Then Shall We Sin? No!

Romans 6:15-23

Welcome! Today we continue with our series on Romans. I want to start by backing up a bit to the end of Chapter 5:

The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. – Romans 5:20-21

What does it mean that the law was brought in so that the trespass might increase? Did the law really make more things sin than were sin before? I would argue “no” – what it means is that the law made explicit things that people who really had loved God and had really loved other people should have known already.

By way of analogy, let’s consider a class syllabus. I have been a professor at Clemson since 1992, for 27 years. When I started my syllabus was barely over one page long. Today my syllabus runs about six pages. What happened?

The main reason my syllabus has grown is because I have become more explicit about the law. Here are some examples: I added something about when to contact me by email vs coming to office hours. I added this because sometimes things were sent by email that were inappropriate for email, including asking me to debug their attached code. I added material on how I contact the student and how they are responsible for what I send, because some students wouldn’t read their email or their messages on our learning management system. I added something about my intellectual property rights being retained on my materials because some students were selling material of another professor. I added something about how students must use the software I say and not another, because some students didn’t want the hassle of installing it and then got into trouble because the software they had didn’t behave the same way. I added information about a syllabus quiz (and added the quiz itself) because people weren’t reading the syllabus.  I added a math review assignment because students weren’t refreshing their prerequisite knowledge for the course. I added a rule about giving a zero when students didn’t put their names on assignments because more and more students weren’t bothering to check if they had put their name, and it was a hassle for the graders.  I added a rule about giving a zero if a multipage assignment wasn’t stapled, because students began claiming that parts of their assignments were lost when they didn’t staple them. I added a rule about requiring written homework to be an original and not a copy, because students were copying each other’s work and only changing the name. I added an explicit rule about late assignments because more and more students were turning in assignments late. I added a time limit about disputing a grade on an assignment because students were waiting until after the final exam was graded to try to get a few more points and change their grade even after grades were submitted. I made attendance mandatory and added penalties for missing too many classes (and rewards for good attendance) because many students didn’t bother to come to class and failed the course because – surprise – they couldn’t work the exams. I added explicit and detailed rules about how to get an absence excused because the process was being abused. I added a whole paragraph about academic integrity because the university began requiring it as a result of issues involving cheating. I added a lengthy section on disability accommodations procedures – and the university established procedures for obtaining accommodations – because this process would be completely abused without them. The university required that I add sections on anti-harassment and non-discrimination and on emergency procedures because the university feels that without them, they could be sued, even though these procedures are common sense and available through a quick search on the university website. 

The syllabus is my “law”. It is there because, like every one of us, my students are sinners. They were sinning before I made my law, but they could claim ignorance or innocence. Now they can claim neither.

This is also true of God and His law. If we were not sinners, we would not need it. The law was brought in so that our sin may be made clear to us. From our perspective, our trespass has increased, but from God’s, He saw our sinful nature and how we continually act on that nature all along. 

But where sin increased, grace increased all the more. What grace? The grace of God paid for by the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. God poured out the penalty we deserve on His Son at the cross. Jesus, without sin, took our penalty. To use my course as an analogy, it is as if every student in the class was caught cheating, each a hundred different times and ways, so that we all deserved not only to fail the class, but to be expelled forever from the university. But there was one person in the class who never cheated in any way. The instructor punished the innocent student with far worse than expulsion, giving him a penalty equivalent to the combined penalties that all the other cheaters deserved. The guilty students were declared innocent and could continue on in the class.

Does this seem unfair? In a way, it absolutely seems unfair. But the student was willing – he voluntarily agreed to take on the punishment that the rest of the class deserved. The rest of the school marvels at the kindness and goodness and love of the student, and praises both the student and the instructor.

Well, the natural question is “What do the students in the class do next?” Do they say, “Hey, look at all the good feelings that have happened around the school as a result of our cheating! Maybe we should keep on cheating so that even more good feelings result!”

Or to put this back into Romans, let’s look back at Romans 6:1, which Tim discussed so well last week. I am going to spend a fair amount of time on Tim’s passage, because it is tied in so closely with today’s passage.

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! – Romans 6:1-2a

Paul is using a rhetorical device called prosopopoeia, a means of having a dialog with a fictional partner who mostly asks questions. Paul has used this device throughout the book of Romans. It enables him to address possible objections and even use the objections to further his primary train of thought.

