ROMANS 6 – 9
CHAPTER 6
If in chapter 5 Paul presents what God has done for us in Christ, in chapter 6 he reveals what God has done in us in Christ. In chapter 5 we see what we were positionally in Adam closed by our new standing in Christ; in chapter 6 what we were conditionally in Adam closed by our new spiritual state in Christ – newness of life.
Verse 1 “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”
Here Paul is answering a difficulty which might arise in the mind of a believer who had not properly understood the doctrine of sin. The new question concerns how grace continues to abound to us ‘in Christ’ after we are constituted righteous, not a question of how it abounds to us ‘in Adam’ and in condemnation. Present enjoyment of salvation and eternal life is the subject of this chapter.
Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Sin became the occasion for grace abounding to man when he was found in sin. So the question might be asked whether our continuing in sin will evoke more and more grace from God. A believer who thinks so is one who still sees himself as being alive toward God in the old, sinful nature, missing the basic truth that the believer is alive ‘in Christ’ and no longer ‘in Adam’ in God’s sight. Grace is the effective power of God to realise eternal purpose. Paul, in the three chapters under consideration, reveals how this power effectively operates. It is not by our continuing in a sinful nature and asking for grace upon specific deeds of sin committed by that nature.
Verse 2 “God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
This is sinful thinking, the activity of unbelief and spiritual ignorance, no matter how widely accepted as normal christian practice. We have died to sin once-for-all (aorist tense), a completed act. To God and to faith, a believer died to sin when he became ‘in Christ’. We must regard our new state from the divine viewpoint. If we died to sin, how can we live in it? This is not an exhortation never to commit natural sin because we have been saved, but to show the folly and ignorance of one who has received the virtue of the work of Christ thinking that he still lives in a sinful nature toward God.
Some observations regarding verses 3-11.
The death and consequent resurrection of Christ is presented three times in these verses. The Lord Jesus is not only the means by which we receive the new life, He was in his life in flesh the pattern of how that new (spiritual) life should be lived. By the death which ended His existence in flesh He has given us the (spiritual) life in which He lived that we might live in it as He did, for righteousness sake, for the furtherance of God’s eternal purpose. What was true of Him is true in us.
Consequently, in this chapter we find terms of comparison – like as, likewise, also, even so, so also, etc. We should copy Christ in the new life toward God, realising all that Christ was toward God in the world, finding therein the spiritual virtues of life ‘in Christ’ in which we are now alive and active toward His God and Father. We must distinguish and separate between what we are ‘in Adam’ and what we are ‘in Christ’. Contrary to modern theology, if God’s grace is to abound to make us profitable in our divine calling, we must separate the natural from the spiritual, the secular from the sacred in thought, word and deed.
Toward God and for the eternal purpose to which we are called and gifted we are not alive in Adam, in the flesh, human nature, but solely in the conferred life of Christ. “We will never be fit for things below till we bring the fitness down from above” (JND). In becoming a man the Lord Jesus established a relationship for us with God, entered into by receiving ‘new life in Christ’ and realised experientially by acting in it, (Yield yourselves unto God).
The death and resurrection of Christ Jesus is presented to us here as a threefold pattern of the newness of life:
a. vs.3-4: It brought His life in flesh to an end and opened up for Him a new form of life as a man, alive in resurrection life, insusceptible to the power of evil and anti-purpose.
b) vs.5-7: It was the means of clearing him, or justifying Him, from God’s condemnation of the sin He voluntarily took upon Himself in the sphere of divine judgment. Thereby we are also in a position of justification.
b. vs.8-11: It ended the life in which He had to do with sin and death and began a life in which He lives wholly and solely unto God. For us this involves our present spiritual life and responsive service to God. It also looks forward to the ultimate redemption of our bodies.
