Romans 6:12-23 (NRSV)
Slaves of Righteousness
15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:12-23 has the theme of the Christian life as putting into effect our baptism. He has been considering the Christian life as walking in a newness of life that Christ initiated and that the Holy Spirit sustains. In doing so, Paul continues to wrestle with the significance of the coming of Christ. He will raise the question of what freedom is. He would agree with the many thinkers who suggest that freedom is not simply a matter of the freedom to do whatever you want. As a political matter, one could make a strong libertarian case that the best society is the one in which people have the freedom to pursue happiness as they conceive it. Yet, that is a minor freedom when it comes to morality, human flourishing, and becoming the person God wants us to be. Doing what we want can be its form of slavery. We discover true freedom in learning how we ought to live so that we can reach our fullest potential. This suggests to Paul the idea that we will serve somebody. N. T. Wright calls this a new kind of “liberated slavery.” Freedom is coming to a place in our lives where we want to live in obedience to God. God loves and seeks our true freedom and happiness.
Paul is also going to suggest that the transition from serving one master to serving another is not an easy one. The pattern established by Adam is one we keep repeating. His turn from God and toward himself leads to death. We need to face our mortality. Those who do so because circumstances force them often have regrets. It will take courage to live life true to ourselves rather than focus too much on what others expect of us. We want to work hard, but not to the point of obsession. We need the courage to take the time it takes to identify our feelings and share them. Friends are precious, so we need to stay in touch with the old and have an open heart for new friends. We need not be afraid of what makes us genuinely happy.[1] Facing our mortality before we must do so will help us move toward what God wants, which we can broadly say is righteousness and life.
Paul has compared Adam, who represents the pattern of sin and death, with Christ, who represents the pattern of righteousness and life. He continues to draw out the implication of this analysis of the human situation to the life of the believer. Paul says to the baptized that they have identified with Christ in his death and resurrection; now become the person so united with him that you can become what God intends you to be. Manifest in your lives the lordship of Christ who has justified you and freed you from the power of sin. He draws a contrast between slavery and freedom, an image drawn from the Greco-Roman world, in which freedom denoted the privileged condition or social status of citizens in a city government. By referring to sin, death, body, and Law, Paul will clarify their continuing roles as they threaten the lives of believers. For example, sin and death continue in human life as we do what Adam did and turn away from God as the source of our lives. Sin is bondage. It shows itself in self-asserting rejection of God. The Law comes from God and is therefore good, but it reveals the sinful state of humanity. His account of sin and death makes it clear that we bear responsibility for the prison or slavery in which we find ourselves. We even use the good intent of the Law in such a way that its effect is to increase the power of sin and death at work in us. At the same time, the Law is weak, something against which Judaism would argue. For Paul, the Law does not provide a remedy to the predicament humanity faces. Through his death and resurrection, Christ offers humanity a new possibility of living with God. Such a new possibility will lead to righteousness and life. The promised redemption that is the future of humanity finds anticipatory presence in the baptized as faith and sanctifying grace begin their work of healing and liberating from sin and death. Fellowship or union with Christ will mean such liberation and healing. This redemption includes the body, to the point that the body participates now in resurrection life. This body is already experiencing the transformation that will come in the final redemption of creation. We see the already/not yet feature of Christian life in that the transition from death to life is incomplete. The historical event of the death and resurrection of Christ finds its answer in us, who respond in the event of baptism, faith, justification, and sanctification. In our eschatological moment we present ourselves to the God who brings us from death to life, from sin to righteousness. Such a moment in our lives puts us under the leadership of grace rather than sin. Such grace will lead us to righteousness, which we find in the “form of teaching” we have received, which today we might think of as the teaching of the apostles. He is thinking of the basic kerygma of apostolic teaching. I suspect he is also thinking of the basic virtues and vices we find in his writings. Christian life in every culture and in every historical age is not a matter of making it up as we go along. The “form of teaching” is there, in the Bible. We turn from what we think is right to what we have learned from the apostles.
