not your own

Romans 14:1-9

I think it’s fair to say that most of you here today would be considered regular church goers.  Especially those of you that are visiting from out of town.  The fact that you choose to go to church while on your vacation is commendable, and is evidence of the fact that you’re probably consistently in church when you are at home as well.

If I were to guess, I would suppose that many of you, like me,  were raised in a home where you were expected to be at church every Sunday. In my case, I was a preacher’s kid.  I was in church every time the door was opened.  Sunday school, Sunday morning service, Sunday evening service, Wednesday night service, youth group on Saturday and anything else that was going on.  And if you’re my age or older, then chances are you were brought up in the kind of home where one dressed up for church.  Women wore hats and some of them even wore gloves.  The men wore suits and ties.  We were told we should look our best for church.  And so people wore what they called their Sunday best.  And if you didn’t dress up  for church, then you stood out like a sore thumb.

But as you are all aware, back in the late 60’s and the early 70’s, we had something of a cultural revolution in this country.  The hippy movement inspired a whole generation to grow their hair out, jeans and t shirts became the popular dress, and there was a colossal culture shift in the way people started thinking about things.  Young people in particular were calling for freedom to do whatever felt good, freedom from what they considered the hang ups of the previous generations.

Freedom and individual rights became the mantra of the Civil Rights Movement, the Equal Rights Movement, the Peace Movement, and the Sexual Revolution and it all was set to a musical cocktail blending booze, drugs and rock and roll.  And if you were alive at the time, it seemed like everybody was drinking the koolaid.

Coming somewhat late to the party, so to speak, was the church.  Some hippies discovered Jesus and began what became known as the Jesus Movement.  That led to more and more churches doing away with many of the social standards that were at odds with barefooted, longhaired Jesus freaks.   Gradually, the mainstream church in America began to change along with the culture.  Some of the changes were good and some of them have not been so good.  In our rush to be culturally relevant, the church in some cases threw the baby out with the bath water. 

Today the Jesus Movement and hippy inspired culture has been replaced by whatever the latest trends and fashions are today.  But there is one hallmark of that time period that still is a pervasive attitude of not only our culture today, but also of the church today.  And that is this fixation over what we perceive to be our freedoms, our rights as an individual.  It became ingrained in our society in the hippy generation, and it still continues with us today.

But the freedoms that inspired the hippy generation to try drugs and free sex and all these things that once were considered taboo just turned out to be an empty promise of the devil that enslaved a generation to alcoholism, drug addiction and wasted lives.  Kris Kristofferson wrote a song about this freedom called Me and Bobby Magee which was sung by the late Janis Joplin who eventually died of a drug overdose.  Ironically, Kristofferson was one of the first rock musicians to produce what would become known as “Christian rock”, with a song called “Why Me Lord” and another hit called “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”  But he didn’t last long in that genre and began a career which was known for heavy partying and drinking. But in that song “Me and Bobby Magee,” there is the line that says a lot about what the freedoms of the 60’s ended up revealing.  It says, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…”  A generation lost their innocence, lost their virginity, many of them lost their sanity and even their lives trying to exercise their freedom to live like they wanted.

Maybe it’s an uniquely American phenomenon, I don’t know.  But there is still this overarching attitude that our personal freedoms are something we have a right to exercise, no matter what.   And what I think that Paul is getting at here in this passage, really starting all the way back in chapter 12, is that this idea of personal freedom is at odds with mature Christianity.  When we as a church are overly concerned about exercising our personal freedoms and protecting our personal rights, then it goes against the teachings of the Bible.

At the root of this problem with freedoms is the concept of grace.  If you were here last week, then maybe you will recall that I spoke about our misconception of what grace really means.  It’s not a license to sin.  It’s not freedom to do whatever we want without fear of condemnation or repercussion. Romans  6:1 says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

But rather grace is the loving gift of God whereby He redeemed us from the price of sin, by paying the penalty for our sin with the blood of Jesus Christ. “God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Jesus.” 2 Corinthians 5: 21   That was grace.  God paying for what we could never pay for.  God giving us what we could never get on our own: righteousness, holiness, made acceptable to God.

Now then, having been made righteous by grace, 1Cor. 6:19 says “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.”

Well, wait a minute, you say.  I thought Jesus said He came to set the captives free?  And that if He sets us free we shall be free indeed.  What happened to our freedom? 

