Romans 6:19-20

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.

V19 – Human terms: be slaves to righteousness, not sin. Paul here offers an argument to support his position, but he knows that doubts and questions will be raised in the minds of his audience when he gives it. Paul effectively says that “true freedom is slavery,” not slavery to sin, but slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. And he knows how shocking this sounds. In fact, he apologizes by saying, “I’m speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh,” because you are weak in your natural selves. Paul is telling his audience, “You were slaves of lawlessness and impurity. That’s how you were apart from Christ. Now having known the bondage of wickedness, pursue the slavery of righteousness in order to know the freedom of holiness.” Paul knows that there are limitations to this 3-part illustration, and that’s why he says that he’s speaking in human terms. Notice first the 3 parts: slavery to impurity and ever-increasing wickedness, slavery to righteousness, freedom of holiness. The text doesn’t say, “Freedom of holiness,” but that is implied. Slavery to sin is no freedom; but slavery to Christ is the freest of freedoms.

The problem with Paul’s “human argument” is that slavery is not an institution that we would naturally desire to be under. If you were to ask 2nd or 3rd graders, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I doubt you’ll hear, “I want to be a slave.” Slavery is not something that one generally longs for. But Paul chooses this illustration in order to shock us out of the illusion that people are free apart from Christ, that true freedom is doing what ever you want to do. Paul wants his audience to understand that this illusion of freedom is not freedom at all: it’s bondage of the worst and most dire kind. Why? Because it’s our desires that control us; and it’s our natures that control our desires. So, when the Holy Spirit changes our natures, and when Christ changes our desires, only then we are free. And notice we still do what we want to do. Yet now this is freedom; before it was not. Paul says, “You were giving your lives and using your bodies as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness. You were slaves to your own wicked desires.” That’s not a very pretty picture. “But now, pursue slavery, desire bondage to righteousness, and gain freedom!”

V20 – Slaves to sin = Free from the control of righteousness. Jesus said in John 8:34, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin.” Simply put, true freedom is not sinning. True slavery is freedom from the control of righteousness. And the text says that if we are slaves to sin (which those of us who sin apart from Christ are), then we are free from the control of righteousness (and therefore not free for righteousness). Apart from Christ we’re bound to sin. When He sets us free by justification through faith, our bondage to sin is ended. But the battle inside us between the sinful desires and the Spirit-led desires begins and continues as sanctification progresses. We have freedom from sin now, but it won’t be completely and perfectly realized until eternity. In eternity, we will have true complete and perfect freedom, because there will be no possibility of sinning. Note that God is truly free because He cannot sin.

Slavery in Romans 6 does not imply being forced against our will. It implies that our wills are enslaved. They are bound to do sin or bound to do righteousness because by nature we either see the rewards of sin or the beauty of righteousness as more attractive. So in both cases we do what we want most to do.