Heavenly Father, Lord, we have come here this morning because we want to know You more. Lord, I pray that You would be working through Your Spirit and through Your Word, that You would bring alive the truths that You have for each and every single one of us.

Lord, I pray that for us as a congregation, You would make us receptive, tender, and listening ears to the message You have for us. And Lord, I pray for Cameron, I pray the same thing also, Lord, that You would give him a tender and receptive heart to Your Spirit's leading, that You would be his divine editor.

Lord, I ask that today You might be glorified through the proclamation of Your Word. And Lord, we give this time and set it aside for You and for Your work. In Jesus' name, we pray, amen. Amen.

Good morning, friends. How are you? Good, good. My name is Cameron, one of the pastors here, as Pastor Luke already said. We are going to do our best this morning to make it through a significant part of Paul's letter to the Roman Church.

If you had been at Conduit for any time back in the fall, you know that we were studying the book of Romans and had made our way through about six chapters of it or so. It's important that in some regards that we follow the flow of Paul's thought and his argument in the letter because he does take a progression and he does build upon things as the letter progresses.

So that sometimes makes it difficult to grab a passage if we were to start in chapter 6 here and just continue on in Romans where we left off right before Advent. It kind of would make it difficult to say, "Okay, well, what is Paul saying in relation to the things that he's already said?" And so we want to take a little bit of time this morning to do our best at a six-chapter flyby review of the first six chapters of Romans.

Now listen, I tried to do this on Wednesday night at our Wednesday night Bible study, and there were about 40 of us or so there at our Wednesday night Bible study. And I will tell you, we did not make it through six chapters. We made it through about one and a half to two. But it was a great time in the Word, and we had a lot of great insight to the Word and a lot of great conversation.

My hope here is just to help us maybe understand a little bit of Paul's thought, to hear the Lord in it once again, and to ask the Lord, "All right, Lord, what would You have to say to me? What would You have to say to us?" Because next week, we're going to continue on in chapter 6 and chapter 7 of Romans, and we'll do that here for the next month or so.

If you have a Bible, I want to open it up to Romans. Romans is in the New Testament of the Bible. If you're not familiar with the Bible, that's okay. We hope to help you get familiar with it. The New Testament is the portion that's in the back of the Bible, so it's the kind of the back third of your Bible, and it starts out in the Book of Matthew, which is one of the Gospels. And there are four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Then the rest of the letters or the rest of the books in the New Testament of the Bible typically are letters from individuals to churches or groups of churches. And so when we say a book of the Bible, we're almost always talking about a letter to the church or a letter to an individual. Romans is a couple of books after the Gospel. So you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, then you have Acts, the Book of Acts, and then you have the letter to the Romans.

We're going to try and do a few key points here. If you read in Romans, you'll see that Paul starts out by pointing out what is kind of, or what seems relatively obvious, to the world. Anyone who has their eyes open, anyone who is paying attention to the world around us would come to the conclusion, maybe, would define it a little bit differently, but would come to the general conclusion that something is horribly, horribly, horribly wrong in the world, that there is a brokenness, that there is a wickedness, and that there is a godlessness that is rampant among the whole world.

And what Paul says here is that not only is that wickedness and godlessness rampant and everywhere, but that God is positioned to respond to that wickedness, to respond to the godlessness, to respond to evil, to respond to and in places where things have gone awry or things are broken. In fact, in Romans chapter 1, verse 18, it says not only is God prepared to respond, but that it's actually His wrath that is prepared to respond, that the wrath or the anger or the justice of God is being revealed from Heaven against all of the godlessness and wickedness of those who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

Now, when we talk about evil, when we talk about godlessness, when we talk about wickedness, we're all, I think, sometimes we get a picture in our mind of the thing in the world that is the most wicked sin.

