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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Previous Section - Chapter 6:1 - 14 Next Section - Chapter 7:1 - 6 Slaves
To Righteousness (ch. 6:15-23) In
chapter 6 verse 1 Paul asked, "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may
increase?" Here in verse 15 he
asks a similar question to that in verse 1.
The question is, 'Shall we sin because we are not under the Law but under
grace?" He is asking this
question because of what he as just said in verse 14.
It is another natural question that someone would ask him because of what
he had just said. Paul, as in verse
1, answers by saying, "By no means."
He has just stated the reason why we should not sin in verse 14, which
says, "Sin shall not be your
master because you are not under the Law, but under grace." In
verse 16 Paul introduces the idea here that we are no longer slaves to sin, but
we have become slaves to God and to His righteousness. This
is one way of viewing our lives as Christians that isn't very popular these
days. When one becomes a Christian,
one is in fact giving his life to Jesus, and if you give your life to Jesus,
that means you belong to Him. You
belong to Jesus as a slave belongs to his master.
Paul
is also saying that all men are slaves. We
are all slaves to sin or slaves to Jesus. It's
one or the other. No man is really
free. In
verse 16 Paul reminds the Romans that if you give yourself to someone, and I
add, either by choice or constraint, you become that person's slave.
It should be noted that the majority of people living in the cit of What
is called patronage was the social norm of the day back in the first century In
verse 16 Paul affirms that one is either a slave to sin that leads to death or
one is a slave to obedience that leads to righteousness.
The life of righteousness that Paul speaks of here is first and foremost
the life of being declared righteous by God as seen in the process of
justification as we've already talked about.
Paul might have had in mind also the righteous life that with the help of
the Holy Spirit would be lived by the believer.
In
verse 17 Paul gives thanks to God that these Roman Christians are no longer
slaves to sin. They aren't slaves to
sin because they gave themselves to the teaching Paul entrusted them with.
This shows us the importance of good teaching.
Teaching is something that we are actually entrusted with.
It is our responsibility to act accordingly to that which has been taught
to us. These Roman Christians did
act accordingly, and so should we. It
is very important in this day in age when Bible teaching is taking a back seat
to other things to know that God has given us certain teachings and truths.
Beyond that, He has trusted this teaching with us.
I would dare say that over the centuries the church has done a poor job
in holding the teachings of God in their pure form.
More often than not, we've abused God's truths by turning them into
falsehoods, otherwise known as false doctrine.
In
verse 18 Paul makes it clear. His
readers, and us too, are no longer slaves to sin but slaves to righteousness.
To date Paul has told us that we are declared righteous by simply
trusting Jesus. He mentioned one
time that we have eternal life. He
has hinted to us about receiving God’s Spirit.
Now he tells us that we are slaves to God.
Is this something we want to hear? I
thought salvation was free? Salvation
is indeed free because we do not have the ability to pay for it.
That being said, that is where freedom ends.
Jesus is our Lord and that means we serve Him.
In one sense of the word we are free from sin in order to freely serve
Jesus. Paul did consider himself a
slave, but, it was a bond slave, which is a slave by free choice.
Being
slaves is another thing the modern church has left behind.
We like to soften this concept by using less offensive words.
The fact of the matter is that Jesus is Lord.
He is the final authority over all there is. So, if He is Lord, then in
one real sense of the word, we who have given our lives to Him are slaves to
Him. That being said, Scripture also
says that we are His brother and friend. As
in many things found in the Bible, there is a dichotomy to the things of God.
On one hand we're slaves and on the other hand we're friends.
Just remember, we're thinking of Biblical slavery here, not the slavery
that many black people experienced in In
verse 19 Paul says that because the Roman Christians, and I'd say any Christian
as far as that goes, are weak in their natural selves, they, and we, who once
offered our body parts to sin, now should offer them to God.
As these people were passionate in their sin, they should be just
as passionate towards being righteous. You
might well imagine that one of the body parts used for sin were the sex organs
of both men and women. As a man is
passionate about sex, and in this case all sorts of sexual perversion, he should
be just as passionate for living right before God. We
should understand that in the culture in which Paul was writing this letter,
sexual sins according to the Bible, were commonplace.
It was simply a part of their culture.
Men were homosexual, even though they were married to women.
Women for the most part were considered baby machines, Men preferred
homosexual sex. At each temple of
worship throughout the northern In
verse 20 Paul says that when the Roman Christians, and us too, were slaves to
sin, they and we were free from the control of righteousness.
That tells me that righteousness, and really, that's Jesus, should have
control over us as Christians. So
one again, salvation may be a free gift, but living the Christian life is a
matter of submitting to the rule of the Lord Jesus Christ in one's life.
In
verse 21 Paul asks the Roman believers how they benefited from their past life
of sin. That's a good question to
ask anyone. One can just list a
number of sins. Then they can list
the results of those sins. It is
obvious that sin leads to problems, and as Paul says, the biggest problem is
death, death in every aspect of life. One
example of this would be the sin of adultery that leads to death of a marriage.
In
verses 22 and 23 Paul tells his readers that when they were slaves to sin, the
natural result was death. At that
point righteousness had no benefit to them.
Now they are slaves to righteousness and there are lots of results,
including holiness and eternal life. This
is the first mention of the word holiness and the second mention of eternal life
in the book of Romans. We can,
therefore, conclude that holiness is a part of the Christian life.
We need to understand that holiness is not simply obeying rules.
It is obeying God. It is
living out the righteousness that God has pronounced on us, from a loving and
thankful heart. Holiness is a state
of being just as righteousness is a state of being.
Holiness is more than doing holy things.
It's being holy. Paul closes this chapter in verse 23 with the famous verse we all learned in Sunday school. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." This is a Biblical truth. Christians cannot compromise this truth away. Sin leads to death in many ways, and the most important way is the death of the relationship we have with our God.
You must remember that Paul is speaking to Christians, people who have been declared righteous by God. Even though they died with Jesus on the cross, Christians still struggle with sin. If this were not the case, this chapter would not be found in Paul's letter to the Romans. Paul would not have had to tell these believers not to sin, if indeed we had no capability to sin after being declared righteous. Chapter 7 will continue with this topic of Christians struggling with sin. Next Section - Chapter 7:1 - 6 Previous Section - Chapter 6:1 - 14
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