Romans 6:15-23--Slaves to Righteousness

Romans 6:15-23
English Standard Version

Slaves to Righteousness
15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

​20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Again, Paul asks a question that should be rhetorical, but he is going to answer it anyways.  Should we continue to sin because we are no longer "under the law," but are "under grace?"  That is, should be use grace as a license to sin?  The answer is "certainly not" or "God forbid" or something even much stronger that gets simply translated, "By no means!" (this is a very strong denial in the original language).

Paul says that we are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness and we know which we are slaves to because a slave obeys his master.  If we continue to live in a way where we are bound and controlled by sin, then we are still sinners who have not really been saved.  If however we have been "born again," then we are no longer slaves to sin, but slaves to righteousness as we have been transformed into the image of Christ and we can't help but love to obey His commandments.  "If you love Me, you will keep my commandments." (John 14:15).

Sin and disobedience lead to death, but obedience leads to righteousness (and eventually eternal life, though not by works, but by faith).  We have been made to be obedient to God, though we were once slaves who were obedient to sin, and we should be committed to that teaching which was instrumental in this change of heart and giving us a new life and a new Master--the gospel.  We also should not be afraid to see ourselves as slaves of Christ and slaves of righteousness.  So then we are not to talk about our freedoms or our rights as Christians as we are slaves in the service of our King--we have no rights or freedoms to claim other than those which our kingly Master decides to extend to us and bestow on us, but all such "rights" come from God and are yet another good gift and grace that we receive and do not deserve.

No longer should we present our bodies and its members to the service and practice of sin and unrighteousness.  Paul calls these things "impurity" and "lawlessness" here, and he's probably thinking of the kinds of things that were going on in the church in Corinth where Paul had to tell them that even the pagans would be ashamed to do some of the things that Paul heard about them doing.  They could not claim to have gone through metamorphosis and then come out unchanged--or worse, be even more sinful and more evil and wicked than the world.  If the gospel that we claim to believe in does not fundamentally and permanently change us, then we have believed in a false gospel.  We should now instead submit our bodies and their members to be slaves of righteous with the purpose of sanctification--that is to be made holy--to be set apart for the service of God--to be conformed into the likeness of the Son of God.  Sanctification is a process that occurs from the time we are justified (some would call this the point of conversion) to the time of our natural death or when we will meet Jesus in the air and be change--which we will later call "glorification," but we're not quite there in Paul's argument yet.

Paul then connects this with the last idea by saying that when we were slaves to sin we were free in regards to righteousness.  No one could make us do the "right" thing if we didn't want to do, and we never really wanted to do the "right" thing for the right reason, because even if we appeared to do what was right, we did it for some reason to gain glory for ourselves or take glory away from God, both of which are sinful.  The natural consequences of such a lifestyle that Paul laid out in chapter 1 should be embarrassing to the Christian now.  If we have no shame over what we once were and we still love that sin and try to somehow just "sanctify" it so that we are now a "Christian womanizer" (for instance), then Paul would ague here there is very strong evidence that we were never saved because we were never changed.  The end of these things is death--that is not only physical death, but spiritual death which we call "hell."

True faith will lead to true repentance and its end will be sanctification (and eternal life).  Now comes the next verse that many of you know from the Romans Road.  Romans 6:23 says, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."  While this verse doesn't change meaning when you pull it away from the surrounding text, isn't it much more rich when you understand the full context?  You cannot continue to live like the world and claim that you belong to God.  You cannot let Jesus simply be your Savior without also making Him Lord.  There is no such thing as a salvation that is simply a "get out of hell free" card or a "fire insurance" policy.  There are all ways that carnal Christians speak and Paul's argument here and in 1 Corinthians is that the carnal man is the unsaved man--there really is no such thing as a carnal Christian.  1 Corinthians 3:4 is a proclamation of judgment from the apostle Paul on the Corinthian church--it is not a statement of something good they were doing that we should emulate.  Our "fruit" needs to be consistent with our "root."  If our "root" is the carnal man or "the flesh," then we would expect to identify with sin and to practice is like is described in Galatians 5:19-21.  But if we have been changed by the gospel, then we should expect to be controlled by the Spirt and we should display the fruit of the Spirit as the Spirit changes everything about about us and lives both in and through us.  We see a list of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23.  Paul wraps up that part of the book of Galatians with the following words, "24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another."  There is is--our desire is no longer about ourselves like when were slaves to the flesh.  Such people would get whatever they wanted at the expense of others.  We are no longer to be like that.  We are walk in the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit as we let the Spirit be in control of everything.