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.
But thanks [be] to God, that ye were bondmen of sin, but have obeyed from the heart the form of teaching into which ye were instructed.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Now, having got your freedom from sin, ye have become bondmen to righteousness.
Paul has just thanked God that his readers obeyed the teaching handed to them. Now he states what that obedience produced: a change of owner. Two questions follow. What does freedom from sin mean when sin is still at work in us? And why does that freedom hand us straight to a new master?
The word "sin" here is not a list of wrong acts but a power that held people. One writer draws the distinction that unlocks the whole chapter.
Take note of the closing words of verse 6. They show us plainly how this chapter looks at sin. Sin is a master, a slave-owner, and we had fallen under its power. The chapter is not discussing the presence of sin in us but the power of sin over us. We have got our discharge from sin.
That distinction matters. The verse never says that sin has left the believer.
We know from God's word and bitter experience that as believers we are still able to sin. But Christian liberty means we no longer have to sin. This is a great liberty.
Paul says in the next verse that he is speaking in human terms. He uses a picture from ordinary life so his point is clear. (Some quotes on this page use older wording for the verse.)
"Being now made free from sin." (Rom. 6:18, 22.) The apostle tells his readers that he speaks to them "after the manner of men, because of the weakness of their flesh." He uses the term "made free" in contrast to a state of slavery. To mark that contrast, he adds that they have become servants to God. It is a simple picture of slaves and freed slaves, and the apostle uses it to make himself better understood. Moreover, the condition spoken of is that of all Christians, without exception.
The freedom did not come by effort or resolve. It came by a death: the believer's death with Christ. That is the argument running through the earlier part of the chapter.
Yes, this is how you changed masters: through death, from sin to righteousness. And all this in perfect grace. Once you were under sin and free from righteousness. Now you are servants of righteousness and free from the slavery of sin. Yes, this chapter looks at sin and righteousness as two masters. The Christian is perfectly free from the old tyrant.
Many people try to serve God so they can get free. Paul puts it the other way round, and the order of his words matters.
So every Christian is made free from sin: "Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness." (Ver. 18.) It does not say, You became the servants of righteousness, and then you were made free from sin. There can be no true fruit to holiness until we are made free from sin.
Notice that the verse does not end with liberty. It ends with a second slavery, and for a creature there is no other option.
Man is not enough on his own. He is only a creature, and so he must depend on God. If he seeks to be his own master, if he chases independence, he only falls more completely under Satan. Instead of obeying God, he becomes the slave of sin. Redemption sets the believer free from this slavery. But it frees him only to bind him with all his heart to do as the Christian form of teaching instructs us — all the more because he is under grace, not law.
The new master needs defining too. Righteousness is not a standard we set for ourselves.
A Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right. That is pride, independence, or making a god of self. It is doing them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to reach practical righteousness.
The verse makes no demand. The demand comes in the next verse, and the difference matters.
Verse 18 deals with actual fact: verse 19 with practical character. This is easy to see, above all in the New Translation, which puts verse 18 more strongly: "Now, having got your freedom from sin, you have become bondmen to righteousness." Verse 19, by contrast, urges us to "now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness."
- Master — This chapter treats sin as an owner, not a habit. The issue is its power over us, not its presence in us.
- Discharge — Freedom came through death with Christ, and all in grace. The old tyrant lost his hold on us.
- Order — Freedom comes first, then service. No one serves righteousness to become free.
- Owner — Liberty is not self-rule. Chasing independence lands a creature back under sin. Redemption frees us to bind us to God's will.
- Practice — Verse 18 says what you are. The next verse says what to do with your body. The fact stands; the yielding is daily.
I speak humanly on account of the weakness of your flesh. For even as ye have yielded your members in bondage to uncleanness and to lawlessness unto lawlessness, so now yield your members in bondage to righteousness unto holiness.
Paul has just called his readers slaves to righteousness, and he stops at once to explain why he picked such a word. The verse then sets two histories side by side: what our bodies once served, and what they are to serve now. Will we give ourselves to the second as fully as we gave ourselves to the first?
The word "slave" could sound like a heavy chain, so Paul pauses to say he is borrowing an everyday picture. Commentators point out that the apology is not about the truth being taught, but about the limits of the hearers.
The words "slaves to righteousness" might be taken to mean a harsh yoke, with all freedom lost. So the Apostle is careful to explain that he is only speaking in human terms. Serving righteousness is not miserable slavery. It is happy freedom. But our flesh is weak, and that makes the truth hard for us to grasp. So he uses the words "slaves to righteousness" to set the happy result of living under practical righteousness against the terrible bondage sin holds over its slaves.
Paul is comparing a slave with a freed man. And the freedom he describes belongs to every Christian, not to an advanced few.
He says "made free" in contrast to slavery. To mark that contrast he adds that they had become servants to God (Romans 6:22). It is a simple comparison between a slave and a freed man, used to make the matter easier to understand. And please notice that this is not the condition of a perfect Christian only. It is the condition of all Christians without exception.
The verse repeats a word: lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. Their old service kept sliding further down.
Their old condition showed its corruption and self-will more and more. Evil ripens and grows worse and worse. Willing service leads not only to a right sense of our place before God and other people, but to an ever deeper sense of being set apart for God.
If sin deepens by repetition, so does righteousness. One writer shows the same rule at work in everyday skills.
Romans 6:19 lays down this principle of practice. A wicked person who practises lawlessness becomes more wicked — "lawlessness leading to more lawlessness". In the same way, he says, a good man who practises righteousness arrives at holiness. Everyone knows how this works. Knowing the theory of music does not by itself make a person a brilliant pianist. Only constant, long practice brings the touch of a master that no one can mistake... So just as a man becomes an expert in wickedness by practice, a man is adorned with every Christian virtue in the same way. For the simple reason, as someone has said, "our acts re-act upon ourselves."
The verse names two things, and they are not the same.
To give the parts of our body to sin is to become the slaves of impurity in practice. It builds a character of lawlessness that grows into more lawlessness... But if we give those same parts to the service of practical righteousness, it will build a character and condition of holiness. Here, for the first time since the opening verses of the letter, the Apostle speaks of holiness... Righteousness has more to do with right acts toward other people. Holiness has to do with the new nature, and so with what is inside... We not only practise righteousness; we also hate what is unrighteous.
The two do not stand as equals.
Holiness, or sanctification, is the end in view, and righteousness is the means to it.
The command assumes a struggle. That is what makes obeying it remarkable.
All this assumes that the old master, sin, is still inside us, only waiting for a chance to assert itself. That makes the triumph of grace all the greater... We learn how to give the parts of our body as servants to righteousness, and so to holiness, even while sin lurks inside, eager to take control again. In serving righteousness we serve God, because doing the will of God is the first element of righteousness. And righteousness in all our dealings leads to holiness of life and character.
- Borrowed word. Paul says he is speaking in human terms. "Slave" pictures a change of owner, not a harsh yoke.
- Same members. The same parts of the body that once served impurity are the ones now handed over. God asks for no new equipment, only a new master for the old.
- Same law. Practice shapes character both ways. Sin ripens into worse sin, and righteousness practised arrives at holiness.
- Means and end. Righteousness is the means — right acts toward others. Holiness is the end — an inward nature that hates what is wrong.
- Same struggle. Paul gives this command to people with sin still lurking inside. Obeying it shows the triumph of grace, not natural strength.