A Study of the Book of Romans

Lesson # 15 

“Whose Slave Are You?”

Romans 6:15-23 

       There is of course a similarity between the question the Apostle Paul raises in verse fifteen of chapter six and the one he asked in verse one of this same chapter. In verse one he said, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” Here he asks, “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?”  In both case he is dealing with a Christian’s involvement with sin after being saved. The difference between the two instances can be seen in the tense of the word “sin”. In verse one the tense is present tense and carries the idea of ongoing, unchecked sin. Paul is literally saying, “Can a Christian go right on sinning after he is saved as he did before?” Can you go on living as you once did? Can you continue on in a lifestyle of sin, just as though nothing had really happened to you except that you will go to heaven when you die? Paul’s answer was, “May it never be!” You cannot  do that and if you do, it is proof that you were never really saved in the first place. Anyone who goes on in an unchanged manner after professing to have been born again is simply giving testimony to everyone that no real change has occurred in their heart.

       Now in verse fifteen the tense is different. It reflects the idea of a single act of sin rather than a continuance. Wuest translates it this way: “What then? Shall we sin occasionally because we are not under the law but under grace.”

       The answer is that sin is dangerous for a believer. It always affects us in a negative way, even though we can be forgiven. If you as a Christian go ahead and sin deliberately (and it is always deliberate) you must face what sin will do in your life. Paul gives three good reasons why we should avoid even occasional lapses into sin. 

First, Sin Still Has the Power to Enslave Us. (vv. 16-20)

“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

       You may remember the comedian, Flip Wilson? His famous line was, “The Devil made me do it!”  Although that may be a handy excuse for our actions it is not true.

Paul says that the reason we sin is that we have sinful desires calling to us and we choose to yield.

       Paul restates in verse sixteen the basic principle of life, found in verse thirteen, that yielding to sin, makes us a slave to sin. Even though as Christians we have been freed from the bondage of sin, we may come back under its control. Here in verse sixteen Paul states, “And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.” The point is that there is a choice involved in which you decide to yield to sin.

       Ray Stedman, former pastor of the Penisula Bible Church in Palo Alto, Calif., tells of walking down the street in Los Angeles on day and seeing a man coming toward him with one of those sign boards over his shoulders. The sign in the front said, “I am a slave for Christ.” After passed by Stedman turned to look after this rather eccentric individual and saw that the back side of the sign said, “Whose slave are you.” [Ray Stedman. “Whose Slave Are You Rom 6:15-23. www.pbc.org/dp/stedman/romans2/3515.]

       Some years ago singer Bob Dylan came out with a song in which were lines that said, “You gotta serve somebody. You gotta serve somebody. It may be the Devil and it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.” I believe that is exactly what Paul is trying to get across.

       Our reaction to the suggestion that we are slaves to sin tends to be, “Hey, I am not anyone’s slave.” There was a group in the Bible that felt exactly the same way, the Pharisees (John 8:31-33). When Jesus tried to explain how to have true freedom to them they responded by saying, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’” (Jn 8:33)

They thought they were not slaves but in fact they were slaves both physically (to the Romans) and spiritually (to sin). Paul is just repeating what Jesus said in John 8:34, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.”

Jesus, however, did have the antidote for the problem he said, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” (John 8:36).

       In verse seventeen Paul says, “But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.” He reminds them of their past condition, “were slaves of sin,” and of their present choice, “obeyed from the heart.”

       In verses eighteen and nineteen, he tells of the consequences of submitting to sin. “And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. (19) I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.”

       The believer must come to the realization that there is danger in dabbling in sin. If you “choose” to dabble in sin you are reconnecting yourself to a power that will carry you much farther than you had any intention of going. The problem is not will this sin be pleasurable (at least momentarily) but where is it going to lead to. Sin is in fact an addicting reality that first deceives and then enslaves. The practice of sin and the defense of that sin grow rapidly. In the beginning temptation meets resistance, but once you get over the initial struggle, it becomes much easier the next time to leap right to the point where you ended last time. In 2 Peter 2:20 Peter warns “For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning.”

      The key words in that verse are “entangled” and “overcome.” If we play around with sin, it is entirely possible that we can become entangled in it more thoroughly than before. Each time we play with sin we run the risk of being overcome by it. A biblical example is the story of Samson and Delilah (Judges 16). Samson played around with Delilah, teasing her with the secret of his great strength, until he was overcome in a moment of weakness. Like Samson we get closer and closer, not realizing our danger until we are trapped. We need to have a healthy fear of the power of sin and must avoid become entangled in its clutches.

       Paul’s remedy for the situation is found in verse twenty, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.”

