Grace Thoughts

Tim Kelley: Romans Chapter 6. You've heard this term before, it’s a slang expression: “Who’s your daddy?” It’s been around forever. I looked it up in the Urban Dictionary; I'll define it for you in a little bit. I relate it to a baseball story because I remember back in 2003, Pedro Martinez, who was just inducted to the Hall of Fame as a Red Sox, was beaten by the New York Yankees. A tragic day in all of our lives.

He said, “I guess today the Yankees were my daddy.” Well, the New York press grabbed all over that. The next time he went to Yankee Stadium, the whole chant throughout Yankee Stadium was, “Who’s your daddy?” It went on for nine innings. That thing is seared into my heart; it wounds me just hearing that. It’s a slang expression that is defined as a rhetorical question commonly used as a boastful claim of dominance over the intended listener. In other words, it can be said: who controls you? Whose authority are you under? Who’s your daddy? Who dominates you?

I think it's a question that we need to ask ourselves first in the spiritual realm, the emotional realm, and even the psychological realm. Who does control us? Whose authority am I under? I'm going to define that a little bit more for you as we go ahead, but I want to read some verses to you because the Apostle Paul asked this question in his own way 2,000 years ago.

We're talking about this word doulos, a slave’s life. That's the Greek word for slave or servant, as it's translated many times, but slave is a better translation. 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 a slave to whatever you choose to obey? You can become 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 that we have given you. Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living. Because of your weakness, of the weakness of your human nature, I'm using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led to even deeper sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life.

I'm going to go back and define that and comment on that passage for you in a little bit and pull out of there what we want to pull out of there. Right now, I want to just do a revisit to the very first week in this series about five or six weeks ago. Look at this word slave, or the Greek word doulos that you find in your Greek Bible. It means to be a servitude. The most likely best translation is the word bondservant. It's an old word, it’s archaic, we don't really use it in our English anymore. But a bondservant sells himself into slavery to another.

I would sell myself into slavery to you; I'd become your bondservant. Very strong word, very powerful word. When that passage says we're slaves to sin, it says we are bondservants to sin. Or slaves to God, we’re bondservants to God. It’s not a voluntary thing; it’s a picture of ownership. Kittel, who's one of the Greek guys that defined this, uses a couple of the definitions: one who has totally lost their freedom and is controlled and dominated by another.

Colin Brown, another guy that writes about this stuff, says a slave owes his master exclusive and absolute authority. Zodhiates, who was actually one of my Bible college teachers for an intensified course I had one time, defines it this way: a permanent relation of servitude to another with his will altogether consumed by the will of another. Doulos, slavery. Paul's bringing up here in Romans 6 that we're slaves to sin. What does he mean by that?

First of all, I think we need to define sin. If you don't really know what that means, you immediately think we're slaves to doing something really bad, and that could mean that. You might be thinking of individual sins that you commit or that you struggle with, and no doubt that could fit too. But I take sin much broader here. Usually when you see sin in the plural, “sins,” it refers to individual acts of sins. But when you see it singular, it really points to the whole prevailing nature of sin and what that means.

I take this term and I put a pretty broad umbrella around it because I put underneath sin the flesh—what the Bible would call the flesh. Or man's attempt to meet his own God-given needs through his own strength, however that works for each and every one of us. So, sin is the prevailing nature of every man without Christ. Now, when God breathed life into us in creation in the garden, He made us humans. He didn't make us robots, He made us humans.

He put in me love and the deep need for significance, the deep need for acceptance, the need for safety, the need for affirmation, security, and throw a few more of those needs in there if you'd like. He made us humans. That makes us human. We do need to be loved, we do need to be affirmed, we do need to be safe, we do need to feel a sense of significance. Those are real; there’s nothing wrong with those things. But when we were created, God made us those things for Him to meet those needs.

He was our significance. He was our dependence. He was our security. He was our affirmation. He was our love. He was all that we needed Him to be. Prior to sin coming into the human race. Then sin did enter the human race; we know the story, the apple incident. And our relationship with God was severed. But that didn't mean we stopped being human. And that didn't mean we stopped having those needs. But now they weren't met through Him.

So, we did this: we looked horizontal. Imagine that, Adam and Eve, perfect, absolute perfect relationship, no flesh involved, no needs involved, they're getting along great. Then all of a sudden, God wasn't meeting those needs. So, Adam looked at Eve, and Eve looked at Adam. The next person created was a marriage counselor. Because that was trouble right from the beginning. In a sense what was being said here is Adam saying to Eve, “You need to be my love now. You need to be my affirmation, you need to be my acceptance, you need to be my safety, you need to be my significance, you need to be my security. You are responsible for meeting my needs now.”

