Turn your Bibles with me to Romans Chapter 6, 20-23. Romans Chapter 6, verse 20-23, reading out of the ESV. "For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?

For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and its end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life.

In Christ Jesus our Lord." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would anoint this time, that your word would go forth, that our hearts may be sober, and as you are the potter, help us to be moldable clay, that we may not simply be hearers, but to be doers.

We thank you, in Jesus' name we pray, Amen. As you guys know, Paul has been arguing the Gospel up to this point, and why we are in desperate need of Jesus. Whether you are a moral person or an immoral person, no one is righteous by their own effort. And that's the point that he was getting, that salvation is by grace, and by grace alone.

It is not the righteous that he chooses, it's the sinners that he justifies. But the question that he's been dealing with in chapter 6 is, well doesn't that lead to licentiousness? Doesn't that lead to lawlessness? Isn't that going to create an environment where people say, well let's sin, that grace may abound?

Superficially, yes. When there is a superficial conversion, superficial understanding, a conversion experience where all it was was just raising of hand, or just simple acknowledgement of truth, that's exactly what it creates. It creates a generation of people who are absolutely certain over their salvation without genuine conversion. But what Paul is arguing in chapter 6 is about genuine conversion, genuine salvation.

What happens? See, our issue in our generation, in a post-Christian culture, is that we don't measure our righteousness, or we don't measure our salvation or faith based upon what we see in scripture. Often times we measure it by the culture or the people that are around us. So, if our Christianity looks like the Christianity that we are a part of, we feel safe.

Because that's what it looks like. And so, there are times when we're sharing the gospel and we ask them, do you want to accept Christ? And it's just a lot of times so flippant. I've been out on campus and out on the street sharing the gospel, and so many times, after I would do the presentation, I'd say, would you like to accept?

And you could tell by their eyes, it's like, sure. And so, by their response, well, they said yes, but I don't see any conviction of, you know, but I don't want to judge them. They said yes, so let's do it. So, we'd go through the sinner's prayer, and then they would pray, and then after it was done, they're like, alright, thanks.

It's like, hey, you know, I want to introduce you to a church, can I have your phone number? It's like, ah, no thanks. And I always kind of left thinking, was that a real conversion? Did they really accept that? It's like, well, it sounded almost kind of like, oh, if salvation is free, I'll take it, just in case.

Just in case what you're saying is real. Yeah, I don't want to go to hell. What's that going to cost me? It's free. You said it was free, right? And if I do this prayer, I'm going to go to heaven. Is that what you're saying? It's like, hmm. I stopped doing that for that reason.

I stopped doing that years ago, because I didn't leave that situation thinking that there was real conversion. See, again, you and I live in a generation where thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people accepted Christ, gave Jesus a chance. Why not? And it created this environment that people who are complaining or concerned about what they're asking here.

Shall we sin that grace may abound? Isn't this going to lead to licentiousness? Church filled with people who are not pursuing righteousness, but have absolute conviction that when they die, they're going to go to heaven. Is that what the scripture says? There is a clear distinction between before Christ and after Christ.

I mean, that's the way that we talk about history. Right. I mean, we don't I don't think the history books use it that way anymore. But we had B.C. and A.D. before Christ and A.D. Anno Domini, the year of the Lord, which basically we mean after Christ. There is a clear distinction in our Christian lives as before and after we met Christ.

Oftentimes we talk about conversion as like, oh, I didn't go to church. I started going to church. I wasn't a member. I became a member. You know, I wasn't really thinking much about God. And I started thinking much about God. There are some things that I was doing wrong.

And and so I decided not to do that and to and to take my faith a little bit more seriously. I'm not saying any of that stuff is wrong, but the way the Bible describes conversion is slaves to sin and slaves to righteousness. The Bible describes conversion as being children of the devil versus children of God, of eternal damnation versus eternal life as adopted children of God.

