Who is your Slave Master?
RO76-01

In Romans 6:15, the apostle Paul takes up the second attack which is often leveled at the principal of grace salvation. If salvation does not depend in any way upon what a person is or does, the objector says, "Then there is no reason to avoid evil acts." Since the apostle Paul has been so strong in saying that a person under divine grace is not under a law system of keeping rules in order to earn God's favor, then the objector says, "There is no reason to live righteously."

Grace

Paul's response to this suggestion of indulging evil, because we are not under the demand of a good works system, is a strong idiom which we looked at in the last session: "me genoito" – "absolutely may it not be." He has been falsely accused of teaching a system of living that would enable people to do wrong. Paul says, "That is not true."

So, we have studied verses 15-16: "What then?" The idea is, "What shall we conclude?" "Shall we sin as a way of life because we are not under the law (a system of keeping rules), but under grace?" Then he comes with the expression: "By no means."

Verse 16: "Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves slaves to obey, you are his slaves, whom you obey, whether of the sin nature unto death, or of obedience of divine viewpoint unto righteousness." Verse 16 has given us a principle of slavery that the apostle Paul is now going to draw a conclusion from.

A Summary of Romans 6:15-16

1. You are the Slave of the Power that you are Enslaved to

   If one presents himself as a slave to some power, he then becomes the slave of that power. This seems like a very simple principle, and yet Paul has taken the trouble to emphasize it to us. What he is saying is that if a person sells himself to some object, that object becomes his owner. This is true even if the person pretends he's not a slave of that object.

   You can think of many things that people are slaves of, and that they have literally sold themselves to, and they have literally turned themselves over to it, but they are not very proud of it. So, they say, "No, I'm not a slave to that thing." Many alcoholics begin like this. They say, "I'm not a slave to drinking. I can quit any time I want to." They pretend that they are not slaves, but the truth of the matter is that they have sold themselves to drink, and they can't avoid it. They are slaves to it.

   So, the point that Paul is making is that if you turn yourself over to something, then you become the slave of the power to which you have delivered yourself. The nature of slave ownership is that it is absolute and exclusive authority over the slave which is not shared. There is no area of the slave's life which is exempt. The slave owner decides what his slave does, no matter what the slave may desire. There are no areas of freedom of choice. This is what Paul is trying to point out by this first point. It is in the nature of slavery that you have absolute and exclusive authority exercised over you.

2. There are Only Two Slave Masters

   Paul says, "The only to slave masters are the sin nature and obedience to divine viewpoint. Every human being on earth, therefore, is either a slave to the sin nature, or he's a slave to obedience of divine viewpoint. No one is free. No human being is free. Each one of you is a slave. And there are only two slave masters in all the universe. That is a very important piece of information. Be glad that you know it. You are either a slave of the sin nature, or you are a slave of obedience to divine viewpoint.

   Paul has referred to this principle in pointing out that every person is either in Adam or in Christ. That's another way of saying that you're either a slave to death in Adam, or you are a slave to life in Jesus Christ.

   In Romans 5:21, we have already seen that Paul declared that one is either under the reign of the old sin nature, resulting in death; or, the reign of grace, resulting in absolute righteousness and eternal life.

3. The Two Slave Masters are Complete Opposites

   The slave masters of the sin nature and obedience to divine viewpoint are complete opposites, and are in eternal opposition to one another. Both are slave owners; both are slave masters; and, both seek the same slaves. But you cannot be the slave of both. One slave master represents the devil; hell; lawlessness; falsehood; and, death. The other slave master represents God; heaven; holiness; truth; and, life. And there is no common ground between those things. One's slave master is determined by one's negative or positive response to the gospel.

4. You cannot be Enslaved to the Two Slave Masters at the Same Time

   A person cannot be enslaved to both the sin, nature and obedience to divine viewpoint at the same time. You cannot be a slave of the sin nature, and live righteously as a slave of obedience to divine viewpoint. You cannot be a slave of obedience to divine viewpoint, and live in the slavery of evil. This is the principle which was stated by the Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6:24: "No man can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." And then he gives an application: "You can't serve God and money at the same time." So, we are enslaved either to Satan or to God. You cannot be enslaved to both at the same time.

