Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Romans 6:19-23)
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.
Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Our epistle reading today talks about spiritual slavery.
Slavery isn’t a picture that we normally identify with anymore. It isn’t part of our every day life. In the time that St Paul was writing it was still common for someone to have a slave, to have bought their servant with money until they were set free, and so people in Ancient Rome who were reading this letter would have easily understood what he was talking about.
But then, there is slavery in our society today. In ancient times and in the early days in America, slavery was public—it was in the open. People didn’t hide it. If you wanted to criticise it, you could criticise it in the open. But now, slavery has gone underground and it has gone inward. It has gone underground, in that there are people who are kept as slaves in brothels, and there is a trade in child slavery throughout the world. The world was shocked when, in the last couple of years, we heard about a man in Austria who kept his daughter in an underground cellar with the children he has fathered with her. Yes, we know all too well what slavery is—and it is something profoundly and deeply shocking. Anyone whom we would call a slave today is someone who is amongst the poorest and amongst the loneliest people in the whole world.
Slavery is a bit like poverty. In Australia, most people think that there really isn’t such thing as poverty. Employment and work are not readily available but people are still able to receive welfare from the government. A long time ago, before the government offered such widespread assistance to people, poverty was much more public. In countries throughout Asia, Africa, even in big cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York, poverty is much more public. But here in Australia, poverty has gone underground and inward. It has gone underground in that many people fall between the cracks of the government system, sometimes due to mental health, sometimes due to being unable to manage their funds, or because of addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and such like. So the poor in this country often receive very little sympathy, and many Christian too harden their hearts in helping them. Poverty is hidden, it is shameful to Australians, it is very lonely. Gippsland is a place too where there are very many needy people, who are pushed in their loneliness further and further out from Melbourne’s spotlight into the isolated corners of our state.
But I said that poverty—like slavery—has gone not just underground but inward. Poverty and slavery are shocking to people, but we also understand very profoundly and very deeply what these things mean, because there is such a profound inward poverty and inward slavery in people.
People have everything they need—they have a TV, a car, a home, a family, but then they don’t have any values, any customs and culture worth handing on, any aspirations, anything to look forward to in life, any hopes. This is a great inward poverty.
People also are free—they have the ability to do pretty much whatever they like. But they never seem to be able to get anything done—they take two steps forward and three steps back. They build, and their plans are torn down. People are slaves to money, slaves to their desires, their idols, their bodies, their hormones, their work—yes, people today know very deeply what it means to be a slave. There is a great spiritual slavery.
And in our reading today, St Paul says:
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 lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Notice that St Paul tells us that he is speaking in human terms. He is talking in such a way that everyone should be able to understand him. Often St Paul talks in such a way that makes no sense to unbelievers, for example, when he says earlier in this chapter, in Romans 6, that through baptism we are buried with Christ into his death. We can only understand what he is talking about with the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. It’s the same when Jesus speaks in parables—he speaks in parables in such a way that unbelievers and scoffers simply don’t understand what he is saying. They still might understand what the parable is about—for example, they might understand what it means that a person should sell everything and buy a field for the sake of a precious pearl—but they wouldn’t be able to understand it from experience—they would never, ever think to be so silly as to sell everything to buy one field with a pearl in it.
But St Paul is not talking in this sort of lofty, spiritual language. He says: I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. He is appealing to our common sense, our reason, our logic, our basic instincts. We don’t need to know how to speak lofty spiritual language in order to understand what he’s talking about. Maybe this picture of slavery was not so shocking to the ancient people as it is for us, but then the Holy Spirit can use these particular words with tremendous power and encouragement for our context today.
So St Paul writes: 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 lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
What he means is this: Earlier in Romans 6, St Paul talks about baptism. And he says that through baptism we are buried with Christ, and we are raised to new life. We are given the forgiveness of sins completely freely, we are given eternal life completely freely and we are saved by God by grace, completely and totally freely. There is nothing that we can do to earn the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation—it has to be all given to us for free by God in baptism.
But now what? Just because we’re forgiven, does this mean that we can do whatever we like? No—of course not. We’re free from sin, death and the devil, but that doesn’t mean we should continue to serve the devil. Everybody can understand this.
In the Lutheran Church, there are many people who completely misunderstand what the forgiveness of sins means. Sure, we’re not saved by works, but that doesn’t mean that we’re free to do bad works. And so, it often happens that a Lutheran, who reads the bible and confronts a fellow Lutheran about their sinful life and that the bible speaks against their bad behaviour, is told: “Relax! Chill out! Don’t worry yourself! I’m not saved by works, I’ve saved by grace!” And then these same people then just end up giving God a bad name, Christianity a bad name and the Lutheran Church a bad name. These people are simply slaves to the old life. And if that’s true, then the person who is accused of being a “party-pooper” and a “goody two-shoes” should comfort themselves with Jesus’ words: “Woe to you when others speak well of you!”