The process of which Paul writes is sanctification. Justification and sanctification do not follow each other in temporal sequence. They occur together in the event of our faith response. However, they address two separate aspects of Christian life. Justification focuses upon the pardon of our sin that we received in the death of Christ. We need that pardon every day. Sanctification focuses upon the separation of the people of God from the ways of this world that Adam signifies. Baptism consecrates the person of faith to Christ. Union with Christ in his death and resurrection is the source of our sanctification. The pressure of the eschatological moment for us keeps placing this world of sin and death into question. Sanctification is an implication of belonging to Christ. It suggests the separation of the people of God from this world.[2] The baptized await the fullness of resurrection and eternal life. The concept is eschatological in that God will make all this reality in the future, but that there is also a present realization in the life of the believer. The self we once were is the self that belongs to the old age, the self dominated by sin and exposed to wrath. We can see here the eschatological tension that exists for the believer. Believers are still persons under the influence of Adam. The inner logic of the link between sin and death arises on the presupposition that all life comes from God. Since sin is turning from God, sinners separate themselves not only from the commanding will of God, but also from the source of their lives. Death is not just a penalty that an external authority imposes on them but lies in the nature of sin as its consequence. We receive such “wages” due to our choice to serve sin. In contrast to the wages of sin that are due, making death the consequence of sin, God graciously bestows eternal life on people who respond with faith. Paul insists that the gift of eternal life is something that comes to Christians through the mediating death and resurrection of Christ Jesus; it is a gift tied up with the work of Christ.[3]
In a sense, the message of 6:12-23 is something like “that was then” when you were slaves of sin, but “this is now” when you are enslaved to God. To put it another way, Christian life is a matter of living the Christian life out of what baptism signifies. Paul wants believers to look seriously at their baptism. The indicative fact of baptism stands over against their lives as they work out its implications during their Christian lives. The new identity of the baptized is an anticipation of the death that awaits us all, but also finds itself absorbed in the new life found in Christ. This struggle will not end until the last day.[4] The imperative of the call to new obedience is a summons to demonstrate the indicative of the new being in Christ, but it also has its eschatological presupposition in the future that God has promised and that one can expect. Yes, become what you are, but even more, become what you shall be.[5] He does not want the baptized to go back to their old way of life.
In Romans 6: 12-14, Paul is exhorting Christians to become aware of their status. 12 Therefore, do not let sin (ἁμαρτία) exercise dominion (βασιλευέτω) in your mortal bodies (σώματι), to make you obey their passions (ἐπιθυμίαις, with the connection to the body, it most likely refers to sexual desire, where the body is the origin or vehicle of the desire).[6] As Paul will make clear, the body shares in the resurrected life of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us (8:11). He looks forward to the redemption of the body (8:23). The basis for his urging of a certain type of behavior, that of turning from sin, is that the anticipated redemption of the body, the anticipated enjoyment of eternal life, is beginning its transformation by God today, in this earthly life. Paul will never envision eschatological or eternal life as non-bodily life. Such life with God, whatever it is, is redeemed and transformed bodily life. We can see here that the bodily passion of which Paul writes is part of his preaching of repentance. His readers have a serious duty before God, and Paul means to stir their will toward denial of these bodily passions. His concern is that such passion or desire motivates the will toward action. Such passion is lust, since the thought of satisfaction gives pleasure. It becomes anxious self-seeking. The reality of human life is that such passion or desire bursts upon people with the force of immediacy. Even for those on whom the love of God has come through the Holy Spirit (Chapter 5), such passion or desire is always a danger against which one needs to fight.[7] Of course, Paul does not hold out the possibility of becoming sinless or incapable of sin through faith and baptism. His readers are still human beings and have in themselves the effects of Adamic sin. However, he does exhort the baptized not to allow sin to hold sway over their bodies. He reminds them they are to engage in righteous activity with their bodies. 13 No longer present your members (μέλη a euphemism for sexual organs, compare I Corinthians 6:16) to sin as instruments (tools) of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments (tools) of righteousness. Paul distinguishes between who the baptized are eschatologically, as united to Christ in death and resurrection, and who they are in this world, where the baptized must daily present themselves to sin or to God. We can see immediately that Paul is taking seriously embodied human experience. In 5:21, the concern was that sin reigned in death. However, now grace reigned through justification. Paul has set the stage for a discussion of whom or what reigns in our lives and to whom or what we are obedient. We do not find it surprising that sin should dwell in our mortal bodies. What is surprising is that even as a Christian I should compromise with it, adjust myself to it, and permit sin to reign.[8] People making the decision to present themselves to God acknowledge that God has a claim on their lives. Christians are supposed to become weapons in God’s service, not in that of evil and sin. The sinister power of sin needs the members of the body in order to accomplish the actual doing of wrong by subjecting human beings to bodily desire. Sin becomes a slaveowner, so the one enslaved does not have power over his own actions. If the members of the body receive such high significance, then Paul is also elevating the bodily life of the Christian. One way to think of this is that each moral commitment and choice is a renewal of the baptism and initiation into Christ. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. The negative freedom of liberation from the Law also means a new freedom for grace and service.[9] The Law never seems far from the mind of Paul in this portion of Romans. The Law is not the basis for acceptance with God. Such acceptance rests upon grace. The baptized are not to go on yielding themselves by the weakness that succumbs to temptation whenever it comes, but rather dedicate themselves by one decisive act, one resolute effort. Where the Christian lives by faith that works itself out through love, that Christian is living by grace, and life is no longer viewed as existence under law, even the possibility of it.