Certain knowledge comes to us as a result of assuming the spiritual position which the work of Christ opens up to us. The knowledge is both inherent and acquired, from possessing the new life and from its being developed in us. Knowledge is mentioned four times in this chapter, in verses 3, 6, 9 and 16 showing its definitive importance. It is the knowledge of what has taken place for us in Christ, particularly as a result of His death in its past, present and future implications for us. The subject is the service which God seeks from us in response to His work for us and in us.
We are required to realise that we cannot serve God’s eternal purpose in the power of a sinful nature. We are not to live in it that grace may abound. In God’s sight, and in spiritual reality, we have died to that nature. The work of God in Christ presented in chapter 5 deals once-for-all with sin, the sinful nature of man. This is a finished work on God’s part and to receive its virtue we must receive it as such. In chapter 6 a work of God which continues is presented. The life of Christ in us has to do with our continued response to God.
- Firstly, the glory of the Father is involved in it.
- Secondly, the restitution of man to spiritual perfection in life and work from the sin and death introduced by Adam is involved.
- Thirdly, life unto God in the new creation is involved.
Verse 3 “Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into Jesus Christ were baptised into his death?”
Spiritual ignorance may prevent us from rising to divine expectations. Paul presents the doctrinal facts and then the present implications and applications of these in the believer’s life and service. The first basic fact is that, by the work of God, we have all been baptised into Christ Jesus. Baptism in water is an outward confession of the death of all that we are by nature in God’s sight and of our association with Christ Jesus in new (eternal, spiritual) life. Here baptism has in view conversion rather than the ordinance itself. The spiritual nature of a christian is characterised as having been baptised into Christ Jesus. God has associated us with the saving work of Christ, baptising us into Him. Christ Jesus is the Christ who was Jesus, the Man now in glory, our Leader. The life in which we lived in the flesh has been ended in the sight of God by our baptism into His death. Baptism in water is a confession by us that God has finished with the flesh (the old order of human nature) in divine purpose, NOT that we are finished with it in secular life.
Verse 4 “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death; that like as Christ was raised up from thedead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
That we have been buried with Him is divine revelation of great spiritual significance and interpretation, a spiritual situation which God has brought about. It is presented to faith as the christian position from the divine standpoint. What we are in sinful nature has been buried in Christ, hidden away forever from the sight of God. Because of this divine intervention we have, in spiritual reality, been buried as to the nature which sins. (So great salvation). The death in verse 3 is the death of Christ, here it is death generally and our own death in the flesh in particular. The virtues associated with the death of Christ are conferred upon us, the spiritual effects opened up for us that we may follow after Him spiritually.
“Christ was raised up from among the dead”. The Man anointed by God for the accomplishing of eternal purpose went into death to be raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father, glory that acted upon Him to vindicate His life of service and the purposefulness of His death. When the Son had finished His eternally purposeful work in life and in death, the Father worked to raise Him up, opening up the new creation for Him. One of the purposes served by the Father acting upon the Christ in this way is that the spiritual realm into which He raised Him might thereby be opened to us. We were buried with Him unto death that we might walk (aorist tense) in newness of (spiritual) life. Through the glory of the Father we are brought into a spiritual sphere by possessing newness of life. It is an act complete in itself. In the sight of God we walk in this newness of life. Before we can render meaningful service to the cause of God we must know what God has introduced us into spiritually. In our life of service to God we walk in new life in a spiritual realm. We do not act in divine service in natural human life, which is the realm of nature.
Verse 5 “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection.”
God has incorporated us with Him in the likeness of His death. Again, God is presented as being at work, grafting us into Christ in His death. The “likeness” of His death sets forth the fact that God has caused us to die the same death as Christ did, in a spiritual sense of course. We have been identified with Him so as to be made one with Him in His death to the flesh. ‘In Adam’ we had in us a sinful nature which made us, primarily, spiritual failures. Christ had no such sin in Him and hence it is the “likeness” of His death which Paul presents. We are identified with the spiritual success of His death and this closes the history of our life of spiritual failure before God.
