Instruments of Righteousness (Romans 6:1-14)
Therefore, do not live your lives as instruments of wickedness, but change everything to instruments of righteousness to save people. Your thoughts must be within this to live like this for God and for the church
Sin, Death, Life, Grace
These words are repeated over and over again in Romans 6, but if you don’t know the meaning of these words, you won’t be able to understand the chapter.
Instruments of Righteousness =/= Instruments of Wickedness
What does it mean to offer your lives as instruments of righteousness or instruments of wickedness? It also talks about our former selves, it is “me,” but it is the former “me,” and there is a new “me.” My face and everything else may be the same, but what is the old “me” and what is the new “me?” It is talking about my inner state.
Old Person (Sinner), New Person – Normal
I’ve become a new person, but what will happen if my thoughts go back to my old person? This is my present problem. If you become a new person, you should think like a new person, but instead, you’re thinking like your old self. If you become a new person, it’s normal for you to think and feel in your heart and brain like a new person. But what will happen if you’re a new person but you keep thinking and feeling like your old self? What is your old self? Your old self is the “you” before receiving salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ. In other words, it is the “me” that used to live as a sinner, apart from God. Spiritually speaking, I’m dead because I’m spiritually separated from God because of my sin.
What is my sin? Sin is not believing in God. Then, you have the second and third degree sins that come from the original sin of not believing in God. Because you don’t believe in God, you steal what belongs to someone else; because you don’t believe in God, you complain about yourself; because you don’t believe in God, you’re always worried, anxious, and stressed. How did this all begin? You didn’t believe in God; you’re trying to believe in yourself, and that is the fundamental center of sin.
Sin (Genesis 3:5)
It begins in Genesis 3, if you don’t believe in God and God’s Words, then you believe your thoughts that come from the devil, but you think it’s you. You’ve become a new person, but you still live like your old self, a slave to the devil. Jesus Christ died on the cross on my behalf, the result of my sin is death, and by His death, He forgave and took away my sin. That’s why Jesus went all the way down to hell. Jesus experienced hell and then Jesus fulfilled the work of God by resurrecting, overcoming the authority of hell, death, and Satan. This is what we call life.
Sin = United
In the past, we were united with sin, but now we’ve been united with life. By Jesus’s death on the cross, I’ve been united in His death, and because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, my life is also resurrected. Now, what is this new thing called “me”? Because I’ve already died to my sin, I’m no longer a slave to sin. I will no longer be a slave to the idol of not believing in God, and I will no longer live centered on myself, for myself. Now, I’m going to live my life centered on Christ Who is the life. This incident on the cross that finished everything, all problems of my past, present, and future.
Life = Spiritual
I have been united with Christ and live my new, resurrected life with Christ, meaning I live under grace. Because the Lord is my Master, I am living under His grace, but I who have received salvation keep going back to my old self. I keep trying to live my life with my strength for myself, and that’s the problem. It’s all finished, but you’re not able to enjoy that it’s finished, so whenever you face a problem, you go back to your old self, “Why do I keep facing this problem?” The thing you call a problem isn’t really a problem; what’s the problem? You keep going back to your old self. The coronavirus isn’t a problem; you can get a vaccine. Those who have been fully vaccinated walk around with their masks off. Everyone says it’s a problem, but for them, it’s okay.
Problem
If we have strength of being a new person, it doesn’t matter what problems come to me. What is religion? It is going back to your old self and living your religious life. What happens if you go back to your old self? Because you’re centered on yourself, you need everything and you wish problems didn’t come. You wish you didn’t have to study, but you have endless studies. If you went back to your old self, you wish you didn’t have to; you wish there was a vacation. Sometimes you want to die, why does this happen? You go back to your old self, living centered on yourself for yourself instead of being centered on God. Now, you are a new person. Christ lives within you as your new Master, guiding you perfectly until you go to heaven.
Thoughts, Heart, Mind, Soul
This must go into my thoughts, heart, brain, and spirit. What happens when this goes into me? Then when you face a problem, you remember you’re a child of God, meaning God knows about the problem and God guides you through that problem. If you’re really lacking something, God will give it to you, but God allows you to stay that way because God doesn’t believe you lack anything. Because you’re a child of God, God takes care of you perfectly. Once that goes into your heart, thoughts, brain, and spirit, you receive healing.
