Foundations Class – Session 7: Concluding Your Path

If Jesus saved you from the penalty of sin, why does sin still seem to have power in your life? That's the question at the heart of this session — and the answer changed everything for Pastor Mark Medley.

Drawing from his own story of coming to faith out of a life of drugs, broken relationships, and bondage, Pastor Mark shares how some chains broke immediately when he met Jesus, while others held on. It wasn't until a mentor challenged him to memorize all of Romans chapter 6 that the truth began to sink in: the work of Jesus on the cross didn't just deal with the penalty of sin — it broke the power of sin over his life too.

This session walks through Romans chapters 5 through 8, tracing Paul's argument from justification and grace all the way to freedom and life in the Spirit. You'll encounter Paul's repeated phrase "how much more" — the idea that wherever sin reached, the grace of God reached further. You'll hear the raw honesty of Romans 7, where Paul describes the inner war of wanting to do right but doing wrong. And you'll arrive at the triumphant declaration of Romans 8: there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Pastor Mark ties it all together with a vivid illustration — just as the law of aerodynamic lift overcomes the law of gravity and gets a 747 off the ground, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus overcomes the law of sin and death. You don't have to stay pulled down. There's a greater law at work.

This is part of the Foundations class at Trinity Community Church, taught by Pastor Kelly Kinder and Pastor Mark Medley.

We are Trinity Community Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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Transcript