Maybe it's the one sin, maybe it's the one situation, maybe it's the one example, maybe it's the one experience, right? Maybe it's May. There's a thing that we get in our mind, like "yeah, this is the perfect example of what we're talking about." What Paul is talking about when he talks about wickedness and godlessness and how God is revealing his wrath against those things. Both from the specific to the general, Paul leaves kind of no stone unturned here in chapter 1 of describing all of the various ways, across the whole kind of pantheon of examples of wickedness and godlessness that exist, and what God does in response to it. He starts out in 18 and goes through the rest of the chapter (verses 18 through 32 in Romans chapter 1). But some of these things that Paul lays out kind of start in verse 24 with like a specific list and leave nothing unturned. He says, "Therefore God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. And in the same way, men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." In verse 28, Paul goes on to say, "Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, every type of evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, and God haters. They are insolent, arrogant, and boastful. They have invented ways of doing evil. They disobey their parents. They're senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. And although they know God's righteous decrees and that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but they also approve of those who practice them."

And so it seems like Paul begins to create a list, and there are some proverbial people here and us, even in our own application now, who are like, "Yeah, there is a lot of wickedness and godlessness out there. There is a lot of suppressing the truth of God and rejecting the truth of God out there, and man am I super happy that none of that wickedness and godlessness, none of that rejection of the truth of God, none of that suppression of the truth of God, none of that self-idolatry is in here, right? It's all out there. It's all those other people, right? It's never us."

What Paul seems intent on making sure is that no one is left out of this conversation. And you can see that kind of in the way that he makes that list at the end of chapter one. They've been filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, depravity, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, God's haters, insolent, arrogant. They disobey their parents. They're senseless, they're faithless, they're heartless, and they're ruthless.

In a way, Paul is like, "I want everyone to hear me very, very clearly, no one is left off of this list, no one." There is not one person who commits a special sin that happens to be more wicked or more ungodly or more deserving of the revelation of God's wrath than anyone else. They are all, we're all under and in danger of the same wrath of God being revealed against us.

And in fact, it goes on. Paul says here in these first couple of chapters that God has already started to reveal his wrath against this wickedness and godlessness. And how does Paul say that this has already begun to happen? There are a few verses here in chapter one. Look at verse 21, verse 24, verse 26, and verse 28 where Paul says essentially the same thing.

I want us to be really clear to hear this and to understand it. I think this is a point of significant application for my life and yours now. We talked a little bit about this Wednesday in our Bible study. Several points here, Paul says words similar to this. For instance, verse 21, "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened."

If sin will destroy you, it will darken and harden your heart so much to the point that you no longer hear the voice of the Lord and the things that you know you should do. There should be a clue here in our own lives, right? How do I know if that's the direction that I'm going? Here's one way that I would answer that question: are there things in your life that you no longer experience conviction over that you once did? At one point, I remember significantly feeling, knowing, hearing the conviction of the Lord, the call to repentance, the voice of the Holy Spirit saying, "Turn from that, turn from that, danger warning signs, danger, danger." But now, yeah, I'm still doing that, but I don't really hear that anymore. I don't really hear that anymore. God must be okay with it now, it's normalized, it's rationalized in my life, right?

Well, listen, the Lord does not change his mind on sin. He's not like, "Oh, it's 2023 now, I think probably that sin is okay, let's just not think about that, we'll be okay now," right? That's not the way that the Lord works, it's not the way that his word works, it's not the way that the conviction of the Holy Spirit works. And so, if there are things that you have fallen under conviction of before but you have not heeded the voice of the Holy Spirit in your life about it, but now you just no longer sense or hear or feel the conviction of the Spirit, then look, listen, there's danger, brothers and sisters, there's danger. Turn from your sin.

Allow the voice of the Holy Spirit that is speaking now about that thing to be the call to confess and repent. Do not harden your heart, even in this moment, to say, "Well, I just can't do it," or "I won't do it," or "The consequences of me actually repenting would require too much of me and take me in a direction that I don't want to go." Listen, the enemy will always tell you that the direction that the Lord wants to take you is the wrong one. It will be too hard, it's easier to go this way. The enemy is fantastic about over-promising and under-delivering. Because you know the direction that you have been walking already is a direction that has been leading you only to darkness and has never produced significance or life for you. It's only produced darkness, destruction, hopelessness, fear, and hurt. Repent of it and your refusal to hear the Lord, turn towards Him, and receive from Him the gentleness and the kindness of His grace that is patient and calls you to repentance. In this chapter one, we're not trending well.

