Every person serves a master – either sin or the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no neutral ground. Romans 6:15-23 exposes the lie that grace gives licence to sin and instead reveals the stunning contrast between the two slaveries: one leads to shame, heaviness, and death, the other to holiness, fruitfulness, and everlasting life. The question is not whether you are a servant, but whom you serve – and whether every area of your life is truly under Christ’s rightful rule.
Everyone has a master. The idea that any person is truly autonomous – free from all servitude – is an illusion. There are only two masters: sin, which leads to death, or Christ, who leads to righteousness. The question is not whether you serve, but whom you serve.
A common misunderstanding of grace is that it functions as a licence to sin. If believers are no longer under the law but under grace, does that mean occasional, planned sin is permissible? Paul’s answer is emphatic: God forbid. Whatever version of “grace” would permit such a thing is not the grace of God. Grace and truth are never divorced from one another. As John 1:17 says, the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And Titus 2:11-12 teaches that the grace of God does not merely save – it teaches, instructing believers to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously, and godly. Grace is liberation, not licence. Grace is escape, not indulgence.
The excuses people offer for sin under the banner of grace are familiar: “God knows our hearts,” “all things in moderation.” But God does know our hearts – and the Bible says they are deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. And “moderation” applied to sin – a bit of gambling, a bit of immorality, a bit of mental adultery – is not moderation at all. These philosophical balloons are burst by the sword of the Word of God.
Paul explains the reality of servitude using the language of slavery, which would have been immediately understood in the Roman world. The root word for “servants” is doulos – a slave, a bondman. To whomever you yield yourself as a servant to obey, that one is your master. Before salvation, sin was the unrelenting taskmaster. Once saved, the new master is the Lord Jesus Christ. And here is the critical point: a believer never has to obey the old master again. Like a slave who has been sold from one owner to another, seeing the old master may stir old feelings of obligation – but the old master no longer has any claim. When we are saved, we are purchased out of sin’s slave market with the blood of Christ and can never be sold to another. Yet in practice, many Christians sell themselves back under sin, returning to work for the old slave master when they do not have to and should not.
There is cause for deep thankfulness in this. “But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.” The past tense matters – you were the servants of sin. When the gospel came and was obeyed from the heart, liberation followed. No religion could accomplish this. It took the Son of God to purchase, forgive, and lift a soul out of slavery. The freedom is real: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). A believer can say, “I was a drunkard, no longer. I was a thief, not anymore. I was an idolater, no more.” But if the present tense is still “I am,” then either liberation has never happened, or the believer is choosing to return to the old master.
The new sphere of servitude – slavery to righteousness – is a wonderful place. The burden Christ gives is not the crushing weight of sin. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30). The way of the transgressor is hard, but the burden of following Christ is light. Some Christians carry secret, sinful burdens – heavy and growing heavier – because the old master does not play games. He plays for keeps. Relief only comes from bringing that burden to Christ and exchanging it for His.
The question of Christ’s lordship is intensely practical. “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). No one else owns you – not your boss, not your peers, not the government, not even your children. Christ alone is master. And that lordship must extend to every area: career, marriage, finances, ministry, friendships, hobbies, music. The instinct to hold back one area – “my master can have his way everywhere but here” – is the very thing that prevents victory.
F.B. Meyer’s account of his encounter with C.T. Studd illustrates this powerfully. Meyer gave Christ an iron ring with all the keys of his life on it – except one, the key to a tiny closet he wanted to keep for himself. Christ’s response was clear: “If you don’t trust me in all, you don’t trust me at all.” When Meyer finally surrendered that last key, Christ cleared out the closet and filled it with something far better. He had wanted to take away the sham jewels to give the real ones.
The method Paul prescribes is straightforward: yield to God the same way you once yielded to sin. The same energy, the same abandon, the same totality. If you once had a passion for immorality, now have a passion for purity. If you once spent every night at the pub, now be faithful at church. If sport used to be your god, make the Lord Jesus your God. If you once took revenge, now forgive. If you once hated, now love. Be as sold out to your Saviour as you once were for sin.
The contrast between the two servitudes is stark. The old servitude was a terrible freedom – free from righteousness, blind and running in the dark, making mess after mess. It was shameful: the crop that was planted produced shameful fruit, and sin always yields far more than what was bargained for. It was leading to a dismal end, for the end of those things is death. The old slave master had his servants in chains, dragging them ultimately toward hell.
But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, the fruit is unto holiness and the end is everlasting life. The Simon Wiesenthal illustration captures something of this: a man liberated from a concentration camp, seeing the American flag, with its stripes like roads to freedom. How much more should those liberated from the chains of sin never get over the day of their liberation. To be God’s slave is a privilege. As Psalm 84:10 says, “For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”
The chapter concludes with a final, crystallising contrast: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Sin pays wages – earned, deserved, and terrible. God offers a gift – unearned, undeserved, and eternal. The question remains: do you know Christ? Are you His slave? And as a believer, are you serving the old master or the new? You cannot serve two. If Jesus Christ is not Lord of all, is He really Lord at all?
Sermon Audio Id: 5182592354564