James Meehan - Freed From, Freed For
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— Well, welcome to this week of "Switch Uncut" where we are doing what we enjoy doing. Just nerding out over the Bible, asking and answering different questions about faith, following Jesus, and of course the Bible. With me is our co-host, Kaitlyn Caffrey, who is going to be walking us through a passage in Romans that I think is gonna be really helpful for us as we continue in this journey of becoming more like Jesus for the sake of others. And so, Romans... You're not Romans. Kaitlyn, what are we reading today and why?
— So we're gonna be reading in Romans 6, the section where Paul is kind of talking about how we have been redeemed, we have been rescued from our slavery to sin and to death. And so I'm super excited because that's what we just talked about at Switch this week, and so Paul is going to reinforce most ideas that we've already heard.
— Yeah, you might be noticing a pattern here, that what happens during our Switch experience on Wednesday night and online and we talk about here on "Switch Uncut" kind of like weave together, because we want this to be a cohesive journey for you, so that what happens on Wednesday night is sort of the starting point and then you can go deeper throughout the week through the different Bible plans and through videos like this one, because ultimately a couple of hours on Wednesday night is nowhere near enough to actually equip you with what you need to know to become who God has created you to be. So, with that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and read this passage of scripture and then we'll talk about it. From beginning to end, this is Romans 6:12-18, where the apostle Paul writes: Do not let sin control the way you live. Don't give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God. Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace. Well then, since God's grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin and you have become slaves to righteous living.
— So, something that we do is we explore the context around the passages that we read because we know that Jesus is King and context is everything when it comes to understanding scripture and what it means for us today. So, who wrote Romans and why did he write it?
— Yeah, great question. And the cool thing is answering these questions doesn't actually require you to be a Bible scholar or a historian. There's tons of people who have done really great work on learning the answers to those questions that we can learn from, and so what we wanna do though is just give you the basics. There's so much more you can dive into, but when it comes to understanding the context, three super easy questions. Who wrote it, who did they write it to, and why did they write it. So, the author of Romans was the apostle Paul who was one of the most prominent leaders in the early Church. He wrote what makes up 2/3 of the New Testament in these different letters that were written to these churches. And it's important to remember that what we're reading when we read Romans is someone else's mail. This is literally Paul writing a letter to a group of Christians in Rome. And so there's a lot of things that we don't actually know, so we have to approach this text with wisdom, with humility and with curiosity to ask the question, what did Paul really mean? What was going on in the lives of his original audience and how does translate to what we're experiencing in our modern world? So, Paul wrote it. He wrote it to a group of Christians living in Rome. And what's unique about this letter as opposed to most of Paul's other writings is that Paul didn't actually know these Christians personally. He wasn't the one who planted this church in Rome. But he knew about them, he had heard stories of their faith and the struggles they were experiencing, and what Paul's doing here is trying to help instruct them in the ways of Jesus so that they can represent Jesus well in the capital of the Roman Empire, the city of Rome. So, Paul wrote it, he wrote it to Christians living in Rome that he hadn't met yet, and the reason why he wrote it was what I just mentioned, to help them understand the truth of the gospel, who Jesus is and what that means for them, because they were experiencing a lot of challenges that wouldn't actually just be unique to them. They're challenges that we experience today. There was disagreement, there was division, there were arguments happening even within the church. And what Paul's trying to do is help them understand that we are united in Christ Jesus. We are united by the grace of the gospel and that even when we disagree, the beauty of Christianity is that we're still family.
— Come on, that's so good. So we're gonna start walking through this passage verse by verse and kinda breaking it down. So, we started in verse 12, could you read that again?
— Verse 12, Romans 6. "Do not let sin control the way you live. Do not give in to sinful desires".
— Right, so what Paul is saying here is that sin wants to control the way that we live and our own desires can actually derail us. And what that's telling me is that sin is both this spiritual force, this spiritual power, but it's also a personal struggle, right?
— Right, absolutely.
— So, sin wants to control the way that we live and our own desires can actually derail us.
— Important question, what is your most sinful desire?