So also shall we be with His resurrection. Paul now looks to the future, showing the certainty of resurrection before proceeding to set forth the present implications of it – knowing this. The present time is characterised by our being united by God with a Christ who died in absolute spiritual perfection concerning the work He did for God’s eternal purpose. His life, and the virtues of the work He performed in it, are implanted in us so that we can act in that life toward God. Further, we wait and act in it in the certain knowledge that God will yet act upon us in the likeness of His resurrection.
Verse 6 “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”
Paul then proceeds to reveal what we get to know in the present time as a result of the effectiveness of the work God has wrought for us and in us through the death and resurrection of Christ. We gain the knowledge that our “old man” was crucified (aorist) with Him. This is an act complete in itself, having been completed by God. It is not we who should crucify the old man, rather that we know God has done so as a result of the death of Christ and our death in His likeness. It is our old man, not the old man which was crucified. The death of Christ was a judicial sentence on sinful human failure but the act by God in identifying us with it is a spiritual reality for us. The knowledge of this governs the way in which we respond to God.
What we were once before God, ‘in Adam’, is now described as the “old man”. From the divine standpoint, human life in nature has now become the ‘old order of humanity’. An altogether ‘new order of humanity’, a spiritual order, has appeared as a direct result of the completed service of Christ. ‘In Adam’ we lived in the world but were ‘dead’ in divine purpose. This spiritually dead form of life was crucified by God with Christ. Men crucified Christ in flesh, acting in spiritual failure in the power of the old nature. Christ became obedient unto death, even the death of a cross, and as a result God has crucified our “old man” in present christian experience. He has so acted that we might live and act in the knowledge that He has done to us spiritually what men did to Christ literally.
The second basic fact which we come to know is that God has so acted that “the body of sin” might be annulled (aorist). It is not destroyed in any literal sense but is annulled spiritually by the completed work of God in response to the work of Christ. The “sin” is the spiritual failure resulting from the deficiencies of the old life in its involvement in the spirit of evil. (It is important to understand that the failings of human nature are not just moral but spiritual in their consequences, falling short of the glory of God). This was fully demonstrated by the crucifixion of the embodiment of eternal good. This “body of sin” remains in us in our continued existence as men in the world of nature. However, in possession of new life in Christ, we are alive in a new spiritual realm in which we live and act spiritually toward God. “The body of sin” is excluded from this realm. This then, is the true christian situation from the divine standpoint and God presents it to us that we may know it and act accordingly in our service for Him.
The third basic knowledge which we acquire as a result of God’s completed work is that we should no longer serve (present continuous tense) sin. Again, this has in view our new life in the spiritual realm. We are gifted and called by a divine work to complete the spiritual service which God requires of us for the realisation of eternal purpose. We should not go on serving sin as its bondservants. The question of our spiritual service is now introduced. God demands that we know what He has already wrought so that we might no longer go on serving spiritual evil in the power of a spiritually evil nature. What God does not do is give us a power to efface the sins of the flesh, because we no longer live in it, so far as He is concerned. If we view ourselves as still being alive in the flesh and respond to God in its power in an attempt to better it and to improve the world by human effort, then we are continuing to be slaves of sin by failing to realise the nature of the work of God for us.
Verse 7 “For he that is dead is freed from sin.”
The believer is justified, cleared or discharged from sin. This is how we must see ourselves as a result of God’s completed work for us. By the work of God in response to Christ’s death, we have died. The old nature which sins is no longer alive and active so far as God is concerned and that is what matters. This is how we must understand what has happened to us spiritually. Not only do we no longer serve the old master but we have been justified from the sinful nature in which we once served him. We cannot be held answerable as a spiritual people for the sins of a life which God has put to death spiritually, though we can be at a natural level in the world.
In our natural life and experience we are of course still alive and active in the power of a nature which is sinful. That this is not true spiritually is entirely on account of God’s work for us. In God’s view, and in that of the spiritually discerning, we have died and been justified from sin once for all.
