The Most Free Slaves

Paul is teaching the Romans that it is utterly impossible for one who is truly saved to continue in a lifestyle of casual sin. One reason is that, through union with Christ, believers have “died to sin” (Rom. 6:2), leaving their lives of sin behind. But another reason (or, perhaps, another way of saying the same) is that believers have been bought out of slavery to sin and made “slaves of righteousness.” What does Paul mean by this strange language?

It is a fact of human existence that we must serve someone. “Since you and I are human beings and not God, we can never be autonomous,” Dr. James M. Boice writes in his Romans commentary. “There is no such thing as absolute freedom for anyone. No human is free to do everything he or she may want to do.” Such freedom belongs only to God, he notes; all other beings are “limited by or enslaved by someone or something.” As Paul already has shown in Romans, all human beings are born enslaved to sin because of their union with Adam; that is, they have an overpowering inclination to rebel against God. Therefore, they actively present themselves as slaves to obey sin, even though they know this servitude leads to death (Rom. 1:32). They are miserable slaves who, amazingly, have no desire to be set free. They can be delivered from bondage to sin only if another Master purchases them for Himself.

This is exactly what Jesus has done for His people. “We were slaves to sin, that cruel taskmaster,” Boice writes. “But Jesus paid the price of our redemption by His death. He purchased us with His blood.” Then, at the proper time, He opened our eyes to see our misery, and caused us to hear the gospel and obey it, as the Romans did (v. 17). And so we became His slaves. However, this slavery leads not to death but to righteousness, for that is the essence of obeying our new Master. Through union with Christ, we become slaves of God, and He will not let us return to obedience to our former cruel master.

Boice notes that we usually see sin as freedom rather than slavery and submission to God as loss of liberty. But, he adds, sin is really bondage, while enslavement to God through Christ is real freedom. He writes, “The only real freedom you are ever going to know, either in this life or the life to come, is the freedom of serving Jesus Christ.”