Sunday, May 22nd, 2011
Romans 6:15-23
“Slavery’s Power”
Bible Memory Verse for the Week: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 6:23
Background Information:
- It would look as though Paul was replacing the law with grace, thus giving people no law and, therefore, freedom to sin. This almost repeats the question in verse 1, and Paul’s response is the same: By no means! As the argument develops, however, there is clearly a different matter at stake. In verse 1, Paul was challenging the crude assumption that sinning will give God the opportunity to exercise more grace. Here, Paul is guarding against the assumption that because sin is no longer our master, we can indulge in sin without fear of being controlled by it. Being under grace and under the mastery of Christ allows us the freedom not to sin. Any attitude that welcomes, rationalizes, or excuses sin is not grace, but slavery to sin itself. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 124)
- There were more slaves than citizens in the Roman empire. It has been estimated that as many as 40% of everyone living in the Roman empire was a slave.
- The concept may surprise us because we tend to think of Roman slaves as having been either captured in war or bought in the marketplace, not as having offered themselves. But there was such a thing as voluntary slavery. “People in dire poverty could offer themselves as slaves to someone simply in order to be fed and housed.” (John Ziesler, St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, 167) Paul’s point is that those who thus offered themselves invariably had their offer accepted. They could not expect to give themselves to a slave-master and simultaneously retain their freedom. It is the same with spiritual slavery. (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 183)
- In the ancient world slavery was primarily voluntary servitude. When someone had a debt he could not pay, he would offer his services to fulfill the debt. That is the context in which Paul asks, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey? (RC Sproul, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary: Romans, 200)
- It is very likely that more than one-half of the Roman church either were or had been enslaved. (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Romans, 130)
- Sin is the terrible, life-wrecking, soul-damning reality that resides and grows in every unredeemed human heart like an incurable cancer. Even when men try to escape from sin, they cannot, and when they try to escape its guilt, they cannot. The greatest gift God could give to fallen mankind is freedom from sin, and it is that very gift that He offers through His Son, Jesus Christ. It is on that great, unsurpassable gift of redemption from sin that Paul now focuses his great inspired mind. (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Romans 1-8, 341)
- Paul gives the same forceful and unambiguous denial he gave in verse 2. The idea is, “No, no, a thousand times no!” The mere suggestion that God’s grace is a license to sin is self-contradictory, a logical as well as a moral and spiritual absurdity. The very purpose of God’s grace is to free man from sin. How, then, could grace possibly justify continuing in sin? Grace not only justifies but also transforms the life that is saved. A life that gives no evidence of moral and spiritual transformation gives no evidence of salvation. (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Romans 1-8, 342-3)
- When God sets His people free from Satan, He doesn’t mean for them to turn around and make themselves the devil’s slaves VOLUNTARILY. That’s a terrible insult to God, a shameful way to use the freedom He gives them. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 140)
- Because eternal life is a gift, we cannot earn or purchase it. It would be foolish for someone to offer to pay for a gift given out of love. To be a gift, it must be given and received freely. A more appropriate response to a loved one who offers a gift is grateful acceptance. Our salvation is a gift of God, not something of our own doing (Eph 2:8-9). He saved us because of his mercy, not because of any righteous acts on our part (Ti 3:5). How much more we should accept with thanksgiving the gift that God has freely given to us. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 129)
- (vss. 18, 22) This is a statement of fact; it is not an exhortation. He is not exhorting us to free ourselves from sin, he is telling us that we are free from sin. This is the position of, and the truth about the Christian. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 222)
The questions to be answered are . . . Why does Paul say that we are going to serve either sin or obedience? As Americans are we not free to serve what we want? What is Paul trying to tell us here?
Answer: Paul understands that at the core of our being we either serve sin or obedience (to God). We either serve God or Satan. And the power of that service will ultimately lead to either death or righteousness. We will either become increasingly more like Jesus or more like Satan. But, unlike the thinking of most Americans, Bob Dylan was right: “Everybody’s gonna serve somebody”. Choose you this day whom you will serve.
The Word for the Day is . . . Slave
What does Paul tell us about slavery’s power that automatically comes when you offer yourself?:
I. We are all slaves and there is power in your offering of yourself as a slave to anything (Rom 6:16; see also: Jer 13:23; Mt 6:24; Lk 16:13; 2 Cor 11:20; Gal 3:22-23; 6:7-8; 2 Pt 2:19)
The paradox: slavery is freedom and freedom is slavery (20-22) (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 185)
The character of every life is determined by the kind of loyalty which rules it. (Abingdon Press,The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 483)
If we regard sin as a conscious choice to “prefer inclination to obligation,” then we can see that the prevailing attitude in much of our business principles, political choices, educational emphases, and cultural norms may be under a reign of sin so powerful we may not even recognize that we are being subjected to its control. (D. Stuart Briscoe, Mastering the New Testament: Romans, p. 122)
No man in this world attains to freedom from any slavery except by entrance into some higher servitude. There is no such thing as an entirely free man conceivable. (Phillips Brooks (1835- 1893), Perennials)
He who angers you, controls you!
“We do not keep ourselves virtuous by our own power,” Pascal wrote, “but by the counterbalance of two opposing vices, just as we stay upright between two contrary winds. Take one of these vices away and we fall into the other.”
What did Pascal mean by this? A man or woman who works very hard may simply be avoiding the sin of laziness by being filled with selfish ambition or greed. Remove his or her hunger for more money, and this person will immediately become as lazy as any of us.
Others might be very disciplined around food. They would be the last persons on earth you would label as gluttons. Yet they are disciplined around food because they want to have a physique that will draw attention to themselves, not because they don’t want food to have a hold on their hearts and steal their affection for God. They may be free from gluttony only because they are slaves to vanity.