So that distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian isn't simply I didn't go to church or I didn't take it seriously. But, you know, I just kind of are more serious now than I was last year. There is a an absolute line that is crossed when regeneration happens. This is not unique to our generation.

This happens in any culture where Christianity becomes a post-Christian culture. There is remnants of Christianity, church attendance, Bible. We have in God we trust printed in our money. I mean, if there's any culture that's post-Christian culture, it is the culture that you and I live in. And the danger of living in a post-Christian culture is we feel safe being saturated by Christian things without genuine conversion.

See, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a German theologian who lived during the period of the Nazis, also lived in a very nominal Christian culture. Reformation had a huge impact hundreds and hundreds of years ago. But by the time the Nazis began to rise in power, it was a very nominal Christian culture.

It was a post-Christian culture. A lot of Christian things, a lot of old Christian relics, churches that at one point fought for the gospel. Now it was a very liberal place. And Bonhoeffer writes a book, and some of you guys are very familiar with, called Discipleship. And Bonhoeffer writes about this cheap grace.

"Cheap grace amounts to the justification of sin without justification of the repentant sinner who departs from sin and from whom sin departs. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is a grace without discipleship, grace without cross, grace without Jesus Christ." In other words, cheap grace isn't grace at all.

It's just an imitation. The Bible describes our salvation in three parts. Justification, sanctification, and glorification. None of these things can be understood independently. All of these things are one thing that the Bible describes. But the theologians describe it in three different parts because the Bible describes our salvation as past, present, and future.

But you can't be justified without being sanctified. And again, you may look in a culture that we have now where a lot of people are professing, and many people who are not walking right with God, saying that they are justified, but their sanctification is just not taking place. But God, thank you, thanks for His grace.

So the Bible doesn't describe salvation that way. The Bible describes it as past, present, and future. And all of it is a description of one salvation, not three salvations. See, another way for us to understand salvation is, again, past, present, and future. Another way for us to understand salvation is rest.

Justification is a description of an individual who has fallen out of the Sabbath with God and is in turmoil. And when we are justified, we found rest in Him. Sanctification is a description of labor, that we are laboring in the context of this rest. Just like Adam and Eve, before they fell, they were laboring in the Garden of Eden.

And so, sanctification is the process in which we are being saved. What was lost is being restored. So that sanctification describes labor. And then glorification is a description of the hope that we have because of what Christ has done. Another way for us to understand salvation is, justification is to pay for the penalty of sin.

Sanctification is salvation from the power of sin. Glorification is a salvation from the presence of sin. And all of it is a description of one salvation. You can't have one without the other. There is no hope if there is no justification in sanctification. There is no justification without sanctification.

There is no sanctification without justification. But if you take any one of these parts and say, "I don't believe this," or "I don't participate in this," or "I have not been saved in this way," it is not a biblical sanctification. It is not biblical salvation. That's a Christianity that was created in a post-Christian culture.

That's a Christianity that is embraced by nominal Christianity. It's more of spiritual superstition. Some people go to a Buddhist temple and rub the temple drop money because they want the blessing from Buddha. It just happens that our avenue for this blessing happens to be Christianity. It is nothing more than superstition.

That if we go and do the right thing, that somehow God is going to bless us and make our children healthy, and He's going to take care of us, answer our prayers. It has nothing to do with biblical Christianity. That is why it's extremely important for us that our understanding of our faith, our salvation, and who God is, and the Church, and all that we profess to believe is coming from Scripture and not coming from what is normal in the Christian culture.

That's why living in Orange County is so dangerous. Because it is saturated by cultural Christianity. And cultural Christianity in Orange County may not be Christianity we see in Scripture. In fact, my opinion is it is not. It is not the Christianity that I see in Scripture. There is a clear distinction between before Christ and after Christ.

So we're going to look at this text in verse 20 where Paul again describes who we were before. And I want to remind you that what Paul is saying here is not saying, "Hey, you guys should get this right and do this." He's simply describing indicative. This is who we are.

