Choosing Righteousness over Slavery to Sin—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 5A/Proper 8 (Romans 6:12-23)

Romans 6:12-23 New Revised Standard Version UpdatedEdition

¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. ¹³ No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

¹⁵ What then? Should we 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 slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted ¹⁸ and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

²⁰ When you were slaves of sin, you were free regarding righteousness. ²¹ So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. ²² But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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                As we come to this particular Sunday, in the year 2026, the United States will celebrate its semiquicentennial (250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence). During this season, people in the United States will celebrate freedom, but what is freedom? Are there limits to our freedom? With the Declaration of Independence, the emergent United States of America declared its freedom from British rule. But once independence was declared, the people who voted to do this had to begin thinking about how they would govern themselves. That is, they had to figure out what kind of limits should be placed on their freedoms. Ultimately, the nation’s leaders created the Constitution, together with a Bill of Rights, that provided guidance as to how they would live into their newfound freedom.

                When Paul wrote his letter to the churches in Rome, a community he had never visited, he addressed one of the major questions facing the early Christian community. That question had to do with how they would live their faith if they set aside the law. The problem, as Paul outlined it, had to do with the problem of sin. Or, perhaps put differently, the brokenness that afflicted humanity’s relationship with God and with the rest of creation. In the previous reading (Romans 6:1b-12), Paul spoke of the role baptism played in connecting believers to Christ, such that in baptism one is buried with Christ, thus dying to sin, and then rising with Jesus from the waters of baptism to the new life in Christ. Therefore, as Paul writes: “So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ” (Rom. 6:11). Since they now live in Christ, sin should no longer define their lives.

                In our reading for the Fifth Sunday of Pentecost (Proper 8), Paul declares that those who have undergone baptism should not let sin have dominion over their mortal bodies. To be in Christ means not letting our passions have control of our lives. So, rather than allowing their bodies to be used as instruments of wickedness, they should present themselves as people who  had been brought out of death to life so that their mortal being might be used by God as “instruments of righteousness.” Therefore, sin will no longer have dominion because they (we) are no longer under the law but under grace. But if we are free from the dictates of the law, how does grace free us from the grip of sin and death?

                What we’re talking about here is a matter of salvation (soteriology). People are broken, and that brokenness leads to death. The law might have its place, but it can’t free someone from the grip of sin. But to be in Christ is to break the hold of sin’s dominion.  Here comes the big question. If we are no longer under the law but under grace, does that mean we are free to sin? The theological word here is antinomianism. Paul recoils from the question. By no means are we free to sin. In fact, to do so makes one a slave to sin. So, the choice is between submitting ourselves to slavery to sin or to offer ourselves in obedience to what leads to righteousness. The good news is that having been set free from slavery to sin, we can become slaves to righteousness. That is, thanks to the work of God in our lives, we can become obedient to the teaching entrusted to us, which leads to slavery to righteousness. So, using the imagery of slavery, which was ubiquitous at the time, we can either become slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to righteousness, which leads to life.  

                It might seem as if we are still under the law, but in Paul’s mind, this is not true. Perhaps standing in the background is Jeremiah’s vision of the new covenant written on the heart rather than on stone. While Paul doesn’t mention Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 31, we read that God will write the law on our hearts, so that everyone who has this law written on their hearts will know God (Jer. 31:31-34). By presenting our members (lives) to God, we can experience sanctification (the process of being made holy).

                As the reading comes to a close, Paul asks the reader what advantage they had gained from things they were now ashamed of. After all, these things lead to death. The good news is that since they are in Christ, they have been freed from the bonds of sin. At the same time, they are now enslaved to God, which leads to sanctification and eternal life. The final verse in this reading is well known to many since it is often produced in evangelistic efforts: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). Sin is deadly, but God offers grace in Christ Jesus, which leads to eternal life. The use of the word “wages” here suggests that sin is something we work at, but the payment comes in the form of death. Eternal life, however, is not a wage but a gift. Michael Gorman summarizes the message of these closing verses, writing: “Eternal life, then, is the ultimate conclusion of the new life begun in justification and baptism. It is the full experience of God’s glory that is known in part in the present” (Gorman, Romans, p. 175).

                Something needs to be said about Paul’s usage of the imagery of slavery in this passage. We live in the aftermath of race-based chattel slavery that continues to be a stain on the history of the United States and the leading cause of the Civil War. While some still defend slavery, often appealing to passages like this one, it is important to state clearly that the slavery practiced in the Americas was itself a state of sin. Unfortunately, despite the great sacrifices made during the civil rights era of the 1950s and 1960s, racism still plagues this nation. For Paul’s world, slavery was ubiquitous. A good portion of the early Christian churches was likely composed of slaves. Thus, his readers would have understood the imagery used here. Paul offers two kinds of slavery: one involves sin and the other righteousness. The choice is ours. To whom do we wish to be enslaved?  Do we wish to serve the realm of sin, which leads to death, or embrace God’s ways, which lead to sanctification? Perhaps it’s time to stop working at the sin thing and accept the blessings that come with God’s grace.