What does Paul say? Paul talks all about in chapter one about all this sin, wickedness, godlessness, darkness, and hardening of the hearts of those who are not heeding the voice of the Holy Spirit. I think he kind of imagines the proverbial person who stands there listening to this letter and is cheering Paul on for really giving it to all those sinners. Yeah, Paul, you tell them all those wicked, godless, dark-hearted people. You tell them what to do. Glad we're not them, but you tell them what we think, Paul. Because the next few chapters, Paul anticipates that attitude, that hardness, that darkness of our own hearts, that judgment that exists within our own souls, and he goes right after it. In chapter 2, we see in verses 1 and 2, he says this, "You, therefore, have no excuse."

Notice here that he no longer is addressing the sinner that exists in all the lists of sins. He's addressing the person who's looking at the sinner that has all the sins. He says, "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth."

A couple of points that we have here from chapter two are this: listen, understand this, internalize it, make it be a guard of your mouth and a guard of your heart. When you see the other person and the response of kind of the visceral fleshly response, it's like, "Wow, I'm glad I'm not like them," or "I'm going to talk to that person about the sin that I see in their life. I'm going to get them right. I'm going to be the one that tells them, 'Hey, did you know that you're sinning?'" They're going to turn and listen.

What Paul says here is that any bit of judgment that I have towards another person can only be done from a place of hypocrisy. That there is only one place that my judgment of another's sin can be done from, and that's from the place of hypocrisy. That's exactly what he says here in verse one and verse two: "You have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else. For at whatever point you judge the other, you're condemning yourself, because you do the same things."

That our judgment of others is only and can ever be done from a place of a hypocritical heart, knowing that there is darkness and wickedness and godlessness and hardness in our own lives. But it's not that judgment for sin in someone else's life doesn't exist. If that judgment for sin in someone else's life is not our job because we do not stand in a place of integrity, spiritual integrity of being able to offer judgment.

Paul goes on to say there is someone who stands in a place of integrity and is able to offer judgment, and that is God, because his judgment comes from a place of truth. That our judgment can only come from a place of hypocrisy because we ourselves do the very same thing, Paul says. But that God's judgment is based upon the truth.

Now we know in verse two that God's judgment against those who do such things is based upon truth. So, brothers and sisters, let us not be eager to judge others because we will not escape the judgment of God. How does he more fully explain this? If you keep going on in Romans Chapter 2, you'll see that he talks to a Jewish person, the proverbial Jewish person.

Paul's whole letter to the Romans is about the relationship that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has with the Jews, who are the Covenant people of God. They have the law, they have the promise of the Covenant, and they have the outward mark of being the Covenant people of God in circumcision. What Paul says here is he begins to address the Jew who stands at a place of seeming religious superiority because they have all the things and promises and marks and Covenants of God. But they look upon the Gentile person for whom Jesus also came to die and say, "Well, if you look at those Gentiles, they're not very religious or spiritual like we are. They don't follow the law, they don't have circumcision, they're not a people of the Covenant, they're not a descendant of Abraham. They're not like us, us Jewish people. We hold religious superiority, and those Gentiles, they're just a bunch of sinners. All of them, look at them, look at what they do and don't do. Can you believe them, right?"

And so Paul, a Jew himself, goes after them. He goes after the heart of that, and he says in verse 7, "Now you, if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law, if you brag about your relationship to God, if you know his will, if you approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law, if you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, if an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of infants, because you have the law, the embodiment of knowledge and truth, you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?"

He basically says, "Hey, look, you hold all of these religiously superior ideals. I have the law, and I teach the law, and I instruct people in the law, and I lead others to faithfulness in God. But does your life reflect that those are things that you actually do yourself?"

"I encourage people to forgive those who have hurt them, but I am living with bitterness and anger and thoughts of revenge on those who have hurt me, right?"

And so Paul essentially says, "Listen, are you espousing to others or requiring that others be obedient to the law of the Lord and to follow Jesus fully and to turn their heart towards Him? But on the other side of your life, if you flip the proverbial coin, there is nothing but a complete rejection of all of the things that you were telling others that they must do, that they should do, that is God's will and obedience for them. He was like, "Listen, you're not fooling anyone. That's the heart and foundation of hypocrisy."

