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Introduction: You can be a slave to sin or a slave to God. You can’t be neither. You can’t be both.

I. IDOLATRY: SLAVERY TO SIN
Why don’t we love obeying God? How does this passage expand our understanding of sin?

II. FREEDOM: SLAVERY TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
How can we come to love obeying God? How does this passage expand our understanding of salvation?

III. MORTIFICATION
What does it look like to love obeying God? How does this passage hold God’s work for us and our work for God in the proper tension?

Discussion Questions

1. 1 John 5:3 says, “His commands are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:3). Are God’s commands burdensome to you? If so, which ones? And why?
2. The root of sin is “passions” (Rom 6:12). The word is epithumia, or “over-desire.” Where do you experience epi-desires? Hint: where do you experience epi-emotions? Drill down into those epi-emotions. What do they tell you about yourself?
3. We said a number of things about how we become slaves to righteousness instead of slave to sin. What was the most helpful of those principles?
4. Paul says we have died to sin. He also tells us to put sin to death. How do we keep this balance?
5. In Romans 13:14 Paul writes, “Make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (Rom 13:14). What does it mean to make provision for the flesh? What is one concrete way this could change in your life? Proclamation of God’sWord