The Good News (8): A Slavery to Thank God For (Romans 6:15-23)

Introduction

Slavery is revolting to our ears, isn’t it? The ownership of one human being by another human being is repugnant. In our society, in Western Society, we value freedom. Why should Australians all let us rejoice? Why? For we are young and free. Freedom is a value in our society. Slavery is not just illegal, it is obscene. We value liberty of movement, liberty of conscience, and freedom of speech.

Slavery has been important enough to fight and die for. The US Civil War was at least ostensibly over slavery. The soldiers fighting and dying for it believed that was the key issue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War). Abraham Lincoln was famous for campaigning against it.

And two generations earlier, Evangelical Christians in England sought to abolish slavery. We all know of John Newton (1725-1807), who by God’s amazing grace went from slave trader to Christian and minister. His work was finished by British MP and evangelical William Wilberforce (1759-1833) in the early 1800s, who succeeded in having the English slave trade abolished. So slavery is something that Christians at different times have fought against.

And in scripture too we are used to seeing ‘slave’ contrasted with ‘son’. We are used to reading in the bible that we are not slaves but sons, God’s children. Jesus said "A slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever" (John 8:35). Paul will later say in Romans:

You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received a Spirit of sonship (Rom 8:15 NIV)

You ladies, too, are sons, because in that society, sons inherited. So women and men together are joint co-heirs of Christ, where in the new heaven and earth, there is neither slave nor free, nor male or female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus, and that is reflected in our joint inheritance. Again in Galatians, "So you are no longer a slave but a son" (Gal 4:7 NIV).

So it is surprising, and a little disconcerting, to read in Romans 6:15-23 things like this: verse 18, that Christians have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness, or verse 19, we are commanded to offer your bodies in slavery to righteousness, or verse 22, that we are set free from sin and have become slaves to God.

Now, Paul himself says that he is speaking that way as a concession to weakness. Verse 19:

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.

In other words, he is using a way of speaking to make a point. He wants to make sure Christians in their weakness can understand him. Slavery is not the only, and certainly not the most important, way of talking about being a Christian. There is more to be said, and qualifications need to be made.[1]

But that being acknowledged, Paul here pictures every Christian as a slave. Do you wish to be a Christian? Then, for Paul, you choose slavery to Christ the Lord.

But that’s OK, for we were already slaves. In fact, according to Paul, we can only be slaves, not masters. Paul’s very first words in Romans are "Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus". And we who listen to Paul now will only ever rise to the heights of "slave of Christ Jesus". For we are either enslaved to sin or we are enslaved to God.

As Bob Dylan sang, "You gotta serve somebody. May be the Devil. Or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody".[2]

Our choice is not whether to be servant or boss. We will only ever be the slave. But we can choose our boss to be either sin or God. And we will see that God is a far kinder boss than sin. For God’s service is perfect freedom.

The Two Bosses Compared (verses 16)

So Paul’s response is verse 16:

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience which leads to righteousness?

Notice that we only ever are the slavers, not the masters. Either we are slaves to obedience, or we are slaves to sin. The reality is that you are slaves. And you are slaves to whoever you obey. So the test of who your master is, "Who do you obey?" And before Christ and his redemption, we were slaves to sin. That was the only job going for us, unfortunately. And we were quite happy with it.

There is no neutrality. There is no Switzerland. There is no fence on which to sit. We either serve God or we serve sin.

And there are two consequences of these two choices. We serve sin and we die an eternal death, or we obey, which leads to righteousness, which is conduct pleasing to God.[4]

A Better Job Offer, and the Past Change of Masters (verses 17-18)

But now we have had a better job offer. For the gospel has come to us. And the Christians to whom Paul wrote had already made the choice. They had already submitted to Jesus as Lord and relied on his death and resurrection for forgiveness. They had already been bought from slavery to sin to slavery to God. So verses 17 to 18:

¹⁷But thanks be to God that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. (NIV)

The Roman Christians before their conversion to Christ, symbolized by their baptism, were slaves to sin. They weren’t good, moral people, seeking after God. Neither were we, before Christ. They weren’t noble savages or cultured philosophers, innocent and ignorant. And neither were we. As far as God’s concerned, we aren’t nice people before we become Christians. There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one good except God alone. We and they together were slaves to sin, and objects of God’s wrath.

