"Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as you have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness." For when you were the servants of sin you were free from righteousness." Romans 6v18-20
In this section Paul uses freely the imagery of the slave to illustrate his teaching. He uses the word translated servants in the A.V. but which should be translated slaves; verse 16 (twice), verse 17, verse 18, verse 19 (twice), verse 20 and verse 22. The people to whom he was writing would understand what he was saying, but in a modern world not so because although slavery still exists in the world it does not exist so obviously as it did back then. The imagery of the slave is a very powerful one, and before we go into it, protesting that the language is over the top, let me remind you that the man who is writing this was probably the most religious man the world has ever seen: yet he describes the human condition as one of slavery.
The renowned Greek scholar, Kenneth Wuest, has described slavery as understood in those times, as follows: One born into a condition of slavery; one whose will is swallowed up in the will of another; one who is bound to his master with bonds that only death can break; one who serves his master to the disregard of his own interests. All this was true of us when we were slaves to sin; we were born as slaves to sin, our will was swallowed up and captive to sin within us, our bondage to sin was so strong that only death could break it, we were so enslaved to sin we served it to the disregard of our own interest, even when sin destroyed us. Again let me remind you that this is the language of a very religious man.
He now applies this to our new life in Christ, something like this, we were born again as slaves to righteousness; our will is now captive to the will of God; we are bound to Jesus with bonds that not even death can break; we now willingly choose to serve Jesus to the disregard of our own selfish interest.
This means says Paul we have been set free from sin and we never have to sin again, but sin will be inevitable until our mortal bodies are glorified in heaven. Sinless perfection in this life is an illusion
(1st John 1v8). Due to the frailty of our human condition, at infrequent intervals we will submit to sin, but the point is we do not need to. We are to think and live as free people. This is why Paul qualifies his usage of the term slaves, saying that we must not push the imagery too far, because there is still a weakness in our flesh.
Slavery to sin is not quite the same as slavery to righteousness, because Jesus said to his disciples "take my yoke upon you and learn of Me...for My yoke is easy, my burden is light." Matthew 11v29-30
Paul's message here is that as you in the past presented your members as slave to sin, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness. In other words show the same zeal for righteousness and holiness and the things of God as you showed in the pursuit of the activities of sin. You will get all the help available but if you want to live your Christian life to the full, you also have to work at it and the rewards in this life and in the next are incalculable. What did your former life lead you to? Says Paul, it led you to uncleanness and iniquity which led to more iniquity. This is not to say that all unregenerate people are totally filthy in their habits and their minds, or rebellious in their hearts, what it is saying is that, that is where sin will lead to when given free reign. Unclean, rebellious, moral chaos, a total breakdown of all moral values, so we should not be surprised when seemingly stable people suddenly go bad because this is the nature of sin. Conversely the practice of righteousness, right living, fair living, considerate living will lead to holiness, which simply means a state of being set apart for God. All this describes the dynamic power of lifestyle that points our lives in one direction or another. The message here is clear and wonderful, we were slaves to sin, we are now slaves to righteousness.
Tomorrow d.v. we will discuss the final end of those two lifestyles.
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