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Let’s move on. The passage I opened with in Matthew comes from the tail end of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount. This next portion of Scripture comes nearer the Sermon’s beginning but is no less forceful. Ask yourself as we read, “Is Christ actually teaching that without holiness we will be cast into hell?” This comes from Matthew 5:27-30.

You have heard that it was said to those of old, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it form you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

Christ is teaching that without holiness we will be cast into hell, and He prescribes a mentality that is willing to do whatever it takes to keep sin from reigning in your body.

Last Friday I was coming home from work and I grabbed one of the many tapes from the floor of my car and popped it in. By God’s sovereign design, the tape I grabbed was profound and convicting and dealt entirely with this subject of holiness, or sanctification. The text was Romans 6:22 & 23, the preacher was John Piper, and the tape has been playing continuously in my car for the last week. I’ve heard the message five times now, once a day during my trips back and forth between home and work. There is a part of me that was tempted this morning to just pop that tape in, hit play, and sit down, but I trust that God’s strength will be magnified in my many weaknesses. Nevertheless, I was happy to glean from it what I could, and I am again thankful to God for faithful and gifted teachers of his Word. Let’s read together the end of Romans 6 (vv. 22,23), and this time I’m in the New American Standard.

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.

The first thing to point out is that eternal life is the outcome of sanctification, which we could simply define as progressively becoming like Jesus. This, then, corroborates with Hebrews 12:14 affirming that sanctification, or holiness, is necessary for the attainment of eternal life. But what else does this portion of Romans tell us? It also says that eternal life is a free gift. Therefore we must deduce that if eternal life is a free gift, then sanctification, which results in eternal life, must also be a free gift. If eternal life is a free gift, but the sanctification necessary to get there isn’t, then eternal life would not be a free gift.

But what does this mean that sanctification is a free gift, for we all know by experience and by the testimony of Scripture that holiness results from our own obedience, from our own choices, and from our own preferences? We will be held accountable for the decisions we make. In this same chapter of Romans we are commanded to consider ourselves dead to sin, to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies, to not obey its lusts, and to present ourselves as slaves of obedience. These are all things that we must do, and yet sanctification is a gift. We see this tension again in verse 17, “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.” Paul thanks God for our obedience, not us. If we were responsible for it, we’d get the thanks, but we don’t. What we are left with is the biblical reality that sanctification is both dependent upon our choices, and built upon God’s gift. The mistake that we could make here, and the mistake many people do make when considering these mind-bending biblical concepts, is to think that since sanctification is God’s gift, then we don’t have to do anything. That would be like saying, “Since obeying God is a gift, then I don’t have to obey God.” Or to place it in the framework of last week, “since the ability to get out of bed and read my Bible is a gift, then I don’t have to get out of bed and read my Bible.” Such thinking is nonsense. The gift of God is not in place of our effort, it is our effort! Whenever we deny ourselves some sinful pleasure, it’s a gift! Whenever we say some bold word of testimony, it’s a gift! Whenever we present the members of our bodies to righteousness, it’s a gift! So let’s be desperate for that gift, realizing that the gift is not in place of us, it is us. Our affections have been enslaved to another and our old self has passed away.

Before leaving the confines of Romans 6, I want to consider briefly this notion of slavery. The Bible is clear, both here and elsewhere, that all of humanity is enslaved to one of two masters. I said last week that we are all unified in the desire to be happy. Today we see that we also unified in bondage, either to God or to sin. There are no in betweens. Everyone you meet, everyone you see on the street, everyone you pass in the mall is either enslaved to God or enslaved to sin. The natural mind thinks itself free. The redeemed mind knows better.

This slavery which the Bible speaks of is unusual in that it is the slavery of the will. Unlike a person enslaved to a cruel master, forced to work against their will, this is a slavery which rules the will. Those whom God calls to salvation do not begrudge the rescue. We thank God, we do not cry out, “Help me, I’m enslaved!”. Likewise, those outside God’s kingdom are not beating at heaven’s door, lamenting their inability to get in. Rather, they are perfectly content to serve their slave master sin. The only way we can move from one slave master to the other (and it is a transaction which only works one way!) is for God to break in and free us from the slave master sin, the slave master we were born serving. In the process, our old self passes away and we are given new affections. We are still fallen, weighed down by our corrupt flesh, but no longer enslaved to sin. And once we are freed from sin and enslaved to God, all the forces of sin and hell are incapable of getting us back (John 10:29).

In a practical sense, this notion of slavery is not hard to illustrate in the real world. Even the most ardent atheist must admit that they are not free in any ultimate sense. We are all subject to something just beyond our control, namely our affections. For example, let’s consider food. If you despise mushrooms or brussel sprouts or liver, are you truly free to enjoy them? You are certainly free to eat them, but are you free to delight in them? Or how about sports, if you don’t like boxing, are you really free to have fun watching it, no matter how hard you try? While these first two examples center on fairly inconsequential preferences, matters of massive moral significance often fall in much the same way. Consider the gospel call. How many times does the exact same sermon prompt the exact opposite reactions in people, so that one person falls to their knees in repentance and the other jeers in derision. The same message was preached, the same evidence was presented, the same call was issued. These two people may be the same age, the same gender, the same race, and the same intelligence, and yet one accepts and one rejects. When it comes right down to it, our affections are rarely, if ever, determined by mere objective evidence. What could the deciding factor then be, if not something completely beyond our own control? The Bible tells us what that something is. For the believer, it is the Spirit divinely enabling us to prefer righteousness. For the unbeliever, it is the slave master sin forcing their affections away from righteousness. I tell you this not to discourage you, that you’re will is enslaved, but to encourage you that as believers, we are in a relationship with He who can change our affections and bend them towards Him, so plead with Him to do it at ever increasing levels. “Lord, satisfy me in the morning. May my desire be for you and for your Word and not for my bed!” The world has no mechanism for changing their affections. This is why all their efforts at moral reformation fail. But we, through prayer, can somehow influence Him who influences our affections . I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but I am thankful for it.