Romans 6:16

Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

It would be impossible to frame in English a more dogmatic declaration that faith is not the only thing required for salvation. Paul's extensive writings hitherto in this letter, regarding salvation by faith, may in no sense, therefore, be construed as diminishing or omitting the requirement of obedience in all who hope to be redeemed. Paul's gospel is emphatically that of "the obedience of faith" (Romans 1:5; 16:26) and not, as foolishly thought by some, salvation by "faith alone"; but people are tenacious where their theories are concerned, and thus it remains to soften the impact of a sentence like this. Oh, that is not talking about justification at all, but about sanctification - so the quibble runs; but, so what? Sanctification itself, which is personal holiness, is categorically stated in tones of thunder in the word of God, to be, itself, a quality in the believer's life, "without which no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14)! Thus, as regards the practical question of whether a man is saved or lost, justification and sanctification may indeed be separated in theory and distinguished by this or that shade of meaning; but all such discriminations are distinctions without any difference. The man who is not sanctified to the extent of obeying God rather than Satan has not been justified either, making it an obvious fact that he is never saved without either.

Sin is obedience of the evil one, as contrasted with righteousness, which is obedience of Christ. It is true of all people, even saved, regenerated, Christian people, that if, through exercise of free will, they shall elect to serve the devil, they inevitably become in such transgressions de facto servants of Satan, in exactly the same manner Adam did in the beginning, only with this marked difference: whereas Adam knew of no remedy and enjoyed no hope of forgiveness, the opposite is true of the Christian. This cannot mean, however, that the indulgence of sin has lost any of its dangerous consequences for humanity; because with every sin, with every temptation yielded to, and in every transgression, the spiritual life of the child of God is weakened and eroded, with the ever-existing possibility that. through dalliance with sin, the Christian may become. "entangled therein and overcome" (2 Peter 2:20).