Do you see how we play vice against vice–using vanity to destroy gluttony, for instance–and are upheld by the struggle of two sins? This is a much different holiness than the ancients’ view of a transforming passion that gives birth to virtue. On and on we could go, showing how 90 percent of our virtue is a sham, a vice wearing a coat and tie. That’s why Jesus constantly pointed us to the heart, the one battlefield that really matters. The state of our heart is the true state of our virtue. (Gary L. Thomas, Seeking the Face of God, pp. 68-69)
When a new activity or experience occurs, it can result in a strengthening of the connection between neurons, or even in a new connection altogether. These connections are critical for memory, behavior, emotions, desires, and any number of other outcomes that activity or experience brings. If that experience or activity occurs again, the connection is used and strengthened in the process. If that connection is not used, the synapse eventually breaks down and dies. This process refers to either a continued connection between neurons or to a loss of connection–not the life or death of the neurons themselves, although that can and does occur as well. (Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., MD & Freda McKissic Bush, MD, Hooked, p. 28)
The primary things that change in the brain structure, that mold it, are its synapses. Synapses either are sustained or they are allowed to deteriorate based on behavior and experience. It may seem incredible, but the things we see, do, and experience actually cause part of our brains to flourish, i.e., synapses that survive and strengthen; and part of our brain to weaken, i.e., synapses that disintegrate or die. (Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., MD & Freda McKissic Bush, MD,Hooked, p. 29)
This time the apostle points out that each slavery is also a kind of freedom, although the one is authentic and the other spurious. Similarly, each freedom is a kind of slavery, although the one is degrading and the other ennobling. (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 185)
All human beings are enslaved. While this idea clashes with our goal in independence, the fact is that we were created for interdependence. Paul is using a “human term” (6:19) to make an important spiritual point. Life is filled with choices about who and what we will obey. Another way of expressing Paul’s phrase is, “You are a slave to whomever or whatever you commit yourself to obey.” This means that friendships, goals, employment, citizenship, membership, education, career, debt, and marriage all include aspects of slavery. We should choose our slavery wisely. When sin is our master, we have no power except to do what it bids us. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 124)
It has often been noted that some black slaves willingly fought with their masters during the American Civil War. Not unlike sinners who oppose and reject the One who offers to save them, those slaves fought against the Union forces who wanted to emancipate them. (John MacArthur,The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Romans 1-8, 341)
John Calvin said over 400 years ago, “the greater mass of vices anyone is buried under, the more fiercely and bombastically does he extol his freedom.” (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Romans, 131)
Elizabeth Elliot tells of visiting in Scotland and observing a Scottish collie in his glory–tending sheep. He was doing what he was bred for and trained to do. He was beautiful to watch as he circled right and left, “…barking, crouching, racing along, herding a stray sheep here, nipping at a stubborn one there, his eyes always glued to the sheep, his ears listening for a tiny metal whistle from his master…” As she watched, she reflected, “I saw two creatures who were in the fullest sense “in their glory”: A man who had given his life to sheep, who loved them and loved his dog; and a dog whose trust in man was absolute, whose obedience was instant and unconditional, and whose very meat and drink was to do the will of his master. (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Romans, 131)
The idea that man could be free, in the sense that he can be lord of his own life, is nothing but a chimera. To live in service to one power or another is a position from which man can never escape. The only question is which power he serves, the power of sin or the power of righteousness. Freedom from the one means service of the other, and service of the one precludes service of the other. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 254)
Sin is by nature disobedience to God. How then could one possibly serve God and sin at the same time? One cannot simultaneously obey God and disobey Him. (Anders Nygren,Commentary on Romans, 255)
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 ourdisposition 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! (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 172)
Notice that when a person surrenders himself to wickedness the result of that wickedness is more wickedness. Sin breeds sin, which breeds sin, which breeds sin. Sanctification is the goal of our Christian life, and the more we yield ourselves in obedience to righteousness, the more that righteousness brings about holiness. (RC Sproul, The Gospel of God: Romans, 117)
Augustine said that a human being is like a horse, and the horse has one of two riders: either Satan or Christ is riding the horse. Before you were justified, Satan was riding the horse. Now that you are justified, Christ is riding the horse. (RC Sproul, The Gospel of God: Romans, 117)
The character of every life is determined by the kind of loyalty which rules it. (Abingdon Press,The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 483)
There are few passages in the NT where the problem of human freedom is so explicitly discussed. “Do you not know,” asks Paul, “that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?” (Vs. 16). But it is also apparent to him that we have only two choices before us; we can be the slaves of sin or the slaves of righteousness. He did not stop to consider the possibility that we might decide to be the servants of no one. To Paul that would have seemed an entirely profitless discussion of a purely hypothetical question. He shared the biblical conviction that man is a created being. Now it is the mark of a creature that he is dependent on his creator, and dependence remains the invariable characteristic of man’s life. He may vary his service but, even so, the range of his choice is not really large. The most insidious temptation man could face–and the cause of his most catastrophic fall–was to believe that he could “be like God” (Gn 3:5). It is consequently nothing but self-delusion to think that we are really independent, or can do exactly as we please. A man always acts under obedience; often when he thinks he has won complete freedom from control, he has merely fallen a prey to license. Our common language (as Gore points out) testifies to the fact. We speak of the drunkard as a slave to drink, of the libertine as a slave to lust; and so one after another of the various impulses to which men submit. But if we are always under obedience, and never completely untrammeled, it behooves us to watch carefully the kind of service which we accept. Some kinds destroy their victims, leading them farther and farther away from the possibility of self-realization. But there is a kind which makes it possible for us to achieve our fullest development and to live in part at least the life we know we ought to live. In this human liberty consists. Those who serve God discover not only that they are set free from every alternative obedience, but that his “service is perfect freedom.” (Abingdon Press, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, 486)
The first is that there are two possibilities facing every individual who comes into this world, and there are only two. They are shown in this verse. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The message of the Gospel is often put in this way. You have either your “house on the sand” or your “house on the rock.” You have either passed through the “wide gate” or the “strait or narrow gate.” You are either on the “broad way” or the “narrow way.” You serve either mammon or God. Inevitably, it is one or the other–there are only two possibilities. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 302)
If I sell myself to a power I then become the slave of that power; and the power that it has over me is the power of a slave-owner over his slave. But the characteristic of the power of a slave-owner is that it is totalitarian and exclusive power. If I hand myself over to be a slave to such a power, then I am nothing but the slave of that power. I am in his hands, in his grip, under his authority. It is a totalitarian power and I am no longer a free man; the power decides what I do and what I am.
