Sermons 2026

Text: Romans 6:12-23

INTRODUCTION

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord, and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation is the Epistle of Saint Paul sent to the church in Rome, the sixth chapter verses twelve through twenty-three.
 

ILLUSTRATION
Beloved lambs, I pray that you are doing well today.
 

Have you ever played the game Simon Says? You have to do whatever Simon says, let's play a bit. Simon says pat your head. Spin around. Oh, caught you. Simon says jump like a bunny. Simon says is a fun game. It is also a good way of explaining what a slave is. A slave is someone who has no freedom of their own. They have to do everything that their master says whenever he says it. If you were told, 'I want a hot fudge sundae.' at midnight, you would have to make a hot fudge sundae at midnight. If you were told to jump, you'd have to say how high? Are we slaves or are we free? How are we given freedom? How do we use our freedom? Ponder those questions as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

SCRIPTURE

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ro 6:12–14.
Pasted from English Standard Version. © Crossway. Used here under fair use; verify rights before publishing.

EXPLANATION

Are you a slave? You are, even if you do not realize it. Paul talks about what it is to be a slave. You are either a slave of sin or a slave of righteousness. Those are really the only two options.
As we discussed last week, every single one of us starts as a slave to sin because of Adam's failure to uphold God's Law as commanded. We all want to be our own gods and make our own decisions, we want to follow our own desires and lusts.

The word in the Greek, in the Epistle lesson is epithumi, which is sometimes translated desire or lust. We normally think of lust in terms of the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. We should see that there is a lust that lives in every one of the commandments. Whatever the commandments forbid, that is what you and I desire. Your sinful flesh and my sinful flesh want. The same as when mom makes a plate of delicious cookies or brownies, saying, do not touch, they are for dessert. What do you want to do? Touch them and eat them, perhaps you are hungry or not, merely because you were forbidden from doing so.

We can apply this to all the commandments. The fourth commandment, honor your father and mother. We want to be rebellious and rebel against our parents and other authorities. According to the fifth commandment, you shall not murder. We want to be angry. We want to hate our neighbor's actions when they hurt us. We do not want to forgive them. According to the sixth commandment, you shall not commit adultery. We want to be unchaste and sexually immoral. According to the seventh commandment, you shall not steal. We are greedy and desire more and more posessions. We want to have the things that we’re not supposed to have. The Eighth Commandment, you shall not bear false witness. We are bitter and envious. We want to exalt ourselves among the people around us.

We want to sin. This desire to sin is called by the theologians concupiscence. It is important for us to know. It means that inward desire and inclination to sin. It means to miss the mark. For example let's say you are driving a car. You press the gas, but it goes backward instead of forwards in drive. You try to go straight, but it jerks right and then immediately left. Would you feel safe? No, because something is wrong with the car. It’s always going off the track. It’s always going the wrong direction. And that, even that desire to sin is already sin itself. It’s already guilt. The fact that you want the wrong thing means that you’re guilty.

So, this is the situation in which we find ourselves, that we according to our sinful nature want the wrong things. We confess what we call the bondage of the will. Our will cannot choose or decide to follow Jesus, choose or decide to be a believer and so forth. So, we confess the bondage of the will, but we also confess the bondage of the want, the corruption of the desires that we have.

The devil wants us to believe that by doing what we wnat to do, that we are living in freedom.

Choosing to do what you desire is living free from bondage. The devil wants us to think that the Ten Commandments are what put us in bondage and that our sinful choices are what cause us to live free. Do you see?

TRANSITION

What can we do? Nothing. There is nothing that we can do to save ourselves as we confess every Sunday. We are sinners in thought, word, and deed. We are powerless to free ourselves from this slavery to sin, death, and everlasting death.

EXPLANATION

It all depends upon the work of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, on our behalf. Through His perfect life, Jesus perfectly kept the Law on your behalf. Judas betrayed Jesus to the religious rulers, who were slaves to their own power and authority. Pilate was a slave to power and fear, giving into the demands of the crowds, sentencing Jesus to be crucified. There, bleeding and dying, Jesus pays the price for you to gain your freedom.

Sin was a tyrant ruling over you. However, that tyrant has been crushed and his authority over you has come crashing down! Jesus paid the price to free you. His blood covers every single one of your sins. There is no more that you have to pay for your freedom. Even the Devil has no more power over you. We do not have to give into his deadly lies because Jesus has crushed his head. He lies defanged and declawed. Even death has been destroyed because Jesus rose from the dead, crushing its power beneath His nail-scarred feet.

We are no longer slaves to sin, death, or the devil! Thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.

You no longer belong to your lust. You no longer are defined by your corruption. You are no longer under the dominion of death. You are free. You belong to Jesus. This is a freedom that the world cannot know but it needs desperately to have, and the Lord sends us out as ambassadors to this freedom, to those who are fighting to remain slaves of their own lusts and desires.

APPLICATION

What does this look like? This looks like people who resist their sinful natures. Who resist the temptations of the devil. We know and see what the reality of our sin is, where it leads, and how it is an enslavement that leads to eternal death.

Through the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we use our freedom wisely. We do not use it to fall back into sin. That would be to cheapen the grace of God and make a mockery of it. Rather, as Saint Paul writes, "present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness." The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2025), Ro 6:13.

We do the good things that God has given us to do. We fight against our sinful flesh. We tell the Devil that he has been defeated. We help our neighbor keep his possessions. Likewise, we speak well of him when we hear of lies and slander against him. We honor those in authority over us, praying that God would work through them to do His holy will in our lives, for our good, and to keep evil in check. We keep the marriage bed pure, honoring our spouses, always looking out, not for our own interests, but their well being and interests above all.

May the Lord grant us the strength to always be instruments of righteousness, working through us in our lives that we may be truly free, in and because of Jesus Christ our Lord.

CONCLUSION

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds, in Christ Jesus.
Amen