Instruments of Righteousness

June 28, 2026

Romans 6:12-23

Today we are reading again from Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Listen for the word of God speaking to you today.

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This morning I want to focus on a single idea: Christian freedom is not the right to do whatever I please; it is the means to loving my neighbor.

Paul’s message in Romans is both urgent and simple: grace frees us from sin… sin not defined as individual acts that have been deemed bad or wrong in our church or society… but sin that is defined as the brokenness of relationship… grace frees us from sin… grace heals our brokenness… grace reconciles us to God… so that we might be freed for service, for community, and for the healing of the world.  When we act in ways that demean, exclude, or exploit our neighbor… anything that damages the image of God in another person and corrodes the bonds that hold community together… then we are participating in the death that sin brings.

Christ’s death and resurrection are not merely a private atonement transaction between God and Jesus that somehow magically sets the world aright.  To be united with Christ in a death like his is to be set free to die for one another… to give up privilege, to share resources, to bear one another’s burdens… so that new life can come into being.  We are set free to be instruments of righteousness… set free to work through grace… building a world around us that reflects in ways big and small the gospel God has given to us through Christ Jesus.  Grace moves us from a life focused on the self… for the self… by the self… to a life focused outward… a life more concerned with good service in this world.  The message of the gospel transforms us toward the being of the gospel.

When Paul asks whether grace gives us license to sin, he is not asking a theoretical question. He is confronting a temptation that always returns: to use freedom as an excuse for self‑indulgence… for isolation or the setting apart of others… for the protection of our privilege. The gospel answers that temptation with a different vision of liberty…  a liberty that costs us something because we are to approach that form of liberty from a servant’s perspective.

Look… we live in a culture that prizes individual rights and loudly defends them. That language of individual rights can protect the vulnerable and restrain unjust power, and it has had a profound history of doing so. But… that same language can also be used as a shield for self‑interest, a way to insist on exemption from responsibility, or as a tool to dominate public life.   My concern here is not political; it is spiritual… but the two… political and spiritual… have gotten so intertwined lately that the language of the spiritual keeps getting conscripted to serve political ends… more often than not at the expense of the very principles the spiritual is here to promote. When talk of religious liberty becomes an excuse for ignoring the needs of others… or harms others in the name of Christ… it has drifted far from the gospel.  Religious liberty then becomes an instrument of wickedness… reintroducing brokenness into the world and undoing the healing and reconciling work of grace.

However… at the same time… we must never forget… at its best… religious liberty as a civic principle is very important to our life together. It is meant to protect conscience and prevent the state from imposing a single religious view.  The fact that there are those now openly and shamelessly using the state to try to impose a single religious view upon us all, shows how much this civic principle has been compromised and turned inside out to service the needs of those in power rather than to protect the vulnerable.  Religious liberty that is void of any sense of grace creates sin.  Only grace can overcome sin.

Christian freedom as gospel reality is different in purpose and direction. Civic freedoms asks, “What may I do?” Gospel freedom asks, “How may I love?” The first protects the self; the second frees the self to serve. Paul’s question in Romans… “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”… has the right amount of ridiculousness to reveal the truth of grace and the freedom it brings. Grace is not a permission slip for selfishness. Grace is the power that breaks the hold of sin so that we can live into righteousness. True Christian freedom is freedom from the power of sin and freedom for obedience to Christ and the way of Christ.

Now, obedience here is not the same as legalism. It is not a checklist of dos and don’ts that earns God’s favor for our benefit. Rather, obedience is the shape of a life formed by love. When Jesus taught his disciples, he gave them a new commandment: love one another. That commandment is the basis of Christian freedom. If love builds up, then freedom that tears down is not Christian freedom at all. Paul gives us a measure: the one to whom you present yourself as obedient becomes your master. Present yourself to sin and you are enslaved to death. Present yourself to obedience and you are enslaved to righteousness. The paradox of the gospel is that true freedom is found in willing obedience to Christ… not in the unbounded pursuit of self.

If you doubt the cost of sin understood as separation, look around. Separation produces loneliness, despair, and violence. It produces systems that advantage some and marginalizes others. Christian freedom is measured by how the least among us flourish. Our liberty is not complete until our neighbor’s liberty is real and equal in every way to our own.  That is a world transformed by God’s grace. How free am I when my neighbor… when all my neighbors… are not free?  That is only a lie waiting to be exposed.  A lie that we accept as truth as long as it doesn’t come for us.

