TEXT [Commentary]
b. We have become slaves of righteousness (6:15-23)
15 Well then, since God’s grace has set us free from the law, does that mean we can go on sinning? Of course not! 16 Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. 17 Thank God! Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you. 18 Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living.
19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
NOTES
6:15 Of course not! This emphatic negation (mē genoito [TG3361/1096, ZG3590/1181]) occurs ten times in Romans (3:4, 6, 31; 6:2, 15; 7:7, 13; 9:14; 11:1, 11) but nowhere else in Paul’s writings.
6:16 You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death. Here “death” refers to ultimate death in the final judgment. “Death” has the same meaning in 1:32; 6:21, 23; 7:5; 8:6.
choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living. “To righteous living” is lit., “to righteousness” (eis dikaiosunē [TG1343, ZG1466]). “Righteousness” here could be interpreted either as “righteous living” (as in 6:18-19; so Mounce, Moo) or as “a right standing with God” (i.e., final justification), which provides a clearer contrast with “death” (so Cranfield, Bruce). A right standing with God, given freely on the basis of faith in Christ, requires obedience as a response, if faith is to be considered authentic. In the context of ch 6, obedience refers to moral living; it is not to be equated with the act of believing (as in 1:5; 16:26).
6:17 this teaching we have given you. An awkward passive construction (hon paredothēte tupon didachēs [TG1322, ZG1439]), here translated more freely as an active. It is a reference to the way of life demanded by the Good News. There is no need to understand it as a set body of teaching representing a summary of Christian ethics based on the teaching of Christ (as in Bruce 1985:134; Mounce 1995:156-157).
6:18 Now you are free from your slavery to sin. Lit., “and having been freed from sin”—that is (in this context), freed from the enslaving power of sin, not from sin’s condemnation.
6:19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Lit., “I speak in a human way (anthrōpinon [TG442, ZG474]) because of the weakness of your flesh (sarx [TG4561, ZG4922])”—that is, because of the proneness to self-deception and to forgetting the obligations imposed by grace. As inadequate as it is, Paul used the human illustration of slavery to help them understand both their previous bondage and their present obligation.
you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness. “Impurity” and “lawlessness” (wickedness) were terms commonly used by Jews to describe Gentile sins (Newman and Nida 1973:123).
which led ever deeper into sin. Or, “for wicked purposes” (eis tēn anomian [TG458, ZG490])—an emphatic amplification (“to greater and greater iniquity,” NRSV).
slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy. Lit., “slaves to righteousness (tē dikaiosunē [TG1343, ZG1466]) for sanctification” (eis hagiasmon [TG38, ZG40]). Here, sanctification is not a single experience or a state but a process—the continuing process of being transformed by the Spirit into the kind of person God desires, more and more like his Son (8:29), a reflection of the glory of the Lord himself (2 Cor 3:18). Cf. commentary on 8:29.
6:20 you were free from the obligation to do right. Lit., “you were free [with regard] to righteousness” (dikaiosunē [TG1343, ZG1466]). Their lives were formerly dominated by sin and not righteousness. However, the clause could be interpreted in other ways: “you were free from the control of righteousness” (REB, NIV); “you felt no obligation to uprightness” (NJB). Here the focus is on ethical righteousness, not imputed righteousness.
6:21 And what was the result? Lit., “what fruit did you have?” A better translation than the traditional renderings, “And what was the gain/benefit/advantage?” (cf. NIV, NRSV, REB, NASB)
things that end in eternal doom. Lit., “the end of those things is death”—that is, ultimate death in the final judgment. “Death” has the same meaning in 1:32; 6:16, 23; 7:5; 8:6.
6:22 things that lead to holiness. Lit., “fruit for sanctification” (eis hagiasmon [TG38, ZG40]). See note on 6:19.
eternal life. Though linked to the coming age, eternal life is given to the believer at the moment of believing, so it is experienced already in the present. It is the eternal life of the resurrected Christ himself, now resident in the believer through the Holy Spirit. The present experience of eternal life is emphasized especially in the Johannine writings (John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47, 54; 11:25-26; 1 John 5:11-13).
6:23 death. Ultimate death in the final judgment. “Death” has the same meaning in 1:32; 6:16, 21; 7:5; 8:6.
COMMENTARY [Text]
In this section, Paul addresses another anticipated objection, closely related to the first: If Christians are now freed from the jurisdiction of the law and governed solely by the principle of grace, what’s to keep them from continuing in sin? Doesn’t such a denial of the God-given role of the Mosaic law undermine the foundation of all morality and ethics? Not at all, Paul responds, because true Christians submit themselves to God and are committed to obeying his desires. If a person chooses to continue in sin, it shows that sin—not the will of God—is the real “master” of that person’s life. Real Christians are committed to living a morally good life because they have made God’s desires their “master.” How a person lives, then, shows who or what that person’s master is, for that to which we submit becomes our “lord.” One cannot claim to be a follower of God and continue to live in sin; the two are mutually exclusive—to continue to live in sin results in eternal death. But to submit to the lordship of God and his desires (the mark of genuine faith) results in holy living and eternal life. There must be a correlation, then, between what we confess and how we live, if our faith is to be considered authentic. So even though Christians are not governed by the legislation of the Mosaic law, they are committed to a life of righteousness and obedience because of their submission to the Lord.