I want to step back a moment, though, and use some prosopopoeia myself. Why would a real person ask a question like this? I can think of two reasons.

The first is that the radical grace of God makes people uncomfortable. It is scandalous, in a way. We want to say, “They are forgiven, just like that? That seems too easy! It doesn’t seem right.” It is also scandalous because it means that I am “just as” forgiven as someone who sinned a whole lot worse than me – and in so doing, it somehow equates my sin with theirs. (Of course it also means that I am “just as” forgiven as someone who sinned a whole lot less than me – but we don’t tend to think about that.)

Grace does make us feel uncomfortable, out of control. The Giver of grace – God – is shown to be utterly unlike us, who, if we are honest, rarely truly and totally forgive anyone at all. If someone hurts us, even a little, we respond by putting a little distance between us in the future, or doing little things to hurt them back, just a little. If we have truly lived lives in total rebellion of God, the thought that He would have His dearly beloved one-and-only Son die for us is unthinkable, extreme, shocking.

What is the second reason someone might ask this question? Because they don’t really want to stop sinning, not entirely. They are looking for some excuse, some justification, some “silver lining” that could occur even though they still sin. Here is the thought – since our sin brought on the display of God’s grace, which is a very good thing, if we sin a little more, it’s not so bad because God’s grace will be on display more too.

I encourage you, if you were not here last week, to go to the archives on our website to find Tim’s message expounding upon Paul’s answer in the first part of Romans 6. In a nutshell, Paul responds by saying, you are dead to sin, now. Therefore, do not let sin reign in you any longer.

Last week’s passage ends with this:

Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness.  For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. – Romans 6:13-14

So should we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Absolutely not! By choosing not to continue to live in sin, grace increases in another, better way – through us! By offering ourselves to God, rather than offering ourselves to sin, God can work in our lives, and those around us can witness God’s glory and power working through and in us.

The word “offer” appears multiple times in these verses. This brings to mind the sacrificial system at the time of Moses and on into the days beyond, right up to the time of Jesus. Offerings were personal, in the sense that you gave something that belonged to you, but they were never your person, yourself. Here, our offering is to be ourselves. I find this tremendously helpful in my own struggles with sin. It is hard just to “not sin.” It is hard to not do something unless you can also do something. In choosing to sin, you are offering a part of yourself to sin. If you find yourself about to do something sinful, or beginning to engage in it, stop and “move” the offering from “sin” to God. Tell him, “Here I am, to do Your will, O God. Do Your will through me.”

The first part of this passage is a command. Do not offer yourself to sin, but instead, offer yourself to Him. What about the second part of this passage? It says, “For sin shall no longer be your master.” Is this a command or a promise? It is a promise! Regarding this verse, John Piper writes, “Don’t let sin master you, because sin is not going to master you.” I love this!

You find the same interesting structure in Philippians 2:

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. – Philippians 2:12-13

To paraphrase this, you need to work, because God is working and will work. Another example of this is found in I Cor. 5:

Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. – I Corinthians 5:7

That is, get yourself clean, because God has made you clean – you are clean!

Back to Piper’s paraphrase: “Don’t let sin master you, because sin is not going to master you.”  We should not allow ourselves to live in defeat in the present, because in our future, God will not allow us to live in defeat. We should seek to live a victorious life now, because our future is certainly victorious. 

Paul ends Romans 6:13-14 with the reminder that we are not under the law, but under grace. Going back to my syllabus that I mentioned at the beginning of this message, my class is clearly “under the law”. What would a syllabus “under grace” look like?

Homework would be voluntary – you would receive a grade if you turned it in, but you wouldn’t be penalized otherwise. Attendance would be voluntary. Even exams would be voluntary! Everyone would pass, if they wanted to. Some might want to retake the class if they realized they didn’t know it well yet.

How would my class do? Maybe I don’t have enough faith in my students, but I picture an absolute disaster. All but a few students would do nothing at all. As I have said, grace is scandalous! Paul anticipates this kind of thinking and returns to the prosopopoeia form of rhetoric:

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! – Romans. 6:15

Paul then explains why we should resist the temptation to do this:

Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one 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 have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. – Romans 6:16-18

I am reminded of the scene in the Lord of the Rings movies where Pippin offers himself to Denethor, steward of Gondor. It seems like Pippin’s decision to do this is quite spontaneous, and later he realizes that he has made himself a servant to someone who has some quite serious character flaws and issues.

