Thanks Be to God
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. Romans 6:22
Romans 6:15–23 – Romans: The Righteousness of God
Third Sunday of Easter – April 23, 2023 (am)
Growing in sanctification is a subject that’s very important to all of us who’ve received Christ as Savior, living into/out the righteousness of God that is ours by faith in Jesus. In fact, it would be hard to name a higher priority. Once we’ve become aware of our sin to the point where we recognize our need to trust in Christ as Savior—once we’ve recognized the truth expressed in the most familiar verse in our passage, that 23 … the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord—growing in holiness, which is the short definition of sanctification, is the outcome for which we hunger and thirst most (Mat.5:6), to the point where, if it’s not happening, or just not happening quickly enough, we can get discouraged and begin to wonder if we’ve truly been saved at all, if we’ve really, truly trusted in Christ for salvation.
But we learned last week that growing into a full understanding of our freedom from sin isn’t a quick or easy task. We have to learn what it means to be free from that bondage just like an emancipated slave had to learn what it meant to live out his freedom. And that involves preaching to our own hearts and minds the truth of our freedom in Christ. Paul wrote: 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. There’s the heart of it all. We don’t continue in sin (1) in order to see the greatness of God’s grace. Rather, we entrust ourselves to Him in pursuit of His righteousness (13). We lean hard into His grace, trusting Him to enable our obedience to the praise of His glory (cf. 4).
In summary, then, Paul has already argued (1-14) that we’re freed from bondage to sin, now he argues (15-23) that we’re freed to pursue righteousness, both of these points made in answer to a question he’s posed: 1 … Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Now: 15 … Are we to sin because we are not under law by under grace? … The difference between these two quite similar questions might be illustrated well by paraphrasing them: 1 [Shall we continue to sin because because we should?]—it brings more grace—and: 15 [Shall we continue to sin because we can?]—we’re under grace and nothing can threaten that standing. His answer to both is: By no means! (2, 15) We unpacked his reasoning for the first answer last week, now we’ll do it for the second.
Bottom line today, we’re going to be slaves of something! Let’s look at this under three headings.
The Fundamentals of Our Slavery – 15-16
After asking and answering his key question (15), Paul poses a follow-up that spotlights a simple and practical insight on the one hand but a profoundly theological one on the other. 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, and in this case either of sin on the one hand, which leads to death, or of obedience on the other hand, which leads to righteousness?
This is a great question—again, both simple and profound! We can wonder what Paul means exactly by present yourselves, but we still use similar language today. We talk about [giving] ourselves to something. It means we’re all in with it. This involvement is a priority for us. We’ll give up other things to do it. Kirsten Pearson presents herself to the piano, and because of that she plays very well—while others are doing other things, she’s sitting at a piano practicing and, because of that, she plays piano better than they do!
Because of who we are, because of how God has made us, we [give] ourselves to things. We’re driven to [give] ourselves to things. Life loses it’s meaning for us if we’re not [giving] ourselves to something! Here Paul is saying that [giving] ourselves to sin will make us really proficient sinners, which will eventually lead to the ultimate payoff of sin, namely, death.
But then he’s contrasting [giving] ourselves to sin with [giving] ourselves to righteousness, pursuing it, hungering and thirsting for [it] (Mat.5:6), we might say, because we’ve died to sin (2) with Christ (3) and have been raised with Him to walk in newness of life (4), to walk in obedience (17). So, rather than being slaves of sin, which leads to death, we can be slaves of obedience, which leads to… life! (16, 22)
The Freedom of Our Slavery – 17-19
Now, granted, this is an odd use of the word slave or slavery. And we’ll get to that in just a moment. But first, Paul gives proper attention to the amazing truth that we actually have and alternative to being a slave of sin, which leads to death! 17 But thanks be to God, he writes, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. Now there’s an intriguing statement. It’s translated differently in different versions (nas [same], tniv pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance, nlt this teaching we have given you, ylt form of teaching to which ye were delivered up—this gets closest to the original). Paul is giving thanks to God that these Roman believers, once slaves of sin, are now obeying from the heart the teaching to which they’ve been [given], delivered up, handed over (Moo 2018 427)—not the teaching to which you [have] committed [yourself] but the teaching to which you [have been] committed [by Another]! This is just one more of those many, many places in Scripture that confirm for us how our salvation takes place, that it’s a work of God on our behalf that’s granted to us as a gift (3:24; 5:15-17; 6:23)—18 and, having been set free from sin, there’s another, [you] have become slaves of righteousness, again, from the heart.