Those who think that a Christian can keep on sinning and still be given God’s grace have little understanding of the true meaning of God’s grace. True Christians cannot continue in a life of sin because they have submitted themselves to God as Lord and therefore live in obedience to his holy desires. Just as Christ was driven by a single-minded desire to obey the Father’s will in all things (“I want your will to be done, not mine,” Luke 22:42), so those who are truly committed to Christ are driven by the desire to please God in all things. As a result, those who are real Christians have become slaves of obedience (6:16), “slaves to righteous living” (6:18), “slaves of God” (6:22); for to submit to someone as Lord means becoming that person’s slave, with the whole of one’s life subordinated to that person’s desires. Such a life of devoted obedience to God results in holy living and eternal life (6:16, 22-23), for it represents the outworking of an authentic faith in Christ. If one chooses instead to live in sin, it shows that sin, not God, is still the ruling force—the “master”—of that person’s life. Such a person has chosen, in effect, to remain a slave of sin, and that choice will ultimately prove to be fatal. That kind of life ends in death (6:16), in “eternal doom” (6:21). So one cannot claim to be a true Christian, submitted to God as Lord, and at the same time continue in a life of sin; the two are mutually incompatible. As Jesus says, “A tree is identified by its fruit” (Matt 12:33).
In this passage, there are only two choices, two different ways of living: one is a slave either of God or of sin. There is no such thing as an autonomous person, free of any master. The person who imagines himself to be free because he acknowledges no god but himself is deluded; for such a self-serving perspective is nothing less than idolatry, the very essence of slavery to sin (1:21-25). One can either remain a slave of sin or choose to serve God as a joyful slave of righteous living. To remain a slave of sin is to be driven by the desires of the old sinful self; to be a slave of righteous living is to be driven by the liberating power of the Holy Spirit. The end of the former is eternal doom; the end of the latter is eternal life and a share in the glory of God. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord” (6:23).
Someone might ask whether this emphasis on obedience and righteous living contradicts the heart of the Good News, the message of grace—the truth that we are saved by faith alone. It does not; for Paul, submission to the Lord is the necessary correlate of true faith in Christ because the Christ in whom we believe is Lord as well as Savior. “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (10:9). (It should be noted that when Paul speaks of submitting to the Lord, sometimes he speaks of God and sometimes of Christ—which shows how closely related the two are in his thinking.) Confessing Christ (or God) as Lord is not a matter of simply acknowledging an abstract truth; it must be a statement of what is personally true—an acknowledgment that he is my Lord. So submission to the Lord is not an optional extra for the Christian who claims to be saved by faith; it is part of the essence of being a true Christian. This is very much in line with the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, which stresses that not everyone who claims to be a believer will find a home in the Kingdom of God but only those who take seriously their calling to obey (Matt 7:21-23).
It is possible for us to so overemphasize God’s grace and the principle of salvation by faith alone that we lose sight of the demands of God’s lordship over us. In the New Testament, however, grace and demand always go hand in hand; if we accept God’s forgiving grace, we must accept his demands as well. To accept Christ as Savior means we must also submit to him as Lord. God’s grace, though free, is never cheap.
Some might ask, then, if submission to Christ (or God) as Lord is an essential element of Christian salvation, doesn’t that mean, in reality, that we’re saved in part by our “works”—by how we live, by what we do—and not simply by our faith alone? Only to the extent that our works are understood as vindicating or validating our claim to saving faith. As James emphasizes, “Faith is dead without good works” (Jas 2:26); a faith that is not lived out is not true saving faith at all. That kind of “faith” will save no one.
In discussing the relation between faith and works, it is important to distinguish exactly what is meant by the term works. When Paul speaks of salvation by faith “apart from works,” he usually means that salvation is not conditional on the “works of the law”—that is, the careful observance of the law of Moses (which for most Jews focused on the regulations pertaining to circumcision, food, and the Sabbath). Paul does however teach that true, saving faith must always be expressed in the transformed quality of one’s life—that is, in how one lives. True faith is always life-changing faith. So, faith and works (in a moral sense) are always married: though it is always our faith (our trust in Christ as Savior) that saves us, the reality of our faith is attested by our works—that is, by how we live. Hence one finds a paradoxical tension in Paul’s writings between the principles of salvation by faith and judgment by works (cf. Yinger 1999). That is why Paul can say such things as the following: “Don’t you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God?” (1 Cor 6:9); “Anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21); “The anger of God will fall on all who disobey him” (Eph 5:6; cf. Col 3:5). If our lifestyle does not reflect our faith, there is no reason to suppose that we have any real experience of true saving faith, or God’s saving grace, at all. That is why Paul can speak of obedience as resulting in righteousness and eternal life (6:16, 22)—obedience is the mark of true faith. (See comments on 1:5.)
