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Not Under Law, but Under Grace

Not Under Law, but Under Grace

1. The rhetorical question that begins this section (shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?) is quite similar to the one in 6:1. In verse 1 the potential error was sinning more to experience more grace, while here it is sinning freely because grace has replaced law. Paul anticipates a possible misunderstanding of his statement in verse 14 that we “are not under law, but under grace.” Some might interpret the absence of law to mean they are free to do whatever they want, and the presence of grace to mean God will understand and forgive whatever they do. People today often have this same low opinion of the seriousness of sin, thinking that forgiveness is easy to obtain. Paul responds as he did in 6:1, By no means! This assumption is terribly wrong.

Once more Paul appeals to a commonly known truth (cf. vv. 3, 6, 9), this time to a frequent occurrence in the ancient world, selling oneself into slavery to avoid debt. It has been estimated that 85–90 percent of the population of Rome and the Italian peninsula either was or had been slaves (Rupprecht 1993:881). So the metaphor here yielded a powerful image. Paul’s point is that if you offer yourselves (the present tense means to do so on a continual basis) to a thing, you become slaves to the one whom you obey. This returns to the earlier discussion of sin as an enslaving power (6:6–7) and adds the point that the mark of slavery is constant obedience. Therefore, to surrender yourself (offer is the same verb as in 12:1, to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices” to God) to the power of sin is to become its slave. The obedience is voluntary and continual and means in effect that you become the willing slave of a sinful lifestyle. Aageson (1996:78–80) points out that the semantic domain of slave here especially centers on the image of sin as the controlling force in one’s life. So Paul challenges his readers to choose their slavery—to sin or to obedience (to God). Which controlling agent do they prefer? His use of obedience rather than God is probably to underscore the ethical responsibility of the believer to obey God rather than sin. There is no choice—everyone is going to be a slave to something, and there are only two possibilities, sin or God. Neutrality is impossible. In fact, to choose neutrality is to choose sin because it constitutes a refusal to serve God. As Moo says (1996:399), “One is never ‘free’ from a master, and those non-Christians who think that they are ‘free’ are under an illusion created and sustained by Satan. The choice with which people are faced is not, ‘Should I retain my freedom or give it up and submit to God?’ but ‘Should I serve sin or should I serve God?’ ”

Moreover, the choice has consequences. To choose sin is to find death, and to choose obedience is find righteousness. Death here is physical death, the current state of being spiritually dead and (mainly) the future experience of eternal death, the “second death” of Revelation 2:11 and 20:6. Righteousness here could be final righteousness, eternal life (so Cranfield 1975; Schreiner 1998) or present life in Christ via justification (Stott 1994) or the right living that is the hallmark of the Christian (Fitzmyer 1993b; Moo 1996). As in the case of death, it is certainly possible that righteousness is comprehensive and embraces all three ideas (Murray 1968)


Osborne, Grant R. Romans. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004. Print. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series.

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