            In Deuteronomy 15:16 is one of the most beautiful pictures in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament a Hebrew slave only had to work 6 years. In the seventh year he had to be set free. He became a free man, but God added a little qualification here that the slave could decide to be a slave forever. God says, “But if your servant says to you ‘I do not want to leave you because I love you and your family’, and he is well off with you, then you take an awl” that’s a pointed, metal hole puncher “and you push it through his earlobe into the door. And he will become your servant, your slave for life.”

       This was the Jewish practice, they followed when someone said, “I’ll be your slave forever.” They would say, “Here, pierce my ear”, and they would wear according to the Talmud in their right ear an earring upon which was the insignia of that family. They identified themselves as the property and the servant of that family.

        He said, “Listen, I am going to be faithful as a servant forever because I love you. Go ahead and put a mark on me. I am not ashamed to tell everybody I’m your slave.” The spiritual truth of that is this. If you haven’t already done it, every one of you who names the name of Jesus needs to come to a place where you make the same transaction with God. You say, “God, I love you so much, I want to be your slave. I want to be your servant for the rest of my life. I want to visibly, publicly show everybody that I am your property.  

Secondly, Sin Still has the Power to Shame us (v. 21a)

“What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed...”

       One of the tragic results of sin, and one that we don’t often think about beforehand, is that sin produces memories. How do we deal with the memories of sin Satan uses those memories to torment Christians. Those memories fill us with guilt and regret. Sin produces memories and many people are haunted by those memories.

       We know that we can be forgiven, that once we have God forgiveness, God does not remember those sins any more. The problem is that we still remember them!  

Third, Sin Has the Power to Kill Us (vv. 21b-23)

“….For the end of those things is death. (22) But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.”

       There are consequences to being a slave to sin that must be recognized. First, for the unsaved man the result of sin is eternal spiritual death.

       And for the Christian, when we sin we begin to die on the inside. This does not mean that we are completely dead spiritually and thus lost again. It means that when we sin it begins to make us dead to the things of God. Think about how sin has affected you in the past and I think you will understand the principle. We become dead to love, dead to the joy of serving Christ, dead to spiritual things, spiritually insensitive, and spiritually blind. Sin working in the life of a Christian has a devastating effect. It makes us spiritually a walking, talking corpse.

       There is also one other consideration for the Christian, sin can lead to an early physical death.  In 1 John 1:5 we rather ominously told, “… and there is sin not leading to death.”  When the apostle Paul was dealing with sin among the congregation in Corinth he warned (1 Cor. 11:30), “For this reason (sin) many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep (have died).” Let me be clear I am not saying that there is a specific sin that is the “sin unto death,” commit that you are a goner! I am saying that if a believer continues in a lifestyle of sin that at some point God will declare I think it would be better for the testimony of my church and better for you to bring you home.

       Let me try to illustrate what I mean. When you have young children and you are visiting with friends and your child misbehaves what do you do For most people on the first misbehavior, the child is taken aside and sternly given a warning. If they misbehave again you may take the child aside and disciple them. But if the continue to misbehave, what do you do Well, you take them home, before they can embarrass you or themselves any further. I believe that we can also get that point with our heavenly father.

   We know and understand Romans 6:23 in relation to salvation. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” But there is more. Paul used an interesting word here for wages (opsonion) it is a word that comes from the Roman military world. The word refers to the daily food ration a soldier would receive. “Do your work, get your food. Do your work, get your food.” It’s the word referring to the daily payment. This is saying the daily payment for sin is daily death. You die a little bit each time you choose to sin.       

Conclusion

       The story is told of how “some young  boys were watching the Tennessee River rising above flood stage when they noticed a little rabbit trapped on a shrinking little island in the middle of the raging flood. They decide that they had to rescue it, but they could find no way to do it. Each member of the group, all in their early teens, were strong and vigorous, and fully accustomed to outdoor activities. All knew the danger of the river, especially at flood stage, and their parents had warned them that very day to stay out of the water – but there was the problem of the trapped rabbit. One of the boys, who was stronger than the others, and a powerful swimmer, decided to attempt the rescue. He made it to the little island, thrust the rabbit into his overalls, and plunged back in for the return swim. The end of a log riding the crest of the flood hit him in the temple. Four days later they dredged his body out of the river several miles downstream. The boys who witnessed the tragedy were present when the body was recovered and one of them found the remains of the rabbit in the dead boy’s overalls. In a moment of agony, he held it up for the others to see and said, “This is what he gave his life for!” [quoted by Dave Reddick. “So What’s Wrong With An Occasional Sin” www.preacherstudy.com/Ro15]