Speaking of Life 5032 | Therefore…
This week we’re sharing a Speaking of Life message from our archive as a supplemental resource. We encourage you to use this for reflection and preparation, or small group discussion. For your worship gathering, consider how a call to worship from a local voice or contextualized introduction to the theme might serve your congregation well.
Watch video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDUOX1iqd54
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5032 | Therefore…
Greg Williams
Have you ever noticed how many times the word “therefore” appears in the Bible? One rule of thumb that has been given to help understand a passage in scripture, is that when you see the word “therefore” you need to look to see what it is there for.
That’s a clever reminder that the author has previously told us something significant that will have implications for our lives. The “therefore” means that what follows will be the implications of what the author shared. As a silly example, if I told you that your house was on fire, I may choose to add, “Therefore, get out.” I hope I would not have to tell you that, but I think you get the point. Because your house is on fire, you will want to respond in a fitting way, like getting out of the house or calling the fire department.
The use of the word “therefore” reminds us that when God gives us a command or some instruction, it springs out of an important truth or promise. Sometimes the actual word “therefore” may not be written, but whenever you read a command or instruction, you don’t have to look far to see what the command or instruction is there for. It may be in the immediate passage before or it may be embedded in several chapters leading up to it.
In the book of Romans, we see an example where Paul has been talking about the reality of our union in Christ. On that basis, he then gives some implications of that wonderful truth with a “Therefore.”
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Romans 6:12-14 (NRSV)
If we read that passage and never looked to see what the “Therefore” was there for, the words may come across as burdensome and even impossible. But, because Paul has been talking about our union in Christ, these commands are fitting implications to the wonderfully good news that we have been freed from the bondage of sin to receive and live in his righteousness.
The recurring “Therefore” in scripture is letting us know that the triune God is not in love with raw and arbitrary commands. Rather, he loves us. Everything he tells us flows from that love, and from his good purposes for us. In short, there is nothing God tells us to do that is not for our good or that we must do apart from him. That’s what the “therefores” are there for.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Program Transcript
Speaking of Life 5032 | Therefore…
Greg Williams
Have you ever noticed how many times the word “therefore” appears in the Bible? One rule of thumb that has been given to help understand a passage in scripture, is that when you see the word “therefore” you need to look to see what it is there for.
That’s a clever reminder that the author has previously told us something significant that will have implications for our lives. The “therefore” means that what follows will be the implications of what the author shared. As a silly example, if I told you that your house was on fire, I may choose to add, “Therefore, get out.” I hope I would not have to tell you that, but I think you get the point. Because your house is on fire, you will want to respond in a fitting way, like getting out of the house or calling the fire department.
The use of the word “therefore” reminds us that when God gives us a command or some instruction, it springs out of an important truth or promise. Sometimes the actual word “therefore” may not be written, but whenever you read a command or instruction, you don’t have to look far to see what the command or instruction is there for. It may be in the immediate passage before or it may be embedded in several chapters leading up to it.
In the book of Romans, we see an example where Paul has been talking about the reality of our union in Christ. On that basis, he then gives some implications of that wonderful truth with a “Therefore.”
Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Romans 6:12-14 (NRSV)
If we read that passage and never looked to see what the “Therefore” was there for, the words may come across as burdensome and even impossible. But, because Paul has been talking about our union in Christ, these commands are fitting implications to the wonderfully good news that we have been freed from the bondage of sin to receive and live in his righteousness.
The recurring “Therefore” in scripture is letting us know that the triune God is not in love with raw and arbitrary commands. Rather, he loves us. Everything he tells us flows from that love, and from his good purposes for us. In short, there is nothing God tells us to do that is not for our good or that we must do apart from him. That’s what the “therefores” are there for.
I’m Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.
