Slaves of Righteousness

Part 1

9^th November 2013

A few weeks ago I started thinking and writing about our status as slaves of God, working from the first verse of Paul's letter to the Romans:

Romans 1:1
Paul, a servant [Greek doulos: slave] of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God

Later in the same letter, Paul says this:

Romans 6v15-16
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

To be "not under law but under grace" means that our relationship with God and our eternal destiny are not determined not by how good we are, but by God's kindness to us in sending Jesus to die for our sins, and giving us the ability to believe in the power of His atoning sacrifice. To put that another way, our standing before God is not based on our own actions, but on our God-given faith in the blood of Jesus.

On the day of judgement, God will judge us all. Everybody will have to give an account for how they've lived. Anybody who hasn't accepted God's forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus's redeeming blood, and made the decision to follow and obey God, will have to depend on his own good life and total purity, which means he'll be doomed. But a Christian will point to the cross. His defence before God will be that Jesus has already paid for his sins, and he'll be welcomed into the eternal dwellings with God for ever.

As Paul explains in verses 1-14, this doesn't mean we can take advantage of God's kindness to us, by sinning more and more and asking God to keep on forgiving us. Paul says in that passage that every real Christian has died with Christ, and we should consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, as symbolised and blessed in our baptism.

We could make the mistake of thinking that sinful people are just the ones who get involved in dramatic stuff like drugs, prostitution and gunfights. But there's a lot of sin in sleepy suburbs, too. Sin is just as much about godlessness and selfishness and pride than about wrong sex and violence. Isn't it a terrible sin to refuse to acknowledge our creator and give thanks to him? To care more about getting what we want, or even about appearing to be the person we want people to think we are, than about what other people need? To make an idol of our career, or our hobby, or our car, or our home, or our pet, or our family, and put them above the Lord our God? To ignore our parents? To want things that belong to others? To hurt others so we can feel important, by gossiping, or criticising, or bullying or ignoring them?

Such things are habit-forming. We become their Slave. If we indulge them, we get to a point where we can't stop. That's not just true of alcohol or cigarettes or drugs. It's true of losing our temper, or eating too much, or gossip, or lying. We can be enslaved by sinful habits, whether they be pornography, or boasting, or talking so much that others can't get a word in, or resentment, or laziness, or just the habit of doing what we like, rather what's best for others.

And habitual sin leads to death. Jesus came to save us from death by forgiving our sins and cleansing us from them. How can we choose to be enslaved by sin again? If we ever put our faith in Jesus, it was because we hate our sin, and what it does to us, and to others, and we want to live better lives.

The difference between a servant and a slave is that a slave belongs to his master. He can be called upon at any time by his master, and must do whatever his master tells him. Paul says that either we're open to God's call at any time, or we're open to sin's call at any time, either we obey God or we obey sin, either we belong to God or we belong to sin. Remember that selfishness and laziness are just as sinful as adultery or violence.

We might like to think we can just be free from sin, and live for ourselves. But living for ourselves is just about the best definition of sin I can think of. To live for myself is to be totally selfish. To live according to my own ideas about what is right and wrong is to ignore God and what He has to teach us. It's total rebellion against our creator. Isn't it?

The only alternative to being a slave to sin is being a slave to obedience, a slave to righteousness, a slave to God. And if we have truly repented and believed in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that's what we are:

Romans 6v17-18
But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.