Verse 8 “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.”
The death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus is presented a third time, emphasising that a work of positive spiritual value has been done within us by God. We died with Him in spiritual reality as well as in likeness. The Christ in flesh died to that fleshly form. He did not come to make the world a better place naturally nor to enable us to do so by a fleshly christianity.
“We believe that we shall live with Him”. As before, Paul states the doctrinal fact and then reveals its present spiritual implications. True christian belief is that we shall come to live with Him in the glory in which He now lives. This is already true spiritually in present christian experience. The character of the life in which we now live is described as being ‘with Christ’, ‘in Christ Jesus’ and ‘unto God’.
Verse 9 “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him.”
Paul declares what we now know concerning the Christ of Christianity. The word for knowledge signifies inherent rather than acquired knowledge. Paul is setting forth the basic truths which we know and upon which we can build and progress spiritually. “Knowing” is a past participle – having known and knowing. True christian service arises from this knowledge which God has begotten in us. Being raised up from among those who have died, Christ dies no more. The life in which He served God’s eternal purpose amongst men in the flesh has ended. Divine power acted upon a Christ who was among the dead to separate Him forever from dead humanity, raising Him to live in human life in a realm in which there are no dead. (Resurrection always has to do with the body). The Christ of Christianity is One who will never die again, such is the body of glory in which He now lives.
Death no longer has lordship over Him. He once became obedient unto death, being made for a little while lower than the angels, in assuming a natural body, for the suffering of death. Death was once the final authority in nature. The Christ, coming in flesh as the Christ of Judaism, assumed a natural form and submitted Himself to death’s lordship. This was that He might break death’s lordship over Himself forever. He ceased to live in a form upon which death can exercise its authority. The dominion of death had hitherto prevented man from entering into the fulfilment of all the promises of God. Those who died bodily entered into the kingdom of death and anti-purpose. Christ did so in order to assume a glorified form in which He lives as a man in glory, beyond the authority standing between man and the enjoyment of all that God has purposed.
Verse 10 “For in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.”
He is a Christ who died (aorist) but in contrast to others His death was eternally purposeful. He died in order to die to sin, another spiritual power which stood between man and the enjoyment of the promise. His death in a natural body had to do with sin. Though He need not have died in such a body, yet He chose to do so because the realisation of eternal purpose was to be accomplished by such an act. For in that He did die, He died to the sin in which He had voluntarily involved Himself for God’s eternal purpose. He died bodily in a death which was devoted to resolving the problem of sin by which mankind had become involved in the power of evil and anti-purpose. By living and acting as Christ in the flesh He could have reigned in a world in which death and sin had co-dominion. He died to the sin once for all, departing from the realm in which sin reigned in death, by dying. This was not a spiritual defeat by the enemies of God and man as in the case of Adam and his seed. They die because of sin. He died to sin in a victory accomplished once and for all in a world in which sin and death had hitherto reigned.
“But that He continues to live, He lives unto God”. His accomplished victory has given Him a form of life which is wholly devoted to God, having taken His now glorified humanity into the realm of eternal life. The Christ of our profession is a Man who died to every enemy in order to live in possession of eternal life in a bodily form. In this realm in which all the eternal blessings are to be enjoyed, life is wholly unto God. We know that we shall live in such a realm in like bodies in glory.
Verse 11 “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul now comes to the present implications for us of these known facts about the Christ. A true response to God from knowing such a Christ can only come from us if we consider aright the spiritual position into which we have been set. To “reckon” is to see ourselves spiritually as God sees us, in relation to the accomplished work of Christ. We must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God as a result of divine activity. What we know to be true of Christ in eternal reality we must consider to be true of ourselves spiritually toward God. Christ has died to sin and lives to God, as already stated.
We are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, the glorified Man, even though we still live on earth. We must be governed by this godward consideration and no longer see ourselves as being alive for eternal purpose ‘in Adam’. The sin and death associated with the old life is in God’s sight ended, however real it may appear to be to believers who do not discern the christian position correctly. We live by faith, not by sight.
