Romans 6:16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leds to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.

“I am not anyone’s slave!”  Really?  That’s what we say, what we think.  But we are all slave to something / someone.  

Slaves – doulos = servant, slave – (Lexham Theological Wordbook) a doulos is someone who is a slave and obeys the commands of his or her master.  Like Matthew 8:9 “I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me.  I tell this one, ‘Go’, and he goes, and that one, ‘Come’, and he comes.  I say to my servant, ‘Do this’ and he does it.”

The one to whom we respond when they say ‘go’, ‘do’, ‘come’ that is the one to whom we are a slave.  

Lexham says the idea of a slave carries the sense of belonging.  For Paul “Christ has bought him and owns him”.  

so, this doesn’t happen by accident v16 says “when we offer”. – Then we find ourselves slaves to a master we don’t want, perhaps we even loathe, and we ask, “how did this happen?”  It happened at a moment in time, a moment when …. “when we offer”. Paristemi = to make available, to provide, to present to (Greek English Lexicon) without necessarily involving actual change of ownership.  Oh sometimes we have offered ourselves to one to whom we don’t even belong.  Oh somebody …

And there it is.  It is when we make ourselves available, when we come near, we offer, yield, say “here I am”, when we offer ourselves to someone to obey – hypakoe = to obey, listen to, to heed, to obey

Then you are a slave / servant

Regardless of the master, good or bad.  Regardless of the outcome, holy or sinful.  Regardless of the timetable, eternal or temporal.  In that instant we are slaves to a master.  

Whether slaves to sin or slaves to obedience.  It is an interesting choice of words that the Holy Spirit inspires in Paul, the  one we obey is either sin or obedience.

Wait, I thought who I obey is what determines.  Yes … but if we obey sin, then we are in actuality slaves to DISobedience.  We are obeying disobedience.  “Sin” is the word hamartia which means to “miss the mark” like an arrow missing a target. So, when we become slaves to sin, we are committed to disobedience, we are committed to missing the target.  And Romans 6:23 says that the wage of missing the target is death.  So here it says sin “leads” – eis = markers of a change of state.

“Don’t you know” v 16 begins … this is not inconsequential.  When we offer ourselves to someone it is a marker leading to a change of state  from … to … to … for .

Sin will seek to lead us from freedom to bondage, and from bondage to death.  James says that temptation leads to sin, and sin when fully grown gives birth to death.  

Oh but Jesus says “But I came (Hallelujah) that you might have LIFE”!

WOW, let me stop and shout for a moment! YES LORD!

But if we reject the master that leads us to miss the mark.  If we commit to obedience, to hitting the mark, which is only found in surrender to the justification of Jesus (Rom 3:24) Then Obedience, hearing, listening, taking captive every thought and making it obedient to Christ (2Cor 10:5-6), then we CAN demolish ever pretense, every argument that comes against the knowledge of truth.  Oh satan is a conman.  He will lie to you, offer you 1000s of arguments, and alternate realities, counterfeits, but they are all ways that are committed to missing the target, and they lead to death!

But in Him, Christ, is life and that life is the light of the world.  Walk not in darkness and death.  Walk in the light as he is in the light and we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son, purifies us from all sin … if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:7,9)

So vv17-18 “But thanks be to God that, though we 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.

When we offer … this moment … “Here I am Lord, reveal the righteousness that you have placed within me.”