Scars
If you have scars in your heart, it’s not going to come out. Scars against your mom and dad. The parents don’t think they scarred their children, but the parents are scarred, and they do what they think is best for their kids, but the kids are scarred. Because the parents just live their reality, they unknowingly scar their children. Where are the scars? They are planted deep within their brain. In psychology, they say your brain contains your conscious and subconscious. It is not just your brain, but there is a part of your brain that documents everything, giving you your thoughts and emotions. All the things of your past have already been recorded.
Brain < Longstanding
All the things that would scar your thoughts and heart have already been programmed in your brain. When a child receives a scar, shock, or trauma when they’re young before they are conscious, it will go deep into their subconscious even without being aware of it. It’s programmed into your brain, but the child is unaware. But now that child lives their lives, but the things imprinted in your thoughts and brain control your heart, so you don’t even know why you’re the way you are. I have thoughts that strangely keep coming up, and it’s because of the things in your subconscious that come up while you’re young. If you can remember, you’ll be seized by the scar of your memory, but if it happened even before you remembered, you can’t even deal with it but you’ll suffer from the effects.
You try to solve this and heal your subconscious, and while you’re an adult, you’ll do it with alcohol, but you have the scars. Why do adults keep drinking? It’s because this keeps coming up into their brain. Others talk about this person, and they don’t recognize it, but they’re seized since they’re young. “Why did my dad drink so much alcohol?” This is why, and without understanding this, it will become a scar to you again. “Why does my dad drink so much? Other kids don’t have dads who drink so much.” When they drink, they lose their minds and all the things within them come out. There is no other hell; that is hell.
Lately, marijuana has been legalized in California and people smoke as much as they want, and kids smoking marijuana say it’s cheaper than cigarettes. They say that smoking cigarettes make things smell bad, but marijuana doesn’t do that. But when you smoke marijuana, your mind becomes very numb. Because the things embedded deep into your brain, causing suffering in your heart, you try to numb that pain with marijuana. People try to kill others because of what’s in their brain. Looking at murderers, they could look normal, but you don’t know their past, what went into their brain. You get married to people without knowing that. You marry people only thinking about the thoughts and heart they talk about now, and of course, they won’t reveal what’s in their brain, but it would come out when you get married. Meeting with other people, they will hide this, fearing a breakup. Even at their work, they will cover it up because they would get fired by exposing themselves, so people get crazy, and they do crazy things while they’re alone.
Why is that? It’s just the result of living without God. Will you be okay if you take stronger drugs? When you get the ecstasy from a drug, for a moment, your mind seems better, but once that high goes away, you’ll go bad and because you have no other method, you have parties. Can you calm your brain with parties? No. After that, you have to do more and more things.
Brain -> Transcendental Meditation
Transcendental meditation is on the rise for healing your brain. This has been around for thousands of years in the Hindu religions. What’s the characteristic of America? America has the ability to monetize any skill or knowledge. America is the land that stole music from Europe and sold it so they make money from European music. That’s a superpower nation. Transcendental meditation isn’t new; it’s existed for thousands of years, but it’s becoming popular in America so it’s spread out more, and it’s popular so it’s even visible to your eyes.
Americans accept Transcendental Meditation because there’s scientific evidence for it, so people who used to go to church will no longer go, because the churches aren’t able to give the answer, but they try to find the answer through Transcendental Meditation. They try to go to church to hear the gospel, but they don’t give the gospel; they make people live a religious life. They take out the fundamental blessings and make you chase after the physical blessings you see with your eyes; in other words, the churches do idol worship, so the smart kids know. They know they can succeed even without believing in Jesus, they can be smarter than the pastor without Jesus, so they don’t need these words. “I’m realistically afflicted by mental problems, but the church doesn’t give any solution,” so they go into transcendental meditation.
