Romans 6:15-23
Grace changes masters; those once enslaved to sin now serve righteousness unto holiness and life.
15 What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be!
16 Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered.
18 Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
19 I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh, for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification.
20 For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
21 What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
22 But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Grace changes masters; those once enslaved to sin now serve righteousness unto holiness and life.
To clarify that being under grace does not permit sin but results in a decisive transfer of allegiance from sin to righteousness.
Romans 6:15-23 follows Romans 6:1-14, where Paul answered the objection that grace’s abundance might justify continuing in sin. He grounded holiness in union with Christ: believers died to sin, were buried and raised with Christ, and must reckon themselves dead to sin but alive to God. Romans 6:15-23 now addresses the related objection raised by Romans 6:14: if believers are not under law but under grace, may they sin? Paul answers by using the slavery metaphor. Grace does not create autonomy. Grace transfers believers from slavery to sin into slavery to righteousness and to God, with the outcome of holiness and eternal life.
Paul writes to a mixed Roman church after explaining justification by faith, union with Christ, and freedom from sin’s mastery. The Roman world was deeply familiar with slavery as a social institution, and Paul uses that familiar category as an analogy for spiritual mastery and allegiance. Believers in Rome, including Jewish and Gentile Christians learning how grace, law, obedience, righteousness, holiness, and eternal life relate in the Christian life This passage develops the implications of grace’s reign in Christ. Having been delivered from Adamic sin and united to Christ’s death and resurrection, believers now live under a new master. The movement from sin to righteousness, impurity to holiness, death to eternal life belongs to the new realm created by Christ.
Dead to Sin and Alive to God in Christ Jesus
Grace does not leave believers under sin’s mastery; through union with Christ’s death and resurrection, they are dead to sin, alive to God, and called to present themselves as servants of righteousness.