Secondly, there are only two ultimate totalitarian powers. The one is sin, the other is obedience. That is the great theme of the Apostle; he began working it out in 5:12. We have seen how, all along, he keeps on saying in effect: “It is no use talking or arguing; there are only two positions–a man is either in Adam, or else he is in Christ.” In 5:21 he says; “One is either under the reign of sin which reigns unto death, or else under the reign of grace which leads to righteousness and to eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” There is no middle position; it is either the one or the other; and every human being is either a slave to sin or else a slave to obedience. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 200-01)
II. “In Adam” there is power in our slavery to sin that leads to increasing wickedness and death. (Rom 6:19-21 see also: Jer 2:20; 17:4; Mt 12:543-45; Jn 8:31-36; Rom 6:14; 7:14, 23, 25; Gal 3:22-23; Ti 3:3)
When the desire for the true God is rejected, other gods are raised up. When the desire for God is rejected, other desires take control. Why are shameful lusts the result? When people refuse God and his standards, when they are left to themselves as their own gods, nothing can stop them from seeking to fulfill their passions. Paul indicates that sexual passion, out of control, leads to shameful lusts and other destructive results (See 1:29-31). (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, p. 34)
When our wants become our ruler and our desires our authority, we quickly become slaves to the next appealing offer. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, p. 34)
The freedom that people experience when they are slaves to sin is the antithesis of genuine freedom. It is such a distortion of the meaning of liberty that it causes people to be glad that they are not constrained by the very things that would be very healthy and positive limits. What significance could there possibly be in the happiness of the person who spray-painted the warning signs, scaled the retaining wall, and spit on the offered helping hand in order to leap from the top of the building. The cost of freedom from righteousness is more than we can afford to pay. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 127)
After the brilliant writer Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality and other deviant behavior was made public, he wrote, “I forgot that what a man is in secret he will some day shout aloud from the housetop.” Another famous writer, Sinclair Lewis, was the toast of the literary world and received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930. To mock what he considered the hypocrisy of Christianity, he wroteElmer Gantry, the fictitious story of a Bible-pounding evangelist who was secretly an alcoholic, a fornicator, and a thief. Few people know, however, that Lewis himself died an alcoholic in a third-rate clinic outside Rome, a devastated victim of his own sinful life-style. (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Romans 1-8, 350)
We’ve seen how the brain is composed of multiple neurons, all of which are connected by synapses. These synapses can be created, grow, or deteriorate based on our thoughts and actions. In this manner, each person actually changes the very structure of the brain with the choices he or she makes and the behavior he or she is involved in. (Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., MD & Freda McKissic Bush, MD, Hooked, p. 45)
There are two masters who WANT men, God and Satan. These two masters want men for completely different reasons. Satan is a cruel master. He hates people and desires the WORST for them. It gives him fiendish pleasure to see people trapped by sin and bound to him. He makes slaves of them by making the first sin easy. Then he has them trapped, for each succeeding sin becomes easier. Just as a girl becomes a slave to the man who starts her on drugs, so do sinners become bound to the devil. He doesn’t want their love. He’s incapable of receiving it. He certainly can’t give any. Therefore he is pleased to CAPTURE people with sin and extract FORCED labor from them. He’s happy to have people serve him on a COMPULSORY BASIS. But God isn’t like that at all. He’s a Lover. He wants people to WANT Him and submit to Him voluntarily. He wants them to obey Him out of LOVE. The last thing in the world He would do is TRAP people into serving Him. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 140)
Paul again refers to their former days when the Roman Christians were slaves of sin. In those days, they belonged exclusively to Satan, and were utterly free from the claims of righteousness–as free from holiness as a sick man is free from health. All that mattered was getting the most out of this life–and that made them slaves of selfishness, envy, and fear. Those who seek money, for example, become slaves of money, and live either in the fear of not making it or of losing it. Paul asks the Romans to think back and see what the old life brought them. Did it bring peace and lasting satisfaction? Indeed not. Everything they got, ended in disappointment and death. For the consequence of one sin is another sin, and the process continues until the destruction is complete. At the end of that process is hell. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 143)
Sin is a waste of energy. Plain and simple. It’s wasting your energy on things you can’t have or can’t control. And it’s actually a double waste. After you waste your energy on things like lust and pride and anger, then you have to waste even more energy on things like guilt and shame and regret. Nothing is more de-energizing than sin. But by the same token, nothing is more re-energizing than obedience. It’s pure energy. (Mark Batterson, Primal, A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity, p. 145)
Seeking satisfaction in sin is a futile quest. Instead of giving the pleasure and satisfaction it promises, sin always brings emptiness and torment. Why? Man has an INFINITE appetite. Because he is made in the image of the INFINITE God, only GOD can satisfy him. Things of this world cannot satisfy a man because they are finite. They are not eternal. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 144)