The primary place of disagreement between Paul and his former life as a rabbinic Jew was the strength of the Law. The Law was the remedy for the predicament in which humanity found itself. Paul could no longer abide this judgment. Judaism knew no other way of salvation than that of Torah. It saw even the mercy and the forgiving love of God lying in the fact that they enable the sinner to build for his or her eternal future on the ground of Torah. The light that has arisen in the death and resurrection of Christ reveals the inadequacy of the Law as a means of salvation. Humanity faces a new situation with the death and resurrection of Christ.
In Romans 6: 15-19, Paul says that under the reign of grace, Christians remain concerned about their conduct due to their bondage to uprightness and sanctification. 15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? The question is the same as in verse 1. His concern is that if one removes legal restraint for conduct, it might lead some of the baptized to think that they can do whatever they want, even deliberate acts of sin. By no means! Set free from law, human beings are in no way set free from a moral obligation to each other because of grace. Christ's death and resurrection have not opened the opportunity for libertine living, but rather have ordered the church into a new reality. Where the old reality of sin led to death, this new reality leads to life. 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves (one could voluntarily become a slave at this time), you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? Paul is making a type of argument that focuses upon the urgency of the moment in the life of the baptized. He presents an either/or type of choice. Thus, he is not making an appeal for righteousness based upon ethical or moral obligation to the other. 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching (stresses doctrinal content, where Christ is the original content or pattern of the apostolic tradition[10]) to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. The fact that Paul can appeal to the form of teaching his readers received, a teaching that frees them from sin so that they can become slaves of righteousness, is suggestive as to how Paul is dealing with the imagined opponent who might antinomianism. The Jewish Law is no longer the basis of God welcoming and accepting a human being. The Old Testament is a record of the failure of the people of God to obey the Law. If any system of law could be the basis of acceptance of with God, it would be the Jewish Law, for it came from the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Yet, the Jewish people themselves are a record of the impossibility of any human being using a legal approach to gain acceptance with God. They could not obey the Ten Commandments. They could not offer the sacrifices or follow the purity legislation. Even if they offered sacrifices properly, they did not do it with corresponding personal morality or public justice. The Jewish people themselves show the rest of humanity the impossibility of following the very Law they seek to honor. In the event of Jesus Christ, God has chosen to shift the ground of the relationship between God and humanity. God accepts human beings because God is gracious, which God has showed humanity in the event of Jesus Christ. Human beings, upon acknowledging this grace revealed in Christ, respond with faith or trust in its truth. Such a response will bring a corresponding and transforming effect in our lives. At this stage in the argument, Paul focuses on the image that we must serve somebody. It will be either sin or righteousness. We naturally serve sin but awakened by the acknowledgement of the moment in which God revealed divine grace, we can serve righteousness. We will be enslaved to something. Life is short. We need to do the right thing. We only have a certain amount of time energy. Our choice to do the right thing will always lead to life. 19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. To some degree, Paul apologizes for the flow of the argument. He has chosen the either/or approach that human beings must serve someone in their lives. Serving law or sin will lead to death. Serving God will lead to righteousness and life. As we shall see, his preference is to think of the Christian life as one of freedom. For just as you once presented your members (perhaps a euphemism for sexual organs, compare I Corinthians 6:16) as slaves to impurity (ἀκαθαρσίᾳ, contrasted with sanctification it especially refers to the immorality of sexual sin[11]) and to greater and greater iniquity (τῇ ἀνομίᾳ εἰς τὴν ἀνομίαν, referring to both the individual act along with the general condition that is the result of such acts, namely, that of alienation from the Law in the form of judgment[12] which becomes the lawlessness and indiscipline that lead to anarchy, surrendering to bodily passion or desire[13]), making it difficult to assess is the precise nature of these activities. The implication here is a life characterized by wrongdoing, intemperate living, and selfish lifestyles in which one is enslaved. Until we see our predicament truly, we may even have deluded ourselves into thinking we are free. We are not. Our lives are not truly our own. We are slaves to sin. So now present your members (a euphemism for sexual organs, compare I Corinthians 6:16) as slaves to righteousness for sanctification (ἁγιασμόν). Such sanctification of the members of the body is not simply a mental experience, but a true demonstration of the justifying faith in which the members of the body have a new master. I am not sure if Paul is focusing upon sexual matters, but the language suggests he is doing so. This act of submission of sexual desire in a direction that honors God is in keeping with what Paul call for elsewhere in the form of sexual purity, and even sexual abstinence within