Today, we are going to look into the second half of Romans, chapter 6. And I think this is a very important chapter to look into because it helps us as believers in a Messiah to know how to live the life of the believer. And we all have to admit that in our Christian walk, in our walk with the Lord as believers, we oftentimes find ourselves falling short of that which God has intended for us. And here the apostle Paul, Shaul, is really helping us to see and to understand the privileges but also the responsibilities that we have in our walk with the Lord. And as you remember, Romans, chapter 6, 7, and 8 deals with the theme of sanctification.

And though we are all believers, and I trust everyone here can say that I am a child of God, I am saved, I belong to the Lord Jesus, the Messiah. But as believers, we need the help of the Lord to walk in a way that is pleasing to Him here in this world. So please turn with me to Romans 6, and we are reading today from verse 12 to the end of the chapter. Romans, chapter 6, beginning from verse 12. And so I am reading those verses right now. Beginning at verse 6, it says, Let no man or let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

Neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. But yield, as it says here, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid! Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves members to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey? Whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness. But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you.

Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men, because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members as servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

And then he said that famous verse. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Yeshua HaMashiach our Lord. And that's the conclusion in the reading of Romans chapter 6. Remember, beloved brothers and sisters, that Romans 6, 7 and 8 deals with the theme of sanctification. We were dead in trespasses and sins. God concluded all the world under sin, Romans 1, 2 and 3. Then he provided, through the work of Yeshua the Messiah, the Savior, he provided salvation, Romans chapter 4 and chapter 5. And now that we have brought into, we became children of God, we are saved, we are redeemed. Now, he teaches us the importance of sanctification, being set apart for God here in this world.

So, three chapters, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, deals with the theme of sanctification. In chapter 6, we have three words that we have spoken about in the last meeting where we have been together. We have covered two of these words, and today, by the grace of God, we'll cover the third word. Those three words are these. Number one is to know in our mind. Number two, as we have here in verse 11, is to reckon in our hearts. And number three, from verse 12 to the end of the chapter, is to yield in our will. Those three interesting words. Usually, when we do a baptism, when somebody asks us, ask me to baptize them, Usually, I really like to read Romans chapter 6, those three words.

To know in our mind, to reckon in our hearts, and to yield in our will. And here, the Apostle Paul does something very precious when he explains this to believers. You know, to make it very practical, many times in our walk with the Lord, as believers, we say to ourselves like this: I am forgiven, I am saved, I am going to heaven. And therefore, I know that God will forgive me, he will show me grace, because I am his child. And sometimes, and all of us in the same boat, we allow ourselves to say, what's the difference? I will indulge myself with this life of sin, because after all, God will forgive me, I am forgiven, I am a child of God.

And I will allow myself to creep into my life a pattern of sinful habits. And Apostle Paul tells us, don't you realize that when God saved you, he didn't save you so that you can live a careless Christian life. We would say it as Meshichim, as Messianic believers, a careless Messianic lifestyle. He doesn't want us to live like that. He wants us to have a change that will be evident in our lives as believers, so we will honor him, and we will be blessing to other believers. So, the thought that we learn here from Romans chapter 6, that a believer, a child of God, should not have an habitual, continual pattern of sinful life.

Sin will come. We need to be judged, confessed, repented of, and continue on to live for the Lord. And so he's saying to them, if you remember the beginning of our chapter, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Paul gives us a straightforward answer, God forbid, may it never be. We should not continue in sin that grace may abound. Don't you know what happened to you when you became a child of God? You have entered into a different sphere of life. You are dead to sin. You are no longer servant to sin. It should not be characterizing the believer. It should not be characterizing the child of God.

And so we talked about the knowing. We even talked about the reckoning. He says, likewise, reckon yourself also dead to sin. Not only knowing it in your mind, reckon it in your heart. Consider it true in your heart. And so now he's shifting from the mind to the heart. And now he's going to the will. And we can say the will is connected with our members of the body. With the feet. Where the rubber meets the road. Where we are practically seeking to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord. So there are two things that we learn here from verses 12 to 23 in connection with yielding.