Well, the answer to that is if you have exchanged your old life for new life in Jesus Christ, if you’ve exchanged your sins for His righteousness, if you have been changed from death unto life, then you are free.  You are set free from the wages of sin.  Jesus paid the price of it.  You are free from slavery to sin.  Sin no longer has dominion over you.  You are free from the condemnation of the law.  Jesus fulfilled the law for us.  And you are free from death, because Jesus has given you eternal life.

This passage we have been looking at in the past couple of weeks and are continuing in today is only really understood when we understand what it means to be bought with a price, our bodies are no longer our own, but we are the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. 

There is an Old Testament illustration of this principle in Exodus 21.  And in this passage there is a law written regarding a Hebrew slave that must be set free in the seventh year.  "But if the slave plainly says, 'I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,' then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.”  

The slave was set free, by law he was a free man.  But because of the love that he had for his master and his master’s house, he choose to live with him permanently, forever as his bond servant.  And Paul uses this terminology repeatedly in his gospel.  He starts off in Romans 1 identifying himself as a bond servant of Jesus Christ.  In Philippians, Jesus is described as a bond servant.  James called himself a bond servant.  Moses was called a bond servant, as was Peter and Jude, and  many other disciples.

And this is the principle of freedom then that must be preeminent in our lives.  We have been set free from the condemnation of the law and from the bondage of sin when we believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,  and yet we become because of our love for God and by choice bond servants of Jesus Christ, willingly relinquishing that freedom, our rights, for the sake of the church and the work of the kingdom.  We realize that we have been bought with a price.  Therefore our body is not our own.  And so we offer to God our bodies in chapter 12 verse 1 as a spiritual sacrifice for His purposes, to do His will.   The Holy Spirit indwells our bodies so that Christ may live in me.  That Christ may live through my body here on earth. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, that is such an amazing thought.  It should galvanize you into action.  It should humble you.  It should energize you.  That God has chosen you to be indwelled by His Spirit so that your body would be the vehicle through which Jesus Christ lives on earth.  This is the underlying foundation of these last four chapters of Romans.  That in becoming Christians there is this great exchange; Christ gives us His righteousness and we give over our lives to Christ to be used for His purposes.  We no longer live according to our desires.  We no longer live according to our purposes.  No longer live according to our will.  But we willingly surrender  our bodies, even our freedoms, even our rights, to Jesus Christ to be used for His will. 

Listen, if we got hold of this principle and really, fully accepted it, and lived it, we would see another cultural revolution that would put the hippy movement to shame.  If Christians embraced this concept the way that the world embraced the hippy movement, then we would see a world wide revival that has never been equaled.  Instead of the sham love that the hippy movement proposed which ended up in disillusion and destruction of lives, we would see agape love that would impact the world to turn their lives over to God. 

But unfortunately, the church is a far cry from any sort of bond servant mentality today.  Somehow, Satan has duped the church  into thinking that God is our servant, He is our genie in a bottle, that we can rub it and say a few special words in  a special way and presto, God pops out and says, “Your wish is my command.”  And preachers are preaching that if you just have enough faith, God will be at your beck and call to do your bidding.  The gospel has been turned on it’s head.  It’s upside down.  It’s me first and God only to be used in the case of emergency.

No, the gospel according to Paul is summarized in his statement, “for me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”  He’s saying, if I am going to live, it’s going to be for Christ.  He is my reason for living.  He is my purpose.  His will be done in my life as it is in heaven. 

So how is this bond servant kind of love lived on a practical basis?  How do I live as Christ would live, how do I let Christ have the preeminence in my life?  How do I live in the Spirit and not in the flesh?  Well, Paul said first of all in chapter 12:1 that I will offer my body as a living sacrifice to be used by God for His purposes.  Then in 12: 3-8, I will serve the church using my spiritual gifts that God has given me for the building up of the body.  Then in 12: 9-21 he tells us to love those that are even persecuting you and not take revenge, but rather helping and showing hospitality to those in need, to overcome evil with good. 

And then in chapter 13 verses 1 to 7, he talks about our relationship to the government. We are to be model citizens; submit to the governing authorities and pay our taxes. Then beginning in verse 8 of chapter 13, he talks about the relationship we're to have to our neighbors.  We are to love and serve our neighbors the way we used to love and serve ourselves.  If we really love God, we will love our neighbors the way we say we love God, therefore we can’t sin against our neighbor.  He tells us to live in the light of Christ, constantly looking for His appearing, constantly putting on Jesus Christ and putting to death our fleshly desires.

