Four Steps in Exchange of Slaveries
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. Romans 6:16-18
‘Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?’ (6:16). Voluntary slavery had occurred in the Middle East for centuries. People in dire poverty could offer themselves as slaves to someone just to be fed and housed. They obviously lost their prior freedom.
The same happens with spiritual slavery, whether we become ‘slaves of sin which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness’ (6:16). We would expect the contrast with ‘slaves to sin’ to be ’slaves to Christ’ or even ‘slaves to righteousness’ rather than ‘slaves to obedience’. Paul is emphasising that the essence of slavery is obedience. Serving sin leads to death but serving obedience ‘leads to righteousness.’ Conversion is an act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads to slavery and slavery demands radical obedience. No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). Having chosen our master we have no further choice but to obey Him
Having laid down the principle that surrender leads to slavery, Paul now applies it, reminding his readers that their conversion involved an exchange of slaveries. He sums up their experience in four stages.
First, ‘you used to be slaves to sin’ (6:17). All human beings are slaves and there are only two masters, sin and God. Conversion is a transfer from one to the other.
Secondly, ‘you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted’ (6:17). It is not God or Christ they are said to have obeyed but a ‘form of teaching to which you were entrusted.’ Paul might be contrasting Christian teaching to Jewish teaching or just describing basic Christian doctrine. Conversion to Paul was not only trusting Christ but also believing and acknowledging the truth. Paul doesn’t say they were committed to this teaching but that this teaching was committed to them. The same word here translated ‘entrusted’ is used in Matthew 26:15,16 of Jesus being ‘handed over’ to the Romans. This teaching was ‘handed over’ to them.
Thirdly, they ‘have been set free from sin’ (6:18). They have been decisively rescued from the lordship of slavery of sin into the lordship of God, out of the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of Christ (Colossians 1:13).
Fourthly, in consequence they have ‘have become slaves to righteousness’ (6:18). This transfer from slavery to sin to slavery to righteousness is full and complete.
Running as a constant theme through Romans is the interplay between what is commonly called the indicative (what has been done for us) and the imperative (what we must do). Relating to the indicative: Paul insists that God has Himself accomplished our decisive break with sin. ‘We died to sin’ (6:2); ‘our old self was crucified with him’ (6:6); we are ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (6:11); we ‘have been brought from death to life’ (6:13); ‘sin shall not be your master’ (6:14); ‘you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of righteousness’ (6:18); ‘you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God’ (6:22).
But Paul regularly intersperses his indicatives with imperatives that make us responsible for winning the battle against sin: ‘Do not let sin reign’ (6:12); ‘do not offer the parts of your body to sin … but … offer yourselves to God’ (6:13); ‘offer [the parts of your body] in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness’ (6:19).
For Paul the imperative (what we do) grew out of the indicative (what God has already done). In grace God helps His people and asks them to respond. Christians are called to “become what they are.”
At the same time God’s acts on our behalf are not finished. He has more to give us and certainly more to accomplish in us. In this sense Christians are “becoming what we will be.”