Romans 6:15-16 - Exposition

What then? shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace! God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey (literally, unto obedience ) , his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? This is not a truism, as it would seem to be if it only meant, "whoso servants ye become, his servants ye are." "Ye yield yourselves" ( παριστάνετε , cf. Romans 6:13 ) denotes acts of yielding. "Ye are" ( ἕστε ) denotes condition. The meaning is that by our conduct we show which master we are under; and we cannot serve two ( Matthew 6:24 ; Luke 16:13 ; of. John 8:34 , "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin;" and 1 John 3:7 , "He that doeth righteousness is righteous"). The two incompatible services are here said to be of sin and of obedience, with their respective tendencies or results, death and righteousness. A more exact antithesis to the first clause would have been "of righteousness unto life;" life being the proper antithesis of death, and righteousness being afterwards said, in Romans 6:18 and Romans 6:19 , to be what we ought to be in bondage to. But though the sentence seems thus defective in form, its meaning is plain. ὑπακοῆς means here specifically obedience to God, not obedience to any master as in Romans 6:16 ; and though in English "servants of obedience,'' as though obedience were a master, is an awkward phrase, yet we might properly say, "servants of duty," in opposition to "servants of sin;" and this is what is meant. It may be that the apostle purposely avoided here speaking of believers being slaves of righteousness in the sense in which they had been slaves of sin, because subjection to righteousness is not properly slavery, but willing obedience. He uses the expression, indeed, afterwards ( Romans 6:18 ), but adds at once, ἀνθρώπινον λέγω , etc. (see note on this last expression). Death, "unto" which the service of sin is here said to be, cannot be mere natural death, to which all are subject. Meyer (with Chrysostom, Theophylact, and other ancients) takes it to mean eternal death, as the final result of bondage to sin; δικαιοσύνη , antithetically correlative, being regarded as applying to the time of final perfection of the faithful in the world to come—"the righteousness which is awarded to them in the judgment. " Seeing, however, that the word δικαιοσύνη is used throughout the Epistle to denote what is attainable in this present life, and that θάνατος is often used to express a state of spiritual death, which men may be in at any time (see additional note on Romans 6:12 ; and cf. Romans 7:9 , Romans 7:10 , Romans 7:13 , Romans 7:24 ; Romans 8:6 , Romans 8:13 ; also John 5:24 ; 1 John 3:14 ), it is at least a question whether the final doom of the last judgment is here at all exclusively in the apostle's view.