This is what has happened. If someone was genuinely justified, it's going to lead to sanctification. He's not saying work hard to get sanctification. He's just describing. He's describing the Gospel. And that's exactly what he's doing. Right? Anything that we do is going to be done because he's done it for us.

And that's what, again, I want to remind you that's what he's saying. First of all, he says, "We were slaves of sin and free from righteousness." Before we met Christ, the BC is, "We were slaves of sin and free from righteousness." Now that kind of sounds like an exaggeration.

Right? It's one thing to say somebody's struggling with sin. And if anybody who's in this room right now who's not a Christian, if you heard me correctly, you're probably offended. And if you're not offended, you probably weren't paying attention. Right? Because the Scripture basically said that if you do not know Christ, you are a slave to sin.

And you are free from any righteousness. Now, doesn't that sound like an exaggeration? Like, I know I struggled with sin at one point. I know that I'm not perfect. But the Bible just doesn't describe us simply as people who, before we met Christ, who kind of did some bad things.

The Bible describes us as absolutely enslaved to sin. Which means our will, our emotion, our intellect, every part of who we were, was tainted by sin. And we could do no other. In Jeremiah 17, 9, there's a passage that we mentioned before. It says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?" Again, the heart, the way that the Bible uses it, is not describing just emotion. It describes the essence of a human being. Kind of like the way we use the word "soul." Like, every part of that human being has been corrupted and is deceitful. In fact, in the book of Genesis 6, 5, when mankind was multiplying and filling the earth, God saw mankind, and this was His description of mankind.

Genesis chapter 6, verse 5, "The Lord saw that the wickedness of the man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Again, I hope you're offended. Because it would offend me. It would offend me. If I was a non-Christian and heard this, like, every thought, every intention, this is nothing new.

That's how Paul describes it in Romans chapter 3. "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Every thought, every intention, every act that was committed was sinful. And the reason why it was sinful is because mankind and every part of who we are, our inclination, is self-preservation, self-exaltation, and self-glorification.

So even every good deed that we do, it's about us. Even our desire for education. Even our desire for what is best for our children is tainted by sin. Even the good that we do, ultimately, was under the reign of sin. So the Bible describes not only were we tainted in sin, we were enslaved to sin.

John 8, 34, Jesus himself says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin." And again, the word "commit" basically means somebody who is living in sin. That you have not been converted. Now how do we understand this? Is this an exaggeration? How do we understand this?

I think the text that you and I know very well actually gives us some insight and sheds some light on this question. If you can turn your Bible to Matthew 6, 24. Turn your Bible to Matthew 6, verse 24. And again, it is a passage that we are very familiar with, but there are some things that are described here that help us to understand what Paul is saying.

Matthew 6, 24. "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." You notice, one, that Jesus is not saying that this is what you should do.

He is describing a Christian versus a non-Christian. This is an indicative. He is not saying that try not to. He is saying you can't. It is not possible. You cannot serve two masters. So, if you are an individual sitting in this room thinking like, "Okay, you know what? I am trying to serve two masters." You are deceived.

You are not serving two masters. You think you are serving God and serving money. You are not serving God. Because that is what he is saying. It is not possible. The Bible says it is not possible. So, if you are attempting to do both, you are not serving God.

You are serving money. He is describing a Christian. But that is not the point that I want to make here. The point that he makes here is the connection between deliverance from our sin and love for our new master. I want to read that again. "For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

So, you cannot serve God and money." In other words, what Paul is describing is an individual who loved the things of the world. Loved self-preservation, self-exaltation. And then he comes and he delivers us and he changes our affection. 1 Timothy 6.10 "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." You notice he did not say money.

He said love of money. We are enslaved by the things that we love. So, he says love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. "It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs." Again, in John 3.19, and this is a judgment, "The light has come into the world, and the people loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil." So, you see how he describes enslavement?

