Tuesday, 16 August, 2005: Today’s Bible readings.
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We tend to think that when we become a Christian and are committed to a life of obedience to God we are then shackled and limited in what we can do. We think of it as not being free to do what we really want to do. Freedom would be release from God’s restraints upon us.
Paul turns this thinking on its head and tells us that rather than being free before we were Christians, we were not free before we were Christians. We were enslaved to sin, and we were completely unable to obey God. It is only after we have been regenerated and had our nature changed that we are finally freed to obey.
Paul challenges us to think about the fruit of disobedience. Think about the wages you get from sin. The end result of these actions is death. Compare that to the result of obedience: sanctification and eternal life.
What do we learn from this?
We are always slaves to something: to sin or to righteousness. And though we think that God’s law is constraining upon us as Christians, as God works in us to change our nature, we actually are freed from the tyranny of sin. Things are just the opposite of what we naturally think.
Where is Christ in this passage?
The freedom we find in being released from the power of sin comes as a free gift from God as we are in Christ Jesus. Earlier in the chapter Paul talks about how we are united to Christ in our baptism. Our freedom from sin and the gift of eternal life are the direct result of our unity with Christ who has won our freedom for us.
It is through Jesus Christ’s work that we are freed from sin and are now able to obey God. And it is in obedience that we reap the fruits of sanctification and end in eternal life.