But he says something so extraordinarily poignant right at the end in verse 24. He says, "As it is written, God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you." What is he talking about? He's talking about here that a Jewish person, right, he's that's the example, but like we're going to apply it to ourselves here this morning, right? That a person who, on this side, is like, "You need to forgive that person and you need to set them free, and you need to confess that sin and you need to repent and walk the other way and you need to make sure that you're responding to the conviction of the Holy Spirit in your life." You're encouraging others to do one thing, but over here, you're sitting in a heart of unwillingness. "I'm not forgiving that person. They hurt me, and I'm angry, and they don't deserve it, and da da da." And like, and you don't know what they did to me.

Like, listen, he says that the name of God is blasphemed among those who don't believe in Him because of the hypocrisy between what we are requiring others to do and what we are willing to do ourselves.

He says it's not even a reflection anymore just on your own willingness to heed the voice of the Holy Spirit in your spiritual life, but now your hypocrisy is moving others to blaspheme the very name of God. You know this to be true because every single one of you has probably heard something like, "Yeah, Jesus, I'm down with Jesus, I'm cool with him. I want to follow him obediently and be a follower of Jesus. But Christians, man, I don't want anything to do with them because they say one thing and do another." Or you have people who say, "If that's what it means to follow God, if that's what it means to follow Jesus, then forget it. I don't want anything to do with following the Lord if all that Christianity is, is the big giant gap of hypocrisy between what they make me do and what I see as fruit and evidence in their own life."

So what Paul is saying here is, "Listen, we have zero percent business being the judge, jury, and executioner of someone else's spiritual life when the reality of our own spiritual life over here is that we are so desperately in need of the saving power of the Gospel for us just as much, if not more, than the person who is completely separate from the Lord needs the power of the Gospel to save them as well. The saving power of the Gospel is for both the religiously judgmental person and the person who has never responded to the call of Jesus upon their heart before. The Gospel is for all."

This is the main point of Paul's letter to the Romans. He says this in chapter 1, verse 16: "I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."

This is exactly the point of Jesus' parable of the lost son, or you probably know it better as the prodigal son. The love of the father needed to exist for the son that ran away, the son that was far from the father. But who was equally lost in the condition of their heart, even though the outward example of their life showed them to be the loyal son, the hardworking son, the son that stayed? There were two sons in that parable: the son that ran away and squandered his life, and the son that stayed faithful and loyal, saying, "I'm not abandoning my father." Until what? Until he had to come face to face with the son that was left in sin. Then all of a sudden, the son that stayed and was loyal and faithful said, "Well, what about me? Why are you being so loving to him, Father? Don't you see how faithful and loyal I have been?" And the father's response was, "I'm not sure you understand."

The point of the parable becomes, "Listen, it's not just the son that left that needs the power of the Gospel. It's the son that stayed that needs the power of the Gospel."

That the gospel is not just "we, we, we" as we always think. The gospel is for the really lost, wicked, and godless sinners among us. We forget that we, the godless, wicked, and sinners who follow Jesus Christ, also need the power of the Gospel to continue to refine and sanctify us so that we do not fall into this religious judgmentalism of everyone out there. We should not think it's not us because we got it all on lockdown. Instead, we should ask the spirit of God to sanctify our hearts before we say a word about anyone else's heart. The gospel is for both of us. The gospel is for us judgmental people and for us lost people. It's for both, and we both need it. If there were only two groups, both groups need it to change us, to sanctify us, and to save us because none of us can be righteous before the Lord on our own.

That's what Paul says in chapter 3; we're in chapter three. We're not going to get there; I'm just telling you right now. This is what Paul says in Romans chapter 3; this is his point. If you go to chapter 3:9, you see essentially what Paul is going to say here. Who is better? Who is more righteous? Is it the religious person, the proverbial Jew that has all the promises of God and the law and is walking through the motions like a perfect Christian Soldier but has a heart that's darkened by judgmentalism and hypocrisy and sin? Or is it the person who doesn't have all of the external trappings of what it means to be a super spiritual person but inside their heart is saying, "Lord, I want to follow you. I need you to change who I am. I need you to sanctify me down to my very soul. Lord, please do a work in me." Who's the gospel for? Which one is more righteous? Which one is more Godly?

