Romans 6:15-16

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

If you look back at Romans 6:1, you will see that it begins with a question: “Shall we continue to sin?” Now, the passage today begins with basically the same question. In v15, the question is, “Shall we sin?” Paul is coming back to this question, because he’s discussing the relationship between the free forgiveness and justification that we have in Jesus Christ and how that relates to God’s transforming work in us by the power of the Holy Spirit. So he’s asking the question, once grace reigns, do we continue to live a life under the dominion and the mastery of sin? Or should we sin in order to show all the more the reign of grace? Of course not! But answering this question is Paul’s purpose for chapter 6. He’s made it clear in v1-14 that when God comes to us in His grace, He breaks not only the penalty of sin, but He breaks the power of sin. He’s going to assert that again here.

With the question Paul raises in v15, he wants you to think of what God’s grace was designed to accomplish in you? What did God intend to do in you by His grace? And this question should raise another question. What exactly does it mean to be not under law, but under grace? People give many different answers to that.

(1) People might say that it means there are no more rules. This is the "Outback Steakhouse" theology: "No rules, just right." But even at Outback, there are rules. It’s not like you don’t have to pay for your meal or wait for a table. Paul is not saying that the rules no longer exist.

(2) Some might say, “There are still rules, but in the Old Testament you had to obey the rules, and in the New Testament you don’t have to. However, you try to obey anyway because you want to.” Christians who believe that might say, “I don’t have to obey the Ten Commandments. I still try to obey, because I want to, but I don’t have to.” That’s not what Paul is saying here either. If God’s commands are to love Him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself, then they are not optional. The point of freedom for the Christian is not that godliness is optional, and we do it when we feel like it. That’s not the freedom that Paul is talking about.

(3) Others might say that our freedom from the law means we’re not under the Old Testament moral law; rather, we’re under New Testament moral principles. That’s not what Paul is saying either. God’s moral law is written on our hearts, and that law is a reflection of the very nature of God Himself. It’s what He’s like, and He wants us to be morally like Him. Now the ceremonial law has been cancelled, because it has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and the civil law of Israel it is no longer binding, though it offers principles to learn. However, the moral law is a reflection of God’s character. And the freedom that we have as Christians is not liberation from God’s character.

(4) Finally, people might say that it means we’re not under the condemnation of the law. And that’s true, but that’s not what Paul is talking about here. He has talked about that, and he will talk about it again, but right now, he is not talking about our forgiveness, acceptance, and freedom from condemnation; rather he is talking about the fact that we are no longer pawns of sin anymore. We are no longer dominated by the tyrannical master of sin. We are not under the law, but under grace in this sense. 1 Corinthians 15:56 “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.” God has liberated believers from the dominion and power of sin. In that sense we are not under law. We live under the reign of the grace of the Holy Spirit. The law is no longer your enemy; although it’s the source of your condemnation, it is totally unable to transform you. You live under the reign of grace where the Holy Spirit dynamically enables you to say, “How I love Your law, O Lord. I mediate on it day and night, and I long to walk in it; it’s a lamp unto my feet, and it’s a light to my path.” I’ve not only been forgiven; I’ve been transformed. I’ve not only been justified; I’m being sanctified. I have a new master. There’s a new power at work in me, not sin by the law, but grace by the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:16-18 “So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.”

Thinking you are under law means that you believe law keeping is the way to have a righteousness that lets you stand before God. If we treat the law in such a way that keeping it provides the righteousness that justifies us, then we are under law. And this is true whether you trust yourself or God to enable you to keep the law. Christ will be all your righteousness or none of it. If you try to provide some of your righteousness alongside Christ’s righteousness as the ground of your justification, you nullify grace. Galatians 2:21 “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” Being “under grace” means that our justification is a gift of grace on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, Christ’s law keeping, Christ’s perfect obedience of faith, and nothing in us.

New Testament ethics are structured strangely to natural man. “Don’t let sin master you, because sin is not going to master you.” We come to the Bible with our man-centered bias toward self-determination. In other words, we come with the bias that if the Bible tells us to make a choice (like “don’t offer your body parts to sin”), then in the moment of that choice we, not God, have the final say. And if you come with that bias—that genuine, responsible choice means ultimate self-determination—the connection between v13, don’t yield to sin, and v14, because sin will not be master over you, will probably make no sense. But if you learn from Scripture to see the sovereignty of God and the real responsibility of man in such a way that God is ultimate and decisive, then you will learn to talk about the life choices as the apostle Paul would: I choose not to let sin reign in my body, because God is at work in me and will not let sin reign in my body. Philippians 2:12-13 “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God Who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose.” Philippians 3:12 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.” 1 Corinthians 5:7 “Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” Does this make sense?

Now Paul asks another question in v16, suggesting that his audience should have already known that you’re either a slave to sin, leading to death, or to obedience, leading to righteousness, depending on which you obey. Again, we revisit the freedom/slavery issue. We live in a culture that is obsessed with freedom. Freedom is a concept that we value highly and rightly so. We should never take the freedoms that we have, which have been transferred to us and protected, for granted. But we tend to be slightly freedom obsessed. We live in a day and time where freedom means freedom from obligations. Freedom means, “Hey, I will do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it wherever I want to do it however I want to do it.” And Paul is saying, “That view of freedom is a myth. It does not exist. There is no such thing as non-obligation in life. Paul says, “We are slaves; obligation to someone or something is not an option. Yet we are free; the issue is to what or to whom we are obligated.” We are slaves to our desires, and our desires are slaves to our natures, and our natures are slaves to sin from conception. Yet we are always free to choose according to our desires. We are never bound from that. And so we must be freed from the bondage of the sin nature. Freedom from sin in this sense frees our natures, which frees our desires, which frees us. So this is freedom: being no longer bound by the sin nature. In other words, you are always free to pursue your desires, yet you are always obligated to the desires you are pursuing, whether it be sin or righteousness, Satan’s agenda or self’s-agenda or God’s agenda. You may think you’re free, but you’re bound. Paul says you are slaves of the one whom you obey. And this doesn’t sound good in our cultured ears. But keep in mind that grace binds us to Christ. Being a slave of Christ is a good thing. We will not be mistreated by Him; rather we will be cherished as co-heirs of all creation!

Paul reminds us that sin often presents itself as, “You do exactly what you want to do, just because you want to.” It seems to be ultimate freedom; it’s very enticing, seductive, and tyrannical. It may look like freedom; it may look like you’re calling the shots, but you’re not. You’re never calling the shots. Paul’s point here is that nobody is their own boss. You either serve a beneficent, generous, loving master whose commands are always for your own good, or you serve a tyrannical master, self, and Satan and sin. Everybody serves someone or something. Do you get it?