5. You Reveal who your Slave Master is by What you Do

   A person reveals who his slave master is by what he does. A lot of you thought that the way you reveal who your slave master is, is by what you say. There are all kinds of religious groups that think that they reveal who their slave master is by what they say. So, they say certain things. They love to say certain codewords and certain religious words. They like to repeat phrases like "Praise the Lord;" "hallelujah;" "glory, glory, glory;" and, any number of codewords which are all designed to convey to others that they have a certain loyalty and allegiance to God. But what you say does not identify your slave master.

   The pope is visiting the United States. The other day I heard the pope, speaking to a group of young people, close his remarks by shouting out, "Jesus Christ is Lord." And all the charismatics vibrated all over the country. You could just hear it all over coming through the tube, and all the other disoriented religious idiots in our country. When the pope said, "Jesus Christ is Lord," they said, "That man is one of our own. Absolutely. I can just tell it. Did you hear that? He said, 'Jesus Christ is Lord.' Isn't that wonderful? We say that at our church. We say that all the time among us. We say that to one another. Isn't that wonderful?"

   But then, do you know what the pope did. After saying, "Jesus Christ is Lord," he promptly proceeded to conduct the paganistic Babylonian mystery cult right of the Mass. And that's where the Mass came from – the bloodless sacrifice that Nimrod created with his false goddess Samaramis. He created the system of the Mass as the center of the religious worship, which the Roman Church then absorbed. And they said, "Well, what we're sacrificing is Jesus Christ again. We're sacrificing a bloodless sacrifice of Christ, and those who are present when we sacrifice Him will have merit that they need to pay for their sins, and to be able to go to heaven someday."

   So, here's this Roman Catholic pope shouting, "Jesus Christ is Lord. Lord, Lord." Do his words tell us who reigns as the slave master of his life? Not on your life. The thing that tells us who reigns as the pope's slave master (whatever he thinks) is told us by his works, when he stepped up and performed that paganistic horrible ritual of the Mass in Grant Park in Chicago; in the stadiums in New York; and, all over the country. And people are going wild in a frenzy over hearing the pope say, "Jesus Christ is Lord."

   Well, it's no wonder they're confused. A very leading clergyman in the Dallas area (I was told by one of our men) publicly referred to the pope as "that man of God." Is he "that man of God? Why? Well, because he says, "Jesus is Lord." I must again direct you to Matthew 7:21, where the Lord Jesus said, "Not everyone that says unto Me, 'Lord, Lord' shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of My Father who is in heaven." Now, you couldn't say it any more clearly than that. Just because you say, "Lord, Lord," and just because you say, "Jesus is Lord" does not tell us who your slave master is. But when you go out and perform a paganistic ritual like the Mass in the name of Jesus Christ, that tells us who your slave master is. And it is . . . the devil. It is disorientation of doctrine that controls.

   Consequently, while we're on this passage, Jesus, who is Lord, had nothing to do with that paganistic ritual. Matthew 7:15, says, "Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." In Matthew 7:23, Jesus says, "Then will I profess unto them, 'I never knew you. Depart from Me you that work iniquity." And one of the greatest works of iniquity that is repeated constantly in the world is the Roman Catholic Mass. That is an iniquity that God loathes as few things that divine loathing is directed to.

   Now this adulation for Pope John Paul II is an example of mankind's own spiritual madness, but it is a preview of the devotion to the false prophet in the tribulation. You are watching something very fascinating with the tour of this pope. People who do not know him; people who have no relationship to him; and, people who have no understanding of what he thinks; what he believes; and, what he stands for, yet they're in a frenzy because he is the pope. He is the religious leader. The religious leader of what?

   Well, they know his claim. The papal claim is that the pope is the representative of Jesus Christ on this earth. Therefore, when the pope speaks, he speaks for Jesus Christ. Now, that is powerful stuff. Here you have the voice of God in a living context. And never forget that the pope is called the vicar of Christ, which means that he is the spokesman of God upon this earth. And when he says what he says, God says it. And if he excommunicates you, and says, "You are cut off from eternal life, and you are destined for the lake of fire," then God says, "You are cut off from eternal life and destined for the lake of fire. That is the power of Christ exercised through this human being.

