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§15 The Slavery That Liberates (Rom. 6:15–23)

In chapters 6–7 Paul discusses the Christian life using four metaphors: baptism (6:1–14), slavery (6:15–23), marriage (7:1–6), and psychology (7:7–25). The present section on slavery continues the interplay between indicative and imperative: what God has done leads to what we ought to do. Paul presents his ideas in a series of antithetical statements: “under law / under grace” (v. 15), “sin which leads to death / obedience which leads to righteousness” (v. 16), “free from sin / slaves to righteousness” (v. 18), “slavery to impurity / slavery to righteousness” (v. 19), “slaves to sin / free of righteousness” (v. 20), “free from sin / slaves to God” (v. 22), “result in death / the result is eternal life” (vv. 21–22), and “the wages of sin is death / the gift of God is eternal life” (v. 23).

The antitheses are built throughout on the foundation of slavery. The institution of slavery in the ancient world is without parallel in the contemporary West. A modern employee, or even a servant, is indebted to an employer for a certain number of hours each week. Any time outside the employment contract is, of course, at the employee’s disposal. The employee can, in other words, serve a number of masters.

Ancient slavery was something entirely different. A modern employee owes an employer a certain amount of productivity; an ancient slave owed a master time, labor, and life. That slaves were held under moral obligation to obey their masters indicates they were considered human beings (and not simply chattel), albeit inferior human beings. Unlike American slavery in the antebellum South, race or ethnic origin played little if any role in ancient slavery. Ancient slaves came from every background imaginable and performed the most varied roles in society; most slaves, of course, performed labors of drudgery, but some were bureaucrats, artisans, teachers, and even physicians. But like their American counterparts, ancient slaves were considered the property of their masters, literally bondspersons. They were acquired through a variety of means, including birth, war, and auctions. Some slave traders acquired babies exposed in temples or at public dumps, and in times of famine adults not uncommonly sold themselves into slavery to avoid starving. The exact percentage of slaves in Greece and Rome varied, but roughly a quarter of the work force belonged to slave classes. Regardless of their functions, slaves possessed few civil rights and virtually no legal rights. If a master freed a slave it was considered a merit, not a duty. Slaves could be sold at the master’s whim, and punishment of slaves, including torture or capital punishment, was permissible as long as social formalities were observed. Lack of rights was due to the most odious, if essential, aspect of slavery, that slaves were considered by nature inferior—children or morons—and named accordingly, “little one,” or “boy.” Always and everywhere the slave psyche was shackled by two thoughts: a slave was an unfit human being who owed absolute loyalty to his or her master. The cardinal virtue of slavery was obedience!

To illustrate the Christian life by such an institution was in many respects an inappropriate comparison, and the apology in verse 19 indicates that Paul was not unaware of a possible offense. But despite its negative connotations, the master-slave relation provided the apostle with a supreme illustration of his core argument at this stage of the epistle, namely, the total indebtedness and absolute accountability of the forgiven sinner to the grace of God.

6:15 / Somewhat surprisingly, 6:1 is repeated in verse 15: Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Why does the apostle plow the same field twice? It has been said that where the gospel is most faithfully proclaimed it is most vulnerable to misunderstanding and misuse. In no article of faith is this truer than of grace. This doctrine is susceptible to the slightest imbalances, resulting in absurd distortions. In verse 1 Paul defended grace against wanton abuse. Here, with a slightly different spin on the ball, he must defend it against antinomianism. Someone might conclude from verse 14 (“you are not under law, but under grace”) that when the restraint of law is removed there remains no distinction between good and evil. At least one purpose of the law had been to check sin, but once the check is removed and the floodgate opened, what is there to prevent the waters of chaos from erupting?