— Oh my God. I gotta go.
— Moving on. Moving on, verse 13.
— I'm ready for verse 13.
— "Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God, for you were dead but now you have new life. So use your whole body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God".
— Right, so we start to hear some of that redemption language coming out, right? You were dead and now you have new life. The other thing that I heard was don't let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin, and what Paul is saying here is that we can be tempted to be divided in our response, in our pursuit of Jesus. If I'm like lifting my hands in worship and then I'm using my mouth to just wreck people, that reveals a problem with my heart. There's some division going on there, and that's what Paul is calling out on that verse.
— Dang, that's great. Ready for verse 14?
— I'm ready.
— All right, verse 14. "Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace".
— I think that verse is so powerful because what it is showing us is we aren't just freed from something, we are freed for something. We are no longer, sin is no longer our master. Now we live under the freedom of God's grace. And that makes me think of the Israelites, that's like the ultimate redemption and rescue story, right? When they were brought out of Egypt after 400 years of slavery by this miraculous move of God. And the thing about the Israelites is they didn't just leave Egypt, they were going to the Promised Land. And that is what this verse, Paul is calling our minds back to that. We aren't just freed from the kingdom of darkness, we are brought into the kingdom of Jesus.
— That's so good. So, a question for you.
— Yeah.
— What I'm hearing when this is read is the idea that once I become a follower of Jesus I don't have to obey the law.
— Hm, so the beautiful thing is Paul actually anticipates that exact question.
— Wait, what?
— Yeah.
— Are you telling me that verse 15 and 16, should I keep going?
— I'm telling you to keep going.
— Verse 15 and 16, we're gonna put these ones together. This is Paul continuing, he says, "Well then, since God's grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! Don't you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living".
— So, again, Paul anticipates that question, right? And he states some questions that, it seems like he thinks that's some really obvious answers, hence the "of course not" coming out of his mouth. He's like, duh. But what he's doing here is showing us kind of the natural progression of certain ways of thinking and living. If we have been freed by Jesus but we think that freedom is living however we want and sometimes I want to sin, does that mean that I'm free to keep on sinning? And he says of course not. And then the other example that he kinda brings up is if we choose to obey our own desires rather than obeying God, where do we think that that's actually gonna lead us? Well, sin always eventually leads to death because sin is willfully choosing something that is contrary to the God who is the author of life. And so that is where sin is always gonna go and that is what Paul is showing us by bringing up these rhetorical questions. He's like this way of thinking and this way of living is eventually gonna lead you somewhere that you don't wanna go.
— Right, so let me ask you this. When it comes to the idea of grace, which for so many of us when we think about grace we think about the idea that no matter what I've done, no matter how much I've sinned, no matter who I've hurt, no matter what I've said, God still loves me, Jesus still reaches out to me, my sin doesn't separate me from him because of the grace of Jesus. And so how do we reconcile that? 'Cause I get what Paul is saying, of course not, don't keep sinning. But does that mean that grace doesn't work anymore?
— Hmm, yeah, no, I think what Paul is doing is through this whole chunk of scripture showing us that the appropriate response to God's grace is this wholehearted pursuit of him, this wholehearted devotion to him. And he talks about, we've already read that part where he talks about not letting any part of us become an instrument of evil to serve sin, but wholeheartedly obeying God. And I think that is what Paul is doing in this passage, is showing us that the only appropriate response to the matchless grace of God, the continuing grace upon grace of God in our lives, is to respond with that wholehearted obedience. Nothing else makes sense.
— Verse 17?
— I'm ready.
— Verse 17, "Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now," oh wait, you just said this word, "but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you".
— Yeah, so again, he comes back to the idea about not being divided in our response to God's grace in our lives.
— Verse 18?
— Yeah.
— "Now you are free from your slavery to sin and you have become slaves to righteous living".
— Right, again, the idea just reminding us and repeating the idea that we are not just freed from something, we are freed for something. A new way of life that God has invited us into. And that's what he means when he says "slaves to righteous living".
— That's great.