Whatever you are in love with is what you are enslaved by. It doesn't have to be pornography. Anything that has nothing to do with God. If that love is what is saturating your thought, your speech, your mind, you are enslaved by that. That's how the Bible describes it. So, salvation is described as deliverance from that.

You know, I don't see this here much. Because I think here, when you present the Gospel, people will compare Christianity to what they see around them. And they've experienced a lot of Christians and co-workers and maybe even family members, and they don't see any difference between professing Christians and non-Christians.

So, when the Gospel is presented to them, and say, "Hey, do you want to accept Jesus Christ, and you want to confess?" They'll say, "Yeah, sure." Because they don't see any difference. "Oh, why not?" But oftentimes, out in China, when you are sharing the Gospel, because they don't have the benefit of the church and all this other nominal Christianity to compare with, just by purely understanding the Bible and reading the Bible, they're hesitant.

Because it's clearly understood that when you accept Jesus Christ, there's a new Lord in your life. So, I've had so many situations where the students will come to the point of conversion and say, "I'm not ready yet." And we ask, "Why are you not ready?" "So, I don't want to relinquish control." "I want to be in control of my own destiny." "I have plans." "I have things to do." "And if I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, then I have to submit myself to everything I see in Scripture." "And I don't want to do that yet." Well, they have the proper perspective, because we are taught in Scripture to count the cost.

It just doesn't happen in a nominal Christian culture. Or in a post-Christian culture, where, what are you counting? Go to church or don't go to church. But the correct understanding of the Gospel, the correct understanding of the Gospel causes us to understand that we are slaves of one thing, and then now we are called to be slaves of another.

But you and I sometimes don't recognize that we don't have as much freedom as we think we are, especially living in a free country. We're free, and we value freedom. But think about the most fundamental things that make us who we are. Right? Those most fundamental things. And I know you chose your hairstyle.

You chose that. That's all you. Your style, school, we can say all of that. You know, it was you. I'm free. I can say whatever I want. But the most fundamental things that make you who you are, you didn't choose. Right? Male or female. You were born male or female.

You didn't necessarily choose that. And as a result of that, you have a high level of estrogen or testosterone. And that makes you react or respond a certain way. You didn't choose that. That happened. You were born in a certain family. You were born in a certain ethnicity, speaking a certain language.

Born in a certain country. All of these things are major things that affect your affections. I like sushi. I didn't choose that. It chose me. Right? I didn't sit there and say, "Oh, I'm going to love sushi. And if I do these things, I'm going to love sushi." Your taste buds.

You didn't choose that. You ate, some of you guys are enslaved to boba. You didn't choose that. You drank it, you loved it. Now you have to have it. Right? So certain fundamental things about who we are happened to us. And these are not little things. These are major things.

You're an extrovert. Did you choose one day, "I'm tired of being an introvert. I'm going to be an extrovert today." Right? I mean, how big are these things? These are the fundamental things that make up who we are. And we were born into these things. But the scripture says, "All of these things have been tainted by sin." All of it.

So we were enslaved. Even our likes and dislikes. How we react. What makes us angry. What makes us happy. All of these things didn't come by hard work. We were born as sinners. And as a result of that, we have been enslaved. See, that's how the Bible describes us.

And that's why it says, "Not only are we enslaved to sin, we are free from righteousness." And what he means by free from righteousness is that we have no ability to choose righteousness of our own. Jeremiah 13, 23, it says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spot?" Then also, you can do good who are accustomed to do evil.

So just say, one day, wake up and say, "You know, I have enough. I'm going to be righteous and I'm going to pursue righteousness." You know, the scripture talks about how if you have a faith of a mustard seed, you're going to move mountains. And we may often ask ourselves, like, "I've never seen mountains move." Now, we think of physically.