Paul now summarizes in a sentence, the difference between Christian slavery and satanic slavery. In Gk., the word he chose for “wages,” signifies the food and pay given to soldiers. They have EARNED it, they have it coming. Paul’s use of that word implies that Satan HIRES people with sin to battle against the Lord. Men become Satan’s soldiers thinking he will pay them with FUN and PLEASURE. Actually the devil LIES to them. He deceives them. Fun and pleasure are NOT the real wages of sin. That’s a false promise. He merely says that to lure people into his service. Sooner or later every man learns that sin is not as Satan represents it, that the real wages of sin is DEATH, not satisfaction or profit. Naturally the devil won’t tell people that. They wouldn’t cooperate if they knew he was merely baiting them. So they find out the hard way. Many won’t discover it until they wake up in hell along with their evil leader. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 145)
The unsaved person is free–free from righteousness (v. 20). But his bondage to sin only leads him deeper into slavery so that it becomes harder and harder to do what is right. The Prodigal Son is an example of this (Lk 15:11-24). When he was at home, he decided he wanted his freedom, so he left home to find himself and enjoy himself. But his rebellion only led him deeper into slavery. He was the slave of wrong desires, then the slave of wrong deeds; and finally he became a literal slave when he took care of the pigs. He wanted to find himself, but he lost himself! What he thought was freedom turned out to be the worst kind of slavery. (Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Right, 69)
It is quite characteristic of bondage to sin, that he who lives in it thinks himself free and his own master. If freedom from sin means nothing more than just freedom, the result really is that man is still under the dominion of sin and more securely bound in its thralldom. (Anders Nygren,Commentary on Romans, 253)
One may remember the words of Jesus, “when the unclean spirit has gone out of a man, he passes through waterless places seeking rest, but he finds none. Then he says, “I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he goes and brings with him seven other spirits more evil than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first” (Mt 12:43-45). An empty, unqualified freedom gives sin its best chance to get man under its dominion. For the Christian the throne from which sin has been removed is never left unoccupied. That place has been taken by righteousness. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 253)
Many have argued that if we are free from sin, we no longer need to fight against it. Paul’s idea is the direct opposite to this. He who is not free from sin cannot fight against it, for he is the slave of sin. That which he does serves sin. Only he who, through Christ, has been freed from sin canenter the battle against it; and he, because of his status as a slave of righteousness, is obligated to join in that battle. Seen in this light, this chapter is marked by a manifest unity; it shows an entirely consistent development. The reason why interpretations have so often gone astray here is probably due to the fact that sin has not been understood as Paul saw it, a power of destruction which holds man in bondage, until Christ comes and sets him free. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 263)
God does not usually stop us from making choices against his will. He lets us declare our supposed independence from him, even though he knows that in time we will become slaves to our own rebellious choices–we will lose our freedom not to sin. Does life without God look like freedom to you? Look more closely. There is no worse slavery than slavery to sin. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, p. 37)
Why, you might inquire, don’t sinners put the brakes on their behavior? First, there is the problem of enslavement. Which one of us cannot recall some pattern of sinful behavior that we told ourselves we should stop, but in our own strength found we were unable to do so? If sin were as simple as a rational decision to behave or misbehave, many persons would know when to stop…and would do so. But the downward spiral described in Romans 1 is totally consistent with the concept of enslavement. (Clarence L. Bence, Romans, A Commentary for Bible Students, 117-18)
I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self-addiction. (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, 182)
Years ago, before the current thaw in Sino-American relations, some Christians in Hong Kong had an interview with an 82-year-old woman who had come out of China just a short while before. She was a believer in Christ, but her vocabulary was filled with the terminology of communism, which was all she had been hearing for decades. One of her favorite expressions was “the liberation.”
The interviewers asked her, “When you were back in China, were you free to gather together with other Christians to worship?”
“On, no,” she answered. “Since the liberation, no one is permitted to gather together for Christian services.”
“But surely you were able to get together in small groups to discuss the Christian faith,” they continued.
“No, she said. “We were not. Since the liberation, all such meetings are forbidden.”
“Were you free to read your Bible?”
“Since the liberation, no one is free to read the Bible.” (James Montgomery Boice, An Expositional Commentary: Romans, Vol. 2, 391-2)
When we allow others’ perceptions of us (or even our perceptions of their perceptions!) to control how we live, we are enslaved. We become entrenched in the ways of this world and do not live as citizens of heaven, which is another kind of kingdom altogether. (Francis Chan, Forgotten God, pp. 53-54)
Menninger suggests that self-destruction is observable in each of the old “deadly sins.”
Pride (of power, knowledge, or virtue) destroys relationships. It turns us into people who look on others as possessions to be amassed, exploited, or controlled.
Lust (which embraces all sexual sins) destroys one’s personality. It weakens loyalty, undercuts trust, and destroys integrity.
Gluttony destroys the body–in whatever form it appears, whether as overindulgence in food, drink, or drugs. “Gluttony…is sinful [because] it represents a…love which is self-destructive.” (Menninger, Whatever Became of Sin? flyleaf)
Anger destroys others, whether by violence or by words only. To wound another’s pride or status by words is “to kill him” slowly.
Sloth destroys opportunities and ambitions.
