Romans 6:15-23 - Outline and Summary

 

Brief Summary:

Should we conclude that it doesn’t matter if we sin since we are not required to obey the law in order to be saved, but are saved apart from personal merit?

 

By no means!

 

We are slaves of whatever power we willing obey whether we be slaves to sin or slaves to God

 

We used to offer ourselves as willing slaves to sin, free from the control of righteousness. In the same way we are now commanded to offer ourselves as willing slaves to God

 

Detailed Summary:

The kind of life led by those who are truly justified (those who are not under law but under grace) is illustrated by comparing their service  to God with the service of an obedient (self-yielding) slave to a master (Romans 6:15-23)

 

•        In Romans 6:14 Paul states that believers “are not under law, but under grace”

 

•        If we are not required to obey God’s law in order to be saved, then should we go on sinning, since we’re not under law but under grace?

 

•        Since some might reason in this manner, Paul asks:  

–      Romans 6:15 - What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?

 

•        The apostle then answers with an emphatic NO! and shows why this cannot be:

–      Romans 6:16 - By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey?

 

•        We demonstrate whom we belong to by whom we serve!

–      Romans 6:16a - Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--

 

•        There are only two choices (Romans 6:16b) :

–      you are slaves to sin, which leads to death,

–      or [slaves to] to obedience, which leads to righteousness

 

•       If a man can live at peace with sin, he has no peace with God. He is not justified!

–      Steele and Thomas, Romans,  p.50

 

•       “If a man voluntarily sins, on the pretext that he is not under law but under grace, it is a proof that the grace of God is not in him.”

–      Haldane, Romans, p.258

 

•        Paul thanks God for the fact that the Romans, while they used to be slaves to sin, are now slaves to righteousness - as demonstrated by the fact that they now obey God’s teaching:

–      Romans 6:17-18 -  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.

 

•        Perhaps concerned that he might be misunderstood in comparing our relationship with God to slavery (a degrading and undesirable condition), Paul makes the following clarification:

–      Romans 6:19a -  I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.

–       In other words, human nature produces a weakness in understanding that can only be overcome in this life by the use of (imperfect) analogies.

 

•        Paul admonishes the Romans to serve God in righteousness to the same degree that they once served sin in unrighteousness.

–      Romans 6:19b-23 - 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 to 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.

 

•        Note the contrast of the end rewards between these two types of servitude:

–       Servants of sin earn eternal death for themselves

–       Servants of God are given eternal life through Christ Jesus