Whenever the gospel fell victim to such a patent misinterpretation Paul often reacted sharply, as he does here, mē genoito, By no means! Freedom from law does not mean license to do whatever one pleases. That is wide of the mark, and “missing the mark” is exactly what sin meant in classical Greek. Sin, of course, is often a willful offense against the moral law of God, but it is also a falling short of God’s glory (3:23), a failure to inherit the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Phil. 3:14). There are sins of commission or trespasses (i.e., bad things done) and sins of omission or debts (i.e., good things left undone). The danger inherent in verse 15 is the latter, the failure to “live up” to grace. Both the costliness and free bestowal of grace obligate believers to special accountability. Grace is a form of indebtedness, a happy indebtedness, to be sure, that permits its servants no neutral ground. To live under grace means freedom to do not what we want but what we ought! It means, as Paul will continue in the following verse, freedom for obedience, not an excuse for disobedience.

6:16 / Paul hopes to make his reasoning apparent by a rhetorical question: Don‘t you know that … you are slaves to the one whom you obey? This resumes the thought of verses 12ff., and, as there, the present tense of his verbs implies continuous or habitual action. He is not thinking of occasional sins, but of an ongoing alliance with sin, an obedience to sin that leads to enslavement. “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin’ ” (John 8:34; see also 2 Pet. 2:19).

Paul’s blunt alternatives—obedience to sin or obedience to righteousness—may strike our sophisticated age as overly simplistic. Are not “either—or” answers, especially in matters of ultimate reality, the mark of ignorant or narrow minds? In Pauline anthropology the essential truth is that a human being is a creature. To be free in the sense that any human being could be lord of his or her own life, or of the world around, is a total illusion. Was not the fall of Adam and Eve due precisely to their attempt to reach beyond their creatureliness, to put themselves above obedience, or to find some neutral ground where they would be exempt from the divine commandment? Is that not the quest to be God?

Freedom from choices and obligations, or freedom from the constraints of being a creature, was out of the question for Paul. The question was not if one would bow before a master, but before which master one would bow! One may stand on this plot of ground or that, but not in mid-air. One may obey this master or that, but the choice to obey no master is granted to no one. To be free from one power is simply to be drafted into the service of another; and to serve the one excludes service of the other. The issue of obedience was not, like other problems that Paul discusses in Romans, a problem of sin or the law. The command to obey was given along with the breath of life. It is inherent in being human, for it sets freedom itself in motion and is thus the primal condition of knowing and loving God. In Paradise Lost the angel Raphael admonishes Adam and Eve in pristine Eden, “ ‘That thou art happie, owe to God; That thou continu’st such, owe to thy self, That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.’ ”

Freedom, then, obligates one to obey grace, and only in obedience to grace is one free. The auto racer who drafts or slipstreams a car in front of him experiences this freedom in a rough sort of way, for by pulling into the wind pocket of the car ahead and “obeying” it, the second car achieves a speed and economy of fuel impossible on its own. It is neither the dispassionate ascetic nor the supposedly unbiased critic who exemplifies grace, but the individual indebted and bound to righteousness. Had not the Incarnate One taken the form of a slave (Phil. 2:7)? The second word of Romans is doulos: “Paul, [a] slave of Jesus Christ” (1:1). The uncommitted life has yet to be lived. Jesus told a story about a householder who rid his house of an evil spirit, swept it clean, put it in order, … and left it empty. The expelled demon searched for seven demons more wretched than itself, and they all returned to seize the house in fury (Matt. 12:43–45). The owner’s mistake was not in ridding the premises of the demon, but in leaving it unoccupied. Unless the vacuum left by sin is filled with righteousness, the heart is vulnerable for a more violent takeover. The point is obvious. The human experience does not offer us a state of limbo. Deliverance from evil does not leave one in a neutral zone. There is no no-man’s-land in moral and spiritual matters; indeed, that is the most dangerous ground to stand because it is raked with fire from all sides. Rather, to be delivered from the power of evil is to be delivered over to the power of God. It is an exchange of lords, a good one for a bad one, to be sure, but an exchange nevertheless. A Christian is still a slave—but the Christian has changed masters! One is either under grace or under sin; these are the two primal authorities, and both obligate their servants to obedience, the one to life, the other to death.

In his Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle offers the following insight on slavery in moral and spiritual matters. Each action which we do in life is voluntary, he says, but with each voluntary action our disposition becomes increasingly involuntary. We continue, of course, to make choices, but over a period of time the choices are influenced by a disposition which is increasingly determined, either for better or worse. In Paul’s words, you are slaves to the one whom you obey!