Being a slave to sin is like this. It only has one ultimate outcome – death, and it brings ruin and destruction along the way. This is what we were – slaves to sin. Sin was our master. It was our steward – but now, Christ is our King. We have been released from our former bondage and now we are to obey from our hearts. We, as free men and women, choose daily to be slaves to righteousness, because doing so brings glory to our King.

Another term for righteousness is obedience, and another term for sin is disobedience. So these are our two choices – to be slaves to disobedience of God or to be slaves to obedience of God. This is a true dichotomy; it is one or the other.

Again, this is a response, an explanation to verse 15 – shall we sin now that we are under grace? Absolutely not! Why would we want to choose to bow to the feet of the evil master, sin, any longer? Instead let us choose to bow to the feet of righteousness.

Understand the power of these metaphors – they go deep. To be a slave to sin means that as you continue to sin, sin starts to tell you what to do, and you have less and less desire but to obey. There is an old Christian novel with the wonderful title, Cobwebs to Cables that captures this thought. What starts as only spider webs that are easily broken progresses into steel cables that cannot be broken even with the aid of powerful machines. This is the danger of sin, of remaining in sin.

But the same goes for righteousness. Wonderfully, to be a slave to righteousness means that as you continue to live in righteousness, righteousness starts to tell you what to do, and over time you have less and less desire but to obey. Living a life where God is on the throne of your heart leads to living a life where God is on the throne of your heart!

If you have become a believer, if you have put God on the throne of your heart, you have been freed from the master sin. As freed men and women, act like you are! Don’t go back to that old master, not even a bit. Choose daily, hourly, continually, to live for Christ. Become a slave to righteousness, and over time it will become easier and easier.

In fact, note that the wording Paul uses is, once again, not a command. Once again, it is a promise! You have become slaves to righteousness! This is a change! You are free from the old master. Our choice is whether to live as we were, or to live as we are.

One more point from these verses – in verse 17, where it says you have obeyed from your heart the pattern of teaching, the Greek word there is tupos, which means a casting mold. That is, you have literally allowed yourself to be poured into a new mold. God has melted you down, you who were a slave to sin held fast in that former form, like a statue in the owner’s home where you had no freedom at all, not even the freedom to move. God has melted you down and poured you into a new mold. This new mold is of the teachings, that is, the gospel message. The point here is that, in moving from being a slave to sin to becoming a slave to righteousness, your very form has changed – you have been melted down and remade by your new master.

The passage goes on to say:

I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. – Romans 6:19 

We have little direct experience of slavery, so perhaps this is harder for us to understand. For Paul’s immediate audience, slavery was a part of daily life. I did some reading on slavery in Roman times, and it was very complicated. There were probably thousands of laws regarding slavery, and many kinds of categories and conditions within the law.

At the time of Paul, the master had complete ownership of a slave – he could sell him, punish him, and even put him to death without a trial. The slave had no rights and was for all practical purposes treated as property. Only later were laws passed that prohibited certain acts of cruelty against slaves.

Slaves could not marry in the legal sense – if they “cohabitated” with someone and had children, they had no rights or recognized legal standing with their partner or their children. Slaves could not own any property, but any property they acquired became the property of their master. If a child’s mother was a slave, then the child was also a slave.

Some slaves had specialized skills and served as physicians, engineers, and artisans. In order to get skilled slaves to work well, sometimes they were paid a small “wage” called a peculium. The peculium was actually the property of the master. The peculium was motivational in that at such time it reached a promised amount specified by the master, the slave could choose to buy out their freedom with what had been saved. Slaves could borrow against their peculium if their owners agreed to it. Slave owners had their own selfish motivations for offering the peculium – it kept their slaves motivated, and it also enabled them to get rid of slaves when they reached old age and were not as useful as they were earlier.

If a slave ran away, it was illegal to help him or harbor him. Each city had people paid by the city called fugitivarii whose sole job was to find runaway slaves.

When slaves were sold, it was usually at a slave market which sold slaves by auction. Slaves were stripped naked and inspected much like how horses were inspected for defects. Sometimes physicians would come in to inspect slaves for potential buyers. The claimed condition of the slave was written on a scroll that was hung around the slave’s neck and served as a kind of warranty on the slave. The vendor was required to accurately list the condition of the slave on the scroll and could be returned within a set period of time – usually 6 months – if the scroll was found to be inaccurate. The scroll was to include both physical issues such as epilepsy and “mental” ones such as a tendency to thievery, running away, or trying to commit suicide.

