under new masters. They aligned themselves with masters who were good and kind and loving. Those slaves used their new found freedom to become slaves of much better masters—not because they had to, but because they wanted to.
My friends, isn’t the same thing true for you and me? By Jesus’ death on the cross, by the Spirit’s work in our hearts, God the Father has declared that we are no longer the slaves of sin. The question is, what are we going to do with our new found freedom? Are we going to run back to our old masters? You know, the sins that brought us nothing but guilt and shame and hopelessness? Or are we going to turn to a new Master. Are we going to offer ourselves to the One who offered himself to us first? The One who died to set us free. The One who made us his own at the cost of his holy precious blood. The One you and I are free to call our Lord, our Master, our Savior Jesus Christ. He’s the One who loves you, who forgives you, who holds you close to himself—even when you struggle with the same sin again and again and again?
Let’s face it, we all struggle with our pet sins. We all prove that by nature we are slaves of sin. But by God’s grace, Jesus has set us free from sin—not only from the eternal consequences of our sins. He also gives us what we need to win the daily battles over sin in our everyday lives. He’s gives us his Word. He gives us his Sacrament. And he even surrounds us with fellow believers who are fighting some of the same battles we are fighting. Isn’t that one of the purposes of our Life Groups, to support each other as we do life together? Or how about some of the other support groups that are available to us? For those who are struggling with the slavery of alcohol there is our Recovery through Christ group that meets here at Mount Olive every Friday night. For those who are dealing the loss of a loved one there is GriefCare program at St. Matt’s or DivorceCare at Immanuel Greenville. And for those who are caught in the web of pornography, there is something called Conquerors through Christ. In your mailbox today or on the back table, you’ll find a business card with a web address for Conquerors through Christ. Maybe you’ll never need CtC. But chances are, someone you know will. In the Christian church these days porn addiction has become the hidden epidemic. It’s destroying marriages; it’s destroying ministries; it’s destroying lives. But with Christ, the friend of sinners, there is always hope and strength and healing, no matter what the sin is.
My friends, the bottom line is this: By nature, we’re all slaves to something. But by God’s grace, Jesus has set us free. Free not to serve sin. But rather, to serve God. Yes, free to be a slave of God. For in the end, there is no better Master in the world for us to serve than Him who loves us and freed from our sins by his blood–to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen. (Rev. 1:5-6)