Verse 12 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”
The reign of sin and death as it affects, or ceases to affect, us is then considered by Paul. These issues are first set forth negatively and then positively. The negative is set forth in the present tense. We must keep on refraining from a wrong and thus unrighteous response to God and His work in Christ for us, and we must engage once for all in the spiritual activity by which we can further eternal purpose. Paul presents the fact that though God has called us to live for His pleasure and purpose, we still do so in mortal bodies. We remain in the world in bodily limitations but this need not hinder us from our true life and work toward God.
We are not to go on letting the sin reign in our spiritual life and work in the present time of fleshly weakness. The sin is the sin that reigned in spiritual death as a result of man’s involvement in the spirit of evil. If we realise that we died to the sin, to the spiritual failure associated with natural human life, we shall not cause it to reign further in our response to God in a mortal body. Conversely, if we still see ourselves as being alive in a sinful nature, and our response to God is to seek to prevent that nature from sinning, then we are in spiritual failure in spite of the work of God for us. This is a lamentable position for a believer to be in. The puritanical response by which believers seek to improve the old form of life by conscious human effort is the reign of sin which God expressly forbids. Such a response militates against the work of God in us.
Paul warns us not to let the sin, the spiritual failure associated with Adam, reign in our present spiritual service. The lusts which are forbidden in our response to God are not the lusts of our natural existence but those of the power of sin, which declares that we can be profitable to God in the old order of life, the old man, ‘in Adam’. The consequence is that the new life in us cannot express its desires in life in the body. Ignorance and spiritual pride, arising from not regarding aright the new spiritual situation, are dangers from which we must retreat.
Verse 13 “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”Verse 13
Paul then speaks of the second negative response to God which is to be avoided. Neither go on yielding, or presenting, your members instruments of unrighteousness to the sin, the sin of spiritual failure. Paul distinguishes between ‘your mortal bodies and your members’ and ‘yourselves and your members’. The first category sets forth that which we are by nature, the second what we are spiritually in the sight of God. Our members are the powers which express what we are as men, whether ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’.
In the days of spiritual failure we presented our members as instruments, or weapons, of unrighteousness. Man ‘in Adam’ reckons that he can perform true good, the good that God desires, by harnessing his gifts and powers to the cause of present natural peace and prosperity. This is a response the believer must avoid, seeing it is unrighteous spiritually. Righteousness does not arise from improving the world by our natural powers. This is the sin, the spiritual failure of mankind, against which wrath is revealed from heaven in the gospel.
The positive response which Paul commands is that we yield (aorist) ourselves to God, presenting ourselves, as a completed act. (In chapter 12:1 the same exhortation is seen in the context of a corporate spiritual sacrifice). What God desires is that we realise the significance to His purpose of the new life He has begotten in us. What we are by nature is now merely a snare and a hindrance, to be avoided. Our true self is now ‘Christ in us’. Being alive from among the dead spiritually by the possession of His life, we can be profitable to God. It is imperative that we realise the spiritual situation which we occupy. We live on earth amongst the seed of Adam, who remain spiritually dead toward God and His eternal purpose. We have become, by the effective work of God, a new race alive in present possession of eternal life. In this new life we have faculties which are serviceable to God. We are required to present these powers of the new nature as instruments of righteousness to God. A new power, resident in us, has been acquired by God to effect the present purpose on earth for which He has already raised up Christ into glory. Our new spiritual faculties are, potentially, His members on earth. These have been acquired to perform the spiritual work for which God has called and gifted us.