6:17–18 / We have then two masters, grace and sin, vying for control of both individuals and the world. A scene of two slave buyers, each bidding against the other at a slave auction, is not inappropriate to Paul’s thought. Thanks be to God, the benevolent master has won, for the service of sin would be actual bondage, whereas the service of grace is actual freedom. Paul does not praise believers for having made a better choice of grace over sin. Salvation is not a game show where the panelist who knows the right answers wins the prize. An overweening confidence in human freedom leads us to think we have done God a favor by believing in him. Paul, however, demonstrates that the sovereign human will is a chimera. Our miserly faith scarcely does God any favors. Salvation is far more a matter of desperation and need, a rescue operation from the grim and hopeless servitude of sin to the freedom of sons and daughters. Grace is not honored by mere lipservice, by admitting the existence of God, or even by assenting to Christian morality. Grace is not something we grant; it is the ineffable love of God which lays claim to us as the one treasure which is worthy of our heart and will—or worthy of nothing. Paul speaks of obeying this grace wholeheartedly (Gk. ek kardias, “from the heart,” which means from the center and source of the inner life). Obedience cannot be one with faith unless it comes from the heart. Bengel was surely right when he said that Christians gain a oneness of heart and will in the act of goodness which is denied to persons in their badness (Gnomon, vol. 3, p. 82). A wicked person is plagued by at least some stirrings of conscience and hence cannot be wicked with the same freedom that good persons can be good from the heart.

The wording of the statement, the form of teaching to which you were entrusted (v. 17), appears rather backward. Would it not be more correct to speak of handing over doctrines to hearers than hearers to doctrines? In defense of the wording Barrett notes that “Christians are not (like the rabbis) masters of a tradition; but are themselves created by the word of God, and remain in subjection to it” (Romans, p. 132; see also 2 Cor. 2:9; Gal. 1:6). Käsemann is more specific, seeing the form of teaching not as the gospel in general, but as an early baptismal creed to which believers were entrusted at their baptism (Romans, p. 181). Precedent for the latter can be found in the early church’s course of instruction for believers at their baptism; the Didache (ca. A.D. 75), which means “Teaching” or “Instruction,” indeed may have been an early baptismal manual. In response to Barrett and Käsemann, however, it should be noted that form, typos, is almost always in Paul used of persons, not things. Moreover, the form of teaching is nowhere else used of a baptismal creed. It seems more likely, therefore, that Paul intends the phrase with reference to Jesus Christ, which is entirely possible in Greek, i.e., “but you obeyed from your heart the model (typos) of teaching to whom (= Jesus Christ) you were entrusted.” At any rate, whether the phrase refers to Christ or the gospel, the main point is that the form of teaching does not belong to us, but we belong to it. We do not change Christ (or the gospel) to fit our culture and mores, but we must be changed and converted by it. Only thus are we set free from sin. This freedom, which Paul introduces for the first time in Romans (and again in vv. 20, 22), originates from the cross of Christ and from the believer’s engrafting into Christ at baptism.

6:19 / Paul was not unaware that comparing Christianity to the brute conditions of slavery risked offense to the gospel. He defends the analogy, however, because you are weak in your natural selves. Paul had meditated deeply on the incarnation (e.g., Phil. 2:5–11), and if Christ did not think it undignified to walk the streets of Palestine, then his apostle did not think it undignified to speak of him in street language. Paul would risk offense to the sacred in order to communicate the sacred to the secular. There are religions which consider their saving stories too sacred to be couched in the vernacular; Paul considered the saving story of the gospel too important not to be!

The remainder of verse 19 is structured according to contrasting parallelism: just as you used to … so now.… The same parts of your body once used for impurity are now to be used for holiness. How brilliant the mind and indefatigable the will in the pursuit of evil. But now that they have been baptized into Christ, they are to become equally resourceful and tireless in the cause of righteousness and holiness. The injunction to offer your parts in slavery to righteousness is not a return to the burden of the law, but the way the justified individual expresses grace in daily life. Because we are freed from sin we are to be as creative and energetic for God as we once were for sin and self. The release from slavery to sin does not relieve us of responsibility, but shifts our responsibility to God.