Envy, greed, avarice, and affluence destroy contentment, even a proper sense of freedom and nobility. (James Montgomery Boice, An Expositional Commentary: Romans, Vol. 2, 708-9)
If you show me a man who is living in sin, I say that that man is not under grace. He cannot be; he could not go on living in sin if he were under grace. His manner of life shows that he is under sin and under the power of sin. We proclaim what we are, finally, not by what we say, but by what we do. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 202)
Let us never forget that the real truth about any man who is not a Christian is that he is the slave of sin. The Apostle has emphasized that repeatedly from the end of chapter 5: “Sin hath reigned unto death.” That lies at the heart of the tragedy of the man who is not a Christian. He does not realize it, of course, but that does not make any difference. Slaves often do not realize that they are slaves. That is one of the greatest tragedies in connection with sin–and sinners are always slaves of sin. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 271-2)
Two great enemies obtained dominion over man when Adam sinned–the world and self. Of the world Christ says, “The Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him” (John 14:17). Worldliness is the great hindrance that keeps believers from living a spiritual life. Of self Christ said, “Let him deny himself” (Mk 8:34). Self, in all its forms–self-will, self-pleasing, self-confidence–renders life in the power of the Spirit impossible. (Andrew Murray, Receiving Power from God, 27)
What we have received is a gift of grace, unearned in any way. We need to understand that man’s free will is free only in that God never compels anybody to sin. The sinner is not free to do either good or evil because his corrupt heart, formed by Satan’s dominion, always inclines him to sin. Man is enslaved by that heart, a bondage that can be broken only by God’s merciful intervention. (Emailed from Carole Jacobus 8/17/10)
Sin is what you do when your heart is not satisfied with God. No one sins out of duty. We sin because it holds out some promise of happiness. That promise enslaves us until we believe that God is more to be desired than life itself. (Ps 63:3). Which means that the power of sin’s promise is broken by the power of God’s. All that God promises to be for us in Jesus stands over against what sin promises to be for us without him. (John Piper, Future Grace, 9-10)
These good moral people have no conception of that, they are simply living up to their own standard. They decide on the standard, and then live up to it. But they are not righteous, they are strangers to righteousness, they have nothing to do with it. There is a very simple way of proving that that type of man is a complete stranger to righteousness. It is this. A man who knows anything at all about righteousness, God’s righteousness, is a man who is acutely aware of his own unworthiness, his own lack, his own desperate need. But that is never true of these people. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 276)
Do these good moral people give any evidence of hungering and thirsting in that way? Listen to them, observe their glibness, and their smugness. They ooze out self-satisfaction and there is no humility or meekness about them. They do not hunger and thirst after righteousness; they feel they are living up to their own standard, they are obeying and honoring their own little moral code. Such men are indeed complete strangers to righteousness, or as the Apostle puts it here, they are “free from righteousness.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 277)
III. “In Christ” there is power in our slavery to obedience that leads to increasing righteousness, holiness and life. (Rom 6:22; see also: 1 Sam 15:22; Ps 119:133; 123:2; 142:7; 146:7; Is 42:7; 58:6; 61:1; Ez 34:27; Hos 2:16; Mt 11:29-30 Lk 4:18; Jn 8:31-36; Rom 8:1-2, 15; 1 Cor 6:19-20; 7:21-22; 9:19, 27 Gal 5:1; Eph 4:1; 1 Jn 3:9; 5:12)
“In Christ” the sway of the powers that oppose God was broken once for all. Therefore it is also true that they who are “in Christ” are thereby free from all those forced which held man captive in the old aeon. (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, p. 155)
The tense of the expression has been freed indicates a past action that has a continuing effect–we have been freed from sin and will continue to enjoy that freedom. We died to sin, but we are constantly being freed from sin. We are not yet sinless, but sin no longer has control over us. With our death to sin, we are free to being our new life in Christ. Our former master (sin) has been bankrupted; we do not need to live in fear of its power. We are free from what we were in Adam, but we are prone to act like we used to in Adam. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary–Romans, 118-19)
In these closing moments of this age, the Lord will have a people whose purpose for living is to please God with their lives. In them, God finds His own reward for creating man. They are His worshipers. They are on earth only to please God, and when He is pleased, they also are pleased.
The Lord takes them farther and through more pain and conflicts than other men. Outwardly, they often seem “smitten of God, and afflicted” (Is 53:4). Yet to God, they are His beloved. When they are crushed, like the petals of a flower, they exude a worship, the fragrance of which is so beautiful and rare that angels weep in quiet awe at their surrender. They are the Lord’s purpose for creation.
One would think that God would protect them, guarding them in such a way that they would not be marred. Instead, they are marred more than others. Indeed, the Lord seems pleased to crush them, putting them to grief. For in the midst of their physical and emotional pain, their loyalty to Christ grows pure and perfect. And in the face of persecutions, their love and worship toward God become all-consuming.
Would that all Christ’s servants were so perfectly surrendered. (Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds, 93-4)
To a Pharisee, the service of God was a bondage which he did not love but from which he could not escape without a loss too great to bear. God, as the Pharisees saw Him, was not a God easy to live with. So their daily religion became grim and hard, with no trace of true love in it.
It can be said about us, as humans, that we try to be like our God. If He is conceived to be stern and exacting and harsh, so will we be!