Verse 14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
The spiritual failure which dominates the life of Adam’s seed will not have dominion over those who reckon and respond aright to God. Just as Christ lives in a life and realm in which sin no longer has dominion over Him, so it is with those who are ‘in Christ Jesus’ and respond to God in spiritual enlightenment. The expression and service of the new life in us, the fruit of righteousness, is in a spiritual sphere in which the sin which dominates Adam and his seed has no authority. We must rise to God’s thoughts of our life and position in Christ if we are henceforth to be profitable to Him. “If the Son has made you free then ye are free indeed”. We have lost the lordship of sin and have a new Lord to serve. We have been brought by Him into the liberty of grace and are not under law. We are alive spiritually from among those who remain dead spiritually. We are not under the law in this new life nor as to the service which God desires of us. In Christianity there is no natural, fleshly ethic to govern the life and work which we perform unto God. We are under the power of grace, the power by which God effects His eternal purpose in creation.
Verse 15 “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.”
Paul then answers a possible objection which could be raised by a believer, particularly a Jewish believer, to this doctrine. If we are freed from all legal obligations in our present life and service to God, shall we not thereby sin all the more? At least the law was a curb upon natural sin for the Jew. Can we be saved and then do what we like after the flesh? Are we to live in a sinful life? This is the force of the question rather than “are we to go on sinning?” Paul is concerned with our true service to God rather than with our natural lives before men in the world. Paul’s doctrine is not antinomian, in the sense that the flesh has freedom from the law to act as it desires. Not at all, rather he teaches that we are not under the law spiritually. Our spiritual position is apart from the law, as in chapter 3:21. Are we to sin because we are under grace? The grace of God has acted upon us to gift us a righteousness which consists in the possession of new life in Christ and has nothing to do with natural human merits or otherwise.
We are not to live and act in a sinful nature toward God, even though we still possess a sinful nature in our ordinary secular life. We act under grace, the form in which God’s eternal power and wisdom now acts. It does so through the new life that grace has already produced in us.
Verse 16 “Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness.”
Spiritual character and maturity develops itself in this service of grace. Again, the importance of acquiring true knowledge is stressed. Have you not got to know? Paul rebukes those who offer such an objection to his doctrine for being spiritually immature. Service, the activity of our members, results either in death or righteousness, depending upon which master we serve. We are to present ourselves as slaves for obedience. As believers we can do so in a sinful or righteous form of obedience to God. ‘Slaves for obedience’ is the nature of the service we are called to render as a result of God’s spiritual work in us. A slave is the highest form of servant, one who is willing to devote his life to his master. The question concerns which life and power we are to devote to God, our fleshly life and its members, or that which is spiritual. It is possible for the present people of God to fail spiritually, as man did in creation and under law.
We are slaves to him whom we obey. Paul’s argument is practical and not rhetorical. He addresses believers in their contracted responsibilities to God. Our responsibilities lie in the way in which we serve the God to whom Christ became obedient in His life in flesh. We may in our day be bondmen of sin, despite receiving and being under the grace of God. We can receive the grace of God in vain, in a spiritually purposeless manner. If we obey sin, the result and the present effect produced in us by accepting its lordship, is death. If we devote our natural talents to a christian ethic we are being obedient to the cause of death. As a result the world would remain a place in which God and His grace would be unknown.
On the other hand we may be bondmen to obedience. This was the character and pattern of the Lord’s service. He took upon Himself the form of a bondman and became obedient. His obedience to His God and Father consisted in revealing the Father and not in glorifying Himself on earth even if He was the Son. Though He was the Son He learned obedience. So we also should subject the new life of Christ in us to obedience to the same cause. Our obedience is fulfilled in coming to know the God whom Christ has fully revealed. The end is eternal life, as in verse 22. This is life eternal that they might know only the true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. The end of service to obedience is righteousness. This is practical Christianity, the true activity of the new nature, the works of faith. We are justified before God by faith alone, apart from works. We justify our present possession of new life by serving the cause of righteousness in the present time. God is glorified for His righteous activity by acquiring a people who serve Him spiritually and not naturally.
Verse 17 “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.”