his churches (e.g., I Corinthians 7). Whether married or not, Paul understands that life in Christ demands of believers the response of sexual purity. Such a response is borne out of the new reality the church has found in Christ. This new reality is a part of the new dominion through which they live "in Christ," and it is a dominion that is guided by grace and not law. The result of baptism is the dedication, the consecration, of the baptized to Christ. Those united with the death and resurrection of Christ are sanctified. The cultic term of sanctification receives an eschatological nuance and involves the daily task of the living out of justification. We are not to conceive of sanctification in this letter as somehow the consequence of justification; it is simply saying the same thing under a different image; as does justification, so sanctification also transfers the baptized Christian to the dominion of Christ.[14] In contrast, if God be gracious towards us, that better “other world” must put in question our life in “this world,” whether by its absence or by its insistent pressure upon us, by its invasion and its violent knocking at our doors. The indicative of the divine truth concerning humanity becomes the imperative by which divine reality makes its demand upon humanity. They must will what God wills and serve righteousness. They must bring sanctification into existence by the same instruments they had before used to create iniquity. The demand involves a different being, having, and doing. Yet, we must guard against the anticipations of religious moralism and the illusions of romanticism and sentimentality.[15] The imperative of the call to new obedience is a summons to demonstrate the indicative of the new being in Christ, but it also has its eschatological presupposition in the future that God has promised and that one can expect. Yes, become what you are, but even more, become what you shall be.[16] For Paul, sanctification is an implication of belonging to Christ, as in this context, but the demand for sanctification is usually addressed to the community, not to individuals. The theme of sanctification goes along with the thought of the chosen people of God and its separation from the world for fellowship with God.[17]
In Romans 6: 20-23, freed from sin and death, Christians become slaves to uprightness and God. Sin leads to death, while grace leads to life eternal, an eschatological event in the process of being created in our lives today. 20 When you were slaves of sin (ἁμαρτίας), you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed (ἐπαισχύνεσθε in the sense of doing something bad[18])? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed (ἐλευθερωθέντες) from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The result of becoming a slave to righteousness is sanctification (v. 19). It is also the result of becoming enslaved to God. If we look broadly at the story of the liberation of the Hebrew people from Egypt, we read of a people enslaved by Egypt, set free by the Lord, and bound to the Lord in covenant in such a way that their obedience to the covenant would make of them a holy or sanctified people. They experienced liberation from slavery by passing through the waters of the Red Sea. The goal was to become the people of God in the Promised Land. In a comparable way, Christians were in bondage to sin, but liberated through the waters of baptism, and have received the “form of teaching” (v. 17) that will bring them to righteousness and eternal life. Sanctification refers to a people set apart for purposes determined by God. In that way, we become instruments or tools in the hands of God that serve righteousness. The end is eternal life (ζωὴν αἰώνιον). 23 For the wages of sin (ἁμαρτίας) is death (θάνατος), but the free gift (χάρισμα) of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. In the death of Christ, God paid the wages of our sins in our place.[19] Paul places the life and death choice before his readers. Since Christ is the primary moment in the relationship between God and humanity, the significance of baptism in Christ heightens. It transfers the believer from death to life. thus, nothing is so meaningless as the attempt to construct a religion out of the Gospel. It would be a betrayal of Christ. Such a construction would allow people to proceed on their way in a twilight of indifferent neutrality. Yet, the fruit of their journey is a discovery of themselves.[20] The inner logic of the link between sin and death arises on the presupposition that all life comes from God. Since sin is turning from God, sinners separate themselves not only from the commanding will of God, but also from the source of their lives. Death is not just a penalty that an external authority imposes on them but lies in the nature of sin as its consequence. Such “wages” are paid out as death to those who serve sin. In contrast to the wages of sin that are due, making death the consequence of sin, God graciously bestows eternal life on Christians. Paul insists that the gift of eternal life is something that comes to Christians through the mediating death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, it is a gift that is tied up with the work of Christ.[21] Paul does not give much detail about what eternal feels and looks like. He does refer to the trumpet sounding and God raising the dead to transformed, imperishable life (I Corinthians 15:52). Revelation concludes its narrative of the approaching end by saying that God will be with us, wiping away our tears, and death will be no more (21:3-4). Augustine said, that "we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall know; we shall know and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise; behold our end which is no end."[22] About all we can say with certainty is that everlasting life will be an experience of rest, love, praise and closeness to God.