When transcendental meditation wasn’t popular in America, people had to choose a religion to solve this, but now, all around America, every religion is on the decline ever since transcendental meditation began. They receive healing by doing transcendental meditation. I’ve heard this personally, I was exercising and there’s an older man who mocks me in an offensive way on purpose so that I can hear him, “I’ve been a deacon at church for a very long time,” he makes a lot of money by making Korean fried chicken downtown, and every time he comes to exercise, he brings some beer. He says with confidence, “I couldn’t receive healing when I went to church, but I was healed by transcendental meditation. The church has no answer,” and he says this confidently before pastors because he’s a witness.
He talks about two incidences, and I think he has a pretty good house in Seoul. In the past, the very poor people would send their children to Seoul as housekeepers. One child was sweeping the street and collided with him on his bike. They were the same age, but he paid the child on the street because he had money. There was another incident, he was skipping stones on a river but it hit a kid in the face who was swimming, and this had afflicted him his entire life, he felt guilty for harming these people. Scars don’t leave. In reality, these were accidental misfortunes, but he went to church and the church said they can’t solve their problems.
Evil Spirits
I don’t know what church he went to, but do you think that just by talking about David, that these problems will be solved? Will these problems be solved just by memorizing the names of the tribes and you’re good at studying? He went into transcendental meditation and received healing. It’s the same for shamans. They say they have a severe spiritual problem, and no matter where they go, they cannot solve it. They say they went to a pastor who supposedly had a lot of spiritual power, but they looked down at that pastor’s spirituality because shamans can gauge spiritual power. If anything, the pastor was afflicted by demons. You might not know, but those who are spiritually seized can see this.
So, he was wandering around and was possessed one day. As soon as he was possessed, he said his spiritual problems were solved, “No matter where I went, no one could solve my suffering, even if I went to church. But the spirit of my grandfather helped my problem.” If the churches aren’t able to give the fundamental answer to the fundamental problem, people will get stuck on false things, being witnesses of lies. Satan constantly uses them, and this is spreading as a mental illness these days. So many mental illnesses are unseen to our eyes, and especially the more elite you are, the more you’re afflicted without showing outward symptoms, but they gather together to do crazy things.
If you look at the upper levels of society, they gather amongst themselves and do terrible things to children. Do you think pastors won’t do that? Someone doesn’t change because they become a pastor. What’s important is that if you’ve been changed as a new person, you need the grace of God to become a new person. Without God, it’s impossible, “My thoughts aren’t like that, but what must I do if what’s been imprinted in my mind is controlling my thoughts?” If this becomes severe enough, Satan seizes your brain until you will go as far as murder.
This is the reason our Lord Jesus finished everything on the cross, to die to your old self and to become a new person, but religion can’t be like this. So, even though everything is finished, you live your life without knowing this blessing. Therefore, the way to be liberated from your past is to root firmly in the Word of Christ. The scars and experiences of your past will move you. You can’t control it. Trying to control this with your mind, it’s impossible. You must overcome with the Word of God.
The Word has already been given to you, but it appears weak to you. So even though you have the Word, your old self is stronger and will completely engulf you. That is why the Apostle Paul confesses in Romans 7, “I can see my old sinful nature engulfing and capturing me. Who can save me from my body of death?” Paul was extremely afflicted. He was a successful elite talking about God’s Word, but elites are afflicted without expressing it outwardly. Even without receiving salvation, these things move him. Then he confesses in Romans 8:2 that the law of the spirit of life sets him free from the law of sin and death.
This is the Word. Nothing can overcome unless it is the Word. The reason it has to be the Word is that the Lord is living within me as the Master, so His Word is my life. So, that is why you worship, so that the Word of the Lord becomes rooted, seizing your thoughts, mind, and heart, and spirit. So we don’t do transcendental meditation, but holding onto the Word, we do holy meditation. David did this while he was shepherding his sheep; Joseph did this while young as well. The evidence is that Joseph faced so many problems in Egypt, but no one could overcome Joseph. The world teaches you to amass power and strength to overcome your problems, but God used Joseph and gave the word that made his problems no longer problems. Everyone said he would fail, but Joseph held onto God’s Word, “I am a child of God; nothing can make God fail. If God never fails and I’m God’s child, I will never fail.” If this is rooted in you, this is how you overcome.