   That's where Joseph Smith of the Mormons got the idea, and that's why he set up a pope. They call him a prophet, but it's the same thing, so that they can have a person who speaks for God now, on current issues.

   So, here we have a great example of trying to identify who your slave master is by what you say. That is not true. Doing what violates Bible doctrine reveals that one slave master is not the Lord Jesus Christ. Pronouncements in favor of biblical morality; world peace; and, even these words of exaltation of Jesus Christ does not identify who one's slave master is.

   Each slave master insists on a certain type of conduct, and your conduct is what identifies who your master is. One who practices evil is revealed thereby to be enslaved to the sin nature, not to grace with its obedience to divine viewpoint.

   Again in Matthew 7:16: "You shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles? Even so, every good tree brings forth good fruit, but a corrupt tree brings forth bad fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit. Neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit."

   Matthew 7:20 says, "Wherefore by their fruits, you shall know them."

   Then in the gospel of John we may add John 8:34 to that: "Jesus answered them, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, whosoever commits sin as a habit of life (as a practice of living) is the slave of sin.'"

   The evidence of one's lifestyle concerning one's slave master is revealed in 1 John 1:6, where we read, "If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." It is not what you say that indicates who your slave master is. It is what you do.

   Also in 1 John 2:4, we may add: "He that says, 'I know Him,' and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

   So, here you have a very interesting condition here. You have a situation where the Bible clearly says that you do not identify your slave master by what you say. You identify it by what you do.

   What Paul has done here is that he has refuted with logic, using the example of slavery, the objection that being under grace means that a Christian who is enslaved to obedience to righteousness can follow a lifestyle of slavery to the sin nature. All by logic, he took the principle of how slavery works. The objectors says, "You can be enslaved to obedience to righteousness and still live a life of evil." Paul says, "You don't understand slavery, or you wouldn't say a thing like that. You cannot be a slave to obedience of righteousness, and yet have a lifestyle which obeys evil.

"But God." That is the word "theos." It has "the" in front of it: "the God." Therefore, we know that it is referring to God the Father: "But God be thanked." The word for "thanked" is the word "charis" that you may recognize as the normal word for "grace." Here it means "gratitude" or "thanks." It connotes a person's sense of gratitude for favor received. It expresses here Paul's gratitude relative to the slavery status of the Roman Christians.

Paul says, "Now I have something that I'm very grateful for concerning you people in Rome." And what he says about these people in Rome, because they are Christians, is also true of you and me. The apostle Paul could say, "I am grateful concerning the believers that the Berean congregation" in terms of this same thing.

So, he opens with this expression of gratitude: "But thanks be to God." For what? There is a status that the believer holds. He has the word "that," which is "hoti." This is a conjunction again, and it introduces the reason for Paul's gratitude to God. He is grateful for the fact: "That you were" something in the past. This is the verb "eimi." This is the word to express status or condition. It is in the imperfect tense. We haven't had that one too often, but imperfect in the Greek refers to something that has happened in the past, but repeatedly in the past. . . . This thing is repeatedly happening in the past. And the Greek language has a way of saying that so that you understand that he's talking about something that's repetitious in the past. It is a past condition of these Romans Christians, which was repeatedly true of them. It is something that was repeatedly true of them, and which he is grateful for the fact that it's no longer true of them.

Now, what he is referring to, as you'll see in a minute, is that they were slaves of sin in the past. And in the past, no matter what they did, everything they did, and every move they made, it was a demonstration that they were slaves of sin. This is active voice, which shows that these Christians, before they were saved, did this by choice. They had rejected God's truth. And to that extent, their slavery was self-induced. It is indicative mood, which tells us that we have a statement of a fact here.

This verb "eimi" is introducing a contrast between a past slavery condition of the Roman Christians, and what they became. So, that's why, in our translation, we add the word "whereas" or "though." The idea is to indicate that there is something different: "But God be thanked that, whereas (in the past, repeatedly) you were." And the King James says "servants," but that is not a good translation. It should say "slaves." In the Greek, it is "doulos." It is far stronger than servant. "Servants" implies a choice. These people are not in a position of choice. They are in a position of slaves.