The blessed and inviting truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings, and in our worship of Him we should find unspeakable pleasure. (A. W. Tozer, Whatever Happened to Worship?, 28)
To the degree that we feel we are on legal or performance relationship with God, to that degree our progress in sanctification is impeded. A legal mode of thinking gives indwelling sin an advantage, because nothing cuts the nerve of the desire to pursue holiness as much as a sense of guilt. On the contrary, nothing so motivates us to deal with sin in our lives as does the understanding and application of the two truths that our sins are forgiven and the dominion of sin is broken because of our union with Christ. (Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace, 108)
When Christ died for sinners, sinners died in God’s sight. “One died for all,” said Paul, “and therefore all died” (2 Cor 5:14). Christ’s death for us has broken the power of sin over us, as verse 11 attests, “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The strong Son of God has wasted the strong man’s house, to allude to Mk 3:27. Since Christ has broken the claim of sin over our existence, sin no longer determines our existence. Christians are like citizens who have been liberated from a long and oppressive dictatorship. Something has been done to them: the liberator has broken the power of tyranny. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, p. 159)
It is impossible to be neutral. Every person has a master–either God or sin. A Christian is still able to sin, but he or she is no longer a slave to sin. This person belongs to God. Believers are set free from the control of their evil desires and their selfish habits, free to become enslaved to righteous living. We serve the righteous God who is in the process of transforming us to become more like him so that we can one day share in glorious resurrection to eternal life. That’s not a bad master to have! (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 125-6)
Having received the new nature, they could STOP sinning and live godly. That doesn’t mean they didn’t sin any more. Of course they did. But it meant that sin was no longer their absolute master. Through the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, they could throw off sin whenever they chose and do the will of God. Since God’s appeal was TO the heart, they could respond FROM the heart. When you give your heart to someone, he gets all of you–your body included. Satan, on the other hand, appeals to the flesh. Consequently those who serve him can hate it. Many who are trapped in sin hate what they do. Those who respond to Jesus, LOVE what they do. That is the real freedom. (C. S. Lovett, Lovett’s Lights on Romans, 142)
The abiding truth is this: obedience is the key to our liberation. Irenaeus said, “The glory of God is a man fully alive!” Our spiritual life comes, of course, through our union with Christ. But the fullness of that life comes through obedience. G. K. Chesterson said, “Obedience is but the other side of the Creative will.” Obedience looses the creative power of God in our lives. (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Romans, 135)
Throughout the whole chapter there runs, like a red cord, the thought that the Christian is “free from sin.” Through baptism he has “died to sin” (vs. 2). He who has died is “freed from sin” (vs. 7). Just as Christ died to sin once for all, so we must consider ourselves “dead to sin” (vs. 11). And finally Paul twice describes the Christian by using the expression “freed from sin.” (Anders Nygren, Commentary on Romans, 262)
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 (Mt 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! (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 171)
We must realize that it is not Satan who defeats us; it is our openness to him. To perfectly subdue the devil we must walk in the “shelter of the Most High” (Ps 91:1). Satan is tolerated for one purpose: the warfare between the devil and God’s saints thrust us into Christlikeness, where the nature of Christ becomes our only place of rest and security. God allows warfare to facilitate His eternal plan, which is to make man in His image. (Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds) (Beth Moore, Praying God’s Word, 323)
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. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 175)
As the alternative to being “slaves to sin” one might have expected “slaves to Christ” rather than “slaves to obedience,” and as the alternative to “death” the expectation would be “life” rather than “righteousness.” Yet the idea of being “obedient to obedience” is a dramatic way of emphasizing that obedience is the very essence of slavery, and “righteousness” in the sense of justification is almost a synonym of life (cf. 5:18). At least Paul’s general meaning is beyond doubt. Conversion is an act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery; and slavery demands a total, radical, exclusive obedience. For no-one can be the slave of two masters, as Jesus said. So, once we have offered ourselves to him as his slaves, we are permanently and unconditionally at his disposal. There is no possibility of going back on this. Having chosen our master, we have no further choice but to obey him. (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 183)
Verse 19 begins with a kind of apology by Paul for the human terms in which he has been describing conversion. For slavery is not an altogether accurate or appropriate metaphor of the Christian life. It indicates well the exclusivity of our allegiance to the Lord Christ, but neither the easy fit of his yoke, nor the gentleness of the hand that lays it on us, nor indeed the liberating nature of his service. Why then did the apostle use it? He gives his reason: because you are weak in your natural selves (sarx, “flesh”), or “because of your natural limitations” (19a, RSV). Their natural “weakness” or “limitations” must be a reference to their fallenness, either in their minds, so that they are dull of perception, or in their characters, so that they are vulnerable to temptation and need to be reminded of the obedience to which they have committed themselves. (John Stott, Romans, God’s Good News for the World, 184-5)
I sum up the apostle’s teaching about “the form of doctrine” in this way. The essence of sin is disobedience of God, His Word and His way; and therefore the essence of the opposite, which is faith, is obedience to God. The Christian man is a man who obeys God. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones,Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 219)
From the moment we cease to be the slaves of sin we are the slaves of righteousness. There is no interval in between, no such thing as a spiritual “No man’s land,” no neutral position. You are either the slave of sin or else you are the slave of righteousness. The moment you are delivered from the one you are in the other.
