Text: Romans 6:15-23
Date: October 26-27, 2019
Event: The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C
Romans 6:15–23 (EHV)
15What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! 16Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness?
17Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. 18After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. 19(I am speaking in a human way because of the weakness of your flesh.) Indeed, just as you offered your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, resulting in more lawlessness, so now offer your members in the same way as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21So what kind of fruit did you have then? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death. 22But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We Are God’s Slaves
We don’t like the concept of slavery, and with good reason. Its history, especially here in the United States, is horrid and disgusting. Slavery is commingled with denigration of fellow human beings; the cheapening of life; the mindset of “money over all else;” and the idea that what benefits me is most important, even if it hurts or kills you.
So, when we hear a lesson from God’s Word like the one we have before us from Romans 6, when we see a sermon theme printed in the bulletin like “We Are God’s Slaves,” we rightly begin to squirm a little bit. We don’t really want to talk about the subject, probably, and even if we do we don’t want to think of ourselves or our family or friends living the life of a slave.
Now, we could spend time this morning talking about that being a slave in biblical times was generally not the atrocity of abuse that it was in the earlier years of our country, but that’s not the point here. If there’s one thing the concept of slavery is very good at communicating regardless of the era you’re talking about, it’s a lack of options. When you are a slave you don’t get to leave. When you are a slave, you don’t get to consider other job offers or apply to work elsewhere. When you are a slave you do not get to change what you are doing and choose a different path. When you are a slave, you are stuck where you are indefinitely.
And that’s Paul’s point as he begins in our lesson. Romans is a beautiful book that hangs together so well. In fact, this afternoon I would encourage you to go and at least read from the start of the book through our lesson to see Paul’s train of thought. He begins in the first three chapters by assuring us that all people are condemned because of their sin, no matter whether they knew God’s Word or not; sin and its wretched results are the same for everyone. But then, in the middle of chapter 3, he puts for the solution: we stood condemned, but then Jesus came and took that condemnation. We have righteousness, a right relationship with God, because Jesus solved our sin. Paul then goes on to demonstrate how this gift of God becomes ours through faith. The Holy Spirit works faith, trust, in what God has done and promised and those gifts and promises become ours. This trust is what Jesus talked about in the gospel. When God makes a promise, you can be sure it will happen. If God had promised that you could speak to a tree and it would be uprooted and planted in the sea, then you can be sure that it will happen. God hasn’t promised that, though. What he has promised is that your sins are gone, that you are his, and will be with him forever in heaven. We are more confident about than anything else!
But then Paul gets into the “what now?” of the Christian life. We were sinners, but God has freed us. How do we respond to that? What do we do with that? At the time of the Reformation, this was one of the chief concerns leveled by the Roman Catholic leaders as they confronted Martin Luther. Their argument was that you cannot tell people that forgiveness and eternal life are a free gift because, if you do, the people will then just live any way that they choose. They will think, “It doesn’t matter how much I sin if God has forgiven me, so I will continue to sin more and more!”
This is exactly the issue Paul is addressing in our lesson for this morning, some 2000 years before our day and 1500 years before Luther’s day. Paul asks, “What then? Should we continue to sin, because we are not under law but under grace?” And what is his answer? “Absolutely not!” There is no doubt about it, Paul says, to think that God’s grace gives me the free pass to sin as much as I want is a misguided and dangerous view.
But why is it so dangerous? Paul explains, “Do you not know that when you offer yourselves to obey someone as slaves, you are slaves of the one you are obeying—whether slaves of sin, resulting in death, or slaves of obedience, resulting in righteousness? Thanks be to God that, although you used to be slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to the pattern of the teaching into which you were placed. After you were set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” You used to be a slave to sin. You used to have to do whatever sin and Satan told you to do. You had no choice you belonged to them. But that’s what used to be true. Jesus changed all of that. He changed you from a slave to sin to a slave to righteousness, to God himself.
But to willfully sin puts yourself back under the cruel slave master of sin and death. To embrace their commands is to submit to the destruction that they bring. Being a slave to sin means rejecting God’s forgiveness; it means rejecting Jesus. No one who willfully sins continually can be said to have a healthy faith, or perhaps even saving faith at all. And the end result of that slavery is utter disaster and hell. So what kind of fruit did you have then [when you were slaves to sin]? They were things of which you are now ashamed. Yes, the final result of those things is death.
We don’t want sin to be our slave master. We rightfully define human life as something that cannot be bought or sold. And that is true, except when it comes to God. People cannot buy people, but God can and has bought us. Paul, elsewhere when he writes to the Christians living in Corinth, reminds them of that truth. After telling them to run away from any kind of sexual sin, Paul tells them, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, EHV). God owns you. He bought you. And the price on your head was worth more than all the money, power, and fame in the world combined. Martin Luther reminds us of that as he explains the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed about Jesus’ work in this way: He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.
So now, Paul says, we are slaves to God. Again, we react negatively to that term for a lot of correct reasons. But the negative connotation of slavery comes from the presupposition of abuse. What if you were a slave to someone who loved you? What if you had to be connected to someone who would do anything for you? What if you belonged to one who would die for you? What a change that would be!
Ideally, this is not far from the relationship of husband and wife, of parents and children, of Christian brothers and sisters. We are slaves to God, yes, but we are slaves to the one who loves us by sacrificing his life to save us. We have to listen to him, but by God’s grace we now want to listen to him. What he directs us to do is good for us; the way he has us walk is the way of love and gratitude toward him. His commands are not cruel like and earthly slave master. His commands do not lead to eternal death like the slave master of sin. No, Paul says, “But now, since you were set free from sin and have become slaves to God, you have your fruit resulting in sanctification—and the final result is eternal life.”
Because God bought you, redeemed you, now owns you, you are rescued from sin and hell. Jesus’ blood paid for you and now you belong to God, and no one can change that. We are slaves to God, yes, but slaves to the most loving master who provides for us now and will give us a perfect eternal life with him in heaven.
So, my brothers and sisters, let the way you speak, the way you act, the way you treat other be a reflection of the joy you in have in your Savior. Rejoice that you are no longer slaves to sin and death! Rejoice that the hell that was waiting for you because of sin has been undone at the cross where Jesus subjected himself to the cruel slave master and endured the wrath that we deserved! Rejoice that you are slaves to God. Rejoice that while the wages of sin is death, yet the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord! Amen.
