Well, thank you so much. Well, please do keep your bibles open in Romans, chapter six. If you’ve not got a Bible but would like one, do stick a hand up. And Peter’s got some at the back. And we do actually have a few large print copies. So if you find yourself in the future struggling, do ask for a large print one and you can follow along with that. Now, I wonder if you’ve ever had one of those job offers. A job offer to be your own boss. Have you ever had one of those? Perhaps you’ve seen an advert online or a magazine or newspaper. Perhaps you’ve had an email come into your inbox which has told you about all the benefits of being your own boss. Work when you want, work where you want, no one telling you how to do your job. And of course, you can earn thousands of pounds every week. These adverts promise the world, don’t they? The perfect job, the perfect work, life balance, a great salary. And the best bit is you’re in charge. You’re the boss. Of course, the problem is that the dream being sold in those adverts just isn’t real, is it? You’re not your own boss. It’s likely some kind of fake franchise scheme or some pyramid selling system. In fact, in the worst case, far from it being the perfect job, it will end up being a dead end where you end up losing everything you invest. Now, that’s the picture of sin that Paul’s already used in Romans chapter five. A few months ago, we were in Romans chapter five and there he reminded us of Adam’s big fall in the garden. Remember the story, don’t we, Adam and Eve? Sin seem so enticing. You can be the boss, you can be in charge, you can make the decisions about what’s right and wrong. You’ll get all the benefits of being the boss, those benefits that God is keeping back from you. In this one act of disobedience, it looked to Adam and Eve like they were going to be set for life. But in reality, they lost everything. It was a dead end. We talk about that sometimes, don’t we? We talk about dead end jobs, jobs that go nowhere. Perhaps you’ve had one, you felt trapped, the pay is bad, your colleagues don’t want to be there, you’ve got a terrible boss, and there seems to be little or no hope of the situation ever improving. Of course, the advice would always be, well, get out of there, find a new job, a fresh start. And as Paul writes to the Christians in Rome, he’s writing to warn them about getting stuck in a dead end job. And not a job that’s dull but literally a job that ends in death. Now, over the first few chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans, he’s been trying to get the Christians in Rome excited about the gospel. It’s been a deep delve into the issue of sin, the world’s biggest problem. And the rescue, the forgiveness, the sorting out of sin that the gospel offers through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He’s reminded them that this rescue hasn’t come about through their good behaviour or because they followed all the right rules, but rather it’s been a free gift given by Jesus. Sometimes, for short, Paul simply describes this gospel as grace, the free gift of God. So Paul has told them about the bad news about sin, how, like Adam, we’ve all gone off and tried to be our own boss. And he’s told them about the even better news, grace. And he rightly expects the question, well, if Jesus is such good news, if grace is so amazing, does it matter how I live now? That’s the question of chapter six, verse one. That’s how the chapter begins. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Shall we live how we want because God’s so kind and he’s forgiven us and he’s done it all anyway? Does it matter now? Last week, Steve showed us that since christians are united to Jesus, we’re joined with him in death and in life. It’s as though our old lives have died with Jesus and our new lives are raised with him. He says, well, why would we keep on sinning? That life has died and we’ve now been given a new life. You see, that’s why the question is then virtually repeated in chapter six, verse 15, because he’s been arguing that this new life is one lived under grace, not law. That’s how this section begins, verse 15. What then? Shall we sin because we’re not under law, but under grace because that’s how he concluded that first section. So in verse 14, just the verse before our reading, he said to them, sin shall no longer be your master because you are under law. Not under law, but under grace. So here’s what he’s saying. My place, my standing, my justification. How I stand before God isn’t determined by the law. Whether I fulfilled every stipulation of the Old Testament commandments. Rather, as we sang earlier, I stand because of grace. I stand under grace. My standing before God is determined by his grace, his free gift, righteousness. I stand not because of me, but only. Only because of Jesus and his perfect life. So that’s where he gets to. And then he says, well, if it’s all about Jesus, if it’s only about Jesus, if it’s all about what he’s done, if I stand because of his free gift, does it matter if I sin? Does it matter what I do? I mean, logically, that’s a reasonable question, isn’t it? If it is all about Jesus, which it is, does it matter if I sin? Paul gives the same response at the end of verse 15 as he did at the