Psalm 89:1–4, 15–18 • Jeremiah 28:5–9 • Romans 6:12–23 • Matthew 10:40–42
Our theme today is Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us. Each Bible reading shows us what it means to trust God and how God responds with love, strength, and blessing. In Psalm 89:1–4, 15–18, we hear a song of praise about God’s love and promises. The psalmist says that those who walk in God’s light are blessed. God is their strength, their shield, and their joy. This shows us that faithfulness is not only about duty; it also brings deep happiness and a sense of being loved and protected. The prophet Jeremiah stands firm even when others speak messages that are false but comfortable to hear in Jeremiah 28:5–9. Jeremiah reminds the people that true faithfulness means listening to God, not just to words that sound nice or that confirm our own opinions. He teaches us that following God may not always be simple, but it is always right. In Matthew 10:40–42, Jesus says that even small acts of kindness done in his name matter to God. When we welcome, serve, or care for others, we are not unnoticed. God is present in those moments. In Romans 6:12–23, Paul reminds us that when we belong to God, we belong to life. We are no longer on our own. Serving God leads to freedom, purpose, and hope. Together, these Scriptures tell us that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not leave us to figure things out by ourselves. They walk with us, support us, and have our backs every step of the way.
Reminder: This introductory paragraph is intended to show how the four RCL selections for this week are connected and to assist the preacher prepare the sermon. It is not intended to be included in the sermon.
How to use this sermon resource.
Christ Jesus Obeys on Our Behalf
and Shares His Life With Us
Romans 6:12–23 NRSVUE
[Read or ask someone to read the passage.]
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:12–23 NRSVUE
Last week, we read the first half of Romans 6. We heard the good news that in Christ, God has already freed us from sin. Through our union with Jesus — proclaimed in baptism — we have died with him and been raised into newness of life. Sin no longer owns us, defines us, or rules us. Our old self has been crucified, and we are now alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The passage ended with an invitation to consider or to view ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ. And that brings us to today’s question. If this is true of us, that Jesus has freed us from sin, how do we live from that reality now?
Well, there’s only one way we can live this reality: Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Our obedience, as you’ll see in this passage, is important. Our choices and actions matter. But our obedience is only possible because it’s happening inside of the reality of Jesus’ obedience. In the Incarnation, God became human in Jesus and lived the life we could not. He wholly relied on and listened to his Father, and empowered by the Holy Spirit, Jesus lived a life without sin. He lived in perfect obedience.
And because God, in Christ Jesus, has united himself to humanity, we are included in his obedience. We are joined to Jesus, and he shares his life with us. We call this the vicarious work of Christ, meaning what he did on our behalf.
So, let’s talk about how we live in light of this reality.
Tools of love or tools of harm
Verse 12–14 contrasts two different ways of living.
You can bring your whole self to sin and be a tool of unrighteousness. Or you can bring your whole self to God and be a tool of righteousness.
Biblically, righteousness is first and foremost about relationship — about being in a right relationship with God and with others. In this sense, unrighteousness is that which leads to brokenness and harm in a relationship. Sin here means the patterns and powers that pull you away from love and into harm.
Earlier in this letter, Paul declares the good news that we have been freed from sin. Now Paul moves from what God has done to how we live because of this. He says: do not let sin rule your life anymore.
And here’s the key: You are not under law (trying to earn your way). You are under grace (living from what God has already given). That’s why change is possible.
Verse 15:
Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
Paul asks this question for a second time: If grace is free, does that mean sin does not matter? Again: No. It makes no sense. This is not who you are any longer.
The life we now live is lived by trust in the Father, and Christ lives in us by the Spirit.
Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Let’s hear verse 16 again:
Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
Basically, do you want to obey or be controlled by harm, or controlled by love and right relationships?
Obedience is not about rule-keeping or earning God’s approval. It flows from relationship. We love because God first loved us, and our obedience becomes an expression of that love.
When Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he pointed to love. Love for God and love for neighbor are at the center of our response to him (Matthew 22:37–39).
Verse 17–18:
17 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness.
Paul reminds them of what has already changed. They used to be controlled by sin.
They’ve been set free from sin and are now living in a new direction. This does not mean perfection. It means their core allegiance has shifted.
Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Verse 19:
I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.
Paul makes it very practical. Before, people used their lives (their bodies, choices, habits) in ways that led to harm. Now, he says: use those same parts of your life in ways that lead to goodness, healing, and love.
In plain language: Live out with your actions what God has already done in you.