We can see the idea of the Christian life as a working out of what baptism signifies in 6: 12-23, where Paul sees compelling cause to demand that Christians take seriously in their lives what took place at baptism. The tension we see in Paul between indicative and the imperative presupposes the fact that the being in Christ that is based on the indicative of baptism will not automatically find fulfillment in the way the baptized live but stands over against them as something that is still to be worked out in their lives. This tension is consistent with the notion of justification in Luther, especially regarding the ec-centricity of the new identity of the baptized in contrast to the ego-centricity of the old humanity. For Luther, until we die the death that baptism anticipates, we will have to face the struggle between the old and the new humanity, between flesh and spirit. Paul would not have to make the warning he does in verse 13 if the situation of the Christian were different from this. With Paul, concupiscence is itself sin. Sin no longer reigns in relation to the identity of the regeneration. Yet, because this new identity rests on anticipation of the death that is still ahead for us in this earthly life, in the course of this earthly life the old humanity must constantly be absorbed by the new until at the last day that which in sign is done already in baptism is fully caught up with and fulfilled.[23] The imperative of the call to new obedience is a summons to demonstrate the indicative of the new being in Christ, but it also has its eschatological presupposition in the future that God has promised and that one can expect. Yes, become what you are, but even more, become what you shall be.[24]
Paul discusses our freedom from sin and becoming slaves to righteousness and slaves to God. Freedom may not be what we tend to think it is. It may not mean simply doing whatever you wish. Freedom is leaning to live as we ought to live to achieve our potential and to be our true self. We are free to do what we ought to do and do the right thing. The notion that freedom is nothing more than what we want to do in the moment is a form of slavery to the moment.
Too many people live in bondage of their own making. We do so because of an exaggerated sense of who we are, for we are so brilliant that we think we can ignore the rules and still move toward happiness. By rules here, I mean ignore the straightforward rules of respecting the worth and dignity of oneself and others. We create what binds us and destroys us by the beliefs and traditions we adopt during our lives, and by the ideas, prejudices, attachments, and fears accumulated through our experiences. The chains that bind us feel as if we will never be free to embrace the richness of life, love, and freedom that is available to us apart from the chains. We need to take the steps necessary to regain our freedom. It requires some humility to put oneself on that path of life, but we arrogant enough to think that we might find another path that includes lack of respect for the person and property of others. The result will be self-destruction and bondage, and prison. To look honestly at the bondage we have made, the patterns of our life that have created this bondage, the people who have sought to point us to a different direction, and to embrace the responsibility to live the gift this one life is truly is.
Paul is suggesting that we are going to become a slave to something or to someone. Paul reminds me of the Bob Dylan (1979) song
You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride,
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side,
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair,
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody,
yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
John Lennon responded with a song not released until 1998, where he ridicules people who follow Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, or anyone else, because all you can do is “serve yourself.” This profanity laced song has some irony in that serving yourself is still serving. When he ridiculed Dylan by saying wondering if he wanted to be a waiter, which could have been said with the Lennon humor, but if said seriously, shows lack of understanding what Dylan was saying in the song. At another level, and I am sure John did not mean it this way, is that focusing upon serving yourself will lead to a shallow life and a lonely life. One might gain much wealth with this approach to life but dine alone.
We will serve someone. The imagery Paul uses is interesting, for he says we choose our master. Although one could sell oneself into slavery in his time, the norm was that the master chooses the slave. God has chosen us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. We can choose whether to live within that realm or to live within the realm of sin and death. Living within the domain of righteousness is sanctification, beginning the process of growing into the life God has prepared for us.
