Romans 6:15-23

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. 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.

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? 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. 23 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)

The Wrong Kind of Free. You’ve heard the expression, “Freedom isn’t free.” I have a good number of America’s “greatest generation” in my church, so I hear it a lot. And of course it’s true. The freedoms of press, speech, religion, self-government, etc. came to this country at the price of much blood shed. A sad fact of history is that it rarely comes in any other way. Yet freedom at the cost of blood shed is still freedom; however, freedom at the cost of slavery is not. Of course, a free slave is an oxymoron, but that is what we all are according Paul. If you are a slave of sin, then you are free to righteousness. If you are a slave to righteousness, then you are free to sin. Such language seriously challenges our assumptions about freedom. Can there be a freedom that is no freedom at all? Can there be a slavery that is really freedom?

Free to Righteousness. What exactly does it mean to be “free of righteousness.” Perhaps Paul means something like “contamination.” A “slave of sin,” which he says we all once were or currently are, is free from the contamination of righteousness. Righteousness does not creep into his life like a healing gangrene and spread its life-giving aroma. No, the natural man is absolutely free of such health, absolutely free from moral good. This might sound like an overstatement. Certainly, even apart from Christ, we are not entirely free of moral good. Even a rapist may send his mother a card on her birthday. But as I said in my last post, Paul is not concerned with good and evil merely at the level of the will. Evil is more than an action or a choice, and so is good. The fruits of righteousness are not the fulfilling of a moral obligation. They are love, joy, peace, patience, etc. That is, they are matters of the heart and soul. So for example, the natural man, the man apart from God’s grace, can perform an act of kindness, but he does so because of what sociologists call reciprocity. He gives because he knows that he will be given to, because he knows he needs to be given to. Others are really tools of the self. You give to receive. His motives are completely free from the contamination of righteousness.

The Wages of Sin. Romans 6:23 is oft quoted by Christians to non-Christians in hopes that they will see the dangers of living life their own way and the hope found in the gift of salvation. However, it is important to note that Paul is addressing believers, and Paul’s point is not primarily about the punitive effects of sin. His focus is on the fruit of sin. He is not thinking of the court room but of the garden. The problem of sin is not merely the problem of a guilty verdict (though that is his point in Romans 3:19-20); it is also the problem of a putrid fungus eating away at the life of a fruit-bearing tree. Sin produces death. God’s punishment is simply condemning it to face its own demise.

The Free Gift of God. But righteousness is not like sin. Self-destruction comes to us as the product of who we are as slaves of sin. Righteousness and the life that follows is not produced by us. It is given to us. Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the producer. Thus, Paul sets before us two roads. One is to walk in our efforts fighting for our own freedom from the authority of God. This is the road of shame with a destination of death. The second road, and God help us never to cease being amazed that there is a second road, is the road of Jesus’ efforts and the healing product of those efforts freely given to us. Is not the choice obvious? And if you do not wish to make the obvious choice, then at least admit that you are not free.