The uncomfortable truth is that all of us are slaves to something or someone. Whether it's our career, possessions, or our own desires, we've surrendered our freedom to various masters. But here's the paradox. Liberation doesn't come from breaking all those chains. It comes from choosing the right master.
Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl teaches from Romans chapter 6. In this passage, Paul presents a choice. We can either choose bondage to sin that leads to spiritual death, or voluntary surrender to Christ, which leads to abundant life. Chuck titled today's message. Whose slave are you?
Our scripture reading today as we prepare ourselves for the message titled, Whose Slave Are You? is found in the letter to the Romans Chapter six Verses fifteen through twenty three.
So turn with me to this section of Scripture as we read it. And ask yourself the question. Whose slave am I? Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 15. What then?
Shall we sin because we're not under law, but under grace? May it never be. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience? You are slaves of the one whom you obey. Either of sin, resulting in death, or of obedience.
resulting in righteousness. but thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. for just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity, and to lawlessness resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness. resulting in sanctification.
For when you were slaves of sin, You were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore What benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? for the outcome of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to God. You derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome.
Eternal life. For the wages of sin is death. But The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the book of Romans on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook by going to insight.org slash offer.
Chuck titled today's message, Whose Slave Are You? Strange as it may sound, it isn't uncommon to see free people living like slaves.
Now, you can't tell by looking. I didn't say they looked like slaves. I said They're living like slaves. Not they. Perhaps some of you.
Whose slave are you? Whose slave are you? There are several possibilities. I know people who were slaves of their work. They are attached at the hip.
to their laptop. They bring their work home with them. They seem to sneer at vacations and take pride in never having a day off, as if that's. A balanced way to live, not realizing They're enslaved to their work. There's a name for that.
And you know it.
Some of you are workaholics. And then you can be enslaved to things, possessions, stuff. Where enough is never enough, the word contentment seems a distant dream. There's a word for that. It's called materialism.
Easy to be materialistic in this affluent. genre of life in which many of us find ourselves. I know folks who are enslaved to others. People pleasers, we call them. And your self-image rises or falls depending on the barometer of other people's.
affirmation or Criticism. Easy to be enslaved to people's opinions. And perhaps most pathetic of all would be those who enslave to themselves. Psychologists have a name for that, it's called narcissism. A spirit of entitlement accompanies That's slavery.
Commonly referred to as a mentality where it's all about me. Then there is enslavement to habits. Enslavement to greed. To negative responses to life's challenges, enslavement to anger. Enslavement to worry.
Anxiety-ridden people are often neurotically. worried. My friend, the late Ray Stedman, while pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, was invited by Vernon McGee to come to Church of the Open Door to teach and to preach. for a series of meetings. Ray told me afterwards that while he was there, he decided one afternoon to sort of take a break.
walk along the busy streets of downtown Los Angeles. Who knows what he would come in contact with right down on Hope Street and other streets nearby? Sure enough. In front of him, he saw a man coming toward him with a long beard and scraggly hair and rather unkempt. This eccentric old fellow was wearing a sandwich board.
sign on front and back hanging from his shoulders. Written in bold letters. By the man himself, no doubt. On the front of him were the words I am a slave. For Jesus Christ.
Ray said as he walked by, the man caught his eye and stared at him all the way. And he walked on. He said, I paused and turned and looked back to see what the sign of the back read. Whose slave are you? Great question.
Before you feel innocently Out of touch with this, you better think again. Your work? Stuff Someone else's opinion. Self.
Some have it.
Some reaction. I have wonderful news. As a child of God, you are freed. You have been Freed. The cross is not simply a A symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a turning point in slavery.
Up to it. We were shackled. to a power we could not control. Or curb. Charles Wesley put it, long my imprisoned spirit lay, fast bound in sin and nature's night.
Thine eye. Diffused a quickening ray. I rose. The dungeon f flamed with light, my chains fell off. My heart was free.
I went forth to follow thee. Amazing love. How can it be that thou, my God, Should Die for me. Freedom. No longer enslaved, however, however.
As long as we are on this earth, we are still attached to the old nature. We never will be what we should be until we are with our Lord. After death. And so, what happens at conversion when we come to the cross, we are given an empowerment. We are given the person of Christ to live within us.
Remarkable thought. The Holy Spirit is engaged in our. decision making and in our life of victory. And he lives within for that purpose. To help us say no to those urges that.
still emerged from the old nature. And there is this Battle. This civil war within us. between an old nature And a new nature. And we're left constantly with a choice.
Before the cross, we had no choice but to yield to temptation. To say yes to wrong.
Now that Christ has come, we have died to that old power. And we have, in being raised with Christ, been given a position that puts us on a level of victory. Rather than defeat. That's what Romans 6 is all about. Romans chapter 6 is a wonderful Chapter of Emancipation.
