Freed from Sin [Part 1]

Allen Wright, pastor, Bible teacher, and author of his latest book, The Power to Bless. We're like a little bird, and the more scared we are of God, the more we just fly away from Him.

Whatever you're scared of, you get away from. And God came in the person of Jesus Christ not to condemn but to save. And it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Belonging to God, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Allen Wright. Are you ready for some good news? In Christ, the scripture plainly tells us you are free from sin. Sin will no longer have dominion over you. You are not slaves to sin. You are not stuck. You don't have to continue in the same patterns of sin.

Everything in your life can change. You are free from sin. Okay, I want to turn you to Romans chapter 6. And we're going to look at verse 5 and read it up through 19. And today as we are nearing the end of our series we call Belonging because it's about holiness and holiness means to be set apart to God.

And to be set apart means to belong to Him. So that's an apt image if you want to understand your holiness. It is not so much about the things you do but it's about being set apart to God. And today we're going to sort of let this grow to a crescendo where we have having seen that we are not called sinners but we're called saints as Christians and that we have been washed, sanctified as something that Jesus has done on our behalf. We have been made into the temple of the Holy Spirit called priests of the most high God and we are His holy vessels regardless of what we're doing. You are as a Christian, you're God's holy vessel.

So you belong to God and that means therefore that you are holy. And we're going to pick up today with something that's such extraordinary news that we are free from sin. Let me just say up front, the Lord's been just stirring this in my heart all week as simple as it may sound, I think this is a tremendous word for somebody, maybe many of us, just to hear the Lord saying you don't have to sin.

Now that's a radical thought but I think that as I show you today that sometimes the way that you begin to move out of certain patterns in your life is just realize that the bondage that you believe that you're in is something that Jesus came to set you free from and therefore you have liberty. All right Romans chapter 6 and verse 5, For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

So there's going to be the primary image in Romans 6 is that this movement from one kingdom to the other of being apart from God and then being with God, this movement is characterized here in Romans 6 as moving from being like a slave to sin where there was nothing you could do to escape it to one who has been set free from that. And slave to sin, verse 7, for one who has died has been set free from sin and we'll see that what Paul is describing is that because Christ died for us and when you accept Christ you are engrafted into Him and therefore you share in the benefit of His death. So His death was a death that was dealing a victorious blow to the dominance of sin and Satan in the world and you in a sense figuratively and mystically were with Christ in His death. You died to sin. Now if we have died with Christ we believe we shall also live with Him verse 9 we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over Him. So you see Jesus died a real human death but because of the resurrection we recognize that death didn't have dominion over Him through His dying He defeated death. And so Jesus became our sin and yet through the resurrection proved that sin didn't have dominion over Him. And these are, for the Christian, these are the truth statements for your life as well. Verse 10, for the death He died, He died to sin once for all but the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now how far of a departure is this from the way many Christians talk about their lives? I'm just an old sinner. I'm just a, that's just who I am.

That's just the way I am. And what Paul is saying here is that no you, if you're going to embrace the gospel you need to learn to say I am dead to sin. It's not saying that you don't still fall into sin. We still will in this world, we're still going to sin. But I'm dead to sin. It doesn't have hold over me.

It doesn't, I don't draw any life from it. I am dead to sin. Christians can you say that? I am dead to sin.

I'm very proud of you, that was well said. Thank you Jesus. Verse 12, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. What he's saying is a slave comes and presents him or herself to the master, the one who owns and controls.

But if one's not your master then you don't present yourself to that. But present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you're not under law but under grace. Sin will have no dominion over you. Verse 15, what then? Are we to sin because we're not under the law but under grace?

By no means. Do you know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, your slaves are the one whom you obey, either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart, from the heart he's saying, not from the will power but from the heart.

There's been a change of nature, that's what we're going to learn about. From the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. And having been set free from sin, free from sin, I'm free from sin. I'm so proud of you, say it again, I am free from sin. It's a powerful thing to say, have become slaves of righteousness. I'm speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations.

For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. Wow. A couple of weeks ago I was rushing off to church actually to preach for video capture and I was getting my clothes changed and I heard a sound in the bedroom, something sounded strange. It was obviously something moving around in the bedroom, nobody was home but me. And I thought what in the world is it and I looked and there was a bird in the bedroom. You ever had a bird in the house? It is a terrible situation and I saw this bird, cute little brown wren flying around the bedroom. And I thought how am I going to get this bird out of here? We got all these windows that are lots of light coming in on the backside but they're well screened from the outside.

You'd have to get a ladder that I didn't have to get up and get the screens off. So I couldn't open the windows and the bird's trying to fly into the windows. Well I want him to go outside the exit of the one way out of the bedroom which is into a little hallway that's kind of darker than everything else. We had a little bird that didn't want to fly down this little dark area. And so I tried the time, age tested, proven, futile attempt of getting the broom out and trying to wave it in the air and kind of coerce him to fly. Well the more that I got the broom, the more crazy he went.

