Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
This automated analysis scores the text on the likely presence of emotional, language, and social tones. There are no right or wrong scores; this is just an indication of tones readers or listeners may pick up from the text.
A score of 0.5 or higher indicates the tone is likely present.
Emotion Tone
Anger
0.16UNLIKELY
Disgust
0.45UNLIKELY
Fear
0.11UNLIKELY
Joy
0.48UNLIKELY
Sadness
0.62LIKELY
Language Tone
Analytical
0.41UNLIKELY
Confident
0UNLIKELY
Tentative
0.35UNLIKELY
Social Tone
Openness
0.82LIKELY
Conscientiousness
0.53LIKELY
Extraversion
0.03UNLIKELY
Agreeableness
0.72LIKELY
Emotional Range
0.58LIKELY
Tone of specific sentences
Tones
Emotion
Language
Social Tendencies
Anger
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9
You know reverse psychology, right?
I tell my kids they can’t do something in order to get them to try.
“There’s no way you can get dressed all by yourself.”
You tell your teenager they can’t date someone; they’ll pursue that relationship all the more.
My sinful nature, what Paul calls “the flesh” throughout Romans, does it too.
When I hear what God demands and what God forbids, I get this urge to do what’s forbidden and not do what’s commanded.
Likewise, when I hear the good news that “where sin increased, grace increased all the more,” I get an urge to sin it up: “Shouldn’t I go on sinning so that grace may increase?”
It makes sense.
I want abundant grace.
I need abundant grace.
I know what makes God pour out grace.
Let the sin begin.
Paul didn’t say, “Sin all the more.”
Paul said that he upholds God’s law.
God’s grace doesn’t nullify God’s law, the rights and wrongs of the universe best summed up in the Ten Commandments.
Paul upholds that law.
Luther certainly does as you read his explanations in the catechisms.
Doing so, and wanting to do so, doesn’t automatically make you a legalistic seeker after do-it-yourself salvation.
God says, “Be holy and perfect.”
Except my flesh keeps me from doing what God wants me to do, even though I, as a Christian, know and desire what God wants.
A world of difference and a vast improvement over the situation when I was an unbeliever; during which time, as Paul says, I hated God, neither submitting nor wishing to submit to his Word.
And my flesh does this on both sides of the fence.
As an unbeliever, my flesh keeps me dead in sins.
Listen to how Paul describes us without faith in Christ: dead in sin, enemies of God, ignorant.
I can hear God’s words, but I can’t understand them.
This adds up to Paul’s dreadful word in Ephesians 2: “Like the rest we were by nature objects of wrath.”
God’s wrath.
As Romans 7 points out, it doesn’t feel all that different on the believing side of the fence.
“I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do….I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature.
For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”
It doesn’t seem like there’s any difference between the believer and the unbeliever.
Both do terrible things: acting out against God, disobeying God.
Because both have this in common: the sinful nature, Paul’s “flesh”.
An apt word, no?
We still call some sins, especially sexual sins, “sins of the flesh,” because we get that there’s something corrupt leading to our depravities, that when we sin sexually we cave in to the flesh.
Jesus says the same.
He says that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
The disciples didn’t just sleep in the Garden because they were tired.
Their flesh put them to sleep.
Paul doesn’t just talk about the flesh in Romans 6.
In fact, he actually avoids that word in our verses, not mentioning “flesh” (in the Greek) until verse 19: “You are weak in your natural selves.”
He uses some other terms, synonymous terms.
He talks about our “old self”, literally the “old man.”
And another one, “the body of sin.”
And another one: “slaves to sin.”
Those fit.
My flesh fails.
Sometimes my whole body sins.
I feel bound.
And if I don’t feel it, I act like it sometimes.
Something else owns me.
That’s even my excuse, “The devil made me do it.”
“I couldn’t help it.”
“I had to.”
We claim to belong to someone else.
Notice, though, both in Romans 6 and 7, there’s a difference between the believer and the unbeliever.
In Romans 7, Paul wants to do good.
He knows good.
He doesn’t want to do evil.
He deplores evil.
In Romans 6, Paul says things like, “We died to sin.” “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.”
There is a difference between the believer and the unbeliever.
A vast difference.
A nearly unbridgeable gulf.
It’s death.
Dead to sin, Paul said.
Crucified.
Done away with.
Abolished Executed.
You have to die to get there.
But death is final.
You die and you’re, well, dead.
Wouldn’t we rather live it up now and pray that God pours out enough grace to cover it?
Don’t we say, “Sin now; ask for forgiveness later.”
No.
You can’t live in sin, walk in sin, remain in sin, continue in sin, wallow in sin, and expect God to just kindasortalike look past it.
If you live in, remain in, and wallow in sin, that’s what you are, a sinning unbeliever, letting the flesh reign.
The devil is your lord and master.
You will end up with him, an “object of wrath.”
So, it’s back to this death thing.
I have to die to sin.
This flesh must die.
And we say, “Ok, how can I do that?”
Here’s where the desire to be holy turns into legalism.
Because now people think dying to sin means being chaste or celibate, or taking vows of poverty or obedience.
“If I sell everything I own and give it to the poor, then I’ve killed the flesh, right?”
Legalism and works-righteousness isn’t the attempt to be holy.
Legalism and works-righteousness is when you pin salvation on your deeds and holiness.
“All these I have kept since I was a boy.” “I thank you that I am not like other men.”
“I devoted my life to you.”
None of those things kill you.
None of them do away with the body of sin.
They come after death, in the new life, Paul describes.
“Are you kidding me?
I have to die…and rise from the dead?! How do I do that!?”
There’s the problem.
We think “I” and “me.”
It’s not I and me.
It’s God.
< .5
.5 - .6
.6 - .7
.7 - .8
.8 - .9
> .9