What then? should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Far be the thought.
Paul has just told believers they live under grace, not under law. He raises the obvious objection himself — if law no longer rules us, are we free to sin? — and rejects it outright.
This is the second challenge in the chapter, and it is not a repeat of the first. One writer keeps them apart:
Two questions in this chapter are worth noticing, for people often confuse the second with the first. The first is in verse 1: "Are we to continue in sin?" The second is in verse 15: "Are we to sin?" The first asks about the moral sphere a person lives in, and so the chapter contrasts being "in sin" with being "in Christ Jesus." The second asks about acts or practice, and so it contrasts yielding yourself to serve sin with becoming servants to God. These are two deeply important lines of thought: the first developed in verses 1-14, the last in verses 15-23.
Paul is not inventing an unlikely opponent. He is answering the mind that hears God's kindness and calculates an advantage from it.
This further truth of practical righteousness comes in with the question, "Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" Here the Apostle answers in advance the reasoning of the flesh. The flesh is always ready to abuse the goodness of God and pervert the word of God. If God says, "You are not under law but under grace", the flesh says, Then we are set free to do what we like.
Some fear that telling people they are not under law will send them straight into sin. That fear misreads what grace does:
Sin, then, is not to have dominion over us, for the very reason that we are not under the law but under grace. Some tell us that if we tell people they are no longer under the rule of law, they are sure to plunge into sin. Here is the divine answer to them. The fact is that nothing so subdues the heart and promotes holiness as the grace of God.
Another writer calls this question, and the one in verse 1, the natural doubts of unbelief. To let sin run free "would be thorough despising of grace rather than understanding and appreciation of it." (L. M. Grant)
The objection assumes that law is what keeps sin down. In fact law does the opposite:
The law is the strength of sin; for by its restraint and prohibition it can only provoke the flesh. It never gives power for holiness, any more than it gives life. Grace, not law, gives life, saves, and strengthens. If believers could be under law, sin must have dominion over them.
Paul's reply is not a rule but a question about ownership. There is no neutral space where a person sins without belonging to sin.
He proves that the question shows entire ignorance of the terrible result of yielding to sin. "Do you not know", says the Apostle, "that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?" Yield to sin and we become the slaves of sin. Every fresh act of sin forges another link in the chain that holds us in bondage. This is an intensely solemn thought, whether for a sinner living in sin or for a saint who turns aside to trifle with sin.
Freedom is not release to do as we please. It is service under a new Master, and that changes what "doing right" means:
But grace uses this liberty to make us all the more His slaves, free from sin to serve the Lord Christ… The Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right — that is pride, independence, or making a god of self. We do them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to have practical righteousness.
Those who raise this objection reveal what they have never known:
No doubt, dear young believer, many will tell you that such teaching will lead you to sin as your old nature likes… Those who talk like that have never known what the grace of God is. They have never known what true liberty is — not liberty to sin, but liberty from sin… God has given you a new life, and that His free gift. He has now placed you in His own unchanging, boundless grace.
- Two questions. Verse 1 asks about the sphere you live in. Verse 15 asks about the acts you do. The chapter answers the first in verses 1-14 and the second in verses 15-23.
- Flesh's logic. The objection is the reasoning of the flesh, always ready to hear "not under law" as permission to do as it likes.
- Grace's power. Nothing subdues the heart and leads to holiness like grace. Law only stirs up the flesh and gives no power to be holy.
- Sin's chain. Whoever you obey owns you. Every act of sin forges another link in the chain — a solemn warning to anyone living in sin, and to any Christian playing with it.
- True liberty. Grace does not free you to sin; it frees you from sin, into obedience that does right because it is God's will.
Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves bondmen for obedience, ye are bondmen to him whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
Paul points to a fact from ordinary life: whoever you obey owns you. Only two masters are on offer. One road ends in death, the other in righteousness.
The verse opens with a question, not a doctrine. It rests on something anyone can check from daily life.
He appeals to that practical knowledge which is common to us all. We all know that if we obey anyone, we are their servant in practice, even if no one calls us their servant. That is the case also in spiritual things, whether it be serving sin or God. Judged by this standard, we were without question once the slaves of sin.
The verse offers only two options. It never lists a third, in which a person belongs to himself.
Any creature is wise to admit openly that he is under authority. Even the most rebellious, degraded wretch in the world is under authority. So is the most proud, respectable, reputable member of society, however independent and self-sufficient he thinks he is. Their natural characters may be very different. Yet both are without Christ, and both have yielded themselves to the authority of sin. A man may hate the word "yield." But it is in his very nature to yield. No creature can do anything else. If he does not yield to God, he is plainly yielding to sin.
Trying to rule yourself does not bring freedom. It brings a worse owner.
Man is not enough for himself. He is only a creature, and so he must depend on God. If he seeks to be his own master, if he claims to be independent, he only falls further under Satan. Instead of obeying God, he becomes the slave of sin.
The verse says you present yourself. That one word decides where the blame falls.
In this life people buy and sell slaves, and the slave gets no voice in the matter. The slavery spoken of here is not like that, whether it is slavery to sin or to righteousness… Men are sinners by birth through Adam's disobedience. They become slaves of sin by yielding to it. This declares and upholds man's responsibility. He is not responsible for being a sinner, or for having an evil nature. He is responsible for giving in to what that nature demands… He was born a sinner, a child of wrath by nature. He was not born the bondslave of sin. He became that by the exercise of his will — yielding himself to it.
The two halves of the verse do not mirror each other. Sin leads to death, but obedience leads to righteousness — not to life.
Death was the natural and appointed wages of sin, and it came as the judgment of God. We could not say obedience leads to life. If we obey, we are already alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But obedience bears the fruit of practical righteousness. And notice the character of what stands against sin here. It is not righteousness in itself — doing right as conscience or law knows it — but obedience. We are alive to God, and that is, and must always be, obedience. We cannot live to God in any other way than in obedience. So Christ lived. He was the obedient Man — He came to do God's will.
The verse sets obedience against sin. So the standard is not a person's own sense of what is right.
Grace uses this freedom to make him all the more Christ's slave, free from sin to serve the Lord Christ. It was exactly what He did here on earth, always the true and perfect servant… The Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right. That is pride, independence, or making a god of self. We do them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to have practical righteousness.
Freedom does not lower the stakes for a Christian. It raises them.
God has called us to freedom, and He equips us with power. That makes the service of sin now deeply solemn. On man's part it is clearly the choice of evil. It is man's will rejecting the grace of God.
- Obedience reveals ownership. Not what you claim, but whom you actually obey, tells you whose servant you are.
- No third master. Self-rule is an illusion; refusing to yield to God is simply yielding to sin.
- You hand yourself over. People are born sinners. They become slaves of sin by their own yielding, and that is why they answer for it.
- The opposite of sin is obedience. Not doing right because it seems right, but doing it because it is God's will, with Christ as the pattern.
- Two wages, two ends. One road runs to death; the other bears its fruit in practical righteousness now.