Everyone Serves Someone

Paul uses a picture in this passage that he admits is inadequate. He says in verse 19 that he is using a human illustration because of the weakness of our natural selves. The illustration is slavery. He knows it is a hard word. He uses it anyway because there is no gentler one that says what he needs to say: that human beings do not get to choose whether they will serve, only whom.

The argument is plain. You are slaves of the one you obey. If you obey sin, you are sin's slave, and that road ends in death. If you obey God, you are a slave of righteousness, and that road ends in holiness and eternal life. There is no third road where a person serves nobody. The person who imagines themselves free of all masters is usually serving the most dangerous one, which is the self, and the self has never once led anyone to life.

The one idea to carry from this passage is that the Romans had already changed masters. Paul says it in the past tense. You used to be slaves to sin. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. This was not a resolution they made but a transfer that happened to them. Their job now is to live consistently with the transfer, offering the same energy and the same body parts they once gave to impurity to the service of righteousness instead.

The turn toward life is in Paul's pointed question in verse 21. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? It is a question worth answering honestly at the start of a week. Think of the sins that still tempt you and ask what they have ever actually paid. Not what they promised. What they paid. Then set that against what God gives, which is a fruit that leads to holiness and an end that is eternal life. No one who does that accounting carefully wants to go back to the old employer. Serve the one who gives instead of the one who charges.