I repeat, there is no gap between justification and sanctification. Sanctification starts from the moment of our re-birth. I go further; there is really no choice in this matter of sanctification. The moment we believe, the moment we are made regenerate, the process begins. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 226)
I choose self-control . . . I am a spiritual being. After this body is dead, my spirit will soar. I refuse to let what will rot, rule the eternal. I choose self-control. I will be drunk only by joy. I will be impassioned only by my faith. I will be influenced only by God. I will be taught only by Christ. I choose self-control. (Max Lucado, When God Whispers Your Name)
To those who submit gladly to the truth of God about themselves as sinners, and about Christ as the Savior, and about the Holy Spirit as the Sanctifer, and about God the Father as Creator–to them sex and food are sanctified. That is, they are pure. They are not unclean idols competing for our affections, which belong supremely to God. They are instead pure partners in the revelation of God’s glory. They are beams of his goodness along which the pure in heart see God (Mt 5:8). (John Piper, When I Don’t Desire God, p. 189)
Paul sees our commitment to righteousness as resulting in God-likeness. In an interesting comparison, Paul suggests that our commitment to serve righteousness should be just as strong as our previous commitment to “impurity” and “wickedness.” One thinks of the single-minded pursuit with which some people seek fame, money, or power. Our pursuit of righteousness and holiness should be just as dedicated. (Douglas J. Moo, The NIV Application Commentary: Romans, 211)
I wanted to prove that I was sorry for what I did by being faithful for a period of time. I wanted to develop a good track record before pursuing my relationship with Him again. I wanted God to see that I could be a good servant. Then I felt good enough to talk with God again. But God didn’t want a good slave who tried really hard. He wanted me to see that He was a good Father. He wants intimacy. (Francis Chan, Forgotten God, 113)
What is holiness? It is to be like Jesus Christ. What did He say of Himself? “I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me.” He did not consider Himself. He said “Here am I, send me.” Though He was the Son of God He humbled Himself, He volunteered, He gave Himself utterly and absolutely. “The words I speak, I speak not of myself,” he says. “The works that I do are the works that the Father hath given me to do.” And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, event the death of the cross” (Phil 2:8). That was the way in which He lives in this world. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 294)
But why does Paul call himself a slave, when elsewhere he says: “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of sonship, by which we cry “Abba! Father!…We may understand this as an expression of humility…and that would not be wrong. Nor is the reality of Paul’s freedom compromised by this in any way. As he himself says: “Though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all.” …For he serves Christ not in the spirit of slavery but in the spirit of adoption, for Christ’s service is more noble than any freedom. (Gerald Bray, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, NT VI, 2-3)
CONCLUSION/APPLICATION: To what or to whom will you offer yourself?: (Rom 6:23; Jo 24:15)
What is this freedom? It is not autonomy, a license to do absolutely anything at all. True freedom is “the ability to fulfill one’s destiny, to function in terms of one’s ultimate goal.” (Roger R. Nicole, “Freedom and Law,” Tenth: An Evangelical Quarterly, July 1976, 23)
The only real freedom you are ever going to know, either in this life or in the life to come, is the freedom of serving Jesus Christ. And this means a life of righteousness. Anything else is really slavery, regardless of what the world may promise you through its lies and false teaching. (James Montgomery Boice, An Expositional Commentary: Romans, Vol. 2, 694)
Not long ago I was rereading an essay by C. S. Lewis called “The Weight of Glory.” As he ends this essay, Lewis urges us to think of people as eternal creatures who are daily becoming either more and more like God or more and more like the devil. He writes: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations–these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, 18, 19) (James Montgomery Boice, An Expositional Commentary: Romans, Vol. 2, 703-4)
In this passage the Apostle sums up what he treats at greater length in 1 Cor 7:1ff. That is to say: live virtuously, in order that sin might not rule in you to the destruction of your faith and righteousness. (Martin Luther, Commentary on Romans, 106)
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. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 168)
These three instructions need to be heeded each day that we live. KNOW that you have been crucified with Christ and are dead to sin. RECKON this fact to be true in your own life. YIELD your body to the Lord to be used for His glory.
Now that you KNOW these truths, RECKON them to be true in your life, and then YIELD yourself to God. (Warren W. Wiersbe, Be Right, 70)
“The more stuff you have the more you have to care for it, the more you have to clean it, the more you have to protect it, the more you have to insure it, the more you have to repair it, the more stuff you got the more it dominates your life.” — Rick Warren
“Wherever the Biblical world view has been prevailed, there has been freedom. Where it has been taken away, freedom has been lost.” — Chuck Colson
Michael Novak (in The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism) said, “The free Western Democracy is like a three legged stool. You have political freedom, you have economic freedom and you have moral restraints. Take away one leg and the stool’s gonna fall.
“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Luke 12:15
Worship point: When we realize how much we were enslaved to sin before we came to Christ and when we also realize the freedom we now have because we are slaves to Christ, then worship will well up in your soul.
Spiritual Challenge: Meditate upon the various thoughts, influences, people, objects, events, memories, ideas that held you captive when you were “In Adam” and also meditate upon the freedom that you now have living “in Christ.”
If we’re no longer under the law but under grace, are we now free to sin and disregard the Ten Commandments? Paul says, “By no means!” When we were under the law, sin was our master, for the law could not help us overcome sin. But now that we are bound to Christ, he is our Master, and he gives us power to do good rather than evil. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 124)
You are free to choose between two masters, but you are not free to adjust the consequences of your choice. Each of the two masters pays with his own kind of currency. The currency of sin is death. That is all you can expect or hope for in life without God. Christ’s currency is eternal life–new life with God that begins on earth and continues forever with God. (Bruce B. Barton, Life Application Bible Commentary: Romans, 129)
A few years ago I read something rather random, but I’ve never forgotten it: “Dynamic properties are not revealed in the static state.” Too many of us try to understand truth in the static state. We want to understand it without doing anything about it, but it doesn’t work that way. You want to understand it? Then obey it. Obedience will open the eyes of your understanding far more than any commentary or concordance could. I think many of us doubt Scripture simply because we haven’t done it. The way you master a text isn’t by studying it. The way you master a text is by submitting to it. You have to let it master you. (Mark Batterson, Primal, A Quest for the Lost Soul of Christianity, 80-81)
Love to God will expel love to the world; love to the world will deaden the soul’s love to God. “No man can serve two masters”: it is impossible to love God and the world, to serve him andmammon. Here is a most fertile cause of declension in Divine love; guard against it as you would fortify yourself against your greatest foe. It is a vortex that has engulfed millions of souls; multitudes of professing Christians have been drawn into its eddy, and have gone down into its gulf. (Octavius Winslow, Personal Declension and Revival of Religion in the Soul, 56)
The first is a new direction in one’s thinking. The second is a change in one’s will. The last is a change in one’s conduct. Together these elements produce a holy life that reflects the very holy character of God. (Clarence L. Bence, Romans, A Commentary for Bible Students, 119)
“Servant” in our English New Testament usually represents the Greek doulos (bondslave). Sometimes it means diakonos (deacon or minister); this is strictly accurate, for doulos anddiakonos are synonyms. Both words denote a man who is not at his own disposal, but is his master’s purchased property. Bought to serve his master’s needs, to be at his beck and call every moment, the slave’s sole business is to do as he is told. Christian service therefore means, first and foremost, living out a slave relationship to one’s Savior (1 Corinthians. 6:19-20).