By the way, you notice there are five times the word yield is mentioned here in those verses. Notice that. Verse 13, neither yield your members. Verse 13b, yield your members. Verse 16, knowing not that to whom you yield. Verse 19 says, for as ye have yielded your members, servants unto uncleanness. This is number four. And number five, he says, now yield your members as servants to righteousness. Notice the word yielding. I do a lot of highway driving. And when I merge, when I have to go from the ordinary road into the highway, I have to yield. I'm coming into the flow of the traffic. And I'm moving in and I cannot just barge in.

I have to yield to make sure that there is room enough for my car to fit into this long groups of cars. And somehow to fit in a proper way so accident will not happen. So I will not hit somebody or somebody will hit me. So yielding is an important thing to do, not only as we drive, but also in the life of the believer. To yield? What does that mean? To yield? To yield is to give way. To yield is not to have my will, but to yield myself into someone or unto somebody else. And you know very well, beloved brothers and sisters, that we have a stubborn heart.

We have a stubborn way. We want to go on with our own way. And God says, like he said to our people of old Israel, that he does not want his people to have a stiff neck. He wants them to be yielding themselves to him. He wants to be in charge. He wants to be in control over the life of the believer. So there are two things that we learn from verses 12 to 23 here. The first thing we learn is how the believer is to yield. How? This is verses 12 and 13. And verses 14 to 23, why the believer should yield. How the believer is to yield and why the believer is to yield.

Two of these things we learn here in these verses. So let's talk a little bit, first of all, about how the believer is to yield. The first one is in verse 12. And the second one is in verse 13. How are we to yield? And first of all, in verse 12, he says, do not constantly allow sin to reign in your body, in our body. Look at this. I'm reading now verse 12. 12. Let no sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. In other words, what he is really saying is that sin should not reign, be a king, continually in the life of the believer.

The word for reign, we know it's when a king reign, when a king or a judge or a ruler, when he's in charge, he tells us what to do. He tells his subjects what to do. And so the apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, says, listen, do not allow sin to become king on an ongoing basis in our lives. That's what he's saying. Why? When sin is being allowed to rule on an ongoing basis in our life, when sin is being allowed to such an extent, you begin to wonder whether this person is a child of God. When sin becomes habitual, continual, without stopping and not judged by the believer, what happens?

You begin to wonder whether this person is actually, truly is a child of God. Because sin should not reign on an ongoing basis as king over our lives. And you notice, he used the word in verse 12, let not constantly sin, therefore reign in your mortal body. See this body, we have this mortal body that God has allowed us still to have here while we are here. We have a new life and we have a new nature, but these members are still here with us. We have hands and feet and eyes and ears and so on. And we are using those members as we are here in this world.

We are walking with them. We are going to work with them. We are going with a friend. We are coming to the meeting with them. The members of our bodies are something that we do have in our life. We cannot do without them. And yet God is saying that we are not to let continually sin reign over our mortal body. If you will read carefully Psalm 51, David's confession of sin to the Lord. You will notice that he used the words eyes, ears, heart, mind. Because he wanted to confess before the Lord the sins that he had committed. You remember what happened. He took the wife of Uriah, Bathsheba, committed fornication.

And then what he did, he sent Uriah, the Chittite, to the front to die. He committed a murder. He was in a sense a vessel to commit murder. And on and on and on. And he realized that what the damage that he did to his life. When sin gets a hold of our life, we lack liberty and freedom and joy as believers. Though we are saved because we belong to the Lord Jesus. But when sin creep into our life, there is a lack of joy and peace, shalom in our hearts. And that's why Paul is saying, listen, in order for you to live the life as a believer, to mature, to be sanctified, set apart practically, you ought not to allow sin to be a king over your mortal bodies.

