There are two ways of being a slave, Paul teaches us in this stretch of Romans 6. Either you are a slave to sin or you are a slave to righteousness. Each of these types of slavery represents a master whom you can follow. To be a slave to sin is to follow the devil, the world, and the flesh. To be a slave to righteousness is to follow Christ.
In the first portion of Romans 6, which is used elsewhere in our system of readings on the first Sunday of Epiphany, we have the beautiful exposition of the power and importance of baptism in the life of the believer. In Baptism we are buried with Christ and raised with Him to newness of life. We are called to therefore count ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
And it is important, as people who belong to God, as people who have been called and claimed to be Christ’s own, to keep this in our hearts and minds. We don’t belong to the realm of sin and death anymore. We are no longer among those who are dead. We are now in the living world, those who have been bought with a price to be Christ’s own and live under Him in His kingdom. Baptism makes this a done deal. In Baptism, the water combines with God’s Word of promise to wash away all sin, give you eternal life, salvation, and to make you God’s own child. This is who you now are. This is who you need to be.
Yet there is this tension, even so, between who we are and who we were. One of the most powerful passages in the Scriptures speaking to the distinction between are and were is that of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” As it is pretty easy to note, the “were” category grabs just about everyone. Everyone has their moments when they commit at least one of those sins on that list, especially when you extend the reach of the Law, as our Lord Jesus Christ does, to what is thought and felt, as well as what is acted upon.
And yet that were is now covered by Christ’s blood, and gives us a new are. Now we are no longer judged according to our sins, now we are no longer condemned for our thoughts, words, and deeds. Now we have forgiveness, new life, and salvation.
This is the fundamental truth of the Christian life behind this morning’s Epistle. Given the were versus are distinction, why would you want to go back to where you were? And yet you do. I do. Over and over and over again. It is the way of the flesh, but it is not the way of God. We will hear more about that when we look at Romans 7. Paul has some sternly worded commands for us. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.” Don’t give sin the upper hand. That position of power and prestige was done away with in Baptism. Don’t go seeking it out again.
“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” Don’t offer yourself back to the ways of sin. Make the time to keep God first in everything, hearing His Word, seeking His will. You don’t belong to sin’s kingdom, so quit trying to belong to it.
Sin doesn’t have dominion, it isn’t in charge, because by Baptism, through faith, you are no longer under its control. Now, many people, from Paul’s day right down to our own, have sadly jumped onto the other side. They hold the thinking that says, “If sin is no longer in charge, if in Christ I have free and total remission of all my sins, then it really doesn’t matter what I do. I can simply go get forgiven and lead whatever life I choose to lead, be it one of enjoying pornography or cheating on my taxes or holding grudges against my neighbour or seeking out only the best of pleasures for myself. It doesn’t matter what I do because I’m under the grace of God.” This teaching is called antinomianism—being against the Law. It’s especially prevalent among Lutherans, of all denominations, because the Lutheran church historically has preached most strongly on grace—and, sadly, weakly on the Law.
Paul is quick to rebuke this, both at the start of chapter 6 and here. Should we sin because sin is no longer counted against us? Do you have the right to use your Christian freedom to go out and be a total reprobate? No. Or as Paul says in the Greek, “May it never be!” May it never be that you or I take Jesus’ death for granted, take the sufferings and pains He bore on the cross for us so lightly that we simply shrug or wink at our sins, figuring that it’s all covered.
This isn’t to say that our sins aren’t covered, either. They are. Jesus died for all sins, big and small, as we said last week. He died for the ungodly. He died for you as you were. But He doesn’t want you to stay as you were. He wants you to be who you now are. As one who has been redeemed by Christ, who has the Holy Spirit within you, you really do have the choice. Are you going to stay and live as Christ has given you to live, or are you going to seek out your old ways and keep trudging down the same old paths of sin, shame, guilt, and fear?
As St. Paul says, “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” Who do you follow? Whose command will lead you?
And please note too that the wonder of the Gospel, the wonder of the forgiveness of sins, is that to follow, to serve, to obey God, is actually to live as a freed person. It means being free from the constriction of sin and shame to live fully, to be dedicated to serving God through serving your neighbour. To be forgiven is to live your whole life, in all its dimensions, as the gift from God it is in order to rejoice in the gifts God has given you. Thus Paul says he uses the word “slave” because of human limitations. But it isn’t really slavery to follow God. It is freedom in the truest sense to bind yourself to serving everyone but yourself.
Remember what the very first results of the initial sin were: Adam and Eve, instead of looking at the beautiful world around them and concentrating on what God had done, suddenly looked at themselves and deemed themselves naked and needing covering. It’s not as though they weren’t always naked. They were. But their direction of focus had changed from what God was doing to what they were doing. That’s what sin does. It takes the focus off of God and His world and puts it on ourselves and on doing things in a way to please ourselves. All sin ultimately derives from this bondage to the self, to this inward-curved view. Forgiveness is freedom from self, freedom to be who you are in Christ Jesus.
So it is that Paul encourages us to live as those who have been freed from this bondage. As he continues: “For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” Anything which comes out of a heart of sin is sinful. As Jesus says, “A bad tree cannot bear good fruit and a good tree cannot bear bad fruit.” The fruits of the Christian life are different in nature than the fruit of the unchristian life. A non-Christian may do all sorts of works which look good, but apart from Christ, no work is deemed good before the Father in heaven.
But the fruit which comes from the life of one who lives as Christ has made them to live, who lives in faithful reception of God’s Gospel through the Word read, preached, and taught in the divine service, who lives in the grace given them in Baptism and daily renewed through repentance and absolution, who lives in the blessings of Jesus’ body and blood received in the Lord’s Supper, as we do this morning, these are blessed fruits indeed. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.” We are made holy by God’s working in and through us by the Gospel. We live as God’s people empowered solely by that Gospel. It is not the works of our flesh or our mind or our souls which make us holy and complete before God, but it is His Word, His Gospel working which accomplishes such great things for us. It’s not who we were which matters, but who we now are by virtue of His calling, baptizing, washing, feeding, and using us.
There is no better way of summarizing this were versus are distinction than the final verse of this chapter: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We were earning ourselves death, but now we are given life. We were earning ourselves a place in hell, but now we are given a seat at God’s heavenly feasting table. We were bound to sin, but now we are bound to righteousness. Rejoice in God’s gift of life, people of God—rejoice and be glad for your sins are forgiven, you are free to be God’s own people, that you “may be Christ’s own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, just as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity.” (SC, Explanation of the Second Article). God grant it for Christ’s sake! Amen.
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