However, it is not "the slaves" this time. It does not have that specific "the." It is stressing the quality of involuntary servitude. You were the kind of people who could not exercise your will in reference to sin. The Greek has "hamartia." The word "hamartia" as you know, is the general word for "sin" in terms of missing the standard (the mark) of God's absolute righteousness.

Now, this time, again, from the Greek Bible, we see that it has "the sin," indicating the specific reference to the sin nature. That's very, very important.

Everyone is Born a Slave of Satan

This point, that nobody is born a slave of God, is what Paul is stressing in the first part of the book of Romans. That's why he has said, "You are in Adam, the place of death. You are not in Christ, the place of life." You are in Adam by natural birth. The very fact that you were born into the human race has upon you the contamination of Adam's sin. Escaping enslavement to Satan requires some kind of a great change in a human being. And that great change is the new birth spiritually. This divine act of regeneration results in what 2 Corinthians 5:17 calls "a new creation." And this new creation is enslaved to God.

So, when you come into this life as a little baby, and you take your first breath, you are under the enslavement of the sin nature. You are dead. That is how everybody begins. Now if you still have some delusions that human beings have some quality of good, and some quality of value to God, then you are seriously mistaken. You are dead (the sin nature – evil). You are absolutely out of it by your very natural birth.

Now, for you to escape this requires a radical change, and that is the new birth. That is becoming a new creation. And then you leave this slavery, and you become enslaved to absolute righteousness.

The Bible does not suggest that the slave to Satan merely needs some improvement. He needs a radical change. He needs a new slave master. That's the problem with people today. They think they just need some improvement. But that is not so. They need a new master. And regeneration results automatically in the transfer of ownership to a new slave master, which is God. Jesus Christ is the strong slave master who overcomes the old slave master of Satan. This is what he refers to in Luke 11:21-22, about a new master coming in and overcoming the old.

However, you must understand the nature of sin. There's just something about the word "sin" that, right away, we equate it with "bad." So, anything that's bad we can understand as sin: things that are violent; things that are loathsome; and, things that are degrading – those we easily understand as sin. But that is not the case for most people. Enslavement to Satan is more often evidenced by nonviolent, cultured, respectable acts. Enslavement to Satan (enslavement to the sin nature) is not by what you say, but by what you do. It is evidenced by a pursuit of pleasure as a lifestyle. And there are some people who live simply for one experience of pleasure after another: whether it is pleasure of food; whether it is pleasure of sex; whether pleasure of surroundings; whether it is pleasure of travel; or, pleasures of whatever type. There are some people who simply live constantly for pleasures that they may indulge in. And that's sin. Sin is more often expressed as people who are subjected to the thing to do.

Is that characteristic of you? How many of you are enslaved to doing certain things that you don't even like to do? You hate to do them. But this is the thing to do. Christmas time comes along, and the thing to do is to send Christmas cards. You hate it. You loathe it. You grit your teeth. And finally, you sit down and you write those Christmas cards out. That's sin. That's characteristic of being a slave of the sin nature – whatever is the thing to do, because you don't want to be thought ill of, even if you think maybe it's a wrong thing to do. But if it's the thing to do, you do it.

Consider the promotion of human good for mankind. How many of you are going to resist the promotion of human good? Well, the politicians in Washington say that you're not compassionate. And there are some Christians who will say, "Oh, I'm not compassionate. I don't want anybody to say, 'I'm not loving.'" For most of you, that's the greatest honor you could be told – that you're not loving, because the world's meaning of the word "love" is human good – the thing that makes God throw up. So, it's quite a compliment if you are not involved in human good.

What do you think is fouled up this great nation, but it's human good programs of one kind and another that flow from a government which has never been authorized to do those things by its constitutional provisions? That's what we're up against – obsession with material possessions. For a lot of people, this is viewed as dignity. Who are the people that cause the average person to look up to them? Well, the guy who's got lots of Krugerrands, and pre-1965 silver? These are the people – these wealthy people. And they are zeros – most of them. They're zeros when it comes to having any personal quality and significance with God. But obsession with material possessions – that is sin.