And he's flying all over the place. And then he wised up and he realized instead of trying to fly away from me he'd just hide from me. So he'd go and he'd get under the bed and hide for a long period of time. And I'd get real quiet and then he'd hop out from under the bed, look at me, jump back under the bed.

It was crazy. I tell you the worst thing of all was I finally just had to leave. I was running late to preach and I had to leave and I decided the only thing to do is just lock him in the bedroom. Because if he did come out of the bedroom by some fluke while I was away I'd have no idea where he was in the house. I said at least I know he's in the bedroom. And I know that is a messy situation to leave a wild bird in your bedroom for hours while you're away. And the worst thing of all was I knew that I needed to call my wife and tell her in the event she got home before I did, babe there's a bird in the bedroom.

That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? The Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church. The Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. Take your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today. We'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website pastoralan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Babe, there's a bird in the bedroom. And so after I could get away from church, I said, honey, you go by the hardware store, see if they got one of those big nets like a fishing net or something.

Maybe we can swoop it down on that. I'll keep trying to get the bird out. And she goes to the hardware store. I go home trying to get the bird out.

She called, she said they don't have such a net. I said, well, I'm trying to throw a sheet on it right now. And she said, you've got to get that bird out of there.

And then I said, honey, I've been trying. I've got over an hour trying to get this bird out of here and bird won't go out. Bird will not go out. And finally I said, honey, I know it's God's creature.

I love it. But we can't just have this bird in here forever. I said, I may have to get the tennis racket. She said, you will not.

You will not. And I said, no, I was just going to stun it a little bit maybe. And she said, no, it's God's little creature.

No. You get that bird out. And I sat there and I just said, what am I going to do? Because the more that I tried to make that bird leave, the more that bird learned to hide from me. And the more I waved my arms and said, you're doing it all wrong, the more scared that bird became, the less obedient he became to me. And this is the nature of sin. So many people think that the way that you're going to escape, the way you're going to finally improve, the way you're finally going to overcome all of your besetting sins and addictions and problems, is you just need somebody with a broom or a net or something scarier than what you've had before that's going to finally jolt you into being afraid enough of destruction that you're going to finally just find your way out.

But the fact of the matter is that is not how any of us ever improves. The fact of the matter is that we're like a little bird. And the more scared we are of God, the more we just fly away from it.

Whatever you're scared of, you get away from. And God came in the person of Jesus Christ not to condemn but to save. And it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. How are you going to change? It is by the power of grace.

And so Paul links in Romans chapter 6 our capacity to overcome sin with coming out from under the fleshly attempts to keep the law and instead embracing our new nature in the new covenant by the grace of God. I want to talk to you today about what it means to be free from sin. Some years ago there was a couple came to meet with me. They were moving their membership from another church. And they wanted to do so in a healthy way and they'd spoken with their pastor and they wanted to speak to me and say here's why we're coming. And I said well tell me about it. And they said well we would leave church week after week. We just felt heavy and discouraged and we just need the message of grace.

And I said well I don't understand. I said I know of your church and I know of that pastor. I thought that you all had a message of grace. And in fact I think grace is in the church motto isn't it?

And the woman said something I'll never forget. She said yes there's talk of grace. But it's always and only the talk of the grace that can forgive our wretched sin.

But it's never talk of the grace that overcomes it. The Westminster Larger Catechism is a foundational document in the Reformed tradition and question number 77 is beautiful. The question is what is the difference between justification and sanctification?

Here's the answer. Although sanctification is inseparably joined to justification the two are distinctly different. In justification God imputes the righteousness of Christ to believers. In sanctification His Spirit infuses believers with grace and enables them to use it. In the former justification sin is pardoned and in the latter sanctification sin is subdued.

I want to talk to you about the subduing of sin because we have been set free from it in the name and by the power of the Lord Jesus. Augustine one of the most important Christian thinkers in the history of the world was born in 354 AD to a strong Christian mother but a dad who was somewhat distant. He had less than an ideal relationship with his father.

His father didn't administer any discipline in his life. And so Augustine as a young man began to live a rather licentious life. He went to Carthage where he was going to be a head of a school of rhetoric and while there he took up with a mistress, a pattern that would develop in his life. In fact Augustine by his own admission in his confessions later said that this lust was one of his biggest struggles. He said quote I could not distinguish the clear light of true love from the murk of lust. And one day Augustine was in a garden and he had all these struggles in his life and he really was, something was beginning to wrestle on the inside of him because he didn't want to be that way that he was. And while he was in these wrestlings, these inward wrestling he said quote I heard the voice of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighboring house changing and oft repeating take up and read, take up and read. I grasped the Bible open and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell. Not in rioting or drunkenness, not in chambering, unwontedness, not in strife and envy but put ye on the Lord Jesus and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.

