Romans 6:12-23 (NRSV)
Read Romans 6:12-23 on biblegateway.com
Verse 12Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Verse 13No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. Verse 14For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. Verse 15What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Verse 16Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? Verse 17But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, Verse 18and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. Verse 19I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. Verse 20When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Verse 21So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. Verse 22But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. Verse 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Devotion
It’s tempting, perhaps especially for Lutherans, to dismiss Romans with yawning familiarity. Why bother with all this tedious argumentation? Won’t a nice summary suffice? Isn’t saying “justification by grace through faith” good enough for us?
To be sure, there’s a functional equivalence with our summary. But I’m startled by the energy, the stakes, the passion of Paul’s account.
Here’s one of our own, Soren Kierkegaard, trying to reconcile our familiar formulations with God’s “extra words.” “Yes, to be sure it is crazy. It is true Lutheranism, too – indeed, it is Christianity,” he says. “Christianity’s demand is this: your life, exerted to the limit, should express works. One thing more is demanded, that you humble yourself and confess: ‘But for all that I am saved by grace.’”
Prayer
Jesus Christ, you freed me from sin, death and the power of the devil – not with silver or gold, but with your holy and precious blood and innocent suffering and death. Forgive my self-protective summaries. Amen.