Then comes this interesting statement at the beginning of v.19 which gives a bit of a disclaimer regarding Paul’s use of the word slavery to describe the Roman Christians’ passion for righteousness, for heart obedience to the gospel. He writes: 19 I am speaking in human terms, he’s using a faulty illustration, because of your natural limitations. Paul’s point [appears] to be that human nature produces a weakness in understanding that can be overcome in this life only by the use of (imperfect) analogies. … [430] [He] recognizes that his language could be interpreted to mean that Christian experience bears the same marks of degradation, fear, and confinement that were typical of secular slavery. But [if we leave out those particular] characteristics, life in the new realm of righteousness and life does mean that a person is given over to a master who requires absolute and unquestioned obedience; and to make this point, the [yet imperfect] image of slavery is quite appropriate (Moo 2018 429-30).
Then Paul gives his purpose for employing such an image. And this is where his teaching in today’s passage is most practically helpful, I believe. 19 … 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. Here’s where the surely imperfect image still communicates clearly to us limited humans under the inspiration of the Spirit. The very energy and zeal and focus with which we pursued self-gratification before we were [handed over] to this new standard of teaching in the gospel sets the standard for the energy and zeal and focus with which we now pursue obedience and righteousness and life! This is what our obedience from the heart looks like!
The Fruit of Our Slavery – 20-23
Now, in this final paragraph, Paul gives us his reasoning, his ground, for this unusual word of instruction. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. You had no interest in it, no hunger, no thirst (cf Mat.5:6). 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? What a great question! Again, we’re still asking questions like this today. You pursued self-gratification, pressing the limits, how did that work for you? That’s the very question Paul is asking! And he’s adding the almost unavoidable observation that most of what we’ve pursued for self-gratifying ends brought at least as much shame as fulfillment! And in all likelihood, it’s brought no fulfillment at all, not of any lasting sort. Whom do you know who was a cut-up during their college years, chasing all the foolishness of those days, who’s still proud of it by the time they’re thirty? They’re ashamed of it! They grieve the lost opportunities! And they have good reason to do so. Those pursuits were not just time- and opportunity-wasters. Ultimately, they were self-destructive! 21 … 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. There’s the payoff! We’ve been [given over] to the teaching of the gospel, thanks be to God (17), so, in response, in expression of that thanks, we give ourselves over to pursuit of His righteousness (18), through obedience from the heart to His teaching (17), which leads to sanctification and… eternal life! (22)
Everybody loves a good person, admires them even wants to be like them. Everybody fears, dreads, even despises the things that cause someone’s life to go off the rails as it’s often called. And invariably those causes are some form of extreme self-gratification, things of which even the one who’s pursuing them is ashamed. But for some reason, even though all this is true, otherwise intelligent people often cannot seem to see that they need to be saved from selfish pursuits, from slavery to sin which leads to death, so that they’re freed to pursue righteousness and sanctification and life! So many just keep pursuing their self-serving aims even after they’ve come to understand their destructive emptiness. They just cannot grant that they stand in desperate need of rescue.
But that’s precisely what needs to happen! They, all of us, need to trust Christ as Savior, to die with Him, to be buried with him by baptism into his death and raised with him from the dead by the glory of the Father so that we too might walk in newness of life (4). 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Conclusion
That’s what this passage means for us. [Should we give ourselves to sin because nothing can threaten our standing in grace?] No! That’s a one-way road to death! And we’ve been freed by God in Christ to experience His righteousness and [holiness] and life! Why would we not want to pursue these things with all the zeal our transformed hearts can muster, to know them as fully as they can be known in this life? Jesus died so that we can know these things by experience, even now while we still live in the [realm] of Adam, sin, and death.
We’ve talked about seeking God to enable us as a church to know the fullness of all Jesus died for us to experience this side of heaven, while we’re still in the flesh. That’s the very end Paul is urging us toward in this passage. And our motivation to purse it is best stated in our theme verse today. 22 … 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. Let’s pursue that together, shall we?
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Resources
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Moo. Douglas J. 2000. The NIV Application Commentary. Romans. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
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Owen, John, ed. Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, by John Calvin. Translated by John Owen.
Sproul, R. C. 2005. The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans. Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus.
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NEXT SUNDAY: The New Way of the Spirit, Romans 7:7–6