A WWII combat soldier might be the epitomy of courage, win every bravery award his courage deserves, conscientiously follow all orders, and progress through the ranks to the very top. But for as long as he wears the swastika, serves the Furher, and salutes with a ‘Zig Heil’, he will always be a war criminal and find himself on charges for crimes against humanity. The more committed he is to the cause of the Nazis, the worse war criminal he is. A sailor might be the best one on the ship, conscientiously scrubbing the desks, and following his Captain unquestioningly to the end. But for as long as he sails on a Pirates ship, flying the Jolly Roger, he will be an outlaw, no matter how good a sailor he is. In fact, the more conscientious the Nazi or Pirate, the worse criminal he is.

But the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe. The gospel is the wisdom of God, even though we look like fools to the world. And the news that Jesus is both saviour and Lord came both to us and them. And so we gratefully accepted both his salvation and Lordship. We got a much better job offer from a much better master, who died to free us from our slavery to sin so that we could serve him, a much more kind and loving master. Notice the way it speaks about their conversion in the second part of verse 17:

… you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. (NIV)

This is another way of speaking about "believing the gospel". They submitted themselves to the Lordship of Christ. They changed their thinking about themselves and Christ. It involved a change of living, stopping doing some things, starting doing others. It involved repentance and accepting the kingship of Christ. And once they accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and saviour, God transferred them from the dominion of sin and darkness to the kingdom of the Son he loves. Verse 18 again:

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

This is a real freedom. Real freedom is not freedom to sin. That’s a terrible bondage. Real freedom is freedom from sin, where sin no longer is our master. Sin is a tyrannical master, because behind sin is Satan, and he has no love for his servants. Everything he does is for self and inspired by hate. But God is the best and most merciful possible master. And his Son, who both made us and died for us, wants us to live in the best way. We were made to love God and enjoy him forever, and love our neighbor as ourselves. And true freedom is to live out what we were made to do.

Don’t Go Back to the Old Master (verse 19)

I understand that when the Negro slaves were emancipated in the United States, many grasped hold of their freedom, but a number of former slaves, especially the older ones, found that after so many years of servitude, freedom had difficulties and responsibilities. After wandering away from the plantation for a few days, to ensure their freedom was real, they returned to their former masters to work, if not as slaves, then as contract workers (Booker T Washington, Up From Slavery, Chapter 2 http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/washington/ch02.html).

Returning to your former master: that is exactly what Paul is wanting us to avoid here. Paul does not want us to go back to our former master, to do a deal with him. Our former master was sin. And we served sin well for many years. Verse 19:

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. (NIV)

We were good slaves to our former master. Think of it this way. All of us used to work for that huge global multinational, 'Sin Pty Ltd', with it’s CEO the devil, and it’s fully owned subsidiary, 'Flesh Incorporated', which seeks to exploit the sinful nature. At one time, we were model employees. We devoted all our resources in the service of Sin P/L. We gave many good years of service, long hours, overtime, climbing the corporate ladder in our pursuit of every increasing wickedness. We didn’t think of it as such. After all, everyone was doing it. But that’s what it was. Look at the last sentence in verse 19 again:

Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness…

Now, the question is, why does Paul remind us of these things. Who likes to be reminded of embarrassing and painful facts? But Paul reminds them of how well they had progressed in their service of sin to show that we should apply that same diligence to our new job, our new master, and our new service. You fully threw yourself into selfishness and sin. OK, now apply that same focus and devotion to serving righteousness. And that fully devoted and focused attitude will lead to our sanctification, our being set apart for God’s service. The last part of verse 19:

…so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.