St Paul says: For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Everybody understands that if you are a Christian, a baptised person, that there’s going to be good works that follow.
And so St Paul says: Everyone is a slave to something!
Today, the atheists look at Christians and say: “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no such thing as God! Then we could kick off our shoes and relax for once and do whatever we like.” But the atheists are not free! They are slaves!
They are right—Christians are slaves! And they are rightly shocked by this. But what they aren’t shocked by is their own slavery to their own sinful flesh. That is much more shocking.
Of course, if you are a slave, you have to front up for work on time and present yourself to your master, ready for duty!
So St Paul says: For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
Present your members! Which master are you going to front up to? Impurity or righteousness? Evil or good? Satan the father of lies, or God your Father in heaven?
And so St Paul writes about the rewards that these masters give to their slaves.
He writes: When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 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. 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.
So what do you think: What does it mean to be a slave of God?
Many people think that God has got us like a puppet on a string, and he is playing some sick and twisted game with our lives. Some people think that they are being punished by God for their sins all the time, and every day is a just another day where they have to live out some more of God’s punishment. Sometimes, then, it’s easier for people to switch off, to stay asleep, to escape from life, to drown their sorrows in booze and drugs, than to face another day of punishment. People say, “What goes around comes around.” “I’ve done the crime, I need to pay the time.” People say, “God knows what I’ve done wrong—and I deserve the punishment from him. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”
But here’s the problem with this. This is not God. This is the way pagans talk about their gods, about fate, about karma, about justice, but it isn’t the way God reveals himself. If we say, “God is punishing me and there’s nothing I can do to stop him”, then we are not treating God as if he is actually a person, but we are treating him like a machine. God doesn’t have batteries, he has a heart!
Psalm 103: The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love… He will not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
And so, Jesus says: Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, for I am gentle and lowly of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
See how Jesus talks about his yoke, his burden, his slavery which he gives to us.
And then we might say, “Yes, but it’s still a yoke! It’s still a burden. I still feel like I’m just a slave to whatever latest disappointment and punishment God wants to give me!”
Well, when you feel like this, say to God, “Listen God, if you want to punish, go away and punish someone else!”
This is exactly what David says at the end of Psalm 39: “Look away from me, that I may smile again!” Go and look at someone else.
And then we might say, “Yes—but I’m the one who has sinned, I’m the one who has done wrong, nobody else can be punished for my sins.”
And that, my friend, is where you’re wrong!—because Jesus was made to be sin who knew no sin. If Jesus wasn’t punished for your sins, for whose sins was he punished? He was either punished for your sins, or he was punished for nobody’s sins.
Jesus drank the cup of God’s anger, he was obedient as a slave to the wrath of God, to his anger, to his judgment, so that all that anger and judgment may be removed from us. We are not slaves to God’s anger, we present ourselves as slaves to God’s grace, to his friendliness, to his blessing, to his kindness, to his love. That’s what makes Jesus’ yoke an easy one, and that’s what makes his burden a light one.
And so we present ourselves as slaves to God as the one who looks after us and protects and guides us and shapes us every day. We present ourselves as slaves to Jesus Christ, the obedient Son of God, who died on the cross for us and rose from the dead for us. We present ourselves as slaves to the Holy Spirit who within the Christian Church forgives us our sins and reminds us of Christ’s work for us daily and richly.
And so St Paul finishes this part of our reading today with these words: But now 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. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If you are a slave to the devil, to sin, to the anger of God, then you will get your wages. But eternal life is outside all human wisdom, all reason, all common sense—because it’s not a wage, a reward, but it is a free gift of God. To be a slave to God is to be a receiver of his free gifts.
This is just what is says in the Book of Concord (Ap V 107): “God wishes us to believe Him, and to receive from Him blessings, and this He declares to be true divine service.” We could also put it like this: “God wants us to be a sponge, he wants us to soak up everything that he gives us, he wants us to put our empty hands to receive his sacrament, he wants us to present our deaf ears and our mute mouths so that he can open them. He wants us to preach to us the forgiveness of our sins in all our poverty. He doesn’t want us to earn, to fix, to solve, to labour for our salvation. He wants us to receive it, and he wants to give it to us for free. And when we trust in God’s word and sacraments, then we are his slaves.” And what a joy it is to be this kind of a slave to such a loving master!
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we present our members to you for righteousness. We are ashamed of the many things we have done in presenting ourselves as slaves to sin. Give us your free gift of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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