Now it can be difficult to nearly impossible to engage with this imagery of slavery. People have caused unspeakable harm by enslaving others. Paul admits he is using human language because of our limits. Perhaps he is trying to make a comparison or analogy that the readers of his letter will understand, but he knows metaphors and images are never perfect and fall short.
Here’s what we do know. The Bible, taken as a whole, teaches us that God is love who lays down his life for his children. So, when we hear “slaves to righteousness” or (later in verse 22) “enslaved to God,” it does not refer to oppressive, coercive, destructive ownership, as in the world’s form of enslaving people. We are not possessions; we are children of God. And we are “bound” to God because we are his and he is ours. We belong to God. We are united to the Father, in Jesus, by the Spirit.
In short, once we were controlled and ruled by behaviors that lead to harm. But in Christ, love rules in our hearts. This very good news.
Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Verses 20—21:
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.”
Paul asks them to reflect. When you lived in those old ways: What did it actually produce? What were the consequences? Was it life-giving?
His answer is implied: it led to things that now bring shame and ultimately lead to death — not just physical death, but a kind of broken, empty life.
Sin never truly gives life.
Verse 22:
But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life.
Because of what God has done: You are freed from sin. You now belong to God.
Jesus has freed you from sin. And you still sin.
We could say this is one of the paradoxes of following Jesus. A paradox is when two truths seem like they should contradict each other, but instead they both remain true. Rather than canceling out, they actually deepen and reinforce one another.
Like: already / not yet. We are already free of sin. We are not yet fully obedient to love. This paradox helps reveal what sanctification means.
You belong to God; now “the fruit you have leads to sanctification” (verse 22).
The Holy Spirit produces fruit in us that leads to us being conformed to the image of God. Sanctification is our movement and life with God over time. It is God setting us apart and forming us into a life shaped by Christ’s love. Sanctification is not about becoming acceptable to God; it is about living out what God has already made true of us in Christ.
Jesus has already freed you from sin. And the Spirit is leading and forming us to choose and act in ways that move away from harm to be obedient to God’s love. Sanctification holds the tension of these two truths that appear to oppose one another. Instead of negating each other, they draw out a deeper reality.
Are paradoxes and sanctification difficult to explain? Yes. Some of the realities of God are difficult to explain with words. This does not mean that God’s truth is abstract or distant. It does not mean that God is unknowable.
God’s truths have to be lived out; God’s way needs to be experienced. We come to discover and experience what’s true about God along the way, in the middle of the real lives we’re actually living. It unfolds within the concrete realities of our lived experiences.
Sanctification and obedience are actively joining Jesus in his mission of love in the world. It is in our participating that God changes us and our understanding unfolds. As we wake up to the truth and actively live inside this reality, our minds and hearts are shaped and transformed.
And it becomes much less about running from sin and much more about running toward love. In this way, obedience is not a burden; it’s freedom.
Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Verse 23:
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul ends with a clear summary. Sin pays wages — what it gives you is death (a life that falls apart). Death is not a fine that God charges for sin; death is the outcome. Death is what sin produces.
God gives a gift — eternal life — real, lasting life with him. Eternal life here does not merely mean lasting forever. It’s not about how much life; it’s about what kind of life — the quality of life. It describes a flourishing life full of right relationship with God and others, experiencing peace, love, hope, joy, and all the wonderful traits the Spirit produces in us.
The key difference: Sin gives you what you earn. God gives you what you could not earn. And that unearned gift is life in Jesus Christ.
Collective Obedience in a Divided World
Obedience is our faithful response to God’s love. This is expressed by our trust and participation in what God is doing. Faithful obedience is empowered by the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
And we are not left to obey on our own.
The Father calls us into relationship and reveals his will in love.
The Son has perfectly obeyed on our behalf and invites us to share in his life.
The Spirit lives in us, transforming our hearts and empowering us to respond.
Obedience is a work of grace from beginning to end. We have been freed from sin. We now belong to God. We share in Christ’s life and obedience.
Because God has already set you free in Christ, you do not have to live under old patterns anymore. You can live a new life shaped by God’s love.
This is good news that needs to be shared with one another in the Church. We should not neglect building up one another.
