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Scripture Text (NRSV)


Romans 6:12-23
 

6:12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.

6:13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments 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 of righteousness.

6:14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

6:15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

6:16 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?

6:17 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,

6:18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

6:19 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.

6:20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

6:21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death.

6:22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life.

6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Comments:

If you have plans to preach about freedom. This is a wonderful reading. How important is freedom to us? We are a nation that supports freedom all around the world. We say that people should have freedom to elect their governments. This is democracy, this is freedom. We also fight and support nation that want to be free. We, americans, love freedom. However we know this is not true in many places. This is not true, also, with humankind speaking spiritually. HUmankind needs freedom from sin and the power of sin and this is possible only through Jesus. But we need to seek and to desire freedom and until then freedom will be possible in our lives. Do we really want freedom? JAM from Texas

I believe this Romans text is very important. What I discovered last week as I carefully avoided Romans to preach the Gospel text was that I have a very naieve idea of sin. That makes me dangerous as a pastor and also makes me vulnerable to subtle influences that could draw me into the realm of darkness. I have been studying many different resources this week to get a handle on the power of sin as we yeild gradually to its seductions. I realized that Paul seems to be setting up two forces which seem to be in contest with one another, yet I don't believe that sin is as powerful as grace. I get a sense of sin and obedience as two possible channels of action and that each leads deeper and deeper into itself. Would this mean that the more I obey Christ, the more I live in his realm and the easier it is to be obedient? Would this mean that the opposite is true, that the more I sin, the more I am captured by the forces of evil and the more attractive sin becomes? This almost sounds like an addiction to sin. Is it possible to also become addicted to obedience without really thinking about the freedom we have in Christ? Thank you for your thoughts on this text. Dyma in South Florida.

From roughly 200 BC onwards, the Romans based much of their society on the exploitation of slavery. Their economic systems became heavily dependent on the widespread existence of slave labour. Slaves laboured in the mines and in the empire's many farms and potteries. The state's public works were largely completed and maintained by slaves. Also the government's state bureaucracy depended very much on educated slaves to keep the administration of the empire running. Even key institutions like the state's mints or the distribution of the corn dole to poor Romans depended on slaves. Other educated slaves also kept the private industries going, by functioning as their accountants and clerks. Other vital services were provided by literate slaves who served as teachers, librarians, scribes, artists and entertainers - even doctors. Also in the private houses of Rome, it was slaves who were the servants of their Roman masters, watching over their private lives. From the man who cleaned the sewers to the emperor's scribe, slaves were an essential part of Roman society. In the latter centuries of the Roman empire, slavery began gradually to decrease in importance, as the rise of Christianity demanded more benevolence, and - no less importantly - the supply of slaves began to dwindle. Had the early Romans been content with a small number of household slaves, these numbers rose steeply with Rome's increasing wealth. Simple tasks, such as the master's bath, would require the attendance of more than one slave. A slave was used to take the children to school. In households of the rich where their was many slaves, they were divided into groups of ten, each under orders of a foreman. . JAM

From verse 12 it is apparent that we have choice in the matter of whom or what we serve. And there appears to me to be a process of entering deeper into slavery until choice becomes automatic. My title is "I just can't help it!" and play off both angles "I can't help it if I sin" and "I can't help it if I live righteously" - choices that through habit one way or the other we will eventually come to some admission that "I just can't help it." Illustration: as I tell myself I am forgetful I take on a forgetful frame of reference to life. as I tell myself "I have a beautiful mind" I can't help thinking that I have something beautiful to offer.