“Romans 6:15-23”

Saturday, February 24, 2018

“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

---End of Scripture Verses---

We are all slaves. That is probably offensive to most Americans because we take great pride in our “freedom”, but there is just no escaping that simple fact. Christians often delight in the freedom that Christ provides for them, and well they should! But freedom in Christ is not liberty to do just as we please and not suffer the consequences (Galatians 5:17). Christ provides us freedom from sin, our cruelest taskmaster (John 8:34-36). But, once a person is freed from the bondage of sin through the blood of Christ, he just becomes the slave of a different Master. A benevolent Master. A righteous Master. But a Master nonetheless. All people are slaves, either to sin or to righteousness; of Satan or Yahweh.

Please notice how Paul emphasizes the importance of obedience in these verses (and in all of Romans actually). In verse 16 he encourages us to be slaves to obedience. In verse 17 he says that those who have decided to truly follow Christ have become “obedient from the heart” to His teaching. Once again, he is stressing the fact that, just because we are saved by God’s grace and not law, obedience to God’s laws are still an absolute requirement if we want to please Him and be righteous in His sight and go to heaven when we die. Law can’t save us, but if we choose lawlessness (iniquity) then we forfeit our claim to God’s saving grace.

But what is “that form of teaching” to which we were committed (verse 17) that freed us from the bondage of sin and enslaved us to righteousness when we became obedient to it? I think he is referring to “the doctrine of Christ” that we read about in 2 John 9, which is not limited to, but certainly includes the death, burial and resurrection that takes place in obedience to the command to be baptized in the first several verses of this chapter. Penitent baptism is certainly the act in which we contact Christ’s blood through God’s grace and have the sins that have enslaved us forgiven.

But “that form of teaching” has a far greater reach than just our initial induction into the kingdom of Christ. Jesus said in Matthew 28:18-20: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

We are made disciples by being baptized into the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but then we are expected to “obey everything” that Jesus has commanded us to do in the pages of the New Testament. The Apostle Paul said that we were “committed” to this form of teaching in Romans 6:17. This is the same Greek word “paradidomi” that he used three separate times in chapter one to explain how the unrighteous Gentiles were “given over” by God to their sins. In just the same fashion we must be “given over” or “fully committed” to the doctrine of Christ that is the entirety of the New Testament. Paul said that we obeyed the Gospel “from the heart”, or “whole-heartedly” and we must continue to do that for the remainder of our lives if we want to please God and remain free from the slavery of sin.

We are all slaves. But thanks be to God, we all have the ability to choose who we will serve and give our allegiance to. We can serve sin and Satan and earn the wages of eternal death, or we can serve righteousness and God and receive the free gift of eternal life (Romans 6:23). Who and what will you choose? The gift of eternal life is “free”, but it wasn’t cheap. It came at a great cost to God, and it will cost us something as well. We will have to forfeit our own stubborn will, and give up our slavery to sin. It will cost us our lives to save our lives (Matthew 16:25). And yet salvation is still a “free” gift because we don’t deserve it and it is impossible for us to earn it.

Please read Romans 7:1-12 for tomorrow.

Hope you all have a super Saturday!

- Louie Taylor

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