Embracing Transformation: Living in God's Grace

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So we surrender ourselves, our hopes, our aspirations, our dreams, we surrender our brokenness and sinfulness, our faults, every single part of us, Lord Jesus, we surrender to you. May your grace abound to us and may we respond to your goodness in faith. [00:00:24]

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death. But now, now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. [00:02:45]

And it's the idea that as we grow closer to Christ, as we follow after him, that it is possible, perhaps not probable that we might be entirely perfected in love in this life. Now, Wesley certainly thought that he would, he had not achieved that, but he said he knew of some people in his life that he thought were, were very close to that. [00:06:02]

Holiness is a fancy word. In fact, in Bible college, one of my favorite professors used to talk to us. He was very bombastic and extravagant in his illustrations. And he would kind of confront our idea of what we thought was holy. I always thought holiness was somehow related to spookiness, that it was somehow this ethereal thing that we could never really quite understand, but you just kind of knew something was holy. [00:08:39]

That's the picture of grace that it covers, that it overshadows, no matter how deep and dark sin and corruption and just absolute degeneration takes place in an individual or society, that God's grace is even bigger than that. And so he imagines they might be saying, well, let's sin so that there might be even more grace. [00:12:20]

And he uses an interesting metaphor to help us gather that. Now for us, it's distasteful as it probably was for them. He uses a metaphor of slavery. And he talks about that when we were slaves to sin, we were free, in regard to righteousness, meaning that we were enslaved, that we were led about by our impulses and our feelings and whatever it was that we wanted to do, our appetites are what guided us. [00:13:32]

The second thing that Paul does, and he does it throughout the book of Romans, but I'll summarize it for you, is he blows up this idea of that holiness is something somehow that means we have to get our entire act together, our life in order, before we're able to approach God. And let's be honest, that's kind of an honest and normal, natural thing that we do in everything. [00:15:23]

The holiness that that Paul is describing the holiness of God is not this idea that we better ourselves and we get ourselves ready so that God will accept us but rather because God has accepted us and has already poured out his favor upon us that's why we live holy lives it's not about earning it's about grace it's about the idea of this person has forgiven me this person has has has given me new life has accepted me in who saw my brokenness who saw my sinfulness and loved me anyway and therefore I will do anything for this person. [00:17:19]

Holiness is a response to the grace that we've been given to to the the favor of God poured out to us and it is so amazing to watch people come to life when that they encounter that kind of grace through us or in circumstances over my time in ministry I've had the occasion to do a lot of marriage counseling either premarital or marriages that are suffering or whatever the case may be and something that I've noticed is that in a lot of these relationships where there are problems it is because there is an absence of encouragement. [00:21:19]

The second thing in verse 13, Paul says, offer yourselves to God. So consider yourselves dead to sin, and now you're under new management. Offer yourselves to God. What he's talking about here is a change in one's will. A shift in the will. We've had a shift in the thinking. Now we need a shift in the will. The reordering of the will doesn't just happen. It doesn't just naturally take place. [00:28:35]

And then third, we already mentioned this in verse 19. Paul says, Offer your members, the parts of your body. That word in the Greek means either an internal organ like your heart or something, but also can mean an arm or a hand or some extremity. Offer those things to Christ. He says before you offered yourself to sinfulness, you were enslaved to it, to do whatever you wanted. He says earlier in chapter six, but now offer your members. As slaves to righteousness. [00:30:12]

The practice of prayer, the practice of fasting, the practice of the gathered people in worship, the practice of all the spiritual disciplines of solitude. Yes, mothers with small children, God calls us into solitude. Amen? It doesn't sound like you really believe that. Have you lost all hope? You have small children. To hear God, to be shaped, the spiritual disciplines alter our conduct by helping us live a kingdom rhythm of life. [00:31:39]

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