A human viewpoint mentality which reveals selfishness in making decisions – that is evil. So, you're talking about sin that most people say, "That's respectable. That's commendable. That's something that we look up to." It is not the loathsome; it is not the violent; and, it is not the uncouth that is only sin. When God says, "You're not a slave to sin as a Christian," you're not a slave to these cultured, accepted things.

Slavery to the sin nature is evident by this fact most of all, and that is failure to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. Why does a person not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior? Because his slave master, who holds complete authority over him, says that he can't do it. And you're born into the human race with Satan as your slave master. 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 say, "But if our gospel be hidden, it is hidden to them that are lost; in whom the God of this age (that is, Satan) has blinded the minds of them who believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."

Do you see what that verse is saying? Paul says, "The reason you do not believe the gospel is because you're a slave of the devil." And you can't do a thing about it. You're a helpless victim of that enslavement. And while your sins may be uncouth, or your sins may be couth (whichever direction you may take), it is still sin. It is still an indication by what you do that you are a slave of the devil. But the primary evidence of enslavement is that you don't believe on Jesus Christ as Savior. That is the status of the human race by birth.

Then out there in space is a God who talks and who is not silent, and who talks not in charismatic gibberish but intelligible terms, who comes into human history and says, "I am going to overcome your incapacity. I'm going to give you the ability to believe, because I have chosen you as one of my own for eternal life." And suddenly, you, who are the slave of the sin nature, have the capacity to say "Yes" to the gospel, and to become emancipated from the devil and enslaved to Jesus Christ. And if you die physically while you're still a slave of sin nature, your destiny will forever be the lake of fire.

So, the apostle Paul says, "I'm so thankful as I look upon you, Roman Christian, that whereas in the past, as a repeated, continual state, you were the slaves of the sin nature." I'm thankful to God that while that was true, something very wonderful has happened. You have obeyed. An act of obedience came in because God the Holy Spirit overpowered the enslavement of Satan ("hupakouo"). "Hupakouo" means "to listen to" or "to submit to." It is in the aorist tense. Aorist means a certain point of time action. It is in the past when the decision was made by these Christians to believe the gospel. The idea here is that you became obedient at some point in the past. It is active. They found the capacity, through the Spirit of God, to say "Yes" to the gospel. It is indicative. Here is a statement of a great fact which is made to us.

They believed in a certain way. It says, "From," and the Greek word is "ek," which is from the source of. That is the idea. And the source was the "kardia," which is the Greek word for "heart," but which refers to the directive side of the mind. The perceptive mind is where you learn things and you take information. The directive quality of the mind is where you make decisions – decisions that are guided either upon human viewpoint concepts, or upon divine viewpoint concepts. It depends whether you have a living human spirit here (with a divine viewpoint concepts) to fill the directive side of your mind, so that you can make this action on God's point of view.

So, here he's referring to the heart. This is the thing that is the place of making decisions. And the implication of this is that it was really definitive – true, full conviction. You did this with absolute conviction. You obeyed from the decision-making part of your mentality, which has come to a settled conclusion.

What is it that you believed? You believed, and we have the word "form." The Greek word looks like this: "tupos." "Tupos," very simply, is a mold. You make a mold. This is like, when I was younger, used to have a set of molds to make lead soldiers. And you put the pieces together, and you clamped it, and then you heated the metal, and then you poured it into the opening, and when it cooled, you broke it open; you broke off the excess; and, you had a lead soldier. And you painted it all up. I made a whole army of lead soldiers out of metal that you poured into a mold.

Doctrine

Salvation by Grace

Now we have to show you something that you don't have in the English Bible. The Greek has this preposition "eis." It means "into." The preposition "into" here, with this mold, is something that's being poured into this mold, and it's a totally different idea than you get here in the King James. You obeyed from the directive side of your mentality that mold of divine viewpoint doctrine. It says "into which:" "Into which mold." Then we have the word "delivered." It looks like this: "paradidomi." "Paradidomi" means "to be handed over to" or "committed to." And it's in the aorist error, which means that it's in the past, at the point when they believed in Christ as Savior. They were then poured into a mold of grace salvation.

