Freedom That Actually Frees: Choosing Your Master (Romans 6:15–23)
Most of us love the sound of grace—until we realize how easily we can twist it. If God forgives freely, if Jesus really paid for all our sin, then doesn’t that mean we can relax about holiness? Doesn’t grace mean “no rules”?
Paul knew people would think that way, so he asks the question bluntly: “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” And then he answers just as bluntly: “By no means!” (Romans 6:15). Not because Paul is trying to drag us back into legalism, but because he understands what grace actually does to a person. Grace doesn’t just wipe your record clean—it changes your ownership.
# You Will Serve Someone
Paul uses a picture that lands close to home: slavery. “When you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey” (Romans 6:16). In other words, your obedience reveals your master.
That’s confronting, but also clarifying. Paul says there are only two masters:
- Sin, “which leads to death”
- Obedience to God, “which leads to righteousness” (Romans 6:16)
There isn’t a third option where you belong to no one and simply “do your own thing.” Everyone is being shaped by something. Everyone is obeying someone—whether it’s desires, approval, comfort, ambition, lust, bitterness, or the living God.
And here’s the key: becoming a Christian isn’t merely agreeing with a set of beliefs. It’s a transfer of loyalty. Paul thanks God that believers “wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted” (Romans 6:17). That’s not perfection, but it is a real change: a new direction, a new allegiance, a new “yes” in the soul.
# The Lie of “Freedom from Righteousness”
Paul describes the old life as a kind of freedom: “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness” (Romans 6:20). That sounds attractive—no boundaries, no accountability, no need to ask, “What does God say?”
But Paul asks a piercing question: “What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of?” (Romans 6:21). That question is meant to wake us up. Sin always advertises freedom, but it pays in shame, emptiness, and eventually death. It promises life and delivers less and less of it.
And sin doesn’t stay still. Paul describes it as “ever increasing wickedness” (Romans 6:19). That’s what makes sin such a cruel master: it always asks for more. More secrecy. More compromise. More numbness. More justification. Until you look up and realize you’re not as free as you thought—you’re trapped.
# The Better Master and the Upward Spiral
Then comes one of the most hope-filled phrases in the passage: “But now…” (Romans 6:22). Something has changed. God has “set [you] free from sin” and brought you into His service. And yes, Paul still uses the word “slave,” because Christianity isn’t independence—it’s belonging. But this is belonging to a Master who heals instead of harms.
The result is completely different: “The benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6:22). Holiness here isn’t sterile rule-keeping; it’s becoming whole. It’s the slow, steady restoration of a person into what they were made to be—someone who loves God with heart, soul, mind, and strength (Mark 12:30), and whose life begins to look like Jesus.
So here’s a practical question to carry into your week: when temptation shows up, don’t only ask, “Is this allowed?” Ask, “Who am I serving right now?” Because your small choices are never just small choices—they’re acts of loyalty.
Paul ends with words many of us have memorized, but we should feel their weight again: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Sin pays. God gives. And grace doesn’t lead you to care less about obedience—it gives you a new Master worth obeying from the heart.
Homepage teaser: Grace doesn’t mean sin doesn’t matter—it means you’ve been set free from a cruel master to belong to a better One.
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