Because of his sin, becoming a king and ruling on an ongoing basis in your life, there is no liberty, no freedom, no joy. And that's why he's saying, do not allow sin to rule, to reign over your life. It is in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 19 that Paul said, don't you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit? Which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own. You have been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which belongs to God. See, God wants the believers to recognize, he wants you and I to recognize that our bodies really belong to God.

There was a price that somebody paid in order to save us. And now we have been shifted from Adam to Mashiach, from the old man to the new man. And therefore now the members of our bodies, the way we speak, the way we behave, the way we conduct ourselves, the things we do, our mind and our hearts belong to somebody else. And that's why he's saying, listen, do not allow a constant, ongoing sin to be a king over your mortal bodies. Because you will not going to have liberty. We're not going to have joy. You will not honor the Lord. You will not be a happy child of God.

Then he tells us also, in the next verse, in verse 13, he tells us, do not yield, and yielding means to give over consistently, continually. Do not yield your members as a body, as unto unrighteous lifestyle. Neither yield. Neither yield. Here's the two times that we have the word yield here in verse 13. Neither continually yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. But yield yourself unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as an instrument of righteousness unto God. See what he tells us here? The yielding, again, this thought of yielding that we have here in these verses, the thought here is to give over.

You know how it's a time very difficult to just let things go and let God, you know, we often hear this expression, let go and let God. It's very hard for us to let go and let God, because we have to be in charge of everything. We are in charge of every area of our life. It's very difficult for us to let go and to say, God, your will be done, and to submit to his will. There is only one man that totally have done that in his life, and it was none else but our blessed Lord Jesus, the Messiah. Even when he was in the garden of Gethsemane, you remember that?

Gatshmanim, we call it in Hebrew, when he was anticipating death on the tree. When he said, Father, if it is possible, take this cup away from me, he said, you remember that? The cup was the cup of God's righteous indignation against sin. He was anticipating this cup which was full to the rim of man's sin and God's judgment to come upon mankind that he was anticipating to come upon him. And he says, Father, if it is possible, take this cup away from me. But then you remember he added, nevertheless, he said, not my will, but thine be done. He totally, beloved brothers and sisters, totally, completely submitted himself to the will of the Father.

And what happened? When he died, he died, he was willing to lay down his life, a ransom for many, not counting himself robbery to be equal with God. Though he was a holy and a righteous God and man, he yielded himself and he went all the way to the cross. Philippians chapter 2, and he died this shameful death on the altar, on the cross. His will was totally giving over to God. Now, you know, it's funny, but you and I are expected also to yield to God as well in our life. And we know that this is an issue, this is a problem that we all have and we are struggling with it in every area of our life.

And here the Apostle Paul is saying, listen, believers are to yield. How are they to yield? Not to allow constantly sin to be king over our lives. And number two is to yield, to give over the members of our body, to be members as an instrument of righteousness rather than unrighteousness. And so these verses 12 and 13 are emphasizing that neither yield your members as instrument of unrighteousness unto sin, but on the other hand, yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. In other words, do the right thing. Allow your members of the body to be used for the glory of the Lord.

And again, I want to emphasize that we have all failed in this area. Sin creep into our life, but sin need to be judged, confessed, repented of, and move on. And it should not become characterizing our life on an ongoing basis, a lifestyle of habitual sin. That's God does not want for us to have in our lives. So we have dealt with the first thing, verses 12 and 13, how the believers are to yield. Now in the next verses, 14 to 23, we have the second thought here is that why are we to yield? Why the believer is to yield? And he gives us reasons here why. Let me number them for you one by one.

The first reason why we are to yield to God is because of the grace that we have received from the Lord. You know, the word for grace in Hebrew, chen or chesed, it means favor. Sometimes it could mean merited favor. Sometimes it could mean unmerited favor. When it is applied to the Lord Jesus, our Messiah, it is a merited favor. You remember we read, and Jesus grew in grace. In the Gospels we read. What does that mean? That he didn't merit that favor? No, he sure did. He grew in grace because he was the unique son of God, son of man, the perfect individual, and he grew in grace.