What Paul says in Romans chapter 3, starting in verse 9, and other places, is that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. He quotes several verses in the Psalms and says there is no one that is righteous, not even one. There is no one who seeks God. There is no one who understands. All have turned away; they have together become worthless. There is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. In verse 20, he summarizes all of that by saying, therefore, no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by being really good and following all the rules. Rather, through the law, we become conscious of our sin.

If we come to a place as Christian brothers and sisters or as non-believers where we say, "Okay, well, if the point has been made that sin, godlessness, and wickedness are deeply within the heart of each one of us, and that our hearts are being darkened, our spiritual ears are being numb to the voice of the Holy Spirit, and we are in danger of the wrath of God being revealed on us in the day of the Lord because of our sin, and if we know that exists for everyone, and that I am not righteous, and they are not righteous, and no one can produce their own right standing before God, righteous means a right standing before God, if no one is righteous in this current condition, then how? That seems pretty bleak. That seems pretty hopeless. That seems if I'm honest with myself and I know that I'm in that group, then what do we do?"

What Paul says here is that righteousness cannot be produced, earned, strived for, bought, or worked hard enough for. We cannot work hard enough, earn it, strive for it, grab it on our own, or produce it on our own. So, how are we ever considered righteous before God? The answer is in Romans chapter 3. Righteousness comes to us as a gift from God.

There are many things that we cannot achieve on our own. We cannot locate them on our own, nor can we earn or work hard enough to attain them. Right standing before God can only be given to us as a gift from God. You cannot achieve it on your own. God will give it to you as a gift. So how does this gift of righteousness come to us? Paul says that the gift of righteousness that comes from God in heaven is given to us through faith in Jesus Christ. Through your faith in Jesus Christ, you will be given the gift of right standing before God.

Some of the most famous verses in the Bible are in this little section. Romans chapter 3 verse starting at verse 21 says, "But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law, has been made known to which the law and the prophets testified." This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference; all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul's message in Romans 3:23 is just a summary of everything he said in Romans 1, 2, and 3. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. The righteousness of God now only comes to you through faith in Jesus Christ. So the Romans reading this letter and getting to Romans 3:23 are saying, "Great verse, tattoo it on my arm." Everyone who originally read it was probably like, "Paul, we get it man. You've been saying it for the last three chapters already. We're there, we're with you. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. I need righteousness to come to me as a gift from God through faith in Jesus Christ, not of my own works."

Then he adds, "We are justified." To be justified means to be declared not guilty. We were standing in the place of guilt, but now we have been justified. We have a not guilty stamp as we stand before God in right standing before Him. We are declared not guilty. We have been justified freely without charge to us. We are made not guilty before the Lord, not because we follow every religious law, rule, code, or value. We are justified freely through the grace of God in Jesus Christ. The grace, the unmerited favor, meaning you didn't deserve it, you didn't earn it. It was a gift given to you out of the heart of love that the Lord has and desires for you to be declared not guilty in His sight and have right standing before Him through His son.

Why didn't Jesus just do that right from the get-go? We go on in verse 25. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement or a propitiation of sin so that the sin of the people would be wiped clean and covered by the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ shed upon the cross. He did this to demonstrate His justice because the wrath of God, the judgment of God, is being revealed upon the wickedness and godlessness of sin that exists in the world. Sin needs to be dealt with in a just and holy manner, and God cannot just say, "It doesn't matter anymore." Instead, He visited the justice that was required at the presence of sin upon Jesus. The justice and wrath for sin were leveled upon Jesus himself so that those who call out in faith to Jesus will be considered righteous and justified because of the sacrifice that was made by Him. What was ours by what we deserved in death because of sin, Jesus received on our behalf so that what was Jesus's based on His holiness could be given to us, which was eternal life. Jesus got what we deserved so that we could receive what He deserved.