Like, move mountains. How come that never happens? You know, I've seen mountains move. Okay. And it wasn't much of a miracle. It was just like all this technology. And I've seen hills. In certain places, I remember having hills. They bulldozed it. There's new homes there. Built tunnels. In fact, the problem in our culture is we have to have the government say, "Don't touch this mountain." Because the developers are going to come and they're going to wipe it out and put man-made lakes and homes there.

And so, yeah, they move mountains. It's not that big of a deal. Right? The older I get, the more I realize just how difficult it is to change people. To change people. Like, fundamentally change people. When you meet somebody that you knew at one point, you didn't see them for a while, and all of a sudden, they're completely different.

Their affection has changed. Right? Something radical happened. When the scripture says, "When you have a face of a mutt to see, you can move mountains," I believe it's talking about salvation. To take somebody whose destiny was hell, who belonged under the power of Satan, was actually enslaved by their sin, to be delivered from that can only be the act of God.

Only the one who is the author of life can actually give life. Every magic show that you've seen was a trick. You know, we get amused, and when we're younger, we get amused by everything. You know what I mean? You go, "Oh my gosh, he separated his finger." We get easily amused.

Right? I remember years ago, when I was a little kid in Korea, there was a missionary that came and he took his teeth out and he put it back in. I remember that till I was a teenager. That some magician came to Korea and he performed miracles. You know what I mean?

And then years later, I realized, "That was his false teeth." I don't know how many kids he did that to, but I was so amazed. And I figured it out. It was his fake teeth he took out and put it back in. But to create something from nothing, to take something that was dead and make it alive, the only person that could do that is the author of life.

The only person that can save us from enslavement to our sin was Christ and Christ alone. That's what he's talking about, Jeremiah 13, 23. A sinner cannot just decide that I'm going to be righteous. If it was that easy to control ourselves, we can take our whole singles department and get rid of it and move on to marriage.

You know what I mean? Most of you guys are single. Every once in a while, your marriage friends will just say, "Why don't you two get together?" "Oh, I didn't think about that." "Why don't I?" Because you can't control that. We'd be the moonies if that happened. We'd just get everybody, just kind of match you guys up and say, "We're going to have a wedding ceremony.

Done." You graduate college, you're going to join the marriage ministry next year. Even the people that you're attracted to, you can't control that completely. See, the first thing that he says is, "Before we met Christ, we were enslaved." "Enslaved by our appetite, enslaved by our lusts, even in the good things that we wanted, we were enslaved by sin." See, that was before we met Christ.

But after we met Christ, he says, "Now we have become freed and we have become slaves of God." That's the second part that, again, often times we think about, well, being freed from sin, that we have Christian liberty, now we can do whatever we want. That's no different than taking a child who's coming from an abusive home and just send him out into the jungle.

Just do, now you're free. Do whatever you want. That's not freedom. That's going from one abuse to another abuse. Now he's going to be eaten by lions and monkeys and squirrels. He's not protected. That's not how the Bible describes salvation. That we are freed from the bondage of sin to do whatever you want.

We are freed from the bondage of sin so that we may become slaves of righteousness and of God. See, not only the penalty of sin, but the power of sin that's been ruining us. The power of sin that's been demolishing homes, friendships. The constant desire to exalt ourselves and compete with others.

Even though that your needs are taken care of, that you feel like a loser because your house isn't as big as the guy next door. The sin that absolutely hovers over every mankind, every inclination, every thought. He delivered us, not simply from the penalty, but from the power of this.

So that you and I may live. And that's how it's described, the description of salvation of the Israelites from the bondage of Egypt. When Moses said to God, "What do I tell them when they ask me, 'What do you want? Who has sent you?'" God says to say this to Moses repeatedly over and over again, Exodus 7, 16, "And you shall say to him, 'The Lord, the God of Hebrews, sent me to you saying, 'Let my people go, that they may serve me.'" "Let my people go, that they may serve me." The whole point of saving them from the bondage of Egypt so that they can come out to serve God.