Everybody was pleased with him when they looked at him, when we looked at his life. There was nothing but perfection in the life of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah. But when it's come to you and I, this favor was really unmerited. We didn't deserve it. We really didn't deserve what we have received. So here the apostle tells us in verses 14 and 15 why the believer is to yield. The believer is to yield because of the grace of God towards us, unmerited favor. Look, we, it says in verse 14, I'm reading, "For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." Verse 15, "What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?

God forbid, may it never be." Paul is reminding those believers that Rome is saying to them, "Listen, why are we to seek to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord, yielding to the Lord?" It's because, listen, we have received the unmerited favor of God. We are no longer under the law. We are under grace. And grace is the grace of God purchased us. The grace of God brought us to Himself. The law condemned us. Grace drew us. The law judged us. But grace opened the door for us to be brought into a relationship with the Lord, without money, without price. It was totally the finished work of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah.

And so He's saying to them, listen, sin should not have rule over you, dominion, king over you. Why? Because you are not under the law. You are under grace. Now there are those who tell us that because God had given to us the law, we are able to keep the law. We are able to kind of rise up to God's high standard of perfection that God had given to Israel in the law. You look in your own life, and I look in my own life, and you just take just simply those ten commandments. There are many other more commandments in the scriptures. But just look at the ten commandments, and you tell me, you tell yourself, you tell the Lord, whether you ever were able to totally obey God's law.

Just one law that God, that our pastor Paul reminds us, and he reminds us in Romans chapter 7, that thought of the inward desires that we have, the covetousness that we have. Paul said, unless I knew that the law said thou should not covet, unless I have been told, you know, and I know it in my life that I have coveted, and so on. And we learn from this that God's law demanded perfection. And because God could not receive perfection from the human race, judgment was to come. But then grace came. The Lord Jesus came from heaven, and he brought redemption for us, and God took a sinner, such as you and I, who simply believed in the Lord Jesus, and he forgave our sins because of the finished work of Jesus the Messiah.

We are not under the law, but we are under grace. Have you ever thought of it to meditate a little bit on your own and to see, Lord, what is it that you found in me that you was willing to provide for me this grace? Just think about that. What is it that God was so much willing in love with us that he was willing to provide for us this unmerited favor? The grace of God. The chen, the chesed that we read of in the scriptures. And oftentimes we read like, for example, in 1 Corinthians, we read, "Look at the grace of God that he sent his son that though he was rich, he became poor, that through his poverty we might become rich." We read it in the book of 2 Corinthians.

Very clear, beautiful verse. I think it is chapter 15. And let me just see if I can find it. 2 Corinthians or chapter 9. Yes, it says here in verse 14. "And by the prayer for you, which long after you and exceeding grace of God unto you." He said, "Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift." 2 Corinthians 9 and verse 15. And on, we can just read of the grace of God that he provided towards us through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it is amazing to see of this grace that God had provided and he's reminding them in Romans chapter 6. He says, "Listen, you are not under the law, you are under grace.

God has shown you this unmerited favor." Then verse 15. "Because we are not under the law, it does not mean now that we should be careless in living a careless lifestyle." That's what he says in verse 15. "What then?" he said. "Shall we sin because we are not under the law?" But under grace, he says, "God forbid." So we are to remember the grace of God. The reason that we are to yield ourselves unto God is because of the grace that he showed towards us. And because he showed us grace, and because we are no longer under the law, it does not mean that we have license to live a careless lifestyle.