We who were once slaves have been freed. The main idea of the first 14 verses is: the believer who is in Christ is freed from slavery to sin. That's what the first. 14 verses are all about. The believer in Christ is freed from slavery to sin.
You no longer have to say yes to wrong. You are now empowered to say no. But you're not forced. You're left with a choice. Every waking moment of our lives, we are faced with choices.
Do I react negatively, or do I let the Spirit of God give me a positive strength? Do I say yes to what would feed my lust? And greed, or do I say no by the power that lives within me? Before the cross, there was no choice. Afterwards There is that opportunity.
I must know and I must care. Calculate in my mind that it's true, and then I must present myself according to verse 13. no longer as members of unrighteousness. But now my mind, my heart, my eyes, my hands, my feet, my will. Um Take it all, Lord, and work through me, see through me, speak through me.
I present myself to you for that empowerment.
Now then. The cynic who reads this, who thinks the person who preaches this kind of grace message. is encouraging people to sin. Rushes to the extreme and says, Well, you let people free to live like you've described. You don't give them a list to live by.
You don't have Hammer away at the law that's still over them, you're going to find people are going to just run wild. It's like the wag who wrote other words, lyrics to the gospel song. Free from the law, O happy condition. Sin all you please, for there is remission. It's not what he wrote.
This heresy, it's called antinomianism. Against law. Against restrictions, against boundaries. We are freed. But love, love for Christ restricts us.
restrains us so that we live obedient lives. knowing that we are free to live disobedient ones. It's a choice.
So when Paul gets to this fifteenth verse, he moves into that balanced area. He begins with a similar sounding question. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? I mean if Sin abounding causes grace to superabound.
Why not sin a lot and let grace super duper abound? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's heresy. In fact, his emotional reaction is: no, no, may it never be. Perish the thought. What a ghastly thought.
What heresy is that? See, the legalist wants to teach you or tell you or convince you that if you really promote grace, you're going to encourage people to sin. The fact is, you free people to sin if they choose. And they will live with the consequences. But you at the same time urge them not to do so.
Because really the choice is yours. Before the cross, you had no choice.
Now you have one, and you can choose wrong. And there's discipline to follow. Which is all part of what's woven into the fabric of these verses.
Now, following this emotional outburst, may it never be. Paul answers rather rationally in 16 through 22. of this section. Look at how it unfolds. It really may look complicated, but it is not at all.
It's just a concentrated series of thoughts.
So you have to concentrate. Look at verse 16. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves? of the one Uh you obey. Almost sounds like something Yogi Bera would say, doesn't it?
If you commit yourself to someone as a slave, then you are a slave to the one you commit yourself. It's a little more than that. If you choose righteousness, you become enslaved to righteousness and all the benefits. If you choose unrighteousness, you become. Oh, one who initiates all the consequences that follow.
In fact, I found out something in my study that I didn't know before. I thought all Roman slaves were simply those born into slavery from their parents or. They were the result of the spoils of war. As the defeated people were brought back to Rome, the ranks of the slaves swelled. But I discovered in the readings of John Stott's work on Romans that.
there was such a thing as voluntary slavery. Listen to this. I quote from his work. There was such a thing as voluntary slavery. People in dire poverty.
Could offer themselves as slaves to someone simply in order to be fed and housed. Paul's point is that those who thus offered themselves invariably had their offer accepted. They could not expect to give themselves to a slave master and simultaneously retain their freedom. It's the same with spiritual slavery. Self-surrender.
leads inevitably to slavery. Remember that line: self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery. That's what verse 16 is all about. If you present yourself to someone as a slave voluntarily, Then the one you choose to be enslaved by will. take over.
will be master of you. It's your choice. See how he puts it? Either of sin resulting in death or obedience resulting in righteousness. You say, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I've chosen wrong and I didn't die. It's not a physical death. It's a death-like existence. You enter into a realm of darkness. and sometimes despair if you stay there.
You stay there long enough, and divine discipline kicks in to the point where the Lord has to decide whether to leave you on the earth or take you. See, he's jealous for his holiness. If his children choose to disobey over a long period of time, There are serious consequences. The Lord cares so much about that. He tells us in other places of the New Testament, I won't let you keep doing that.
So, you have your choice of a death-like existence or a righteous. type life. And now he suddenly bursts into a doxology. Thanks be to God. Thanks be to God.
For what? That though you were slaves of sin, that's when we were lost. You became obedient from the heart to the heart. To that form of teaching to which you were committed, that's a preacher's way of saying you believe the gospel. Preachers sometimes take a long time getting to the point.
That whole last half of verse 17 has to do with conversion. Because you believe the gospel that Christ paid the complete penalty for your sins, thanks be to God, you're freed from the enslavement that was once yours. Inexperience.