There are numerous spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors in this text, and it is difficult to understand its intended meaning. As an AI language model, I can correct the errors in the text, but I cannot interpret the content of a sermon or provide commentary on its theological implications. Therefore, I will simply correct the spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors in the text to the best of my ability:

"So Paul here says that the righteousness of God is a gift. It's not something that we can earn. He says later that it's a gift from God. So he says in verse 27, 'Where then is boasting? It is excluded. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from observing the law.' Paul follows this up in Romans chapter 4: 24 and 25 when he says, 'But also for us to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.'

But listen, the question is: why would motivate God to do all of this? What would motivate God to visit his justice and his wrath on Jesus rather than on us? What would motivate God to go through all of this, to strive with the heart of men and women, to continually call them into repentance and visit conviction upon them so they could turn and be in right relationship with him? What would be the motivation there? Like, why God, why waste all that time? Why go through all of that? I know me, I'm going to disappoint you. Why go through it all? But Paul is sure to help his readers, to help us understand exactly why God would give us the gift of righteousness through his son Jesus rather than just snapping his fingers and making it all happen. He says it in chapter 5:8, among other places. He says this, 'But God demonstrates his love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.' That's the reason it all happened. The reason God did it is not because God wanted to make some complicated religious system that we would have to find our way through. No, the reason that God did it was because of his tremendous love for us.

We are no longer burdened by the yoke of slavery to sin and death. But through our faith in him and uniting with Jesus Christ by faith and in our baptism, we experience new and resurrected life. We are no longer kept in chains, enslaved to our sin, but we now have the power to live in the freedom of God's life, in the freedom of God's freedom from our sin. This is exactly what Paul says in Romans chapter 6. He says in the same way, 'You can count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.' Our identities now have been replaced. We are no longer dead in our sin and enslaved to our sin, unable to wrestle free from the things that are tearing at our heart and soul. We have been set free from it because it has been put to death by faith in Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is the death of our sin, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ out of the grave is our resurrection to new life. We are now set free to live that life in power over the things that have enslaved us in sin. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore, listen here. This sounds like we now have a choice and we now have power and we now have the ability to experience victory over sin. Listen to how Paul says this in Romans 6:12 and following. 'Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer your parts of your body as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. Offer the parts of your body to him not as an instrument of death and sin, but as an instrument of righteousness. Because sin is no longer our master, because we are not under the law but under the grace of God, we now have the power to offer ourselves as slaves to the Lord. We are no longer slaves to sin any longer because God has changed our identity through faith in Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! We are not under the chains of sin any longer, and what Paul says in Romans 6:15-23, which is what we're going to talk about next week, is that Paul uses the same language to describe a new type of slavery. We have been slaves to sin, unable to break the chains of sin in our lives on our own. Jesus Christ had to break these chains for us. But since those chains have been broken, are we free from being slaves? Paul says no. We're not free from being a slave. We're just a slave to something else now. It's the most beautiful kind of slavery. We are now a slave to righteousness. Most of us walk now in the freedom of our Christian life, being like, 'I am free! I am free to do whatever I want, be whoever I want. Christ Jesus has set me free from the power of sin and death in the grave.' And this is great, complete freedom, right? It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Well, yes and no. Because we are not free to do whatever we want. We are still slaves. We are just slaves to righteousness. That's the first six chapters of Romans. Kind of.

I honestly don't think you're getting world-class preaching or teaching here or anything like that. But what I will tell you is that the sermons in Romans from the first section that we did back in the fall, it was like before Christmas, if you go on our YouTube channel, Conduit Ministries YouTube channel, you can rewatch all the sermons. You can listen to them in podcast format as well. And if you want to get a sense, you want to kind of get caught up to where we are in Romans, you can go back and watch some of those sermons, listen to some of those podcasts. It will help maybe prime the pump for what we are doing here in the next few weeks.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for all that you have given to us. We thank you especially this morning, Lord, for the gift of righteousness that has been offered to us through faith in Jesus Christ. That in that grace, Lord, that we have been justified freely, Lord, not of ourselves so that no one can boast, Lord, but something that you have done on our behalf through Jesus. Lord, we come to you and to him in faith this morning, Lord, asking that you would continue to speak conviction into our lives that we may respond, Lord, with a heart that is eager to repent and to turn to you, Lord, that we may be set free from the power of sin and may live fully