The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost --- 1 July 2017

Happy Canada Day !

Romans 6:12-23

12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. ¹³No 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. ¹⁴For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Do 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? ¹⁷But 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, ¹⁸and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹I 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.

20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. ²²But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. ²³For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

… you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness

·       When we hear the word “slavery”, it brings up any number of horrible ideas in our minds. We might think of forced labour, of long hours in a field with all the fruit of the labour going to a master. We might think of people reduced to the level of things – things to be used and discarded, abandoned, or sold at a whim.

·       Slavery is truly a horrible crime against humanity. As an institution, it has been done away with everywhere we can think of. As a reality however, it exists and it exists around us. In many places, people work long hours for tiny wages under threat of the loss of everything. In this country, as rightly proud as we might be of our freedoms, slavery exists. The corridor from Windsor to Toronto – the 401 – is a known conduit for sex workers, young people brutally enslaved in all but name, many of whom sought an escape from an oppressive home life and found another, deeper oppression.

·       The slavery Paul refers to is rather different. The enslaved person often had a place of trust in a family (as a teacher or manager) or a kingdom (as a minister of state or a high military officer.) Some of these slaves owned property and even owned slaves themselves. The relationship was a two-way street; the slave owed loyalty and work while the master was obligated to take care of the person enslaved to them.

·       When Paul calls for the Roman Christians to be “slaves of righteousness”, it is this sort of reciprocal arrangement he appears to have in mind. He compares slavery to sin and slavery to God and appears to state that slavery to sin brings death while slavery to God and to God’s righteousness carries with it the gift of eternal life through grace and the sanctification it brings.

·       For 21^st Century people in this society, the idea of being a slave is odious; it goes against the grain. We’re free people! We’ve never been slaves to anyone! (If that sounds familiar, see John 8.)

·       In truth, we’ve never experienced life without grace. Most of us here were baptized at an early age and in that, were under the reign of grace even though we have sinned and do sin.

·       What we often confuse is the occurrence of sin in our lives and the slavery to sin that Paul speaks about. We wrestle with ourselves and our nature all our lives long. We remain both justified and sinful for as long as we live. Were it otherwise, we might take credit for it and believe we could save ourselves.

·       What then would be the value of Jesus Christ?

·       Although we struggle with sin, we live under the reign of grace and have become – to use Paul’s words – slaves of righteousness. Paul goes on to say that The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

·       This is what we’ve been promised and this is what we’ve received by faith through grace. Paul says eternal life is the free gift of God, which of course is another way of saying grace.

·       Let’s leave aside the talk of slavery for now. It’s confusing and possibly aggravating. Let’s talk about “service” instead. If we serve ourselves, we know where that will lead. It may look like a good deal, but it leads to death. If we serve God in the best sense – “Love one another as I have loved you.” – that service leads to life and to eternal life in the grace of God. It leads to a life that reaches out to others rather than a life that is turned in on itself. It will lead to opposition and misunderstanding, but it leads ultimately to life. And life is what we all hope for and desire.

·       The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.