God is to be thanked for opening up such a spiritual possibility. It is an effect produced in us by His own eternal work. He acted upon us in grace when we were bondmen to the sin. Both Jew and Gentile were in spiritual failure, the sin for which the gospel charges us. We lived and acted toward God in ignorance of spiritual, eternal things.
As a result of the basic work of God in the gospel, those whom Paul addressed obeyed from the heart. God has produced a new heart in them which, unlike the fleshly heart, is capable of responding to God in spirit and in truth. From this heart, which is capable of loving God, they obeyed the pattern or type of doctrine unto which they were delivered. They had received and accepted it as being of God and not of man. This is a basic essential. The teaching of the apostles is to be received as the teaching of God. The basic work of the gospel leads to this. Having a new nature is not of itself sufficient for the realising of God’s eternal purpose.
Being freed from bondservice to the sin, they had acquired new bonds which they willingly accepted as being from God. It is essential that the present people of God be formed and governed by the pattern of the teaching. It is a question of growing up spiritually into maturity of the spiritual life and power which is effective for God’s eternal purpose. The doctrine of God is all-important for this development. We must obey God in being subject to apostolic doctrine. “Effective service flows from a just appreciation of our relative place toward God, and from a deepening sense of separation to God” (JND).
Verse 18 “Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”
Emancipated from the sin, they had become enslaved to righteousness. Freedom from the sin which had captivated the seed of God in spiritual evil comes from the work of the Son, as in John 8:36. They were delivered, by obedience to the teaching, from the bondage of the sin in which they had been held when they previously lived in nature and under law. In these realms they were subjected to a power of spiritual evil which is greater than man’s fleshly powers.
Now they had become bondmen to righteousness in this new spiritual realm into which the work of God had introduced them, in possession of new life and in subjection to the spiritual teaching which governed them. So we are called to realise the new service which we are now able to render to God. This service has to do with righteousness and not with sin. We cannot overcome the sin by dint of fleshly powers but we can nevertheless be effectively enslaved to eternal righteousness.
Verse 19 “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”
Paul now reveals that he is speaking humanly, using a human illustration to set forth what he means spiritually. This is because of the fact that God’s bondservants continued to serve Him in fleshly, natural weakness. The Roman believers had not as yet progressed to spiritual maturity in the things of God, hence the necessity for the epistle and its content. Paul speaks as if they were as yet carnal in their approach and response to God. In that state, man’s members, his natural faculties and powers, are devoted in fleshly weakness unto lawlessness.
Paul, by his epistle, encourages them henceforth to yield (aorist) their members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness. Now is the time when they are to so respond to his provisions that they may acquire true holiness. Holiness is the growth of the new life in them. As the people of God mature spiritually, so they shall not sin (fail) in their service to His eternal purpose. This once-for-all yielding of the spiritual abilities of the new nature to the bonds of the teaching, in righteous activities, is the only way to prevent failure. Far from being a means to avoid it, fleshly devotion to an ethic is sin in the highest sense. Holiness, or godliness, is not possible in the old nature. Christianity does not make us holy in any natural sense. Christ did not die to make us better than other men naturally. The flesh cannot be yielded to God. Ideally, the new life begotten in us by the gospel is yielded to God at its birth. The important thing is that we realise what is involved and live and act accordingly. This is true reckoning.
Verse 20 “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.”
Before we received the virtue of the gospel, we kept on being the bondmen of the sin. In Rome they served the Roman ethic of peace and prosperity by power and human government. The gospel exposed this to be slavery to spiritual failure on the part of man. It does not advance divine purpose. In days of spiritual failure they were free as to the righteousness of God revealed in the gospel. They were not concerned with righteousness, that is, with performing the spiritual service necessary for the ultimate fulfilment of the promises.
Verse 21 “What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.”
