Enslaved - Romans 6:15-23
INTRODUCTION:
Paul has been teaching us the two sides of salvation, they are not different parts of salvation, but are the results of salvation. One is immediate the moment that we in repentant faith come to Jesus Christ for salvation, at that moment we are declared righteous in Jesus Christ, we are justified by God, and at that same moment we are freed from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin and we are made alive to God, we are a new creation with an immortal soul and spirit that can never be touched again by sin and God begins His work of holiness in us conforming us to the image of His Son, this is a life long process that will not be completed until our resurrection or rapture when our mortal body will be glorified like Christ’s glorified body. This process is called sanctification and because we are freed from sin, we can by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit live the righteous life that God has called us to live.
Last week Paul gave us three ways in which we can resist sin and live in righteousness in Christ, the first way was to know that we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. To know who we are in Christ. Second we are to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, this is a fact that is revealed to us in God’s Word and we are to affirm it in our hearts, make this truth of Scripture our own truth, finally we are to submit or surrender to God in Christ Jesus, surrendering our will to His will so that He might use us as tools or weapons of righteousness, so that He can sanctify us. Paul reminded his readers at the end of the passage last Sunday that sin shall not be master over those who have come by faith to Jesus Christ. Then Paul said because you are not under law but under grace. The law no longer condemns us of sin because we have been freed from the penalty and the power of sin by the power of God’s grace. Paul knew that his opponents would immediately jump on this statement and say again that he was teaching that we could sin all we want because the law can no longer condemn us because we are under grace. So much like in the first ten verses of this chapter, Paul begins this final section of chapter six by giving us a question that might be asked by one of Paul’s readers, he then answers it, then goes into a longer explanation as to why it is not true and finally gives His conclusion of the whole matter. Let’s pray and then read our passage for today.
--PRAY--
Turn in your Bibles to Romans 6:15-23. I am going to try and finish up chapter 6 this morning. Please stand if you are able in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
Romans 6:15-23,
“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.” (Romans 6:15–23, NASB95)[1]
Paul opens this section with the phrase “what then?” Paul uses this phrase refer back to what he just said previously and to let us know that what he is about to say is what those opposed to his gospel of grace would say after he had just made the statement that we are not under law but under grace. Paul knows that they will think that he is giving Christians a license to sin.
Paul then gives the question: “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” (Romans 6:15a, NASB95)[2] Those who would ask this question do not in any way understand the Gospel or grace. They believe that because a believer is no longer under the law then all restraint has been removed, if you are no longer under it then you no longer need to obey it so you can live however you want because God’s grace covers all sins and you are now under grace. They completely misunderstand the meaning of grace and the result of grace, it not only covers all sin, but by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. What are we saved from? The penalty of sin and the power of sin. Grace does not promote sin; it saves us from it.
Paul first gives the short answer, “May it never be!” This is the same answer he used in verse 2. Again, as I said a few weeks ago this phrase is the strongest negation that there is in Greek. The King James version translated it as “God forbid!”
Paul want us to understand that this goes against everything that he believes and that he has taught. For Paul the very idea that God’s grace gives us a license to sin is just absurd. As I already stated the very purpose of grace was to free us from sin. Grace would contradict itself if it also said that we could continue in sin. God’s grace not only saves us from sin, but it also transforms us. Our life transformed by the grace of God will be a life that desires and is characterized by holiness and righteousness, a life that desires to continue in sin is a life that has not been saved by grace.
Paul goes on in a longer answer to show us that sin only leads to death. He writes, “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey,” (Romans 6:16a, NASB95)[3] Paul presents this truth as something that we should know, it is a truth that needs no proof. Paul in saying “present yourselves to someone as slaves” is showing us that this is a voluntary choice, this is allowing yourself to be bound by slavery, and because you have made this choice willingly you are bound by total obedience to your master, this is the one whom you obey. Paul says that we are all bound in slavery by the choices that we make, we do not control our own destiny, but our master whom we obey controls our destiny. If we willingly choose to obey sin, then sin is our master or if we willingly choose to obey the Lord Jesus, then He is our Master.