The opposite. Because of it, we should be remembering the grace of God. We do not deserve it. Therefore, we should ask the Lord to help us to yield ourselves unto him. So that's the first reason. Why the believers are to yield is because of God's grace towards us. Secondly, why the believers are to yield? The second reason is verses 16 to 20 is because God had given us the gift of freedom. He liberated us. We were in bondage before, but now he had given us the gift of freedom, of liberty. Look at this. Verse 16. "Don't you know that to whom ye yield yourselves as servants to obey his servants ye are?

Whether it is sin unto death, or obedience unto righteousness." You know, we have been made in such a way that we are always to submit to someone. And obviously, God have intended that all the human race will submit and yield to him. But if we are not yielding to him, if we are not becoming his servants, we become someone else's servants. That's what Paul is saying to them. Look, we are free to serve God in obedience and not to serve sin, which lead us ultimately to death. We have liberty. We have freedom. But our freedom should not be used to be free to serve a lifestyle of sin.

But the opposite, our freedom is to be used to lead us to be servants unto God. So nice to see brothers and sisters who serve in the Lord Jesus. You know, in the ministry of the Lord's work is to serve him. To serve him, to bring a blessing to brothers and sisters, to bring a blessing to the world around us. This is true ministry. This is true service. And so, don't you know, if you are yielding yourself to sin, you become sin servants. And if you are yielding yourself unto righteousness, unto God, you become obedience unto righteousness. Obedience to the Lord leads to righteous lifestyle, which leads to blessing to the people of God.

That's what God is teaching us here in this verse. But if we are yielding ourselves as servants unto sin, you know what it does? Sin leads always to death. And death is not always thought of in a physical sense of physically dying. But we can be empty. Empty. Empty spiritually. Empty, though we are saved. But because of a pattern of lifestyle of sin, we feel empty, broken, unhappy, unuseful. Nothing. It's waste. Because we have allowed a habits and continual lifestyle of sin to take over and become master over our lives. How many Christians are not being used by the Lord because they have allowed themselves to let sin to become their master?

And how many times you and I feel this in our lives? Don't you feel sometimes when we have allowed an ongoing sin and not judge in our lives that you feel empty? You cannot be used by the Lord. You feel like there is no liberty. Why? Because we allowed sin to become a master, a ruler, and we cannot be used by the Lord. And after all, brothers and sisters, why we are here? We are here as believers to be used by the Lord, to be a blessing to others, to be a joy to other brothers and sisters, and to lead people to the Savior. That's why we are here.

We are here to serve God, to serve the Lord Jesus, the Messiah. And how empty it feels in our hearts when we have allowed sin to become our master. And sin leads to death. Not only the physical death I'm speaking about now, but also the emptiness, the shallowness. That's what it will lead us into. In verse 17, we are no longer servants to sin, to obey it. In verse 17, he says, but God be thanked. He said that we were servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered unto you. We used to be servants of sin. We used to be servants of sin.

But things change now. Now things change. He says, you, and by the way, again, I want you to notice, he's writing to believers. He's writing to the Christians at Rome. He's writing to those who were already saved. He says, you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine, that form of teaching which was delivered unto you. What was the form of teaching and doctrine that they have obeyed from the heart? That form of teaching is the body of the truth of the gospel. That's what they obeyed. What they obeyed, they have embraced the truth of the gospel. That they were doomed to eternal separation from God and the Messiah Yeshua died for them.

And he's living for them now and he's given a forgiveness of sin and that he wants them to live a life for him here in this world. They believed that form of teaching that was given to them in the body of the truth in the gospel. So he's telling them, look, he says in verse 17, you are no longer servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart this form of teaching. In verse 18, we became servants of righteousness. We became free. That's what happened to us when we became children of God. Being then made free. He is using the word free. Being made free from sin, he became servants of righteousness.

You see, by believing in the Lord and accepting him as our Lord and Savior, we became free from a lifestyle of habitual, ongoing sin. And we became liberated people who are now can live for the glory of the Lord. It was the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, who said in John 8, 32, and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John chapter 8 and verse 32. And so you can see how he's telling us the reason that we are to yield. He's still now in verse 16 to 20 talking about the fact that we have received the gift of freedom and liberty. We are now free because we belong to the Lord Jesus.