Paul is not merely speaking of the moral debauchery associated with pagan worship. He addresses both Jews and Gentiles in Rome. Everything associated with natural life and its fleshly works in the world is seen to be shameful spiritually when the gospel is received in power. This corresponds to what Paul declares in chapter 1:16. He was not ashamed of the gospel, even in the context of Rome. In Rome, they thought they enjoyed the benefits of the greatest power that could reign on earth. They enjoyed the rule of law and order and the natural prosperity and culture this affords. They did not see beyond present things in the world. However, now that faith had been produced in them by the gospel, they could regard eternal issues. Consequently, they were ashamed of their previous spiritually ignorant and purposeless way of life.
For the end of these things is death. However powerful and affluent society becomes by human effort under the rule of man’s best political system, the net result of those things is death. We are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, knowing that these are not the things of God. They are things of a world order in which spiritual death still reigns as a result of man’s failure to render to God the things that are God’s. Righteousness shall fill the earth only when revealed truth reigns in spiritual power. The people of God are now called to serve the cause of righteousness by becoming spiritually mature. For them to be otherwise engaged as their response to the gifts and calling of God is sin, which results in spiritual death.
Verse 22 “But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.”
But now the highest spiritual realm – and opportunity for eternally purposeful service to God in that realm – has been opened up to us. We have been emancipated from the sin, as in verse 18. We have become bondmen to God. This is a new expression. We are to realise that by divine activity we are constituted bondmen to God Himself. God acquired ‘slaves’ in Rome for service to His eternal purpose. God has freed us from sin, which rendered us purposeless spiritually, to become His (spiritual) slaves just as He did with Israel in Egypt.
Our spiritual slavery is concerned with fruit unto holiness, the development of godlikeness in the slaves-of-God in the present time. Paul is concerned with the fruit of true christian service here. In chapter 1 Paul spoke of the fruits of sin and traced these to the root of Adam’s act of sin in chapter 5. In the new creation the order is different. The root of all grace and power for service is the saving act of the Christ and its efficacy produced in us by the gospel. If their new life is lived in true spiritual conditions in obedience to the doctrine, and from understanding the true response demanded of us as God’s slaves, then the fruit which God desires from His saving intervention will be forthcoming.
The fruit of the things gained in the world from a spiritually shameful response to God was fit only to elicit divine judgment. The end of those things is unto death. The gain of true spiritual service in the new creation is the producing of holiness or sanctification in ‘slaves’. Its end is everlasting life. The present time in the outworking of divine purpose is a time when men who are involved in spiritual slavery to God are being perfected spiritually for the future. The reign of everlasting life is still to come on earth. Christ Himself entered into such a life in His glorified body, already perfect for future reference.
Verse 23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The wages is the food which sin, the slavemaster, feeds to its slaves. Men who respond in spiritual error and ignorance to God in the world receive a present reward. In creation, when men regard their own natural activities and lives as being purposeful, they build up a strong and prosperous society. So it is when the Jew regards the law as a fleshly ethic. So also Christendom has become the most naturally successful form of rule and religion on earth. These are the wages of sin, the spiritual failure perpetrated by man against the things of God which they have received. The Lord Jesus indicated this in His criticism of the Pharisees. Those who do things to be seen of men, to produce effects which are tangible to ordinary humanity without faith, have had their reward. These wages are death. When men live by such food they are contributing to the present reign of spiritual death in the world. It continues to be in a vain, purposeless state spiritually so long as God is not given His true place.
But the free gift of God is eternal life. This is the promise that is presented to those who render true service to divine purpose. In our slavery we receive from God only what we merit. If we do respond aright we receive the divine fulness. God has freely given us eternal life. As we serve Him aright however, we develop the spiritual ability increasingly to enjoy it. If we yield our members to the cause of righteousness and present acquisition of holiness, we shall live and act in the realm in which God acts to confer His free gift. This is the spiritual sphere in which we are ‘in Christ Jesus’ and in which we confess Him as Lord. In verse 11 Paul had called upon believers to reckon themselves to be alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now believers are presented as being ideally in slavery to God. Then they will realise all that is involved in being both alive and active in Christ Jesus our Lord.