How did Abraham overcome? It doesn’t matter if Abraham did a lot of research, it’s all useless. Abraham always had a great personality? That’s useless. David was good looking? It’s unnecessary. Maybe Joseph was a little nicer than his older brothers but that’s in vain. Religions tell you to live nicely. Ever since David was a young boy, he constantly meditated on the Word and praised God. Holy meditation isn’t an action, but it’s simply enjoying the Word God gives you ever since you’re young, being rooted deep within you.
Most people ran away in the face of the Philistine army. Even David, if he lived for his old self, would have to run away, but the word David emphasized is that, “I come before you in the name of the LORD God almighty,” meaning the word had been rooted deep within his heart. So, when the crisis came, the Word of God was able to solve that problem. Your brain senses commands based on what’s been imprinted in your thoughts, heart, and spirit, and it guides your actions. “Why is my kid like this?” Because they have the content that makes them act that way. Because you don’t change what’s rooted inside of them, you ask, “Why are they like this? It’s because my kid went to America.” It doesn’t matter where they are in the world, it’s the same. “It’s because my kid went to a different school.” No, that’s irrelevant. The problem is that the Word of God hasn’t gone deeply in.
Because they’re not rooted deeply in the word of God, they use their survival instincts and run away when there’s conflict. Some people are completely downtrodden even before the problem comes. They’re completely seized. Honestly, cats should chase the mice, but rats with spiritual problems attack the cats and the cats run away. So, the old mice would run away from old cats because the parent mice would tell the kid mice to run away from cats. Parent mice educate child mice in a way we cannot understand. They relay to their children that humans are scary.
If one lion has one experience with a human, they will relay this incident to the rest of the pack. Even with a dog, if you wean them from their mother too quickly, the dog becomes uncontrollable, why? Because the mother has to educate and discipline their puppy for a few weeks. They educate and discipline their kids. Even the stray dogs and wild animals educate their kids on how to hunt. Even momma birds teach baby birds how to fly before they can come out of the nest. So, if you take a puppy away from its mother as it is born, before the puppy is educated by the mother, the puppy will be uneducated. If the puppy misbehaves in front of his mom, the puppy will be disciplined by the mom. They educate and teach the puppy so they can socialize with other animals.
What’s important is what’s rooted within you when you’re little. Then what about when I’m older? It doesn’t matter, God has the power to do what we can do over 100 years in the span of a second. We think humanistically, “if we don’t reach them while they’re young, it’s over.” Then what about me, growing up as a nonbeliever? You must know the power of God. When God works even for a moment, that can upend work we’ve been doing for decades. You sitting here is an answer, but you don’t believe that, do you?
Answer
“I’m sitting here but my grades aren’t getting higher, I’m not making more money,” we have these thoughts from our old, religious selves. The more our spiritual state changes, the more the answers we get in our lives will change. Shall I give you evidence? In Genesis 1, God simply gave His Word and created everything in the universe, is that correct? The world was not created by the efforts of mankind, but that’s how we think in our former selves. “I have to live diligently, designing and fulfilling my life,” but that is an old life devoid of God. What is the new self? Now that God is with me, everything happens according to God’s Word.
Money
So, if God’s Word goes into you, the person will change completely. There is nothing else that can heal you; this is what we call an answer. Before you receive physical, visible answers, you must have this Word come into your heart, then you can see physical answers. Everything is finished, so you just need to be united with the Lord. That’s all you need, to be united with the Word. Through you, all nations will be blessed. Put those words in your heart, then answers will come according to that Word. But if you’re stuck in your old self thinking you need to do something to make it happen, you will crumble before the Word.
Nothing can change my spirit and thoughts unless it is the Word. Elites in America try transcendental meditation, and Jewish people try this as well. Americans receive transcendental meditation like a meditative practice, not a religion like Buddhism. Americans are already sick of religion; they won’t perceive transcendental meditation like a religion. Elites receive power and spread this movement, saying it’s really great, but by doing transcendental meditation, your spirit cannot change. Going deeper into transcendental meditation, you’ll develop a spiritual connection, then people develop a conduit to spread the disease, so that’s why curses and disasters spread at an exponential rate. These spiritual problems are relayed to the children as teachers relay this to their students.