Foundations Recap And Today’s Aim

Mark Medley 0:00

Hey everybody, uh Mark Medley here again. We're looking at session seven of our foundations series. And I hope you see that there's uh kind of a building, a foundation, and there's some building on this foundation. We understand who God is, what he thinks about us, how we come to know him through Christ, how we are um brought into new life, regenerated, justified, adopted into his family through new life, and how those uh those that new life brings uh the work of the Holy Spirit into our lives. He's active and drawing us near to God and showing us God and helping us to live correctly, how prayer has a part of this. And now we're talking about something today which is which was um like really crucial to me. It was one of the revelations that helped me get over humps in my uh spiritual life. And I think maybe the best way to think of it is all of us have struggles. All of us sometimes feel like we deal with some things that we just aren't seem to be getting free from. And so I want to tell you my story today in the context of Romans chapter 5, 6, and 7 and 8, and uh talk to you about how we can conclude our past, close the door on that, turn around into a new kingdom and a new life, and walk forward free, not only clear of the guilt of our sins, um, the penalty of our sins, but also free from the power of sin over us. So let me start by uh turning to chapter 5 of Romans, and I want to read to you. Again, there's uh quite a quite a bit in your booklets that you can read here, but I just want to walk through the scriptures here, uh, chapters five, six, seven, and eight of Romans, because Paul is talking about how to apply the powerful work of Jesus Christ into our lives. So I'll read to you from uh chapter five, verse one, starting there at least. And it says, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we understand this that we have been, uh, as we have talked about in former sessions, that we are in on a solid ground, we are in a place of right standing with God because not of our of our own works, but because of the work that is finished, the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. So therefore, by our faith in his work, we are justified and we have peace with God, and we are standing in this grace. Okay. I love the way he says that, the the grace by which we stand. Okay, so um, and then he goes on down and he talks about, uh, he begins to talk about practically living out a Christian life. Um, so it says in chat in verse 6 that you see that just at the right time when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man, someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since now we've been justified by his blood, how much more will we be saved from God's wrath through him? And so, and there's there's a phrase right there that Paul uses over and over and over. I think four or five times in this one chapter he uses it. And he it's the phrase, how much more? How much more? Let's read through that. So it looks in verse 10 it says, For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more having shall we be saved through his life? Not only this also, but we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have been received reconciliation. Okay, so the idea is there is a long arm of the effect of sin. Sin uh did a lot into our lives, although we were created to be in fellowship with God. We were created to be um to walk with him and know him in unity, to hear his voice with no problem, to fellowship with him. Uh, this is this is our original state, but sin broke that. And through sin came this separation from God. We were friends, now we're enemies, we were near, now we're separate. It also changed the way we, our relationship even with ourselves. Now we are self-deceived. Now we have this fear of rejection because we have our identity problems, we feel like orphans, we're we have problems in our own self. It also changed the way we relate to other people because now there are there's jealousy, there's factions, there's rejection from people, there's war, there's all of these things that that are building walls between us and other people. And sin brought spiritual death and separation from God. And sin brought physical death. We weren't created to ever die, but death came with sin. And then if we come to physical death, still being spiritually dead, we have eternal death, which is eternal separation from God. This is what this is the effect of sin. Sin had a long arm, it reached a long ways. But when Paul is saying this phrase, how much more? He's saying, Sin went this far, sin had this effect, but how much more? Farther the work of Jesus went. So this is the effect of sin, but even more, how much more the effect of God. This is what he continues to say. So let's read this. There we see that in verse 9. How much more will we be saved from God's wrath through him? Verse 10, how much more will we we be reconciled to God through Christ? If we keep reading, we see this in verse 15. But let's back up and let's read verse uh from verse 12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, and in this way, death came to all men because all sinned. For before the law was given, sin was in the world, but sin is not taken into account when there's no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses. Even over those who did not sin by breaking a commandment, so did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, that's Adam, then how much more did the grace of God and the gift of that that came by that grace of the one man Jesus Christ overflow to many? So there's a power of sin, how much more the power of this grace in the work of Jesus? We see it also in verse 17. For if by the trespass of the one man death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. And then verse 18, consequently, just as the result of one trespass was the condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just he keeps on going, he just beats this one, because he wants us to understand for just as through the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one man, the many will be made righteous. The law was added that the sin or trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace increased all the more. How much more? So that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. There was a power that sin released in our lives. It was a power of uh to oppress us, it was a power from the outside to oppress us, to enslave us, to bring us into these habit patterns. But here he says the grace might reign. When sin did reign, it was we were lorded over or ruled over in this domain of darkness by sin. But now, by the gift of righteousness, by the grace of God, grace will reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Okay, here we go. Sin had a powerful effect, the work of Jesus had a more powerful effect. Whatever the sin of life, the effect of sin in your life has brought, whatever bondage or whatever uh um habits or enslavement that you've had to these sins, the grace and the power of Jesus Christ is greater. How much more? Yes, sin had an effect. How much more the effect of Jesus? This is what Paul is saying. So then we get to chapter six. Now, here's why I'll back up and I'll tell you my story. I was raised uh in church, but I did not know Jesus. I went to church