What does this Christian freedom look like in ordinary life? Whoever welcomes… welcomes Christian freedom.  Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones… welcomes Christian freedom… embraces connection through grace over the separation of sin.  Jesus sent his disciples into the world to heal, to feed, to serve. Those acts are the spreading of Christian freedom. Think of the stories of Jesus feeding of the multitudes. The disciples are overwhelmed by the need before them.  They immediately want Jesus to stop… to send these people home.  They do not have enough to serve the need before them.  These people cannot become their responsibility.  They look first at their scarcity of loaves and fishes and decide that it is impossible.  They want to retreat from their calling and only do what seems possible and right for themselves.  It would have been easier for them to talk about rights, to argue about who should be responsible for the feeding of these large crowds… that it was a matter of individual responsibility and if the people in these crowds had neither the foresight to have food for themselves… or the means… that their hardship is not the disciples’ responsibility.  Why should they have to shoulder this heavy burden?  We are not here to save people from themselves.  The disciples’ first sinful instinct is to protect the scarcity of their own provisions.

Instead, Jesus calls them to participate in a miracle of sharing and connecting… a miracle of community.  Jesus asks them to step out with faith in the power of grace.  The miracle begins with what they have… a little bread and a few fish… some gifts to share with others… and those gifts become enough when offered in service.  Not only enough, but where at first scarcity was perceived there is now abundance… there is enough that they could have fed even more.

Grace shared connects people together.  A single meal given to a neighbor is not merely charity; it is a sacrament of the kingdom. A phone call to someone who feels unseen is not merely politeness; it is an act of reconciliation. Volunteering an hour in service is not merely the practice of good civic duty; it is obedience to the one who said, “I was hungry and you gave me food.” Christian freedom is practical. It is measured in actions that build up rather than tear down.

Saints, this is hard work. It requires humility. It requires that we look honestly at the ways we use our freedoms to protect only ourselves. It requires that we confess the ways we have used religious liberty to justify exclusion, to avoid accountability, or to claim superiority. Confession is not a one‑time act; it is a posture of humility that opens us up to transformation. When we confess, we do not merely say what it is that we feel bad about. We turn. We reorient our freedom toward service. We practice small acts of love until they become the habit of our hearts. That is what we call sanctification: the slow, patient work of the Spirit reshaping us into the likeness of Christ.

In Romans, Paul gives us the theological ideas of justification and sanctification.  Justification is God’s once‑for‑all declaration that through God’s grace in Christ we belong to God… not because we have earned it, not because we have proven ourselves worthy. It is the verdict spoken over us before we lift a finger in responsive obedience. It is the freedom of knowing that our standing before God does not rise and fall with our performance. In Christ, the judgment has already been rendered: you are forgiven, you are reconciled, you are free.

But Paul refuses to stop there. The same grace that justifies also sanctifies. The Spirit who declares us righteous begins immediately to make us righteous… not in the sense of moral perfection, but in the sense of reshaping our loves, redirecting our desires, and bending our freedom toward the good of our neighbor. Justification is the root; sanctification is the fruit. They are distinct, but they cannot be separated. The grace that pardons is the grace that transforms.

This means Christian freedom is never an escape from responsibility; it is the power to live differently. It is the Spirit loosening our grip on the sins that accompany privilege, softening our hearts toward the vulnerable, and teaching us to see our neighbor not as a threat to our shallow, fragile liberty but as the very place where our liberty is fulfilled. Again… we do not serve in order to earn God’s favor. We serve because God’s favor has already been given. We love because we have first been loved. We forgive because we have first been forgiven. We offer ourselves because Christ has already offered himself for us.

So… when you go into the world this week, go as people who are justified… standing in a grace that cannot be undone… and as people who are being sanctified… drawn day by day into the likeness of Christ.  Be instruments of righteousness. Let your freedom be shaped by the One who set you free. Let your life bear witness to the grace that has claimed you. And let the world see in your service, your generosity, your courage, and your compassion the unmistakable signs of a people being made new.

For the God who justifies is the God who sanctifies… and the freedom Christ gives is always a freedom that takes the shape of love.  Amen.