Without knowing this and coming to church, everyone gets devoured. You guys have to know this and worship God every single day, and it’s not some kind of form, and sure there is the order of worship, but you must worship in spirit and in truth. So, every single day, even if it’s just for one minute, go to school having a changed state. “Today, I’m going into my mission field again.” What happens if you think of your old self? You’ll have to go there to eat and survive. You’ll work diligently like your old self, but if you’re the old self, you’ll lose all the blessings of your new self, just trying to survive. That is why you need to have your personal summit time of worship to secure the new blessings of your new self. God will use people like this to spread the spiritual influence in your schools and region.
Success
God raises these people up and creates positions so that you can influence others as a new person. That’s what we call success. God creates a position just for you for real success to take place. You need a position so that you can influence others. God sent Esther downtown for this reason, but she said, “I didn’t want to go downtown; I wanted to go to Whittier.” Everybody is actually dying to go downtown, but she didn’t want to go and she’s been stressed out because all the felons gather there. The old self will try everything they can to get to the position of power, but the new self will bring people to that position to influence others. For Joseph to influence everyone, he was brought up as the governor.
Therefore, do not live your lives as instruments of wickedness, but change everything to instruments of righteousness to save people. Your thoughts must be within this to live like this for God and for the church. “Pastor, I agree living for God, but why must I live for the church? I understand living for my family, but why must I live for the church? Why must I live for the church as my first priority?” It’s because they don’t know the church which is the body of Christ. The kingdom of God is a gathering of people where God reigns and controls.
Then what is for God? Is cleaning for God? “I’m doing it for God,” but is it really for God? You’re just saying nothing, living your life with baseless fantasies. If you love God, you will end up loving people, loving your neighbor. What does it mean to realistically love others? The application of loving God is loving people. Everything else is nothing, but you’re stuck with your philosophies. If you realistically studied for God, you wouldn’t say anything is difficult or hard, but it’s all for God so your thoughts will change.
There was a Korean movie that got an award, and the person who created the movie lived in America for 13 years, and he casted a singer who graduated from Trinity College in Chicago. While living with this person, they were separated, and he lived with another woman. So, this lady’s husband left, and she took her kids and went to Korea. Because she was a divorcee, no one in Korea would cast her. That was the old Korea, they would point fingers legalistically, but she still had to feed her two sons, and her education was in acting, so she needed an acting job to make money.
What did she say in the movie where she won an award? “I was only able to become a famous actress because I had my two sons. Because I had to feed my two sons for them to live, I had to put my all into my acting career,” so she’s thankful for her two sons who live in LA. Watch the movie. She was going all into acting so she could feed her two sons, but it became an award-winning film. She was playing an old lady, and her grandmother passed away during the war, so she grew up looking at her grandmother’s grandmother. In the past, the water was a scarce resource in Korea, they would bring it from elsewhere. She saw that as a young child, her grandma washed herself with dirty water, so she thought her grandma was dirty and was ashamed of her. Her grandmother never ate, so she hated her grandmother, but she realized when she was older, that her grandmother used the water to bathe herself after bathing all the kids because of the water shortage. Grandma wouldn’t eat because she had to feed all the kids, so she said she had already ate, so after her grandma passed away, she felt sorry for her grandma. She put exactly what she saw from her grandmother into her portrayal of a grandmother in the movie.
She said she wanted to relay this to some families in America because American families are crumbling. She said, “When I took this job, I took it so that it would allow me to see my sons,” but this is the mother’s love in Korea. America doesn’t have that. American mothers will kick their kids out when they get older. If their kids are starving, they’re told to work. No American grandma would say, “It’s okay, I’ve already eaten.” Because these Americans don’t have the gospel, they receive moving and emotional testimonies from the actresses and they’re shocked. “God’s love is eternal.” I hope you will receive God’s love and grace every single day.
So, that actress was able to succeed by what she saw from her grandmother and the love of their son, but we have the love of God that can make masterpiece stories from our lives as well. God has prepared these things when He called you; may you restore and find them.
Prayer
God, we thank You. Please allow the remnants to be able to remain within the covenant that has solved everything so they may be used as instruments of righteousness. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray, amen.