end of verse one. By no means. By no means. Of course not. Of course that’s not what we’re going to do, how we’re going to live. Now, in the first half of chapter six, Paul uses that image of union being joined together with Jesus in life and in death. And to continue his point, he uses another picture. It’s a picture of a job. It’s a picture of work. And at this point he says, look, guys, I’m really going to try and help you out here. Now, you might have noticed what he says in verse 19. Basically, he says, you’re a bit thick, you’re a bit simple. I realise you’re only humans. I realise you’re going to struggle to understand this. Let me make it simple for you. Verse 19, I’m using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. It’s like, right, let me make it simple for you guys. Let me give you a picture you can all understand. And at this point, we’re thinking, oh, thanks so much, Paul. This is really easy to understand now. Thank you. But he gives us a picture that hopefully we can all grasp, the picture of a job. And the picture begins in verse 16. So come with me to verse 16. He says, don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. Now, just for a moment, suspend the thought process that goes on in your minds where you hear the word slave. And immediately our thoughts are carried to pictures of transatlantic slave tradery, those kinds of images where humans are bought and sold. The language of slave, which Paul uses here, isn’t that kind of picture. It would be better pictures of the servant master relationship, the worker boss, perhaps even the employee employer relationship. He’s talking about a job. He’s talking about work. Now, of course, work in first century context. Might feel different to how we do it today, but in terms of carrying the picture forward, think of it like that. Servant, master, worker, boss. And here’s what he says. When you offer yourself to a master, when you take on a job, you obey the master, you do what they say. And that’s Paul’s point. In verse 16, he’s saying, we all have a master. We all have a boss whom we obey. We all serve somebody. As Bob Dylan sang, we either serve sin, which leads to death, or we serve obedience, obedience to God, which leads to righteousness, God’s perfect life. You see, Paul is warning us about the dead end job, serving sin, which only leads to death. Now, at this point, it could sound like he’s going to launch into a real warning about what this dead end job is like. But that’s not what he says. Remember, he’s writing to christians in Rome. So look what he says next. Verse 17. Verse 17, he reminds us of a change of ownership. He says, a new job is already ours when we trust in Jesus. Verse 17, he says, but thanks be to God, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that is now claimed your allegiance. He’s saying to Christians, you’re not slaves to sin, you’re slaves to someone else. When you put your trust in Jesus, when you called yourself a Christian and started following him, that’s the point. You had a new master, you started your new job, a new allegiance, a heart that wants to obey Jesus. Now that you have a new master, and he goes on verse 18, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. He wants them to know you’re already in this new job. This is christians who you are. This morning, Steve asked if I would preach on the second half of Romans, chapter six, because he’s my boss. He’s the vicar. Now, what would happen? You know, perhaps last night didn’t happen, but what if James, some of you remember James. James, our previous vicar. What if he sent me an email saying, hugh, I’ve been praying about this. I really think tomorrow he should preach on deuteronomy 29. What would I do? What I think. Well, we like James. He was so good. You know, I remember the old days. That was good. Yes, well, maybe I’ll do that. Well, of course I wouldn’t do that, because Steve’s my boss. Steve’s asked me to do something. He’s the one I’ve signed up to serve here at this church. He’s asked me to do something. I’m gonna do it. I’m not gonna listen to what the old boss said. We love him. Are you watching? He’s in the past. I’m not gonna listen to him. He’s not my boss. Steve’s my boss now. He wants to remind them as much as he talks about the old life, the old job. Christians, that’s not your job. That’s not who you are. Sin is not your master. Sin is not your boss. But the truth is, all of us are slaves. You’re a slave and I’m a slave. We all have a master now. Sometimes I do. If I’m honest, I feel like a slave to sin. I keep messing up. I keep failing. I keep making the same mistakes. Sin and death feel very real, very close. But Paul says, no, you are a slave. Yes, but a slave to God, to righteousness. He’s your boss now. It’s as though he said, stop living and thinking like you’re back in that old dead end job. Start living for Jesus. He’s your boss now. Here’s how he puts it in verse 19 again, he talks about the past. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever increasing weakness, so now offer yourselves a slave to righteousness leading to holiness. What he’s kind of saying here is many of you, we’ve had, all of us, we were really quite good at our old jobs. We were really quite good at the old life, the life with Nia’s boss living for self, that life of sin. And he’s saying to the Christians in Rome, a lot of you were experts at this. You knew how to live that old way with that old boss. He says, now, now give yourselves more and more to the new job with the same passion that you pursued all the old life with the same motivation. You served self in the past. Now give that energy, give that passion, give that devotion more and more to the new work, to the new boss. Give your whole heart to serve him. So what do you do when you’re offered a way out of that dead end job? Picture it. It’s like you’re stuck in an awful job. The pay is terrible. There are no perks. There’s a measly pension. I’m not talking about Church for England at this point. That could be. It’s terrible. Your employees don’t want to be there. Feels like there’s no way out, no end in sight. This is it till retirement. 65, 67, 68. How long is it going to be? It’s a dead end job. This is your lot. And that’s how Paul describes the life before Christ, the life without Christ. It’s a dead end job. It only ends in death. There’s no benefits. Verse 21. He says, the only benefits are shame and death. That’s all that comes of this job. Until that one day. The phone rings. Stuck in that dingy office. The phone rings. It’s the recruitment firm. Hey, they got good news. You’ve been headhunted to join a new company here. The boss appreciates you. You’re getting a raise. There’s all those hopes and dreams that you thought would come from being your own boss. Flexi working, medical insurance, dental, a share scheme. You’re invested in the business, you get to receive some of the benefits from it. Life insurance, like you never know. Extra annual leave, training and development company, car business, travel. That’s a picture of the life with Christ. Look how he describes it in verse 22. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. That’s the benefits. Life with Christ, holiness. A life lived like Jesus, a life lived for God, not only now, but for all eternity. Or he puts it even more simply, summarising his whole picture in verse 23, when he says, for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. It’s a picture of the cross, really, that Jesus, when he dies, takes the wages that are due to us, the life of sin that leads to death. He bore those wages on himself so that he might give us his life, his perfect life, his eternal life. You see, it doesn’t matter what the job is, does it? At the end of the month, you’re due a paycheck, you collect your wages. What does the life of sin pay? What does the life lived for me pay? Only death. That’s the wages that are due. But the life with Jesus, that pays infinitely, it pays over and over again. The life with Jesus is one of those things that money can’t buy, you can’t buy, and in fact, you didn’t even earn it. The picture is of wages. It says, the wages the Christian receives is eternal life. You didn’t earn it, you didn’t work for it. Even those wages, they’re a gift, a gift of God’s grace, giving you what you couldn’t have earned, what you didn’t deserve. His grace. Now, friends, if you’re here this morning and perhaps you’re new to church, perhaps you’re exploring. Perhaps you’re not even sure who this Jesus is. Can I encourage two things? Firstly, please do hear the warning. It’s a loving warning, but a real warning. The way of life that we call sin. A life lived apart from Jesus. However appealing to be your own boss, it’s a life that leads to death. It’s a dead end job. It’s a wasted life. That is the truth that Paul lays out for us here. And I’d love you to hear that warning as lovingly as possible. But please also hear the invitation that’s here. A free and open invitation to all of us to come to Jesus and find his gift of life benefits now and eternal future to come. That’s the job we’re being offered. That’s the job that perhaps this morning, for the first time, you are being headhunted for. This is the recruiter calling. Got a better pace for you. Come and serve the Lord Jesus. If you’re here this morning and you’re a Christian, you’re a follower of Jesus, and perhaps you have been for many years. This is really who Paul’s writing to Christians in Rome. His message is clear. Love your new job. Love your new job. You’ve got a new job. Look where you’ve come from. You come from a dead end to an eternal future. You’ve come from wages that only pay in death to a gift of life. What would you do in that new job? Well, here’s some things we wouldn’t do. We wouldn’t go back and freelance for the old company, would we? Why go back there? You hated it. It’s a terrible place. You’ve got a new job now. We wouldn’t go serve that old boss. Do you know what? I don’t think we’d even want to put that place on our cv, would we? We don’t want to forget about it. That’s the past that’s gone. I don’t work there anymore. That’s why Paul asked that question. Shall we go on sinning? Shall we go on living our own life? Being our own boss? Don’t be ridiculous. Love your new boss. Sure, it sounds attractive, doesn’t it? Be your own boss. But friends, we’ve got a much better boss than ourselves. His name is Jesus. He loved us and gave himself for us, his life, his grace, free for you. Amen.