The word Paul uses of the new responsibility is holiness, which, along with impurity and wickedness, was a prominent Jewish word. The Greek original, hagiasmos, means “holiness,” “consecration,” or “sanctification.” It was a moral term, in which, according to several OT passages (Lev. 11:44–45; Deut. 7:6; 26:19), God laid claim to the believer as his “treasured possession” and transformed the character of the believer so as to share in God’s likeness. Here Paul expressly links justification and sanctification as righteousness leading to holiness. The debate whether Paul intends a process of sanctification or an end result is ultimately an artificial distinction and foreign to Paul’s thought. The point is that justification by faith leads to concrete moral change. What the law demanded but could not fulfill is now possible through Jesus Christ. Both the process of moral renewal and the result of moral perfection are present in perhaps Paul’s most explicit statement on the subject: “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify (hagiazein) ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness (hagiasmos) out of reverence for God” (2 Cor. 7:1; see also Heb. 12:14). The first reference to sanctification, the verb “purify,” is an act, whereas the second reference, the noun “holiness,” is a condition.

6:20–22 / Verses 20–22 summarize the transition from sin to salvation. Verse 20 is not entirely clear in Greek, of which the NIV offers an interpretive rendering, When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. The sinner imagines that sin is true freedom. It is an illusory freedom, however, for it is preoccupied with self, resulting inevitably in license, lawlessness, and chaos. Only righteousness truly frees because it leads away from self and to “holiness” (v. 19). Under the dominion of sin one has no responsibility for righteousness and is consequently ordained for death (v. 21). What benefit (Gk. “fruit”) did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? The answer is “nothing,” for death is scarcely a benefit. But because God is sovereign love, the present is never irrevocable, and repentance and change are possible. Here Paul speaks of shame as the condition of repentance (see Ezek. 16:61–63; Ezra 9:7–15). As long as one takes delight in sin (no matter how subtly) and inwardly desires its furtherance, one secretly hopes for some gain from sin, forbidden though it may be. There one is still under sin’s opiate. But where one sees the final consequence of sin as death, there sin’s guise of delight is defrocked and exposed as utter shamefulness. Sin’s deceitfulness is then shattered and one is freed for slavery to God, which is eternal sonship.

Inward obedience comes to outward expression in holiness (v. 22). Sanctification is not something we achieve, it is something we inherit and participate in by active obedience. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God. Paul is not applauding human achievement; he is rather testifying to God’s liberating intervention in the cross on our behalf, the result of which is eternal life. Literally translated the verse reads, “you have the fruit of sanctification, the end of which is eternal life” (v. 22b).

6:23 / The contrast between sin and grace is now sharpened to a razor’s edge. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. The imagery of fruit (NIV, “benefits”) is here abandoned for the military imagery of verse 13. Sin and God are depicted as warlords, the one paying the wages of death, the other offering release and freedom for life. There is a telling contrast between the wages of sin and the gift of God. Hans Heidland notes that opsōnia, “wages,” were subsistence payments to soldiers. Thus, in the present context, sin promises to pay subsistence wages, to provide for our needs, but that is an illusion, for in reality it pays death. Again, opsōnia were not a flat sum but installments paid over the duration of a soldier’s service. If Paul is true to the metaphor, the death he refers to would not be death as a “lump sum,” i.e., physical death, but the shadow and consequences of death already in life. Most importantly, wages and gift are two entirely different things. In Heidland’s words, “Man has rights only in relation to sin, and these rights become his judgment” (TDNT, vol. 5, p. 592). Because of sin humanity gets what it has coming to it; death is our due or “right.” But God does not pay the wages of “rights” nor compensate according to deserts. He freely forgives those who renounce the “rights” of sin. God, who is rich in mercy, remits our debts and freely grants what we do not deserve—eternal life in Christ Jesus. That is the meaning of grace.