Slaves were primarily fed grain, often spelt, similar to animals. They were provided salt and oil, and some fruit, rarely vegetables, and almost never meat. If slaves were convicted of crimes, they were punished by being forced to work in chains or fetters in tasks that were so demanding that they didn’t live long. Sometimes owners punished disobedient slaves by making them work in these settings for a short time. Other times they hung them up by their hands with weights suspended under their feet or had them whipped. Another punishment was the furca, a piece of wood in the shape of the letter A that was placed on the shoulders of the slave, whose hands were tied to it. Slaves punished in this way had carry the furca wherever they went, bringing public shame on them. Runaway slaves were branded with a mark on their foreheads called a stigma, causing them to endure lifelong shame for their actions.

When a free person found themselves in deep debt, often as a result of out-of-control vices such as a gambling addiction or to other things I will not name, as a last resort, a person could offer themselves as a slave to their debtors. It is hard to imagine a greater source of shame than to be a person formerly known as a free person who now shows himself in public as a slave.

With all this in mind, especially this idea of offering oneself to slavery, look at that last sentence again.

Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. –Romans 6:19b

Note that in both cases, Paul is talking about doing a degrading, humbling thing. Before being saved, Paul is saying that any pride a person had was a false pride, based on false appearances – the reality is that the person was someone offering himself as a slave, just about the lowest thing a person could do. But at the same time, Paul is saying that as a believer, you should continue to think of yourself in these lowly terms, only now, to offer yourself to a different master.

If you go back to the question asked in verse 15, Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? The answer is of course not! We are those who know how low we were, and we are still low. We are still in debt, but now our debt is to Him who rescued us from our former owners. We owe everything to our new owner, because we were headed to death, but now we are heading to eternal life. As we offer ourselves as slaves to righteousness, we offer ourselves to Him.

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 of 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. – Romans 6:20-23

People who are slaves are only bound to their masters, not to anyone else. Paul applies this to sin and righteousness. While you were a slave to your master sin, the other master, righteousness, had no ability to influence you – you paid no attention to this other master at all, because it was not your master.

Paul points out that that old master was a terrible master. To be under him was to head to death. But now, our master has changed. We have been set free from that first master. Our new master offers us a peculium, and that peculium is increasing holiness. Instead of offering us a peculium that is saved up for freedom, our new master offers us a peculium that leads to eternal life with Him.

In this beautiful context we find the old familiar verse, often used for sharing the gospel: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is such a powerful verse when you more fully appreciate its context, both in terms of the surrounding verses and in terms of the nature of Roman slavery.

The New Testament writers did not specifically condemn the institution of slavery, but Paul strongly hints at his dissatisfaction with the institution when he writes Philemon and encourages him to treat Onesimus, his fugitive slave, as more than slave, as a beloved brother in Christ, when he sends him back. And in I Timothy 1:10, we see Paul talking about slave traders in disdainful terms, including them in a list that contains murderers, liars, and perjurers, among others.

Many of the early church fathers who came after Paul were opposed to slavery. Early Christians did in fact treat slaves as brothers, permitting religious marriage (in opposition to the law), encouraging the freeing of slaves, and burying them as equals, showing no indication that they were slaves (also in opposition to the law). One verse they sometimes quoted was Acts 4:32:

All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. – Acts 4:32

If you own nothing of your own, then you certainly cannot own slaves. Augustine in the 300s was strongly opposed to slavery and spoke against it. Over the following centuries slavery rose and fell, and it is sad that it was only in the 1800s that slavery finally began to come to an end in Christian-influenced nations. Sadly, slavery still occurs today in many parts of the world.

I want to close by reconsidering my hypothetical class that has been shown grace. We talked about how they would be free to learn or not to learn, without consequences, and how I doubt that most of them would choose the easy way. A few might actually work hard on their own to master the material, because they would see the benefits of doing so. I teach engineering, and to be an engineer is not just a title, but a skill. Those few students who really understood this might have the internal motivation to become good engineers.

Their benefits are so insignificant compared to ours. What about us? We are under grace too. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!