And listen what he said, no further would I read nor did I need for instantly as the sentence ended by a light as it were of security into my heart all the gloom of doubt vanished away. So what happened to Augustine? He was born again. The Bible says you are regenerated is the theological term.

You find yourself suddenly having been disconnected to God now you're restored to fellowship with God. He became a Christian and he realized because he had such a dramatic conversion that happened so supernaturally and so many people it's more gradual than that but some people it's really sudden. And he realized he went from having one kind of nature to another and so much of the sin holding his life was broken away and because of this Augustine was absolutely convinced that what God does for us as Christians is he gives us a new nature. And part of this was defined in a theological conflict that he had with another famous theologian in his era in the mid 300s named Pelagius.

I'm just going to do a little bit of theology with you here and then we're going to come back to the text okay but just stick with me because it's really really important. Pelagius believed contrary to orthodox Christian faith he believed that we are not born in what theologians call original sin that we're not born in a condition of sin that we don't have a nature of sin. Pelagius argued that every person that is born into the world comes into the world in the same condition that Adam and Eve were before they sinned.

That is that they could easily not sin or they could sin but they just have this choice. But what the Bible says is that we were born in sin. The Bible says that we have a problem in that Adam sinned and all of us descending from Adam were all in Adam.

Well Pelagius and Augustine had this ongoing debate and it was ruled by church councils that Pelagius was in error and Augustine asserted what became very helpful and the orthodox Christian belief. And what he had taught about as part of the foundation of his teaching about our nature was Augustine made this very clear that we have kind of different stages of our nature depending on our orientation to sin given where we are in our lives. So before there was sin in the world when Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden they were able to sin but they were also able to not sin. But as soon as sin entered the world now sin has become a condition of humanity and they passed along their sin and everybody's been born in Adam and Eve since. So after the fall, post fall, people are able to sin and not able not to sin. It's a condition apart from Christ. It doesn't mean that a person that's apart from Christ that everything he or she does is sin. But it means that you are in a position where being separated or the Bible says dead to God in the sense spiritually, spiritually dead.

That it is your nature. That this is what a person apart from Christ does is we're selfish and all the sins that flow from that. But when you become a Christian, regenerated, a Christian, the Bible says you're born anew, right? You're made alive. That regenerated person now you're in a position like Adam and Eve were where you are able to sin but you're able not to sin.

And that's where we are. This is why Paul says you're free from sin. It doesn't mean that you're not going to still sin but it means you're not a slave to sin.

Whereas apart from Christ you're a slave to sin. It's your nature. But you now have a new nature. And whether you're a brand new Christian or whether you've been walking with the Lord forever, this is true. You have a new nature.

Alan Wright. Unpacking an important principle today. Freed from sin. It's our teaching in the series Belonging to God.

And Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life in a final word. Imagine for 99 days in a row someone tells you, I love you, I'll never forsake you. Wouldn't you feel cherished? But what would happen if on the hundredth day that same person said, I'm not sure you're good enough for me. If you don't measure up I don't think I'll love you anymore.

Wouldn't that one day contaminate the meaning of the other 99 days? Wouldn't one percent of conditional love poison the other 99 percent? Well just one percent of law is enough to spoil grace. The tiniest bit of law can introduce an unlimited capacity for fear. What if I don't measure up?

When might I be rejected? When the Judaizers infiltrated the Galatian church, the Apostle Paul was outraged and wrote a letter that describes the essence of the gospel of grace and why it must not be mixed with any form of law. Alan Wright's 12 message audio series trumpets the power of the gospel in order to set you free and empower you with pure grace. It's called Galatians and that's the gospel.

Discover the purity and power of the grace of God. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Today is the final day we're offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Alan, I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think this is where a lot of times we can get a lot of good Christian language. Almost in a sense it might muddy the water some because I know when I came to knowledge of grace, I was still struggling with all these catchphrases. Free from sin, shackles, and then I'm a slave to Christ.

I'm trying to wrestle. What does all this really mean? And I love today's teaching. Well, to say free from sin doesn't mean we never sin. But it means that we're not a slave to sin. And it's a very powerful thing to consider that you no longer have to be under the dominion of sin. And it could be freeing for a listener today, that you're just thinking there's some, maybe there's a besetting sin in your own life, or maybe there's just some pattern, and you just thought, well, this is just the way it is. I'm just stuck. Well, no, that's the voice of the accuser that would say that. God says in Christ, you're free. And of course there's a lot to walking that out, but we're going to see today what it means to be free from sin. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.