every week, but I was not born again. In fact, I was far from it. And I was a musician, there were a lot of places that was rocking, played in a rock and roll band, there was a lot of drugs, a lot of bad uh relationships in my life. This was bondage, and I was in bondage at a very early age, actually. When I came to Jesus, everything changed. I mean, my whole life turned around. It was very difficult, even for some people to believe it, the change that went from one school year to the next, my last school year in high school. There was such a change that happened. I was this man and now I'm this man. How is that even possible? And there were some things in my life that were broken immediately, like the power of addiction to drugs and alcohol. You know, that was that was just taken away. It was just chains broke off, and I was free. That's my story. I was bound one day, I was free the next. This is the power of God. But there were some other things in my life that I was dealing with, personal things, personal sins, that for some reason didn't seem to just break right off. They seemed to have a hold on me or keep their hold on me. And I was walking, uh, trying to walk with the Lord, and yet I felt myself being pulled down by these sins. Surely you can understand that too. You there are some things in your life that you still deal with, whether it is actions, whether it's attitudes, you know, your thought life, whatever it is. Um, these are things that are very real. And Paul is dealing with this here in chapter six. So I was dealing with these issues. I had a very uh a wise man in my life that once, who said, when I talked to him about uh sort of a mentor, I talked to him about these things. And he said, uh, you know, you need to memorize chapter six of Romans. And I and I understood a little bit about memorization. I started memorizing scripture when I was born again, but I thought, uh memorize chapter six, verse what? Like uh no, he said, memorize the whole chapter. You you should memorize the whole chapter. And you know, I didn't even couldn't even think of that. Like I've I could do a verse or a couple of verses, but to memorize a chapter, is that even possible to do? I don't know what that even is even like. So, but you know, I started trying and I went into chapter six, and you know uh I eventually I eventually uh memorized the whole chapter because I found in chapter six the answer to my problem. The answer is Jesus and what he has done. Now let's look and see what Paul says about it. Chapter six. How do you get free from your past? How do you conclude your past, step into your future in Jesus? This is the point here. So he says, chapter six, after saying, sin had this power, but grace has even more power. Then he says, So what shall we say then? Should we go on sinning so that grace may abound? Should we go ahead and sin so that we can receive that forgiveness and just live in sin so we can be forgiven? Well, Paul sometimes asks questions and then answers his own questions. This is the way he writes, this is the way he teaches. What should we say? Shall we go on sinning so grace can increase? By no means. One version says, God forbid, another version says, No way, no way. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may have a new life. If we've been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with. That we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who's died has been freed from sin. Now, if we die with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, for we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die any he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body as sin to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master. Sin shall not be your master, for you are not under the law, but you are under grace. Don't you know? Well, then it says, What then? Shall we sin because we're not under the law, but under grace? By no means, no way, God forbid. Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed that form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You've been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. Okay, this is what set me free. I've trusted Jesus as my Savior. I trusted that his work on the cross would deliver me from the penalty of my sin, deliver me from hell, and deliver me into heaven forever. This is this was what I believed. My faith in Jesus had to do with his taking of my sins, the penalty of my sins. But I did not yet understand or believe that Jesus' work on the cross also dealt with the power of sin in my life. And so I began to say, you know what? If this is what Jesus did, if this is what the Bible says, that I died with him, was crucified with him, I was raised with him, buried with him in baptism, raised again to newness of life. So that just as death has no power over Jesus, now sin has no power over me. Therefore, do not let sin have power over me. This thing, as memorized, I memorized this chapter of this thing, the truth kept going into my in my heart. And you know, the scripture says, Jesus said, if you continue in my truth, continue in my word, then you'll know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Okay, this is this is the truth that set me free. And not only Jesus dealt with my the penalty of my sin, but he dealt with the power of sin in my life. Those things that I was struggling with, he has given me power over them. Now I had known the power of God to break those chains immediately in some areas of my life, but other areas of my life, he was giving me the opportunity and the and the grace to walk step by step, day by day, in freedom by making decisions that were consistent with my commitment to him, but more so to his commitment to me and his work for me. I began to just believe this sin will not have dominion over me. I don't have to have, I don't have to walk as slave to this sin. And I want to tell you that it's the same thing for you. You don't have to walk as slaves to sin. This is not something that you're stuck with for the rest of your life. It's not that Jesus saved me and is taking me to heaven someday, but I still have to be under the power of sin here. Now the scripture says that he has delivered you out of the kingdom of darkness and put you into the kingdom of his dear son, Jesus, out of darkness into life. Sin doesn't reign anymore in your body. The power is broken, so don't give it power. It's very interesting, very important that we have to make sure we are in a position to not give it power. We don't go those places on the internet. We don't hang with the people that are dragging us down. Maybe we'll be strong enough someday to drag them up, you know, to pull them up out of there. So but right now, maybe you just need to not hang with them yet. You need to separate yourselves from the influence of sin. And understand that there's a price that's already been paid. So he goes on into he goes into another um section here in chapter seven. Excuse me, let me fix this up here. Um my Bible's too heavy for my podium, so it is like is weighing it down. There's this um section here in chapter seven when he talks about this illustration of marriage, and that if you are married, uh if you're married, then you are bound to your your spouse. If your spouse dies, you're free from that. And he talks about that, you know, and he says that