See, it is in service of God that we feel alive. Because that's how God intended us, is to glorify His name. So if we are delivered from the bondage of sin, to just go do whatever we want, we're going to go right back to the same bondage of feeding our flesh and doing whatever we want.

Because that's what bound us in the first place. True salvation, what Paul is describing in Romans chapter 6, true salvation is deliverance from bondage of sin, that we may be bound by righteousness and by God. See, the way that happened, see, in Philippians 3, 8, Paul describes his conversion, and he says, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." What happened to Paul?

God changed his affection. He changed his affection. That's what makes true worship. God's not telling people, "Hey, you're not at church, come to church." "Oh, you're not reading your Bible, you need to read the Bible." "Oh, you're not giving, you need to give." He's not getting, salvation is not getting people who are not doing something to do something, or getting people who are doing something to stop doing something.

That's not salvation. God is restoring mankind who fell short of His glory. He's restoring what? What is God seeking? People who will worship in spirit and in truth. He's looking for worshipers. And you and I know, sitting in here doesn't mean you're worshiping. Sitting in here, you can check in and check out.

You can give, check in and check out. You can serve the church, check in and check out. I can even give sermons, check in and check out, that's my job. But what God desires is worship. And you and I know that worship happens when our affections are changed. When our hearts are engaged.

And when we see that He is more worthy of my affection, and we come and praise His name from our hearts, that's when worship takes place. Not because you came here, not because you had a Bible, not because you studied theology. So what happened in salvation? He changed our affection, just like it says in Matthew.

"You will hate the one and love the other." And that's how Paul describes his own conversion. Everything, now, when Paul says everything became rubbish, he's not talking about like lust, he's talking about his moral life of trying to live according to the law. What was the purpose of that?

Self-glory, self-preservation, self-exaltation. All of that in light of Christ and His sacrifice, he says, became rubbish. Christ and what He had to offer was so much more beautiful. The gospel that you and I confess to believe is so much more powerful, so much more beautiful than anything else that we can possibly imagine in this world.

And that's what salvation is. He changes our affections so that we may come and worship. In fact, in Hebrews chapter 11, 24, it says, "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called sons of Pharaoh, daughter and daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin, he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasure of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward." Let me tell you simply, and again, this is just not my opinion, this is just common sense.

You can tell what's the greatest in our heart by what comes out of our mouth the most. That's what Jesus said. Out of the abundance of the heart comes. And that's where praise is. True praise is going to come if the abundance of our heart, if our affection is for Christ.

But if you're singing, if your mouth is moving, but your heart is not engaged, that's not worship. But that's how Paul describes salvation. And that's why in light of that, in light of knowing Christ, the world has lost its attraction. If you are a genuine Christian, the world, and if you've seen the glory, truly seen the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ, this world will never be the same for you.

The Holy Spirit ruined this world for you. It's ruined. It will never be the same. Because no matter how much you try to enjoy it, in the back of your mind, you always will know there's something so much better than what you are chasing after. No matter how hurt you get, no matter how difficult it gets, no matter what kind of trials come into your life, you will always persevere.

Because He took the curtain off and He showed you Himself. That's how salvation is described in Scripture. That's why in Romans 8, 18 it says, "For I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." We are changed.

We are changed when we are exposed to His glory. We're changed. Isn't that exactly what happened to the Samaritan woman? In the midday, where everybody was probably judging her, and she'd come with the sweat of her brow, on a hot day, and she's trying to pull water out, and she meets Christ, and recognizes that He's the Messiah.

And at the end of the encounter with Jesus, she drops everything, and she becomes the first missionary to tell people about Jesus. Nobody trained her. She didn't go to missionary school. She didn't go through discipleship training. All that happened to her was she encountered Jesus. And her affection changed.

She forgot. She went, and she started telling everybody. And they said, "Well, if that's true, we want to see Him too." And they came. Isn't that what happened to her? That's conversion. Nicodemus, in fear and trembling. If he gets seen with Jesus, if he shows any kind of curiosity toward Jesus, he's going to lose his status.