May we encourage one another with this truth. May we hold up mirrors to one another, declaring: This is who we are! We are dead to sin and bound to love. We walk in newness of life. We are held in the tender love of the Father, Son, and Spirit who enjoys sharing life with us and sanctifying us. The triune God is producing in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
By the Spirit’s sanctifying work in us, we join Jesus’ mission in the world to renew, redeem, and restore all things. The Spirit empowers us to live inside the Father’s love for the world. We’re empowered to reflect and demonstrate that love to our neighbors by …
-
- Choosing love in our relationships
- Acting with honesty and integrity
- Serving others with humility
- Responding with forgiveness and grace
As we grow in love for God and neighbor, our obedience becomes a reflection of who we already are in Christ. Together, we become a church that lives out the love of God in the world.
And the Church, at its best, is not merely a place you attend. The Church is what collective obedience looks like — unity and love in a divided world.
So, consider yourself dead to choices and actions that lead to harm and destructive relationships. Bring your whole self to be bound to, to be attached to right relationships, leading to sanctification.
Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.
Listen to audio: https://cloud.gci.org/dl/GReverb/GR076-Pandel-YearA-Proper8.mp3
Sunday, June 28, 2026 — Proper 8
Romans 6:12–23 NRSVUE
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Program Transcript
We’re at the home stretch, one passage to go. It’s Romans 6:12–23. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 8 in Ordinary Time, June 28. Matt, read us for it, please.
[00:45:44] Matt:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[00:47:12] Anthony: Amen. Paul uses a language of slavery, Matt. And we’ve already talked about sin and righteousness. Help us apprehend a Christological Trinitarian way to consider enslavement to righteousness. Is it just some sort of behavior modification program? How does that get expressed in the ways that we live in love?
[00:47:33] Matt: I think it starts in just acknowledging a cold, hard fact that comes to us from none other than Saint Bob Dylan: “You got to serve somebody.”
[00:47:45] Anthony: Yes.
[00:47:47] Matt: I spend a lot of time with folks from a variety of traditions and experiences who are on this journey of seeing the triune God is greater and better and kinder and more depictive of love than what they had traditionally believed.
And it always alarms me a little bit how quickly some folks will turn off the idea of service specific to God, but even service to the Creation as if all slavery is the same. I love Paul’s use of love slave language throughout his writing. This is voluntary. No one is forced to be enslaved to God.
It is a conscious choice that is made. Specifically, the way I am going is not productive for me, it is not productive for my family, it’s not productive for the world around me. And so, I want to go a different direction, but like Dylan told us, “you got to serve somebody.” There has to be some direction that you lean into because we are not independent actors in the world.
We are not capable of creation in and of ourselves. We’re not capable of producing the destiny outcomes that we want independent of ourselves. We are only capable of leaning into the order and design of that which is greater than us. And by holding the world together, by being … I take the view of the Ascension that when Ephesians references Christ as having filled all, he ascends and fills all things with himself, we find in everything, the silver thread of redemptive glory that essentially places Christ in this position of being the fabric that holds everything together — not just our spirituality, but everything. It is what holds, keeps the air flowing into our lungs. It’s what keeps the sun rising. It’s that he is the mechanism — to the degree that one can refer to the Uncreated as a mechanism — the means by which the world keeps in motion.
And so, from that perspective I think the opposite of legalism is actually hedonism. Interesting. That, I can simply live for myself. I can do whatever I want because I’m free. One of my mentors years ago used to use the phrase that the law will kill you, but license will kill you quicker.
And I think there’s wisdom there …
Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: … that I am free to “do as I please,” but it can still lead to very destructive ends. I was freed for a purpose. I was freed in the hope that I would voluntarily choose a posture of love, a posture of voluntary loving enslavement to the only master who does not force subjugation, but only accepts service voluntarily.
[00:50:58] Anthony: Yeah, that’s … I want to chew on that. As you look at this text, Matt, what else would you want to proclaim from it? Because so much has been shoehorned in here, but what else do you see?
[00:51:09] Matt: I think the theme as a whole — and this is true for a lot of Paul’s writings, but I think it comes out in Romans the most and probably nowhere more so than this particular passage — is this notion of kenosis.
[00:51:20] Anthony: Yes.