And that didn't work because Adam couldn't meet Eve’s deepest needs, and Eve couldn't meet Adam’s deepest needs. They were created to have those needs met through God, and only God. Not that there wasn't a level of human needs that humans can meet, because we can. But we’ll always come up short. So, without Christ, my friends, we become slaves to these things. Because I'm going to get that need of acceptance met. Or I'm going to look until I find somebody to accept me.

I may compromise my own values, my own priorities, until I find somebody to accept me. Until I find somebody to affirm me. Until I find my place of significance. That might be more money, that might be a position of prestige, that might be a human relationship, that might be a big family, whatever it is. Give me my significance on a human level. And we pursue it.

I relate the story of a friend of mine that we're going back probably 30 years now. Throughout my relationship with my friend, he's a pretty wealthy individual. I remember back in the '80s telling me, “As soon as I make this much money, I'm good. I just want to have this much in savings and I'm good, I don't have to worry about this anymore.” And he was a hard worker and pretty bright guy, he made that much money pretty quickly.

So, within the next five to 10 years, he said, “You know what? I think I just need this much more money, then I'll feel secure and I'll feel economically safe.” Well again, he got there pretty quickly. And so, he said, “I think I just need a little bit more.” This went on for 30 years. Until he's now a wealthy man, and I don't think he's really pursuing it anymore, but the bar kept raising a little bit: make me feel secure. Put my security someplace, economic security, and I'll take care of that myself.

There was the pursuit of these things. See, these things dictate our relationships, these needs dictate our actions, our decisions. They can control our inner life, our outer life. If I had to say, “Pastor Kelley, in the 30 years of ministry, what's the number one mistake that you see people make? Or at least what realm is that made in?” I could say unequivocally: relationships. Number one mistake I see people make: relationships. Why is that?

Because of these needs. Find somebody to affirm me, find somebody to accept me, find somebody I can belong to. I just don't want to be alone, I don't want to be isolated. Whatever it is, so I'll compromise with somebody of a different value, different priority system. I won't bide my time, I won't wait. I must find and get these needs met. So, I in a sense sell myself out to them. We become slaves. They become our daddy. Who’s your daddy?

Now David Powlison, I read a bunch of books when I was going. One of them was a book he wrote called Seeing with New Eyes. Chapter 7 of that book is a really good chapter. He uses 25 what he calls X-ray questions. I'm not going to have all 25 for you, but let me define what he defines as an X-ray question. These questions aim to help people identify the ungodly masters that occupy positions of authority in their hearts. These questions reveal functional gods, what and who actually controls their particular actions, thoughts, emotions, attitudes, memories, and anticipations.

So, these are the questions that sort of peer through us, X-ray questions. You can see what's really behind it. Some of us will never think at this level, some of us will never respond at this level, some of us don't like to think at this level. I was sharing in the first service some of the most corrective moments of my life consistently is the quiet time I spend with the Lord in the morning. If I'm aggravated about something, God doesn't show me or verify my being aggravated; He shows me why I'm aggravated.

If there's tension in my marriage, He shows me why there's a tension there. And it's never, ever anyone else's fault, which I'm a little discouraged about. He just shows me things about me all the time. And I find every proposed problem I have out there is really my problem. It's something I'm not relinquishing, it’s something I'm holding onto, it’s something I'm trying to manipulate life on. It's my problem. It's something I won't give up, I won't humble myself before potentially.

Whatever that is, here are some of these X-ray questions. I only have seven out of 25. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, and security? That's one question. I'll say it again. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, and security? Answer that question honestly to yourself. It'll be an X-ray to you. Where do you bank your hopes? Question number two. Truly. Is it in a relationship? Is it in a government? Is it in my checkbook, my financial reserves? Where do you bank your hopes?

Question number three. What do you seek, aim for, and pursue? What are your goals and expectations? That's all one question. Again, this is grabbing just seven out of the 25 questions that Powlison had. Here's a big one. Where do you find your identity? How do you define who you are? How do you see yourself? “I am a housewife, mother, businessman, preacher.” Whatever it is. How do you define yourself? And once you determine that, what does that mean? In other words, if I don't do good at this or I fail at part of that, does that change your identity? X-ray questions.