— Yeah. So, after we walk through a passage like this and we pull out some of these things that we think Paul is saying and reminding us of, what we wanna do is we wanna allow that scripture to actually transform the way that we live. So, what are some things that maybe you are applying to your life based on the truth that we just read?
— Yeah, I think the thing that jumps out to me here is this contrast between our choices either lead to sin and death or to righteous living and the life that God's called us to. And I think that's the thing that's so important for me to be reminded of because I think it's easy to think about all the things in my life that feel neutral. It's like this isn't a bad thing, but I wouldn't really say it's a good thing either. And I think what I can do is spend so much time on a neutral thing that it becomes a bad thing. So, for example, I love playing video games. Back when I was in high school, my routine was wake up, go to school, come home and play video games, go practice my sport, come home and play video games. And then on the weekend it was play video games. Go to sleep, wake up, play video games. I was really good at "Call of Duty". One v one me, "Modern Warfare 2," I would have wrecked you. The new ones, I'm out on that, I've got a kid now. I can't play video games as much as I want to. But what's interesting is whenever my wife and I first got married, I immediately had to reevaluate how much time I was spending playing video games. By themselves it's not necessarily a bad thing, but what I realized was, oh, if I'm spending this much time on this, then I'm not able to make the time for these other things that are actually more important. And so when I read this passage of scripture what it invites me to do is look at what are the things in my life that aren't actually leading me closer to Jesus, and if they're not leading me closer to Jesus then by definition it's probably pulling me away from him. And so I just wanna analyze those things, I wanna look at it. And maybe for you as you're watching this video, you're like, yeah, for me, I've just got some really bad things in my life that I need to get rid off. That's just real. When I first became a Christian, I was addicted to pornography. When I first became a Christian, I was a jerk to everybody around me. And so maybe for you you're like, yeah, that's me, yes and amen. Start there. Maybe others of you, as you are going on this journey of following Jesus, it's more some of those neutral things that you're spending so much time on them that it's actually become a bad thing.
— Wow, yeah, I think one of the questions that Jesus is inviting me to ask myself is where have I let the cultural idea of freedom to define what it means to live under the freedom of God's grace.
— Glorious, what a great question.
— And this contrast of the way that Elsa in "Frozen" defines freedom...
— Come on, amen. Time out, pause. Elsa from "Frozen 1".
— Correct.
— Queen. Elsa from "Frozen 2," boo.
— Absolutely, could not agree more. But anyways, Elsa in "Frozen 1," she defines freedom as no right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free.
— Yeah, that sounds like freedom to me.
— Right, well, what Paul has shown us in this passage was that freedom doesn't look like that at all. We are not free to just do whatever the heck that we want. We are free to live under God's grace. So where in my life have I accepted the cultural idea of freedom and actually that has led me to reject the grace of God in my life.
— So good.
— Those are the questions that we're asking ourselves. We would love to know what questions that the Holy Spirit is inviting you to ask yourself and process those with you.
— Right, absolutely, you can comment those in the video down below. And if there's something where you specifically feel like, man, I need to talk to somebody about this because there's this sin in my life that I don't know how to move past, then, for real, comment down below and just say, I need to talk to somebody. And we'll figure out how to get you connected to one of our pastors to do the best we can to walk you through that because the truth is this journey of following Jesus has never been meant to be something that we do alone. And that's the beauty of the Church, it's the family of God, the people of God, committed to each other and pursuing all that God has for us. And so let us know how we can pray for you, let us know what God is speaking to you through this video, and then let us know what you wanna hear us talk about in future videos or questions you have, the things that you're thinking about, the things that honestly you're not even sure if you can believe because it just seems so wild. None of those questions are off limits because we want this to be a space where you can bring your honest questions, because it's through that honest wrestling that we actually grow closer to God. And so we're just glad that you spent some time with us. If you haven't taken the chance to already, make sure you like that video, subscribe if you haven't, because we've got videos like this that come out every week that are designed to help you become who God made you to be and to help you do what God has asked you to do. So, all that being said, looking forward to seeing you next week. See y'all.
— See you guys.