[00:51:20] Matt: What I found is a lot of Christians can get on board with the idea of Christ being kenotic that he is self-emptying, that he empties all of his personal desires, all of what he may want, feel entitled to as God, whatever, and uses service and putting the interests of others ahead of his own as the metric for what his kingdom looks like.
[00:51:47] Anthony: Yeah. Go God. Don’t let it touch us.
[00:51:50] Matt: Yeah. Oh, that’s it exactly. We’re okay with that being him.
[00:51:53] Anthony: Yep.
[00:51:54] Matt: And we’ve even created — it breaks my heart — we’ve got a whole branch of folks out there who have pretty much decided that anything written before the crucifixion in the gospels is an irrelevancy because that was pre-cross.
Yeah, but they’re written after the cross, they’re even written after the epistles. So obviously there’s something there we’re supposed to be seen, or else it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to write it down just to tell me it’s not pertinent. The Sermon on the Mount is specifically what comes to mind with this — we’re now told what the kingdom should look like. We’re told the value of meekness, the inheritorial worth of putting the interests of others ahead of our own. In the Magnificat, the prayer that Mary prays when the angel visits her, that the high are brought low and the low are raised up, that the rich are sent away empty and the hungry are given bread.
That — and not twisted into some kind of weird class warfare thing, because that’s a whole, that’s the other swing of the pendulum that goes the other extreme — but that there’s an equalizing within the gospel where if all of us are truly living this modeled in, through, and as Christ, we are going to engage the world in a kenotic manner where we are putting the interests of others first. Imagine a faith community, a local church where every single person present is actively putting the interests of others ahead of themselves. Yeah.
[00:53:26] Anthony: Man.
[00:53:27] Matt: Imagine the challenges you’re not going to face. You’re not going to need arbitration, mediation. You’re not going to need a full-time marriage counselor on staff. There’s a lot of things you’re not going to need because everything shifts toward the other. There’s a book. It just came out. It’s priest and poet Malcolm Guite …
[00:53:50] Anthony: Yes.
[00:53:51] Matt: … has a new book out Galahad in the Grail. It’s a length, and this is, I think, part one of five, and this part’s 345 pages. It is a, an epic poem looking at Arthur and the Holy Grail and that story.
But he has this section, if I can read it here. It’s in the beginning and he’s talking about Galahad. And the only two characters relevant to the reading here are Galahad, who’s a kid at the time, and his mother, Elaine. And the text reads here, “He asked the lady, fair Elaine, what will become of me? Oh, you will be a knight, my son, the flower of chivalry. So many knights just draw their swords to shed blood on the land. They lust for might and mastery. They only pray of courtesy and keep a code of chivalry they scarcely understand. But when the sword of destiny is holdened in your hand, then you will not bring violence, but healing to the land.”
In a way that only Malcolm Guite can …
Anthony: Yep.
Matt: … that is the gospel. That is the summation of the gospel. Not that the powers that be knock the swords out of our hands and eliminate our participation, but that we voluntarily lay them down and instead choose to proceed in a new manner, actually operating as if we actually are a new creation rather than just a retread of what always has been.
Until — and again I don’t believe this is an inherently partisan or even political idea — until we are as aggrieved by what is happening to our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be or what whatever their nationality, race, political persuasion, income — until I’m as alarmed by injustice to them as I would be with injustice that comes to my doorstep, we are still living out of an old covenant.
[00:55:43] Anthony: Preach.
[00:55:45] Matt: And again, I think what’s most challenging for me right now is how — what I interpret that as just, that’s just the gospel. I don’t see it as controversial at all. And yet there are certain circles within the Christian faith, and not just Christendom, but within the legitimate Christian faith that views that very controversially, where they still seem very centered that the Jesus who is coming back is coming back to kick butt and take names, and he will look nothing like the Jesus that came as a lamb. And I don’t overuse the word heresy very often, but that is heretical.
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Jesus who returns in bodily form, the Jesus who is presented to us with every revelation, every time the light burns a little bit brighter, every time we see love and kindness in the world — that is a coming of Jesus. But to the degree that there is a “second coming” — that Jesus must be identical to who he was when he came the first time.
[00:56:48] Anthony: Amen.