Paul uses this illustration by applying it to the person who has put their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation to drive home again the truth of sanctified living which this whole chapter has been on. He says for the believer saved by grace through faith he only has two choices, to sin which would be disobedience to the Lord Jesus, or obedience. One’s lifestyle and the choices which characterize one’s life proves who is one’s true master. If a man deliberately and willfully chooses sin and it becomes the pattern of his life, then he is sin’s slave. But if the pattern of his life is one of obedience, and obedience which reflects God’s will, then he is God’s slave. Paul finishes his answer by giving us the end result of both being a slave to sin and a slave to God. The end result of slavery to sin is death, both physical and spiritual death, and if your slavery to sin continues until you die physically it will also mean eternal death, or as the apostle John calls it in the book of Revelation, the second death, where you are forever separated from God and tormented for eternity in the lake of fire. Paul says the slavery to God which is characterized by obedience to the will of God, that the end result of this obedience is righteousness, which results in eternal life. Remember Paul’s words to the Ephesians after telling them they were save by grace through faith alone. He wrote, “For we are His [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10, NASB95)[4] The life that is characterized by unrighteous living cannot be a Christian life. That is not to say that Christians do not sin, we can and we do, but the life that is characterized by habitual sin is not saved. The apostle John put it this way in 1 John 2:3, “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.” (1 John 2:3, NASB95)[5]
It is one or the other, there is no middle ground. Either you are mastered by sin and belong to Satan and are under his lordship, or you are mastered by righteousness and belong to Jesus Christ and are under His lordship. As human beings we like to think that we command our own lives, that we are the captain of our destiny, but this just isn’t true, it is a lie of Satan. We are not independent creatures, and we are the enslaved either to sin or to righteousness.
What Paul has been teaching throughout this chapter is that we cannot have two different and opposing natures at the same time and we cannot live in two different and opposing spiritual worlds. Either you are a slave to sin, which everyone is by natural birth, or you are a slave to righteousness, which can only come through the new birth by faith in Jesus Christ. Paul is saying for the person who has been saved, this person by becoming a new creation is made a slave of righteousness and cannot be anything else. John wrote the same thing, listen to John’s words in 1 John 3:9-10, “No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother.” (1 John 3:9–10, NASB95)[6] For the person who is justified through faith in Jesus Christ his life is transformed, and he cannot continue in his old sinful way of life. For the true Christian obedience to God in righteous living is a certainty in his new life in Christ. Now there will be times in every Christian’s life when they will give into temptation and sin, but for one who is truly saved, who is justified and transformed, this person cannot continue indefinitely in disobedience to God, because this goes completely against his new and holy nature.
THE EXPLANATION (Romans 6:17-22)
Moving on in our passage, Paul gives us an explanation of the truth that he just stated: a person is either a slave to sin and Satan or a slave to righteousness and God. Along with his explanation he applies this truth to our lives by contrasting a slave to sin with a slave to righteousness. He does this by showing us the position of the slaves, showing us our past, as slaves to sin and then our future, as slaves to righteousness which results in sanctification. Finally, he shows us the outcome of slavery to sin and the outcome of slavery to God.
First, Paul gives thanks to God that the believers in the church in Rome are no longer slaves to sin. It is important to note that Paul gives thanks to God for this, showing us again that it is nothing that we do, and that there is nothing that we can do to be transferred from Satan’s kingdom or sin and death to God’s kingdom of righteousness and life. It is totally and only a work of God and He and only He deserves our thanks and our praise.
Paul makes it clear that those who have been justified by God were slaves to sin, past tense, but they are no longer and never will be again. The Greek word translated “were” is in Greek in the imperfect tense, which means that this is an ongoing reality for those who are not justified by God. The unsaved person is bound by slavery to sin continually, and nothing can break that bond but faith in Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. What that means is that it does not matter how morally good a person is on the outside, how upright they might seem or how generous they may be, this does not change the fact that he is enslaved to sin and everything he says, thinks and does comes from a proud, sinful, and thoroughly ungodly heart. This is the universal position of the natural man, universal in that there are no exceptions.
But Paul thanks God that this is not the case anymore with his readers, and Paul defines the true intent of his readers by describing them as being obedient from the heart, this is not just an outward show of righteousness, this is a righteousness that is from within coming from an obedient heart, this obedient living from the heart speaks of it characterizing your life, it becomes who you are. We must remember though that obedience does not produce or maintain salvation, but is the outcome of salvation, it becomes the lifestyle of those who are saved. Paul says that his readers became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. In other words, Paul is saying that his readers having responded to the gospel by faith in Jesus Christ did not just leave it there, but became obedient to the teaching of the Scriptures that were given to them. The outcome of their faith in Christ was seen in their obedience to God’s Word, God’s Word is the form of teaching that was committed to them. This desire to know and obey God’s truth is one of the evidences of true salvation. Paul goes on to describe the position of his readers, they have been freed sin, they have become slaves of righteousness. Paul describes for us a complete change of those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ, they are redeemed from their slavery to sin, sin no longer has power over them, and they have become slaves of righteousness, making the willing choice to be obedient to Jesus Christ.
Paul then begins to speak of a believer’s past, and he confesses that he is speaking in human terms because of the weakness of his readers flesh. Paul’s readers in Rome thoroughly understood the roles of slaves and masters, so Paul says he uses theses human terms and this human analogy so that his readers understand what he is teaching.