Among the difficult matters in this passage is that bodily desire becomes a master from which we need liberation so that we can fulfill God’s desire for us. Paul is thinking of the body in a theological way. His concern is that if we follow bodily desire, we are behaving no differently than higher order animals. Bodily desire includes hunger, comfort, rest, the exhilaration of victory in battle, and the socialization involved in community. If all we do is fulfill such desire to the point of pleasure in the way other animals may do, then we are not fulfilling the higher purpose to which God has appointed us as bearers of the image of God. While bodily desire can take many forms, Paul will focus upon one such desire. Paul uses sexual desire to show its power and influence over our behavior. Bodily passion, the giving over of our “members,” a possible sexual reference to such desire, shows that we have a choice to make. In many animal species, the male impregnates as many females as possible. Some men approach their relationships with women in the same way. Paul has the concern that those baptized into union with Christ in his baptism and resurrection must exhibit in their lives a vastly different way of channeling their desire so that the body and its desires serve righteousness and become enslaved to God. We will either allow such desire to direct itself in the way God intends or in the way our natural sinful self would direct us. As Paul makes clear in his writings, God cares about what we do with our sexual desire. God cares about how many sexual partners we have, whether we are faithful in a commitment to a spouse, and even the gender of that partner. Paul is marking himself off from the pure hedonist. Yet, he is not an ascetic who might simply deny a person any bodily pleasure. Rather, Paul is urging his readers, and us, to allow God to sanctify our bodily desire so that our desire for bodily pleasure takes a form that is pleasing to God. He wants us to see that bodily desire can become a harsh master. It can lead us down a path of self-destruction, sin, and death. It will certainly not lead us toward right living and anticipate eschatological life. Paul envisions an embodied process of sanctification that orients us toward eternal life.
Paul is also suggesting that changing from the slavery of sin to slavery to God and righteousness is not easy. Paul invites us to envision a new humanity, a movement from the old humanity dominated by Adam and his turning away from God, a form of life that keeps tugging away at us. The new humanity has a pattern of likeness to Christ that turns toward God, seeks righteousness, and enjoys life. Paul envisions a form of liberated slavery, of obedience to God in which we experience the freedom of the true self. We start seeing that which formerly attracted us and led us away from God is leading to death. We start seeing that the new pattern shown in Christ becomes increasingly attractive to us and leads to life. We expel one attraction for a new attraction.[25]
Here is a straightforward way that expresses the difficulty of changing patterns of life.
Autobiography in 5 Short Chapters
Chapter 1: I walk down the street. There is a large hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter 2: I walk down the same street. There is a large hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place, but it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.
Chapter 3: I walk down the same street. There is a large hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit. My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.
Chapter 4: I walk down the same street. There is a large hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter 5: I walk down another street.[26]
I conclude with a modern English form of the covenant prayer of John Wesley.
I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will.
Partner me with whomever you want.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
Exalted for you or brought low for you.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
You are mine, and I am yours.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on Earth, let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
[1] Bronnie Ware, "Top 5 regrets of dying," The Huffington Post Website, huffingtonpost.com, March 2, 2013. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6] Arndt & Gingrich, 293, TDNT Volume III, 171.
[7] TDNT, Buchsel, 171.
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11] Arndt & Gingrich, 28.
[12][12] TDNT, Volume IV, 1-85.
[13] TDNT, Volume II, 496-7.
[14] Kasemann
[15]
[16]
[17]
[18] Bultmann, TDNT, 190
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22] Augustine. "Our end which is no end." The Lion Book of 1000 Prayers for Children. Oxford, England: Lion Hudson, 2013, 214.
[23] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume III, 253-257.
[24] Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 162.
[25] "There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world - either by a demonstration of the world's vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one." –Thomas Chalmers
[26] -Portia Nelson, reprinted at Beliefnet.com, November 2001.
Like the illustration of the hole in the street. Your view of baptism is very close to the catholic view. they celebrate ones baptism as the beginning of ones salvation. The rest of life is to work that out in ones life.
ReplyDeleteThank you. The Roman Catholic reference may be true, but if so, I do think Paul is making that suggestion in Romans 6. It is also quite standard in United Methodist texts on baptism, which I then assume would be true of most ecumenical texts of mainline denominations.
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