What work does Christ set his servants to do? The way that they serve him, he tells them, is by becoming the slaves of their fellow-servants and being willing to do literally anything, however costly, irksome, or undignified, in order to help them. This is what love means, as he himself showed at the Last supper when he played the slave’s part and washed the disciples’ feet.
When the New Testament speaks of ministering to the saints, it means not primarily preaching to them but devoting time, trouble, and substance to giving them all the practical help possible. The essence of Christian service is loyalty to the king expressing itself in care for his servants (Mt 25: 31-46).
Only the Holy Spirit can create in us the kind of love toward our Savior that will overflow in imaginative sympathy and practical helpfulness towards his people. (James Packer, Your Father Loves You)
Our pleasure and our duty, though opposite before,
Since we have seen His beauty, are joined to part no more
To see the Law by Christ fulfilled, and hear His pardon voice,
Transforms a slave into a child and duty into choice — John Newton
Quotes to Note:
Form translates tupos, which was used of the molds into which molten metal for castings was poured. Committed translates the aorist passive of paradidōmi, which carries the basic meaning of deliver over to. And because eis (to) can also be translated into, it seems that a more precise rendering of this phrase is “that form of teaching into which you were delivered.” It is true, of course, that, through its reading and preaching, God’s Word is delivered to believers. But Paul’s point here seems to be that the true believer is also delivered into God’s Word, His divineteaching. The idea is that when God makes a new spiritual creation of a believer, He casts him into the mold of divine truth. The J. B. Phillips rendering of Rom 12:1 uses the same figure: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.” In other words, “Do not let Satan’s forces try to fit you back into the old sinful mold from which God delivered you. Let God continue to fashion you into the perfect image of His Son.” (John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary: Romans 1-8, 347-8)
Someone would undoubtedly reason, “Well, if we really are under grace and free from the penalty of sin, what difference will a little sin make?” I have heard such a comment many times, and perhaps you have too. Recently I heard a fallen minister use the same argument: “I know it is wrong, but I am a child of God–he will forgive me. I am under grace.” Such thinking is not only wrong but precarious! Interpreting the freedom we have in Christ in an unqualified sense empowers sin to pull believers back under its authority. And if this kind of perverse reasoning becomes a permanent part of our thinking, it may reveal that we are not under grace and never have been. F. F. Bruce says, “to make being ‘under grace’ an excuse for sinning is a sign that one is not really ‘under grace’ at all.” (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Romans, 129-30)
B. C. Berkouweer once said, “The essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” What draws us to obedience and righteousness is not duty but love. It is gratitude. Once we have received this grace of eternal life in Jesus Christ, we should be willing to crawl over broken glass to honor and praise him for that grace. (RC Sproul, St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary: Romans, 203)
There are a number of philosophical and spiritual implications of Sabbath recognition, appreciation, and observance, not the least of which has to do with not being enslaved but being free to pursue a godly life.
That is why the Sabbath was given to the Israelites immediately after the Exodus. To this group of ex-slaves the idea of a day of rest was not only enticing, it spoke to the essence of their being. For generations, they had toiled under the whips of the Egyptian taskmasters. Who would not be moved by a day of liberation in which all people could acknowledge the freedom granted by God? This is our freedom from servitude under human masters, the ultimate freedom of the human soul from oppression, toward its true purpose: to serve God. (Dr. Laura Schlessinger,The Ten Commandments The Significance of God’s Laws in Everyday Life, 104)
Side by side with this there runs another thought, throughout the chapter: the Christian’s life is a constant battle with sin. That this thought is brought forth here is due to the fact that both of the major divisions of this chapter begin with the question whether the Christian shall sin. Shall he continue to sin? At the same time that Paul declares that the Christian is free from sin, he stresses the necessity for him to cease from sin and to battle against it. (Anders Nygren,Commentary on Romans, 262)
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. (James R. Edwards, New International Biblical Commentary: Romans, 176)
So if you are going to judge the value or the profit of a way of life you do not stop merely at pleasure and at happiness. For the time being the case may seem unanswerable against the Christian. The non-Christians say that they are having a marvelous time. All you can say to them at this point is, “That is not the real test. And in any case you had better not speak too loudly, too soon. We can take up the discussion again, perhaps, in a year’s time, or five years’ time, or ten years’ time, or perhaps twenty years’ time, or thirty years’ time. Then you may begin to realize that it is “the pleasures of sin for a season.” That, then, is not the real way to test the profit or the value of a life. (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Romans, Exposition of Chapter 6, 278)
“Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name.” —Psalm 142:7a
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