How the Two Slaveries Develop and How Each Ends
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:19-23
‘I put this in human terms because of you are weak in your natural selves’ (6:19). Paul might be thinking slavery is not the best picture of the Christian life. While it accurately portrays our exclusive allegiance to Christ, it doesn’t touch on the love, grace and care of our Master or of the freedom we find in slavery to Him. The limitations of our humanity have made it necessary for Paul to use an analogy like slavery though he recognised its shortcomings.
In spite of this, he continues to compare and contrast the two slaveries. This time he draws an analogy in the way each develops. Both are dynamic; neither is static. One steadily deteriorates while the other steadily progresses. ‘Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness [literally ‘and of lawlessness unto lawlessness’], so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness’ (the process of sanctification, of being changed into the likeness of Christ) (6:19).
Paul now takes the comparison and contrast between the two slaveries a step further. Each slavery is a kind of freedom and each freedom is a kind of slavery. ‘When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness’ (6:20). We would call this license. On the other hand, ‘you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God’ (6:22). We would call this liberty. What are the fruits of each? Where does each lead? Slavery to sin (which is freedom from righteousness) leads to remorse, guilt over the things ‘you are now ashamed of’ (6:21) and in the end, ‘death’ ([6:21] the eternal separation from God in hell). In contrast, freedom from sin (which is slavery to God) leads to ‘holiness’ in the present and in the end ‘eternal life’ ([6:22] fellowship with God in heaven).
‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (6:23). In this final verse of the chapter Paul continues his contrast between sin and God whom he has characterised through their respective slave masters – Adam and Christ. He repeats his warning that these two slaveries are diametrically opposed and that the destinies to which they lead are either ‘death’ or ‘eternal life’ (6:22).What is added is a third contrast relating to the terms of service on which the two slave owners operate. ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (6:23). Sin pays ‘wages’ (you get what you deserve) but God gives a free gift (you are given what you don’t deserve). God’s free gift can only be given because of Christ’s atoning death and the only condition for receiving it is that we are ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord,’ meaning we are united to Him by faith.
Here are two paths utterly opposed to each other, pictured by Paul as slaveries. By birth we are in Adam, the slaves of sin; by grace and faith we are in Christ, the slaves of God. Slavery to sin brings shame and on-going moral deterioration and culminating in the death we deserve. Slavery to God yields the fruit of progressive holiness and culminating in the free gift of life.