A Slave to What?

In the sixth and seventh chapters of Romans Paul discusses the issue of slavery. He suggests that we are all slaves to either sin or righteousness. “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 leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness.” (6:16) “You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.” (6:18)

He puts it in a slightly different way later in the chapter. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. (6:22)

In a previous passage Paul discussed the contrast between being under law and under grace. The law of God is a factor in both conditions, but the contrast is in two different relationships to the law, the obligation to obey it in your own strength, and the internalization of it, obeying through the power of the Spirit.

Basically the same contrast is in view in these chapters. The law has a role in being a slave to sin in that it defined what sin was. Without the law, there is no concept of sin, no standard of behavior. In discussing this side of the issue, Paul says some things that have been taken by some interpreters to imply that the law is no longer a standard to be aspired to. “So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.” (7:4) “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” (7:6)

With Paul saying that “you died to the law… (that) once bound us, we have been released from the law…”, it’s no wonder that in the second century Christianity was able to find supposed biblical support for its new anti-Torah theology. It seems that Paul is discussing the same dichotomy he was earlier when he was not “under law”, but also not free from God’s law. (cp. I Cor. 9:20-21)

In Romans chapter seven he goes on to emphatically state the positives of the law so that we don’t get the mistaken impression that we can ignore it. “What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not!” (7:7) “So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.” (7:12) “We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.” (7:14) “I agree that the law is good.” (7:16)

This string of affirmations by Paul seems to be given as a caution so that his readers don’t get the wrong impression from what he said previously. The earlier mentions of the law seem to be in connection with the definition of sin and being a slave to sin. Paul elucidates this in 7:13. “Did that (the law) which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful.”

So it was actually sin, as defined by the law, that brought death, not the law itself. And when Paul says, “you died to the law”, he’s talking about the relationship to the law of obligation to obey it in his own strength, as was the case under the “old covenant”.

Paul seems to give us his ultimate conclusion at the end of chapter seven. “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law.” (7:22) “So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (7:25)

Paul, and each one of us, can choose to be a slave to the “law” of sin, or to God’s law. Which one will you choose?