This is indicated by the fact that it is passive voice. Passive voice means it was done to you. You did not pour yourself into the mold of doctrine. You came as a helpless sinner who was a slave of Satan; who was blinded by the devil; and, who was not permitted to believe the gospel. You came helplessly to God, and suddenly, for some reason, Almighty God said, "You – I want to be in My heaven." And He directs God the Holy Spirit to pull the blind scales off your eyes. And somebody told you the gospel; you read a tract; you listened to the radio; or, you heard a gospel message, and suddenly the whole thing was illuminated. You had heard it hundreds of times. You had had it implicated you in scores of ways. But you were cold, and it was a stone wall. Now, all of a sudden, you've come alive in your mentality to believing the gospel.

Don't compliment yourself. What happened to you was that you were poured into the mold of grace salvation. It was done to you by God the Holy Spirit, Who enabled you to believe.

The apostle Paul is building on the principle of slavery. And you, who are slaves of sin; helpless; and, unable to change it, are now made slaves of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it wasn't by anything that you did. It's an indicative statement of God's fact.

So, we translate this as: "Into which you were committed," or "Into which you were handed over." The King James translation gives us the wrong idea.

So, here's the believer's enslavement. A great and total change of ownership has taken place from Satan to God. That's what we have in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, where the apostle Paul says, "What? Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit Who is in you, Whom you have of God? You're not your own. You are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's."

The change a slave masters is the result of a pattern or a mold of doctrine into which the believer has been poured. Salvation by divine grace alone through faith. That is the mold described in Romans 3:24, where Paul says, "But being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."

Then we have the famous passage in Ephesians 2:8-9. The mold of grace is indicated here: "For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast. Grace salvation by faith alone. That's the mold. You have been poured into that mold, so that you will come out a slave of Jesus Christ. That's what happens. After you've been poured into the mold, and you break the two sides of the mold open, what stands there? A slave of Jesus Christ. You were melted down, so to speak, as a slave of the sin nature. And then you were poured into the mold of salvation by grace through faith, apart from human doing. And then they broke the mold aside. And there you stood a slave of Jesus Christ. That's the picture you have in Scripture.

Human strivings, then, to achieve a change of slave master are all totally useless. Because the believers have been poured into the mold of grace salvation, they are in the form of slaves to God – not to Satan. God the Holy Spirit is the One who has poured the sinner into the mold of grace salvation – not into the form of self-achieved salvation.

Again in Ephesians 2:1, we read, "And you have He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins."

Ephesians 2:6 says, "And has raised this up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus."

And verse 10 adds: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them.

So, it is very clear that it is God who does the pouring of the sinner into the grace mold that produces the fantastic results of a trophy of His grace. God has done it all. God be thanked.

Colossians 1:12-13 put it this way: "Giving thanks unto the Father Who has made us fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; Who has delivered us from the power of darkness; and, has translated us into the kingdom of His Dear Son." And you don't have anything to do with it except simply to be grateful that you received it. So, don't play high and mighty anywhere along the line, because, but for the grace of God, you'd be that slob sleeping in his own vomit down on Skid Row tonight. It's only because of the grace of God saying, "You're not going to be a slave of sin anymore. I want you now be a slave of Jesus Christ."

The point is going to be that each slave master has a way of life, and you can't live any other way of life. There was nothing you could do but live either uncultured or an uncultured sin way of life when you were a slave of sin. There is nothing you can do but live a life of righteousness now that you are a slave of divine viewpoint. And you see how that is answering the attacks of verse 15.

You can't live a life of sin as a Christian, because the sin nature is not your slave master, and you have to do what your slave master tells you. The only slave master you have is the divine viewpoint righteousness of doctrine. So, you have to obey righteousness. You have no alternative. That is the believer's position of enslavement.

Anybody who resents this, I'll tell you right off the bat, does not understand the principle of slavery to the sin nature, or you wouldn't resent the fact that human beings are so incapacitated. The result of obedience to God's divine viewpoint is a lifestyle with the freedom to do what is right.

Let's close with Titus 2:11-12. Here's how Titus puts it: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appear to all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age." Obedience to God's divine viewpoint is a lifestyle – freedom, at last, to do what is right. The essence of sin is disobedience to God. The essence of faith is obedience to divine righteousness.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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