So he comes speaking in the middle of the night. But at the end of Jesus' life, who shows up? Nicodemus. What happened to him? Was he properly discipled? Was he trained properly? No. God took the curtains off of his eyes, and he saw Jesus. And it no longer mattered what his friends were going to say, because Jesus was better.

Isn't that what happened to Paul? Remember, maybe a member of the Sanhedrin? And in the middle of willing to kill and to squash the Gospel, Jesus comes and He reveals Himself to him. He gets knocked off the horse. And he is changed. The same Gospel that he tried to extinguish, all of a sudden he's standing out there saying, "I was wrong." And then for the rest of his life, he's beaten.

He's stoned. He's rejected. Put into prison. And then eventually beheaded. All voluntarily. Because his affection was changed. In light of Jesus, everything became rubbish. See, that's what Paul means by saying, in fact, the most common description that Paul gives of himself, he, oftentimes you'll say he's an apostle, you know, he's an elder, but the most common description that Paul gives of himself is a bond-servant, which is literally translated "slave." Paul repeatedly calls himself the slaves of Christ.

In fact, he calls us slaves of Christ. If you saw Him, if you know Him, you can do no other. That's why he's saying true conversion does not lead to licentiousness. Because true conversion changes our affection. See, look with me in verse 23. "For the wages of sin is death." We've all earned death.

But look what he said, "But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." But what we received in Christ was the free gift. It's not something, it's like a leopard who says, "Yeah, I'm not going to be a leopard anymore. I'm going to change my skin." We couldn't do it.

And the only way to save us from ourselves was for Jesus to come in the full glory of His Father, in every way like Him. He was a radiance of His glory. He was the exact imprint of this God that they were worshiping in the Old Testament. And He drew near and showed Himself.

And when people recognized who He is and who He was, they were changed. When you are really in love with Jesus, you don't need more training to be a missionary, to be a pastor. I mean, we go to seminary, we study for years of how to exposit and teach the Bible and all that.

But at the end of the day, you don't really need all of that. Because a witness is somebody who just saw something and telling other people about it. That's what a witness is. That's what evangelism is. And that's what the church is supposed to be. We're the light. If we see Jesus, you and I are the best evangelists.

No amount of training, no amount of discipleship, no amount of accountability is going to make us better. That's why He says, "If you want to bear fruit, remain in Me." What you have seen, continue to see. That our affections are always for Christ. He changed us. Doing whatever pleases us, ultimately, is entrapment.

Broad is the road that leads to destruction. The prodigal son chased after it and realized freedom was at his father's house. Some people who are full of life, we often say, "Oh, he's the life of the party." When that person comes, the party seems more exciting. Everybody's laughing more.

But all of that is superficial. The scripture says, "The author of life is God Himself." And the closer we are to Him, the more alive we become. The Son has come to give us life and to give this life abundantly. And that is found when we are enslaved to righteousness and to our Father.

Would you take a minute to pray with us as we ask? The praise seems to come up. Again, take some time to really reflect. Every week, you can hear the Word of God and say, "Oh, I like that," or, "Didn't like that." Just like you watch at some sports event.

And all we become are hearers of the Word, and we become expert judges of good sermons and bad sermons. I hope that's not the case. We move beyond just hearers of the Word and doers. So how are you convicted? And if you're convicted, what does that mean? What does this Word mean to be enslaved to righteousness?

When you look at your life, what are your affections? So let's take a few minutes to consider. He says, "This is what God has done. The Holy Spirit is groaning inside of you, longing for the adoption, longing for redemption of ourselves." And so therefore, He says, "Yield." What have you been yielding to?

Yielding to the flesh or yielding to God? So let's take some time to meditate and think, and think practically. "Lord, judge the thoughts and intentions of my heart. What is it that You are calling me to do?" So let's take some time to pray as our Praise Team leads us.