Paul’s uses the word “flesh” as a synonym for “mortal man.” Remember that it is the mortal man or the flesh that is the only part of man that is not yet redeemed at salvation. This is the only part of man that can be influenced or tempted by sin after salvation. So even though the inner person, the spirit and soul of a person has been transformed into the likeness of Christ, the outer person, represented by the flesh, is still subject to the corruption of sin.
Paul goes from contrasting their position as slaves of sin to slaves of righteousness to comparing their past as slaves of sin to their present position as slaves of righteousness and their sanctification. Paul speaks of his readers before salvation and he said they presented the members of their bodies as slaves to impurity and lawlessness. Remember from last week that the members of our bodies are the parts of our bodies, our limbs, our eyes, our mouth, our ears, our brains, and Paul said that we presented them as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, to sin in our thoughts, to sin by our words, and to sin with our deeds, Paul then goes onto say that this leads to further lawlessness. Sin begets more sin, like cancer it may begin small but if left alone it grows and spreads until the whole body is destroyed, sin works the same way.
Paul says that this is who you were in the past, Paul says now that you have put your faith in God it is possible for you to resist sin and live in righteousness. Paul says, “now present your members as slaves of righteousness which will lead to further righteousness, the ultimate result is complete sanctification. God redeems us by His grace so that we might bring glory to Him and we do this by living righteously as He produces His righteousness in us, we walk in it and glorify Him.
Paul moves on to contrast the outcome of being a slave to sin and being a slave to righteousness. He writes that when you were slaves to sin you were free in regard to righteousness. In other words, they are in no way connected to righteousness, righteousness can make no demands on them because they are unrelated to it, they do not desire it nor do they have the ability to meet its requirements. As a slave of sin he is ruled and controlled by sin and he is powerless to meet God’s standard of righteousness. Paul notes that because they were free in regard to righteousness, then what was the fruit, or what did they gain, or what benefit did they receive from their way of life under sin, Paul describes that way of life as those things which they are now ashamed of. The fruit of sin is not something that we should be proud of as believers, the fruit of sin is usually very self-centered, proud, and selfish. Paul reminds them that the outcome of those things that you used to strive for under sin, the outcome is death.
But when we contrast that with the fact that you are now freed from the penalty and the power of sin and you have been enslaved to God and you are obedient to God, all that you do now in obedience to God is for His glory and the fruit of that obedience, the benefit of it, what you gain from it is sanctification, the outcome eternal life. Two kinds of slavery, slavery to sin results in death, slavery to God results in life, eternal life. For me the choice is easy, I give up nothing to gain everything.
Paul closes out this chapter with a very familiar verse, one that many people have memorized. For Paul this is his conclusion or the summary of all that he has written in this chapter. Within this verse we have two truths that cannot be changed, they stand as absolutes. The first is that the wages of sin is death. What this means is spiritual death is earned. When sin pays you for a life of slavery for sin what you have earned is death. John MacArthur writes, “It is the just and rightful compensation for a life that is characterized by sin, which is every life apart from God.”[7]
The second unchangeable truth is that the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. This phrase “free gift” in Greek has as it root the word for grace. It is a gift of grace, a gift of God’s unmerited favor to undeserving sinners. Gifts generally are free, but Paul makes clear by the use of this word for gift that it is a free gift of God’s grace. Paul is saying that salvation cannot be earned by works, by human goodness, by religious ritual or by anything else man might do to try and earn salvation. Unlike death, which is earned, salvation and eternal life cannot be earned. Paul wrote the Ephesians in Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9, NASB95)[8]
CONCLUSION:
As we close today a choice is before you. If you want what you deserve, what you have earned, God will give it to you as your wages, eternal death. If you want what you do not deserve, God offers that to you as well, but as a free gift. Eternal life, which we do not deserve has only one source which is Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul’s conclusion to this chapter is Jesus Christ. He is the only way from sin to righteousness, He is the only way from condemnation to justification, He is the only way from eternal death to eternal life.
This morning Jesus may be speaking to your heart, calling you to Himself. He calls to Himself those who are willing to be inwardly transformed by Him. Those who desire a new nature that is created in His likeness. Jesus calls us to exchange our sinfulness for His holiness, those who will die with Him so that they can be raised with Him to a new life. He calls us to leave behind our life of slavery to sin, to be freed from its penalty and from its power, and to become a slave to righteousness and He promises that one day we will be freed from the presence of sin when our sanctification is complete. Is Jesus calling you this morning from eternal death to eternal life?
If you have already been saved by grace through faith alone, do you understand your position in Christ, that you have been called to walk in His holiness because He has already transformed your nature into His likeness. You now by the power of the Holy Spirit who indwells you are able to resist sin and walk in righteousness. Paul told the Colossians in Colossians 1:21-22, “And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds, yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach—” (Colossians 1:21–22, NASB95)[9] This is the promise of our glorification, the result of our sanctification.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[5]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[7]MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 1-8. Chicago, IL : Moody Press, 1991.
[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.