True faith in Christ, then, takes seriously the call to obedience and holy living (sanctification). Holiness, in a Pauline sense, is not to be understood in a legalistic way, as the result of following a strict moral code, but as a life of utter goodness and wholehearted dedication to God, one manifestly set apart for him. Those who choose to become “slaves to righteous living” recognize that they are called to become holy and therefore, “do those things that lead to holiness” (6:19, 22). God, by his nature, is utterly holy; it is not surprising, then, that he asks his people to pursue a life of holiness also (Lev 11:44-45; 19:2; 1 Pet 1:15-16). Paul often speaks of Christians as those who are called to a life of holiness (1:7; 1 Cor 1:2; Eph 1:4; 2 Tim 1:9; cf. Col 1:22). In the Prison Letters, Paul says Christ’s purpose in dying for the church was “to make her holy and clean,” so that he might “present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish” (Eph 5:25-27). In the Pastoral Letters, he writes, “He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds” (Titus 2:14). The ultimate goal of salvation, God’s highest desire for his people, is that they become holy like his Son (8:29). So they are to grow “in every way more and more like Christ” (Eph 4:15). Therefore, Paul encourages his young converts to live a transformed life: “Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy” (Eph 4:24). As God’s holy ones, submitted to him as Lord and chosen to become like Christ, then, Christians are called to live holy lives, fully dedicated to him and his purposes in the world. This will inevitably set them apart as different from the people around them—not because they legalistically follow a different moral code but because they live in this world as people dedicated to God, as truly good people who acknowledge God in all they do.
The language of slavery that Paul uses to illustrate submission shows well the sense of total obligation felt by one who recognizes God as Lord—just as it shows the inescapable bondage of nonbelievers to sin. “It is doubtful whether there is any other [figure] which can so clearly express the total belongingness, the total obligation, the total commitment and the total accountability, which characterize the life under grace” (Cranfield 1980:326). The analogy of slavery, however, fails to do justice to Paul’s understanding of submission to the Lord as a response of warmhearted gratitude for God’s mercy and grace; hence, he acknowledges the inadequate nature of the analogy (6:19). The language of slavery is not intended to negate the importance of human choice (6:16): “Don’t you realize that you become the slave of whatever you choose to obey? You can be a slave to sin . . . or you can choose to obey God.” For the Christian, then, slavery—either to the terrible bondage of sin or the joyful bondage of the Lord—is a choice we make. Because Christ gave up everything for us, we gladly give up our lives to serve him as slaves, with joy and gratitude (12:1-2; 14:7-9; 2 Cor 5:14-15). The result is liberating—a life of holiness freely lived for him as our Lord. Ironically, in giving up ourselves to become a slave of the one who created us and loved us, even to the point of giving up his own Son for us, we have the sense of being freed to become who we are really meant to be. We only “find” our life by “losing” it; as Jesus says, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it” (Mark 8:35). Real life, then—the liberated life, the life of freedom—is found, paradoxically, in devoted slavery—to the Lord. For, as Paul says to the Corinthians, in Christ, “slaves” are really free, and the “free” are really slaves (1 Cor 7:22). In Jesus Christ, slavery and freedom are defined no longer by external circumstances but inwardly, by the orientation of one’s heart. The result is a radically different way of thinking about slavery and freedom.
In this chapter, then, Paul is responding to potential objections to his emphasis on salvation as a free gift of God’s grace apart from obedience to the law of Moses, and the rejection of the law as a foundation for morality and ethics that this seems to imply. Here Paul lays a foundation for Christian morality and ethics that is based not on obedience to the law but on one’s relationship to Christ and commitment to God. Christians are no longer governed by the demands of the Mosaic law but by the power of a new life and commitment that transcends both the demands of the law and the power of sin (6:14, 18, 22). As a result, they are to turn their back on sin, considering themselves “dead” to sin and “alive” to Christ. Free of the law, they are to live the whole of their life in submission and obedience to the Lord and to the life of holiness he desires.
With a nice touch of theological sophistication, Paul finishes the chapter by reminding us that, though our sin merits the sentence of death, eternal life must always be understood as a sheer gift of God’s grace (6:23). So we must never rely on the quality of our moral life itself to save us—that will always be insufficient; but genuine, saving faith in Christ will change the quality of our moral life.