Romans 6:17–18 (NET)
“But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.”
Enslaved to righteousness, what an awesome thought! When I read that I get the picture of someone that is under the constant “tyranny” of righteousness – how bad could that be, right? What could be better than a bunch of people whose master is righteousness, all the time. Acting right, having the proper motives, wanting the right things for others, etc.
Unfortunately, today (and really for all of time since the fall of mankind when Adam & Eve sinned) we have a world that naturally is bent towards sin. Sin is anything done that is outside of the standard that God has for us -perfection! Sin, in its rawest form, is missing the mark. The bullseye is absolute perfect righteousness, and sin is anything that hits outside of that bullseye. With that concept of sin, we may be tempted to lose heart and just say, ‘Well, then who in the world can meet that standard?’ I will let you know who is able to hit that mark later in this post!
The topic of slavery is one that has come up lately in our world, and although I will not be discussing the current issues of racial slavery and injustices I will be discussing the Spiritual issues of slavery. There is an allegiance that each of us has to the war in our minds and the passions/desires of our hearts. We either decide to follow the sinful desires of our hearts, or we choose to align the desires of our hearts with the Word of God and follow God’s design laid out for us found in the Bible (it’s really important to note that there is a distinction between God’s passions and our passions!). It says in Gal. 5:17 that “...the flesh has desires that are opposed to the Spirit, and the Spirit has desires that are opposed to the flesh, for these are in opposition to each other, so that you cannot do what you want.” Then it says in Gal. 5:24 that, “…those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” The “flesh” is referring to that part of us that is contrary to the Spiritual, and is the source from which our sinful desires comes from. The flesh can be/is our slave master for sin! We need to understand that when we indulge ourselves in the works of the flesh (see Galatians 5:19-21), we are slaves to it and are controlled by the desires that it produces within us. Paul says in Romans 7:25(b) that, “…So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” This is something that none of us want and we should all desire to get out from under the tyranny of this slave master – sin!
At this point you may be wondering, How? I am glad you asked because after asking himself a similar question, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (How?) in the beginning part of verse 25 mentioned above, Paul emphatically states, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” That is the answer to the above question, Jesus is the One who is able to hit the standard of perfection!We not only can experience freedom from this slave master called sin, we can experience the peace that comes with actually having desires that match up to God’s, and having lives that are characterized by the righteousness that Christ imputed (deposited into our account) to us. I want you to pay attention to this verse, 2 Cor. 5:21 “God made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we would become the righteousness of God.” If you are not either smiling, dancing, praising, or jumping up and down right now (seriously, go ahead I won’t laugh!) then there must be something wrong with the way that you are interpreting that Scripture. Jesus died a sinners death (that sinner is me and you) in order to make us stand before God as completely righteous! I know that I am not practically righteous (meaning that I sin daily), but I also must appreciate the fact that Christ Jesus has made it possible for us to stand before God principally Righteous (meaning in right standing with Him in spite of my sinfulness).
The reason all of that is important is so that we understand that we can walk in righteousness and newness of life when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. Interestingly enough, the term Lord means Master, and whenever I think of slavery, the idea of Master and slave is automatically assumed. Jesus becomes my Master when I invite Him to save me. Now I come back to Romans chapter 6 and ask, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness?” That is the question Paul presents to his readers in verse 16, and I think it is a great question. Are we obeying the flesh (as explained earlier), or are we decidedly giving Jesus mastery over every area of our lives? The former will result in death (simply meaning separation from God, but in a more complex way meaning lifelessness in every area of our lives) and the latter will result in life and life to the fullest (see John 10:10!).
Choose today to make yourself a slave to Jesus and the righteousness that He has made available to you by His death on the cross. Each of us were once slaves to our flesh and sinful passions, “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.” (Romans 6:17-18) Slavery, in this sense, is the best thing that will ever happen to us, so let’s choose today to present ourselves as instruments of righteousness that leads to life! God bless you!