We were in bondage to sin. Now we are free because we are belonging to the Lord. And now in verse 19, he tells us we were made free from sin to live a holy life. He says in verse 19, I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. He knew that they had infirmity in their flesh. He knew that. And he says for ye, as ye have yielded your members servant unto uncleanness and to iniquity and to iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness and to holiness. Before we yielded our members and all of us know that. You remember there are many things in our lives that we used to do and think and have in our life that we are ashamed.

We don't want anybody to know the kind of thoughts and lifestyle we used to live before we became a believer. And now that we became children of God and God saved us, he does not want us to have that pattern of the past in the present as children of God, as believers. And that's why he says, as ye have yielded your members in the past to uncleanness, which led you from bad to worse. Now he says, yield also your members, but now as servants unto righteousness, which lead us into holiness. And then verse 20, he tells us, we in the past had a false freedom. Look, when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.

In other words, you were slaves to unrighteousness. You know, one clear passage in the Bible, make it very clear, is you remember the story of the prodigal son in Luke chapter 15? The prodigal son had everything in the father's house. He had everything. The father blessed him, gave him so much, and he had everything. But you see, he thought that he was in bondage. He was not happy. So he wanted to be free. So he says, Father, give me that which belonged to me. So the father gave him. And he thought, boy, now I'm going to get all what the father is giving to me. I'm going to take it with me.

And I'm going to be free, you see. I'm going to go away. I'm going to have liberty and I can do as I please. And so he took all the goods that his father gave it to him. And he went to look for freedom. You know, brothers and sisters, we don't realize it's so amazing. We are like the prodigal son. We take what the father had given to us. He took what the father had given to him. And he has gone to a far country to be free, to do as he pleased. He thought he was going to be the happiest man in the whole world.

Well, he went far away. He found himself wasting his life. Where he thought he was going to be free, he ended up being in bondage to. He lost all what he had. He lost his joy. He lost the blessing that he had. And he found himself at the end to be a servant, a slave to somebody else. And he was hungry. And he ended up to feed on the food that belongs to the pigs. And he was really not free. He was really not free. It reminds us of a Christian, of a believer that says, I'm going to do as I please. I'll be free from all these restrictions that God put upon me.

Oh, don't do this. Don't do that. Go to the meeting. Read your Bibles. Pray. Oh, you know, this is too much for me. I want to be free. You see, I want to do as I please. So that's what he did. And he found himself in bondage. He found himself destitute. He found himself in need. And then true freedom came when he came to the end of himself. When he really said, not my will, but God's will in my life. And when he bowed to the authority of God. And he came back to the father. And you remember the story. Beautiful story. The father's arm was always open.

The father saw him far off. He saw him coming back. And his heart was so joyful to know that the son, his own son. By the way, this child was always the father's child. Whether he was in a pig pen. Or whether he was in the father's house. He was always a son. And then he came back. And the father embraced him. And he kissed him. And he gave him ring on his finger. Gave him shoes on his feet. Gave him a robe. And he clothed him. And he killed the fattest calf. And he celebrated. And that one boy that thought he is in bondage.

Or he thought he wants liberty. And he could not find that liberty outside. Away from the things of God. He found himself slaves to sin. In a poor condition. Until he repented. And he turned back to God. Turned back to his father. And things have changed completely. And so that's what we learn here from this passage. Is that really, we had a false freedom in the past. Before we became believers, we thought we were really free. But we were really in bondage to sin. True freedom comes with a relationship to God through our blessed Lord, Yeshua, Jesus, the Messiah. So now to finalize that verses 21 to 23.