if you're or if you're still married and you committed, if you marry someone else, you've committed adultery, right? So you but if your spouse dies, you're free to be married, and you're not committing adultery, you know, because because your spouse is no longer living. This is very simple, but he uses the application concerning the power of sin in our lives. And he says that the law was what we were married to. And when we were crucified with Christ and buried with him in baptism, we died to those old sins. And the law, which is the thing that actually opened our eyes to that sin, the law helps us see our sin and helps us understand our need for a savior. And so he says you're free from those things, and so you're free to be married again to another, which is Christ. Okay, so in some sense, there's a New Testament form of adultery, which is shifting back and forth uh between law and grace. So uh I'm I'm married to Christ in grace, but I put up myself back under the law. You know, I'm I am now living the law, uh living under the law. And um, this is uh something that he goes into in chapter seven, but he goes through there and he speaks very personally in a way that we all can very much understand. If you look in chapter seven, and tell me if this doesn't sound like uh something you've st struggled with. We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual. Sold as a slave to sin, I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. That is, and it is uh, and as it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is in my sinful nature. I have the desire to do what is good, but I can't carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it's no longer I who do it, but sin that's living inside me. So I find this law at work in me when I want to do good. Evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but I see another law working in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin working in my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Haven't you felt that way sometimes? You felt, I just don't know how to get free from this. I'm not sure. What I want to do, I don't do. The things I don't want to do, I find myself doing. God, how wretched I am. Who is going to help me with this? Well, Paul doesn't leave the question unanswered. He answers it really strongly. What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from the body of this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I find myself, that's why I find in my mind I'm a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, chapter 8, verse 1, there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because through Christ Jesus, the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death. And what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, sinful nature, but according to the spirit. Okay, so he's saying two things here. He's saying there are two things at work, two laws at work here. And to me, this was one of the most powerful things that helped me release myself from all the things I had identified myself as in the past, and release myself into my new identity as a beloved son of God, filled with his spirit, longing to serve him and free from sin. Okay, so here he says there are two laws at work. The law of the spirit of life in Christ and Jesus and the law of sin and death. Okay, two laws. And the way we can think of this is um there are there are there are two laws, like physical laws. Okay, one law is the law of gravity, right? Law of gravity says if I drop the glasses, they're gonna fall. 100% of the time, they're not gonna stay there, they're not gonna rise. Gravity pulls them down every single time. Gravity is what pull that what anchors us to this earth, you know, and we're kind of happy for that, right? Because or else everything would be floating around and they would be out of control. So gravity is a a gift, but it's a law that that pulls us down, that keeps us down, that holds us here. Okay. There's another law, though, that's greater than the law of gravity. I mean, gravity is everywhere. You go everywhere on the planet, it's there. But there's a law that's greater than it. And for example, there's a law of the aerodynamic law of lift. And the law of lift is why a 747 full of passengers, full of fuel, and full of luggage, can get off the ground. Sometimes I look and I'm on a plane a lot, and I look and I'm thinking how heavy this plane is. It's a massive plane. And it's so heavy. And then when you fill it full of uh of gas, of fuel, jet fuel, 36,000, 38,000 for a huge one, uh, less for a smaller one, uh, gallons of fuel, that's a lot of weight. And then you put 250, 300 people on it, and their luggage, all of them slightly over, probably many of them over overweight in their luggage. Uh, but this is this is a huge, this is a huge number. How can this get off the ground? It's really crazy how this can happen, but it's uh actually very simple because there's another law that's greater than the law of gravity. It's a law of lift. And the law of lift says if you make airplanes' wings a certain way so that that the air that goes over the wing travels actually more or farther than the air that travels underneath the wing, because the wing is shaped like this and flat on the bottom and round on top, then that simple, that simple thing there, when you add speed to it, then what you have is you have a force that lifts things off the ground just by the speed and by the airflow. That plane, which is impossibly heavy, held down by gravity, can be lifted off the ground by the law of lift. There's a law that's greater than the law of gravity, the law of lift. This is what Paul is saying here. There was a law of sin and death that was holding us down, that was binding us to our old life, that was uh enslaving us to habits and addictions. There are ways the old person lives. But because we're buried with Christ, we're raised with him in baptism, and death has no dominion over him, and sin has no dominion over us, and we're free, we're free from the law of sin and death. The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death, just like the law of lift has made us free from the law of gravity, and we can live, and we don't have to be pulled down always to the ground in our spiritual life. We can be lifted up and we can walk in the spirit of God. And later on, he talks about walking in the spirit and how the spirit is in our hearts and the spirit that cries out, Abba Father, the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, it is living inside of us, and it's making us free. Okay, so how do you get free from sin in your life? How do you conclude your past life, close the door on it, lock the door, turn around and walk into your new life? It's through the work of Jesus on the cross, the same power that raised Christ from the dead, the same power that uh, the same work of the cross that made that brought us freedom from the penalty of sin brings us practically every day power to overcome the power of sin in our lives. There's a greater law, the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. So, Father, I pray that you would help us to understand this more and more that we can live in the freedom that you have purchased for us, that the fullness of what you died for us to have, we would live in. In the name of Jesus. Amen. God bless.