The Two Remuneration Packages

And God in his great kindness gives us reasons to be diligent in our new job. For he compares for us the two remuneration packages each job offers. Freedom from God offered a fruitless slavery. But freedom for God bore great fruit.

Freedom from God: fruitless slavery

Verse 20:

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

There was a sort of freedom in our old service, the service of sin: we were free from doing any good. As our Articles teach, all our good works before the grace of Christ have the nature of sin (Article 13). We were Nazis serving our Hitler, a pirate serving his captain.

Sometimes in our sinful stupidity we might think we are missing out. If I wasn’t a Christian I could punch back. I could slander my enemy. I could lie on my tax, or steal. If I wasn’t a Christian, I could throw myself into excess, whether food, or alcohol, or sex. And we might think that God is limiting us, holding us back from everything we could be.

But a fish is only free in the water. On land, it can neither breathe nor move. A train is only free on its railway tracks. A derailment is a disaster, not an opportunity. Peter tells us of the false teachers of his time, that:

They promise freedom, while they themselves are slaves of depravity – for a man is a slave to whatever has mastered him. (2 Peter 2:19 NIV)

So Paul bids us do a cost benefit analysis of our past service of sin. Verse 21:

What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!

Think about your life before Christ bought you back, before you were liberated by Christ. Think of those things the remembrance of which still makes you blush. Was it really worth it? The wrecked relationships, the spoilt friendships, the using and being used, the hating and being hated, and worst of all, the complete ignoring of God our Creator and Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Freedom for God: fruitful slavery

And Paul says, compare it to the freedom that we have from sin. Freedom from sin’s dominion and Lordship is freedom indeed. Verse 22:

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (NIV)

The great benefit of serving God is that we are now holy. Perhaps under our old master, we accrued great riches, great prestige, great acclamation. But we didn’t reap holiness. For holiness comes only when we are transferred into Christ’s kingdom and service.

There a great benefits in being a Christian and living God’s way, the way God designed us to live. We live a better way, which leaves no regrets, no bad taste in the mouth, no blushing, no embarrassment, no shame.

The Two Pension Plans (verse 23)

But we will not grasp all the benefits of having Christ as Master over sin until we understand that they have two different pension plans. Two very different superannuation packages lie before us. Verse 23:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

What a famous verse! Here lies the true outcome of our years of service. The service of sin gives a golden handshake of death: not just bodily death, although that’s included, but eternal death with no forgiveness. Serving sin now means living for an eternity with our embarrassing and shameful sins. We would live with sin, alone, as our master, in both life and death.

Notice that the wages of sin is death. We have earned the death our sin brought to us. We deserve death because of our sins. But notice that eternal life can only ever be "the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ". We fully earned death as the complete and just remuneration for our service of sin. But eternal life, no, we can never earn that. We cannot deserve eternal life. Merit has nothing to do with eternal life. Heaven is not a wage for slaves, but a gift to beloved children (after Calvin)

We are slaves with a difference. We are slaves called to work in the service of our master. But our recompense, eternal life, always a gift, and is never earned.

This is true service. We deserve nothing for it, but receive everything. We earn nothing, but inherit eternity. That is what it means to be true slaves of Christ. For after we have done everything required of us, we are to say that we are unworthy, unprofitable servants, who have only done our duty.

We are servants following another servant, Jesus, who became servant and slave of all, who took the form of a servant, became human, and was obedient to death on the cross. Let us follow Christ, the great suffering servant. For his service is perfect freedom.

Let’s pray.

[1] Thus, "Paul’s point would appear to be that human nature produces a weakness in understanding that can be overcome in this life only by the use of (imperfect) analogies": Moo, Romans: NICNT, 404.

[2] D Seccombe, Dust to Destiny, 110.

[3] The question in verse 1 suggested we might to gain an increase in grace. Now the question raised in verse 15 suggests that no longer being under law but under grace means that we can sin, presumably because the law prohibits sin, and what prohibited sin is now taken away from us, because we are ‘not under law’.

[4] Moo, Romans, 400.