We have the third reason why believers are to yield. Not only because of God's grace, verses 14 and 15. Not only because of God's gift of freedom, verses 16 to 20. But also because God desired to see fruit in our lives. See, God wants to see fruit in the lives of the people that he saved. He wants to see some fruit for him. Something for him. Some glory for him in the life of the believer. So those last verses, verse 21, 22 and 23, shows us this. That first of all, you see in verse 21. There was no fruit for God in the life the way we lived in the past. Before we became believers.

Verse 21 says, What fruit had ye then in those things where you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. He says, look, in the things that you used to live like, in the way you used to live like in the past, there was no fruit for God. And you and I remember this very well in our lives. There was nothing for God in the way we used to live before we became believers. There was no fruit for God. God did not receive honor from us and glory from us. There was nothing for him in the way we used to live in the past.

Like it says in verse 21. What fruit had ye then? You know this then? It has to do with the past. In those things whereof you are now presently ashamed of. For the end of those things is death. Those things that we have done before we became believers. Those sins led to eventual death. Spiritual emptiness. It was nothing for God in this. There was no fruit for God in this. Now he is saying in verse 22. Now we are free to bring fruit to God which is unto holiness. He says but now. What was in the past then? There was no fruit for God. But what is in the present now?

That there is fruit for him. He says now in this verse 22. Verse 22. But now being made free from sin. He says. And become servants to God. Ye have your fruit unto holiness. And the end unto everlasting life. We learn here from this verse. That now we are free to bring fruit which leads unto holiness. Fruit for God unto holiness. And unto the end of it leads into everlasting life. In verse 22. And he concludes here with the last verse 23 where he says. The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus the Messiah our Lord. By the way verse 23. We often use it in the gospel.

To apply it to sinners in the world. And we tell them listen. The wages of sin is death. But the gift of God. If you will accept Jesus the Messiah. He will give you eternal life. And that's true in the gospel. But here the text does not speak to unbelievers. In the context of this passage. It speaks about a believer. The wages of sin leads to death. But the gift of God is eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. You know what he really is teaching us here. He says listen. Sin in our lives will bring consequences. Sin in our life will lead to emptiness.

To death. That's what's going to happen in the life of the believer. He is speaking to Christians. He is speaking to the believers at Rome. The wages of sin is death. Death is a result of sin. And death is wages. It's a price. You go to work in the morning. You finish your day on the job. The wages of your work. Of your labor. You get your certain earning from that. Same thing with sin. Sin eventually will catch up with us. And will lead into emptiness. Moral deadness. That's what he's saying here. As he's speaking to the Christians. It is for believer. Death. And you remember what happened in a couple of passages we read in the New Testament.

You remember in the condition of Corinth. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. You remember there was such a disorder in the church at Corinth. That the apostle told them. That's why some of you are weak. Some of you are sick. And then he said. Even some of you have fallen asleep. That means they've died. God removed them from this sin. From this world. Why? Because there was going on in this local assembly at Corinth. Such a state. Such a condition. That God came in in judgment. Upon his own people. Judgment must begin at the house of God. We learn from other passages in scriptures. So we find out that the wages.

The consequence of sin. Leads to emptiness. To death. It may even lead into some removal of a believer. Out of this world. Because of an ongoing habitual lifestyle of sin. That is not judged in the life of the Christian. And so. Romans chapter 6. I know it's hard saying. But we have to read that. Because that's what the Bible gives us here. Romans chapter 6 deals with those three words. Knowing in our mind. Reckoning in our hearts. And yielding in our will. If we learn those three things. And ask the Lord to help us. Because we know in our mind. And we often neglect to reckon in our hearts.

That we are dead to sin. And for sure. We fail many times. In yielding our will to the Lord Jesus our Messiah. May the Lord help us. In these three areas. The know. The reckoning. And the yielding. May the Lord help us. And brothers and sisters. Sin when it comes. May the Lord help us. To judge us. To confess it before the Lord. To say Lord. I don't want to live habitual type of life like this. Help me so I can bring fruit for you. For your glory. And blessing to the people of God.