Romans 6:12-23 Commentary

This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson invites Jesus’ friends to think of both sin and salvation in perhaps fresh ways. In it, after all, Paul reminds Rome’s Christians that sin is not, as some Christians assume, just an activity. Sin is also a power. What’s more, as the apostle shows in Romans 6, salvation is not just a kind of “get out of hell free card;” it’s also a mighty force.

Paul, again, links this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson to last Sunday’s by introducing it with “Therefore [oun*] …” So wise preachers consider beginning our exposition of it by at least referring to Romans 6:11. There we hear Paul assert, “Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” It’s, quite simply, a summons to God’s dearly beloved people to take our marching orders not from our sinful nature, but God.

Romans 6:12-23 suggests living out that invitation involves counter-cultural attitudes and behaviors. Serving not sin but God particularly includes a great deal of submission that borders on slavery. Being alive to God also includes a willingness to be slaves not to our own interests, but God’s. Add to that Romans 6’s references to royal imagery, and we have a lot of language that’s largely unfamiliar and self-sacrificial.

In verse 12 the apostle says, “Do not let sin reign [basileueto] in your mortal body [thneto hymon somati] so that you obey [hypakouein] its evil desires [epythymais].” Here Paul basically compares sin to a monarchy.

Sin, however, is no figurehead or constitutional royalty. The apostle portrays sin, instead, as a tyrannical despot. In that way it’s closer to Rome’s Emperor Nero than, for example, Great Britian’s King Charles. Sin, after all, longs for nothing more than its subjects’ eternal separation from God and our neighbors.

In verse 13 Paul goes on to compare sin’s power to a tool. There he tells Rome’s friends of Jesus, “Do not offer [paristanete] any part of yourself to sin as an instrument [hopla] of wickedness [adikias].” It’s as if the apostle knows sin doesn’t need anyone or anything’s help to wreak terrible havoc. He insists sin’s power certainly doesn’t need volunteers from citizens of God’s kingdom. Sin is, after all, like a sledgehammer whose power wreaks havoc on nearly everything it touches. The apostle compares sin to a wrecking ball that destroys nearly everything with which it comes into contact.

Paul employs yet another metaphor for sin’s power in verse 14. “Sin shall no longer be your master [hymon ou kyrieusei],” he writes there, “because you are not under the law [hypo nomon] but under grace [charin].” It’s the apostle’s recognition that everyone serves someone or thing. By nature people serve sin, allowing it to control our lives. Those whom God has rescued by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ serve grace. God’s adopted children give God’s amazing grace the say over every square inch and moment of our lives.

Paul carries forward the image of sin’s power’s mastery in verses 16-18. There he writes, “Don’t you know that when you offer [paristanete] yourselves to someone as obedient slaves [doulos eis hypakoen], you are slaves of the one you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death [thanaton], or to obedience, which leads to righteousness [dikaiosynen] … Though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey [hypekousate] from your heart [ek kardias] the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance [paredothete]. You have been set free [eleutheronthentes] from sin and have become slaves [edoulethete] to righteousness.”

Preachers might note at least a couple of things about the apostle’s description of sin’s power’s mastery. Our culture sometimes assumes humans are primarily thinking or feeling creatures. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson insists we are serving creatures. We aren’t autonomous beings. People aren’t even what we know or feel.

God’s image-bearers are defined by who or what we serve. In Pauline language we are slaves to either the sin that kills or the obedience that, by the Spirit’s power, produces righteousness. The apostle even implies that this slavery is something into which we’re born. People don’t need to learn to hate God or our neighbor. We are born that way.

Some people suggest that slavery is the United States’ original sin. No matter what God’s adopted children think of that assertion, Paul insists each and every descendant of Adam and Eve is some kind of slave. Most human slavery involves the forcible removal of God’s image bearers of any sort of agency.

Spiritual slavery is similarly if somewhat differently horrific. It, after all, involves voluntary surrender of our freedom to a force that longs for nothing less than our complete annihilation. To use imagery taken from African enslavement, it’s not as if people were dragged into spiritual slavery in chains or at the end of a gun. We freely volunteered to be Satan, sin and death’s slaves.

People whom God graciously frees from slavery to sin remain, in basic ways, enslaved. Now, however, we’re “slaves to righteousness” (18). This, of course, grates on western insistence that people are moral free agents. We demand the right to make our own choices – no matter how catastrophic the consequences may be.

God summons us into an entirely different kind of slavery, not to sin but to righteousness. It means, among other things, that Jesus’ friends always ask not what’s best for us, but what God would have us do. God, after all, is not just our creator, redeemer and Savior. God also knows what’s best for us. To follow Jesus is to live, talk and think in the ways for which God created us.

This might give room for preachers to explore claims that some non-Christians are nicer and kinder than Jesus’ followers. We can admit that is all too often true. But though I know a number of non-Christians, I see some forms of radical discipleship of Jesus lacking in all of them.

After all, being a slave to righteousness isn’t just being nice to people and caring for the creation. Righteousness’ slaves also unconditionally love, forgive and pray for people who have made themselves our enemies. We don’t, what’s more, give in to despair or place our hope in human solutions to the world’s messes. Even though we work to love our neighbors and care for God’s world, righteousness’ slaves’ persistent optimism about the world lies in God alone.

In verses 21-23 Paul offers a final metaphor for sin’s power. There he compares it to a kind of treasurer, paymaster or perhaps even CFO. In verse 21, after all, the apostle asks, “What benefit [karpon] did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed [epaischynesthe] of? Those things result in death [thanatos]!”

What, in other words, does sin’s power “pay” its slaves? Things that leave its servants deeply ashamed of ourselves. What’s the fruit of serving sin? Death. No matter how attractive sin may look, this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson reminds us it’s poisonous. Service to sin is ultimately fatal. The Message paraphrases Paul as writing we got nothing out of serving sin but a “dead end.”

In verses 22-23 the apostle contrast’s death’s “paycheck” with God’s. “Now that you have been set free [eleurothentes] from sin and become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness [hagiasmon] and the result is eternal life [zoen ainion]. For the wages [opsonia] of sin is death, but the gift [charisma] of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It’s, in some ways, quite simple, says Paul. While sin’s power pays out eternal death, God gifts Jesus’ friend with eternal life. While sin’s power is a brutal slave master that cares nothing for its slaves, God is a loving master who wants nothing for God’s servants but our eternal well-being. While sin’s power absorbs its slaves into its evil ways, God unites us with both our Savior and his followers, both now and forevermore.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his book, Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose describes the American Army’s liberation of Nazi Germany’s Dachau concentration camp near Landsberg. He notes how the freed prisoners were “in their striped pajamas, three-quarters starved, by the thousands; corpses, little more than skeletons, by the hundreds.”

E Company’s General Taylor was so indignant at the condition of the people in the camp that he declared martial law and forced the citizens of Landsberg to march to the camp with their shovels, rakes, and brooms — everyone in town “from fourteen to eighty years of age” had to go — and then made them bury the corpses and clean up the camp. That night they returned to Landsberg, many of them still vomiting.

One of the liberating soldiers later remarked how, when the GIs would look at the emaciated prisoners, they “dropped their eyes and heads . . . in the same manner that a beaten, mistreated dog would cringe.” The soldier said to himself, “’Now I know why I am here.’”

Might preachers prayerfully contemplate inviting Jesus’ friends to “tour” the horrific damage that has been caused by serving sin’s power? While it might nauseate us, after all, it might also help remind righteousness’ slaves of a reason why God has put us here.