Now you have a choice. Before you had none. Verse 18. Take it to its logical conclusion. Having been freed from sins, power is the implied statement, you became slaves of righteousness.
That causes Paul to say, thanks be to God. There was a time when I couldn't face a temptation without yielding to it. There was a time I couldn't entertain an attitude that was negative, that I. Didn't burst out with negative statements. There was a time when my anger controlled me, and I was known for a short temper.
Perhaps all of that is going through the apostle's mind. Thanks be to God, I've been freed from that slavery. freed from what was at one time in my life a a helpless Situation no longer helpless. He says in 19, I'm speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Notice the words of comparison.
Verse 19 continues, just as You presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness.
So now, those are words of comparison, just as so now. Just as you once yielded yourself or presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, further lawlessness. Present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. It's a big word that means consecration to God, set apart for God's purposes. What's he getting at?
Well, he's talking about the downward cycle of sin, quite honestly. In fact, if you hold your place here, I'll show you a verse that ties it in. In Proverbs chapter 5, verse 21. Turn there.
Sometimes seeing it in other words in another part of the scriptures will help enlighten where we are. 521 of Proverbs. The book just beyond the Psalms, right in the center of your Bible. Following that book is Proverbs, verse 21 of chapter 5. And verse 22.
Let me read it slowly and carefully. It's 22 that captures my attention, but first, 21. The ways of a man or a woman, we would say, are before the eyes of the Lord, and He, that's God, watches all His paths. His own, this is our own. Humanity's own iniquities will capture the wicked.
And he will be held with the cords. of his sin. Keep looking at that verse. Paul writes of our being. In a place of choosing disobedience, and when we do, our iniquities capture us.
And there's a downward cycle where we are held wrapped tightly in the cords of sin. Very picturesque language. Back in Romans chapter... Six, verse twenty, when you were slaves of sin. You were free in regard to righteousness.
You really. didn't have a choice. No righteousness. One man writes it this way: the downward cycle of sin moves from a problem to a faulty, sinful response. thereby causing an additional complicating problem.
which is meant by an additional sinful response. That pattern needs to be reversed by beginning an upward cycle of righteousness. He continues, sinful habits are hard to break, but if they are not broken, they will bind the person ever more tightly, and he is held by the ropes. of his own sin. My phone rang several years ago.
On the other end of the line was a voice I'd never heard before, nor have I ever heard since. It was a voice of despair. The man sounded older than what he was. His opening line, I don't know if it was meant to shock me or just to get my attention. His opening line to me was, I am a male prostitute.
I was as quiet as you are right now as I listened. He said, that's why you'll never see me at your church. He said, you don't want me there. Before I could get a word in, I I listened to his story. He didn't begin life as a male prostitute.
He began. Far away from that. never dreaming he would go there. Told me of a past, told me of his home, told me of his broken family. I was on the street about age 14.
worked here and there and finally realized he could make the most money selling his own body. By and by, he now, at the age of 21, though he sounded 40. described The shame. of his life. And I was trying to urge him to Give me a place where we could meet, where we could talk before long.
Click. Why? He is held in the cords. of his sin. You can't break them.
He didn't believe it could be broken. And so he completely shut down. and said in effect Uh That's all I can talk. For now. Never heard from him again.
Your heart breaks in situations like that. You wish you were just able to. have a few extra moments. to let him know there is a way. for the shackles to be broken.
Never heard from him again. Chuck Smendahl is teaching through Paul's letter to the Romans, and we're in Romans chapter 6. He titled today's message with a question. Whose slave are you? Here at Insight for Living, we've prepared a number of study tools designed to deepen your understanding of this passage.
And we'd encourage you to take advantage of this exclusive bundle because each one has been designed to renew your mind and increase your gratitude for God's amazing grace. The first resource is our Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook for Romans. It's spiral bound, and because of the length and depth of Paul's letter, this edition for Romans comes in two volumes, and the first volume is ready right now. Second, Chuck wrote a full-length commentary on Romans. This is a hardback book from our Living Insights commentary series.
Anyone who loves the Bible should own this commentary from Chuck. In his approachable style, he helps us discover the rich theological treasures found in the Book of Romans. And third, Insight for Living has produced a collection of audio messages on CD or MP3.
so you can listen to all of Chuck's sermons in their entirety at your pace. It's a great way to own a permanent record of this hallmark study. To purchase this special trilogy of resources from Insight for Living, Call us at 800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash offer. Before we complete another week of programs together, I want to extend a word of thanks to those who consistently support Chuck's teaching ministry. Because of your generosity, Insight for Living is available to millions of listeners on all the different digital platforms like Instagram, X, and Facebook.
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Join us again on Monday when Chuck Swindahl continues his study in the book of Romans right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Whose Slave Are You? Was copyrighted in 2007, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide.
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