And now in chapter 14, Paul begins a section which will take two chapters to cover, and that is the subject of serving the weaker members of the church in order to prevent them from being offended and to keep them from stumbling.  And here is where my freedoms are tested.  Where I am tempted to resort back to the worldly attitude of exercising my rights and freedoms and if someone’s got a problem with that then that’s too bad.  No, Paul will show us in these verses that the strong in the faith, must give way for the weak in the faith. If there is a possibility that something I do in the exercise of my freedom will be a stumbling block to another brother, then I won’t do it.  Because I love my brother more than I love my freedom.

In the church in Rome, there were new converts coming to Christ from all sorts of backgrounds.  And we don’t have time this morning to go into all of these details.  We will address them more fully this Wednesday evening at our Bible study.  But suffice it to say that you had converted pagans who had been involved in idol worship and temples where they had all sorts of feasts and ceremonies and then at the other extreme, you had converted Jews coming out of Judaism and the Mosaic law with all their dietary restrictions and special days that they observed.   And when these new believers came to Christ, some of them had a hard time embracing the freedoms that others seemed to embrace.  The converted idol worshippers may have not had any problem learning to worship on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, and weren’t concerned about Jewish feast days.  But maybe they had a big problem with meat that was sold in the marketplace which had once been offered to idols and then resold by the temple to the meat market down the street.  And so some Christians in Rome were offended that others were buying meat from the market that resold sacrificial offerings, and some new converts from Judaism were still struggling over a lifetime tradition of keeping the Sabbath or other important feast days. 

And so Paul, rather than addressing all the do’s and don’ts and trying to give these new Christians a bunch of rules to live by, just continues with the principle of agape love that the church is supposed to have for one another.  The principle of giving preference to one another out of sacrificial love.  He is saying that rather than exercising our rights and freedoms under the banner of grace, we submit to one another out of love and restrict or control our freedoms for the sake of the weaker brother.

Vs.  1.  Now accept the one who is weak in faith, but not for the purpose of passing judgment on his opinions. 2.  One person has faith that he may eat all things, but he who is weak eats vegetables only. 3. The one who eats is not to regard with contempt the one who does not eat, and the one who does not eat is not to judge the one who eats, for God has accepted him. 4. Who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls; and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.    5.  One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike. Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind.    6.  He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord, and he who eats, does so for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God.

Paul simplifies this in a way that is instructive for us as well here today.  We may not have the same traditions and cultural backgrounds that these Romans had.  But we still have the same attitudes and the same temptations to put our priorities above someone else.  To hold to our freedoms and our rights at the expense of another. 

But the key to this whole passage is found in the next couple of verses. Romans 14:7 “For not one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.  For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.”

And so the question that I would leave you with today, that I pray you would examine your hearts over this morning, is this.  Are you really living your life for the Lord or for yourself?  Paul says the Christian is living for the Lord, that we do not live for ourselves anymore.  We are bought with a price, we are not our own, the life we live in the flesh we live for God.  And I would ask you to examine your heart and ask yourself if that statement characterizes your life today?  Is Christ living through you?

I’m not asking you if you prayed the sinners prayer at some point in your life.  I’m not asking you if you have been baptized or joined a church somewhere.  I’m asking you have you responded to the redemption offered by the blood of Jesus Christ by offering back your life to Him as a living sacrifice?  Are you putting to death your flesh so that Christ is able to live in you? 

Or are you still trying to hang on to your freedoms, your rights to live life the way you want to live?  Or do you just want to keep God on the side to help you achieve your purposes, but you haven’t got much interest in living sold out as a vessel for Jesus Christ?

Listen, I’m not your judge here this morning. I am not deciding who is born again and who isn’t.  But verse 11 says one day we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.  Our motives will be made known on that day.  God will reveal our hearts.

You may be here today and you can’t say for me to live is Christ.  You know that Christ is not the purpose or the center of your life.  But He can be.  He wants to be.  And if you will just humble yourself right now and call on Him for forgiveness He will come into your heart and live in you and you with Him.  He will change you from the inside out.  Call on Him and invite Him into your heart today.  The psalmist David said, “a broken and contrite heart you will not despise, O Lord.”  Invite God to take over your life today.  To live in you and through you to do His will.