Friday, Oct. 12

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What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? 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 — 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 6:15-18

Here Paul repeats a similar question to the one he posed in 6:1.  Paul is responding to a potential critic who would abuse his statement (6:14), “you are not under law but under grace.” This critic would have said, “If we’re not under law but under grace, then we’re free to sin without any worry of condemnation!”

The subject of law and grace is one of the most difficult theological issues in the Bible and I cannot resolve all the issues here. But it has often been taken to two extremes that we must avoid.  On one extreme are those who fear that if we emphasize God’s grace too much, people will feel free to keep living sinful lives.  On the other extreme are those who believe that talking about God’s law will only make people into legalists and hypocrites.

It is important for us to see that God’s grace is not a kind of midpoint between legalism and wild-living.  God’s grace is opposed to both of these, not as a happy medium, but as a completely different way of relating to God.

Frankly, anyone who asks the question Paul poses at the beginning of this passage betrays the fact that he/she does not really understand grace at all.  You can test yourself by this: If you think that being under grace means that you are free to sin or that you can just shrug off your sin as no big deal, you do not understand God’s grace.

In verse 16, Paul talks about offering ourselves to someone to obey him as slaves.  It is hard for us to understand what he is talking about at first, because we cannot imagine offering ourselves to anyone as a slave.  However, in that culture, it was not uncommon for a man to sell himself into slavery in order to pay off a financial debt.  Once you did that, you were a slave of the one that you sold yourself to. You had to obey him as your master.  

Paul’s point here is not so much that a slave had to obey his master, but rather that the master you obey shows whose slave you are.  If you obey sin, it shows that you’re a slave of sin, headed toward eternal death. If you obey God, it shows that you’re His slave, resulting in righteousness.  If there is a change of masters, you obey your new master.  So the master you obey reveals whose slave you now are.

I have a hunch that if they had to describe themselves in terms of verse 16, many professing Christians would put themselves somewhere in the middle.  They would say, “I’m not really a slave of sin, but it would probably be a stretch to say that I’m a slave of obedience. I’m kind of in both camps.”  But Paul doesn’t give us that option.  It’s very clear: Either Christ is your master and you obey Him or sin is your master and you obey it. There is no middle ground (see Tuesday’s devotional for more on this).  

You can’t keep one foot on the dock and the other foot on the boat.  Either you’re a slave of obedience to Christ or you’re a slave of sin.  You can’t have both Christ and sin as your master.  You must make a choice; you must choose to offer yourself to one or the other.  

This was the choice that Joshua put before the Israelites when he said... “if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

Jeff Frazier