[00:56:48] Matt: Or else God changed it.
[00:56:50] Anthony: Oh, there’s a lot there and I’m grateful for you, Matt. As we come to a close, I’m grateful for the myriad ways that you are a minister of the gospel, and it came out loud and clear in your articulation of the good news. And friends, the gospel is just that it is good news.
If it’s not good, it’s not gospel. And I wanted to end with a quote from the book, Tell It Slant by Eugene Peterson, because so many folks in our audience are preachers and teachers and pastors. He says, “Preaching is proclamation. Preaching announces what God is doing right here and now at this time and in this place.”
It also calls hearers to respond. Preaching is the good news that God is alive and present and in action, and because that is true, we can love our neighbors well. And I just thank you, Matt. I thank our team that works behind the scenes to make this podcast possible and as is our tradition here on Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word in prayer. Matt, if you would please pray for us, we’d be grateful.
[00:57:55] Matt: I’d be honored to.
Gracious and merciful God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are grateful that you have pulled us into your life and that you do this in such a way that we don’t lose personality or distinction, but we’re engrafted into the very heart of who you are. Thank you that there’s no such thing as an outsider. There’s no such thing as someone who has been separated or secluded out from your love, but that your love shines everywhere, that there is nowhere the rays of your countenance doesn’t touch. And so, Lord, we are grateful that we get to participate in this with you, that you could have been God all by yourself without any participation from us, but you opt to include us. You chose us for your very own. Thank you, Lord, that we are able to see you more clearly, more genuinely, and that the veil is being lifted from our sight more and more every moment of every day. I speak blessings, Lord, over everyone who is listening to us today who has engaged these beautiful texts with us and to the preachers who are going to be taking these texts and speaking to the hearts of your people, Lord, that they would receive not a new word, not a novel word, but that you would speak to their hearts specifically what is to be heard by their congregations and parishes, by those you’ve placed in their life, their family, and their own hearts, that Lord, you gave us a wonderful text of Holy Scripture, but you animate it, you enliven it by your Spirit, and we are grateful for the Comforter and Teacher that is ours this day and forevermore. In your name, we pray. Amen.
[00:59:33] Anthony: Amen.
Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating, and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you!
Program Transcript
We’re at the home stretch, one passage to go. It’s Romans 6:12–23. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 8 in Ordinary Time, June 28. Matt, read us for it, please.
[00:45:44] Matt:
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
[00:47:12] Anthony: Amen. Paul uses a language of slavery, Matt. And we’ve already talked about sin and righteousness. Help us apprehend a Christological Trinitarian way to consider enslavement to righteousness. Is it just some sort of behavior modification program? How does that get expressed in the ways that we live in love?
[00:47:33] Matt: I think it starts in just acknowledging a cold, hard fact that comes to us from none other than Saint Bob Dylan: “You got to serve somebody.”
[00:47:45] Anthony: Yes.
[00:47:47] Matt: I spend a lot of time with folks from a variety of traditions and experiences who are on this journey of seeing the triune God is greater and better and kinder and more depictive of love than what they had traditionally believed.
And it always alarms me a little bit how quickly some folks will turn off the idea of service specific to God, but even service to the Creation as if all slavery is the same. I love Paul’s use of love slave language throughout his writing. This is voluntary. No one is forced to be enslaved to God.
It is a conscious choice that is made. Specifically, the way I am going is not productive for me, it is not productive for my family, it’s not productive for the world around me. And so, I want to go a different direction, but like Dylan told us, “you got to serve somebody.” There has to be some direction that you lean into because we are not independent actors in the world.
We are not capable of creation in and of ourselves. We’re not capable of producing the destiny outcomes that we want independent of ourselves. We are only capable of leaning into the order and design of that which is greater than us. And by holding the world together, by being … I take the view of the Ascension that when Ephesians references Christ as having filled all, he ascends and fills all things with himself, we find in everything, the silver thread of redemptive glory that essentially places Christ in this position of being the fabric that holds everything together — not just our spirituality, but everything. It is what holds, keeps the air flowing into our lungs. It’s what keeps the sun rising. It’s that he is the mechanism — to the degree that one can refer to the Uncreated as a mechanism — the means by which the world keeps in motion.
