Freed From, Freed For

Freedom from Pharaoh was never freedom from every master.

That is where the last chapter left us.

One reader hears the word master and thinks immediately of the sin he has fought again this week. The temptation returned. The old desire still knew his name. He yielded where he meant to resist, came back ashamed, and now wonders whether the old master ever truly lost his claim.

Another reader hears the same word and resents it. He is willing to say that Christ freed him from guilt. He is less willing to say that Christ may now claim his body, interrupt his habits, direct his money, govern his speech, or contradict what he wants. He understands freedom as the right to belong only to himself.

The first man mistakes continuing conflict for continuing dominion. The second mistakes freedom from sin for freedom from every lordship.

Paul allows neither mistake.

The gospel does not free a man so that no one may claim him. It frees him from the master that paid him in shame and death, and brings his actual life beneath the gracious rule of God.

The question now is not whether the old master still calls.

It is at whose disposal your life is being placed.

Freedom Has a Direction

Paul speaks to people for whom sin's dominion has been broken, and still gives them a command:

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”
— Romans 6:12

The command itself tells us something important. Sin still presses for rule. The mortal body still knows desires that can be obeyed. A real believer can be tempted, can struggle, and can yield where he should have stood.

But pressure is not dominion. The presence of a claimant is not proof that the claimant still rules. Two verses later Paul says:

“For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”
— Romans 6:14

Let not sin reign.
Sin shall not have dominion.

Nor does being under grace turn freedom into permission. Paul asks, “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?” His answer is immediate: “God forbid” (Romans 6:15).

Scripture holds the command and the promise together. It does not call temptation freedom, but neither does it call temptation mastery. It does not rename a fall as harmless, but neither does it tell the repentant believer that a fall has made Christ's advocacy disappear. John still writes, “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

If you have failed and brought the failure into the light, do not add a second lie to the first by saying the old master must still own you. Confess without minimizing. Receive mercy without pretending. Rise without making your rising the price of being received.

Then listen to the positive command Paul places between the warning and the promise:

“Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.”
— Romans 6:13

Paul begins with the whole person: yield yourselves unto God. Then he becomes particular: your members as instruments of righteousness.

The body is not an irrelevant shell surrounding a salvation kept somewhere safely inside. Paul says elsewhere that the believer is not his own, but has been bought with a price; therefore God is to be glorified in the body (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Divine ownership reaches what your eyes watch, what your mouth says, where your hands go, what your appetites receive, and what your strength is spent doing.

The instrument in Paul's picture is not something lying at a safe distance from the servant. The member itself is the instrument. The hand, the mouth, the eye, the mind, the body—the freed servant places that faculty at the new Master's disposal.

This is not another payment for liberation. Paul does not tell the Romans to present themselves so that God might consider freeing them. He addresses them “as those that are alive from the dead.” Grace has acted. Therefore the living answer.

Freedom has a direction.

Paul presses the matter further:

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

But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.

Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”
— Romans 6:16–18

Present yielding is not neutral. It takes direction from a voice and places something in that voice's service. This does not mean one frightened or grievous act of disobedience settles the whole identity of a person. Peter's denial has already kept us from saying that. It does mean we cannot make allegiance irrelevant by calling every act isolated while continually making the same member available to the same master.

Notice where Paul gives thanks. He does not congratulate the Romans for manufacturing a new life. God be thanked. Their obedience was real—“from the heart”—but the glory did not move from grace to the servant. They had been made free. Their heart-obedience was the response of people upon whom God had acted.

Paul knows that master-and-servant language can be mishandled. He pauses to say, “I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh” (Romans 6:19). God is not another Pharaoh beneath a holier name. Sin degrades the people it uses. God frees the people He claims. Sin takes the members into uncleanness and deeper iniquity. God receives them into righteousness and holiness.

These are not equal masters offering different preferences. They produce different fruit, and they end in different places.

Paul first says, “For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness” (Romans 6:20). That was not autonomy. It was a life in which righteousness had no claim upon their service.

Paul asks the Romans what fruit they had in the things of which they were now ashamed, then answers, “for the end of those things is death” (Romans 6:21). The old service had not made them free. It had used them, shamed them, and carried them toward the wage it always pays.

Then comes the other direction:

“But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
— Romans 6:22–23

Sin pays wages. God gives a gift.

Do not reverse those words. Holiness does not turn eternal life into a wage. Presenting your members to God does not put Him in your debt, improve Christ's blood, or keep a completed justification from expiring. Eternal life remains “the gift of God” through Jesus Christ our Lord.

But neither does the gift make the fruit meaningless. Paul places freedom, service, fruit, holiness, and everlasting life in one sentence because the gift creates a life that has a direction. The fruit does not purchase the freedom. It makes the service recognizable.

This is where Romans 6 speaks directly to assurance.

Do not look at your yielding as though it were the foundation beneath Christ. It is not. Do not ask whether you have presented every member perfectly since the day you first believed. You have not. Do not measure life by the emotional force of your surrender. A dry, trembling act of obedience is still obedience.

Ask whether Christ's claim is still received. When a member has been yielded wrongly, does the failure come into the light? Can His word still name it? Does mercy bring that member back to His service rather than make peace with its absence?

Weak, renewed yielding does not earn life. It may reveal that life is there.

At Whose Disposal?

There is, however, another way to use weakness.

A man may say that God owns him generally while keeping one part of himself in reserve. Christ may have his Sunday words, but not the speech he uses to wound his family. Christ may have his public profession, but not what his eyes repeatedly seek in secret. Christ may have the language of forgiveness, but not the resentment he feeds when no one is listening. Christ may have his soul, as he imagines it, but not his body, his money, his appetite, or his time.

That is not merely an imperfect servant grieving over clumsy service. It is a claimed servant marking one instrument unavailable whenever the Master reaches for it.

The issue is not that the temptation returned or that the battle has lasted longer than you expected. The issue is what happens when Christ lays claim to the contested place. Do you confess what you did? Do you receive correction? Do you remove what keeps supplying the sin, tell the truth to someone who can help you, and place the member back before God? Or have you begun explaining why this part of your life must remain outside His command?

Romans does not let us answer only with a general profession. “To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey.” The question reaches the actual member and asks where it is being placed.

So choose one.

Not every struggle you have ever known. Not every command you may face for the rest of your life. One faculty, habit, or sphere of conduct that you know has been made available to sin.

Name it honestly before God. Then present it to Him with a concrete act of righteousness.

If it requires confession, confess. If access keeps feeding the sin, remove the access. If another person has been harmed, tell the truth and make what restitution you can. If secrecy has protected the practice, bring another faithful believer near enough to ask you questions. If your mouth has been withheld, speak the true and merciful word. If your hand has refused the good before it, do the good.

Do not present it as payment for freedom or as maintenance of Christ's gift. Present it because you have been made free from sin and become a servant to God. Place the member at His disposal.

What part of yourself are you still treating as yours to withhold from the One who freed you?

Freedom has a direction.

The freed now belong to a new Master, and they present themselves for His service. But servants of righteousness are still unfinished people. How does grace teach them to deny the old life and practice the new one while they wait for Christ?

That is where the next chapter begins.

Up Next:

Grace That Trains, Not Just Grace That Covers (Chapter 12)