And so, from that perspective I think the opposite of legalism is actually hedonism. Interesting. That, I can simply live for myself. I can do whatever I want because I’m free. One of my mentors years ago used to use the phrase that the law will kill you, but license will kill you quicker.
And I think there’s wisdom there …
Anthony: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: … that I am free to “do as I please,” but it can still lead to very destructive ends. I was freed for a purpose. I was freed in the hope that I would voluntarily choose a posture of love, a posture of voluntary loving enslavement to the only master who does not force subjugation, but only accepts service voluntarily.
[00:50:58] Anthony: Yeah, that’s … I want to chew on that. As you look at this text, Matt, what else would you want to proclaim from it? Because so much has been shoehorned in here, but what else do you see?
[00:51:09] Matt: I think the theme as a whole — and this is true for a lot of Paul’s writings, but I think it comes out in Romans the most and probably nowhere more so than this particular passage — is this notion of kenosis.
[00:51:20] Anthony: Yes.
[00:51:20] Matt: What I found is a lot of Christians can get on board with the idea of Christ being kenotic that he is self-emptying, that he empties all of his personal desires, all of what he may want, feel entitled to as God, whatever, and uses service and putting the interests of others ahead of his own as the metric for what his kingdom looks like.
[00:51:47] Anthony: Yeah. Go God. Don’t let it touch us.
[00:51:50] Matt: Yeah. Oh, that’s it exactly. We’re okay with that being him.
[00:51:53] Anthony: Yep.
[00:51:54] Matt: And we’ve even created — it breaks my heart — we’ve got a whole branch of folks out there who have pretty much decided that anything written before the crucifixion in the gospels is an irrelevancy because that was pre-cross.
Yeah, but they’re written after the cross, they’re even written after the epistles. So obviously there’s something there we’re supposed to be seen, or else it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to write it down just to tell me it’s not pertinent. The Sermon on the Mount is specifically what comes to mind with this — we’re now told what the kingdom should look like. We’re told the value of meekness, the inheritorial worth of putting the interests of others ahead of our own. In the Magnificat, the prayer that Mary prays when the angel visits her, that the high are brought low and the low are raised up, that the rich are sent away empty and the hungry are given bread.
That — and not twisted into some kind of weird class warfare thing, because that’s a whole, that’s the other swing of the pendulum that goes the other extreme — but that there’s an equalizing within the gospel where if all of us are truly living this modeled in, through, and as Christ, we are going to engage the world in a kenotic manner where we are putting the interests of others first. Imagine a faith community, a local church where every single person present is actively putting the interests of others ahead of themselves. Yeah.
[00:53:26] Anthony: Man.
[00:53:27] Matt: Imagine the challenges you’re not going to face. You’re not going to need arbitration, mediation. You’re not going to need a full-time marriage counselor on staff. There’s a lot of things you’re not going to need because everything shifts toward the other. There’s a book. It just came out. It’s priest and poet Malcolm Guite …
[00:53:50] Anthony: Yes.
[00:53:51] Matt: … has a new book out Galahad in the Grail. It’s a length, and this is, I think, part one of five, and this part’s 345 pages. It is a, an epic poem looking at Arthur and the Holy Grail and that story.
But he has this section, if I can read it here. It’s in the beginning and he’s talking about Galahad. And the only two characters relevant to the reading here are Galahad, who’s a kid at the time, and his mother, Elaine. And the text reads here, “He asked the lady, fair Elaine, what will become of me? Oh, you will be a knight, my son, the flower of chivalry. So many knights just draw their swords to shed blood on the land. They lust for might and mastery. They only pray of courtesy and keep a code of chivalry they scarcely understand. But when the sword of destiny is holdened in your hand, then you will not bring violence, but healing to the land.”
In a way that only Malcolm Guite can …
Anthony: Yep.
Matt: … that is the gospel. That is the summation of the gospel. Not that the powers that be knock the swords out of our hands and eliminate our participation, but that we voluntarily lay them down and instead choose to proceed in a new manner, actually operating as if we actually are a new creation rather than just a retread of what always has been.
Until — and again I don’t believe this is an inherently partisan or even political idea — until we are as aggrieved by what is happening to our neighbor, whoever that neighbor may be or what whatever their nationality, race, political persuasion, income — until I’m as alarmed by injustice to them as I would be with injustice that comes to my doorstep, we are still living out of an old covenant.
[00:55:43] Anthony: Preach.
[00:55:45] Matt: And again, I think what’s most challenging for me right now is how — what I interpret that as just, that’s just the gospel. I don’t see it as controversial at all. And yet there are certain circles within the Christian faith, and not just Christendom, but within the legitimate Christian faith that views that very controversially, where they still seem very centered that the Jesus who is coming back is coming back to kick butt and take names, and he will look nothing like the Jesus that came as a lamb. And I don’t overuse the word heresy very often, but that is heretical.
He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Jesus who returns in bodily form, the Jesus who is presented to us with every revelation, every time the light burns a little bit brighter, every time we see love and kindness in the world — that is a coming of Jesus. But to the degree that there is a “second coming” — that Jesus must be identical to who he was when he came the first time.
[00:56:48] Anthony: Amen.
[00:56:48] Matt: Or else God changed it.
[00:56:50] Anthony: Oh, there’s a lot there and I’m grateful for you, Matt. As we come to a close, I’m grateful for the myriad ways that you are a minister of the gospel, and it came out loud and clear in your articulation of the good news. And friends, the gospel is just that it is good news.
If it’s not good, it’s not gospel. And I wanted to end with a quote from the book, Tell It Slant by Eugene Peterson, because so many folks in our audience are preachers and teachers and pastors. He says, “Preaching is proclamation. Preaching announces what God is doing right here and now at this time and in this place.”
It also calls hearers to respond. Preaching is the good news that God is alive and present and in action, and because that is true, we can love our neighbors well. And I just thank you, Matt. I thank our team that works behind the scenes to make this podcast possible and as is our tradition here on Gospel Reverb, we like to end with a word in prayer. Matt, if you would please pray for us, we’d be grateful.
[00:57:55] Matt: I’d be honored to.
Gracious and merciful God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are grateful that you have pulled us into your life and that you do this in such a way that we don’t lose personality or distinction, but we’re engrafted into the very heart of who you are. Thank you that there’s no such thing as an outsider. There’s no such thing as someone who has been separated or secluded out from your love, but that your love shines everywhere, that there is nowhere the rays of your countenance doesn’t touch. And so, Lord, we are grateful that we get to participate in this with you, that you could have been God all by yourself without any participation from us, but you opt to include us. You chose us for your very own. Thank you, Lord, that we are able to see you more clearly, more genuinely, and that the veil is being lifted from our sight more and more every moment of every day. I speak blessings, Lord, over everyone who is listening to us today who has engaged these beautiful texts with us and to the preachers who are going to be taking these texts and speaking to the hearts of your people, Lord, that they would receive not a new word, not a novel word, but that you would speak to their hearts specifically what is to be heard by their congregations and parishes, by those you’ve placed in their life, their family, and their own hearts, that Lord, you gave us a wonderful text of Holy Scripture, but you animate it, you enliven it by your Spirit, and we are grateful for the Comforter and Teacher that is ours this day and forevermore. In your name, we pray. Amen.
[00:59:33] Anthony: Amen.
Thank you for being a guest of Gospel Reverb. If you like what you heard, give us a high rating, and review us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast content. Share this episode with a friend. It really does help us get the word out as we are just getting started. Join us next month for a new show and insights from the RCL. Until then, peace be with you!
Small Group Discussion Questions
- “Christ Jesus obeys on our behalf and shares his life with us.” How does this statement challenge or reshape the way you think about obedience?
- Romans 6 contrasts being bound to sin and being bound to righteousness. What are some everyday “choices, habits, or patterns” that feel like instruments of harm, and what might it look like for those same parts of your life to become instruments of love?
- The sermon names the paradox: already free from sin, not yet fully obedient to love. How does viewing it as sanctification (maturing in Christ rather than failure) change how you respond?
- The sermon ends by framing the Church as “collective obedience in a divided world.” What might collective obedience look like in your church right now? Where is God inviting us together to choose love over harm?
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