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8. SLAVES TO RIGHTEOUSNESS

Paul’s imagery of death with respect to sin (‘died to sin’) gives way to another imagery: slavery (6:15-23). As we know it, slavery was a common way of life in the Roman world in Paul’s time. It has been estimated that almost one-fifth of the population in Rome were slaves (Everett Ferguson, Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 56-58). Per Ferguson, a slave was a ‘thing’ - ‘a living tool and the tool a lifeless slave’ (Nicomachean Ethics 8:11) - with ‘no legal rights and was subject to the absolute power of the master’. Slaves lacked four fundamental rights of freedom: the right of self-representation in legal matters, the right of protection from illegal seizure, the right of freedom to work in a place of choice, and the right of freedom of movement. Everything a slave could have depended on the master who had absolute control over him. However, a slave could hope to buy himself out of his condition through the saving of enough funds from the peculium, ‘money or property that legally remained in the possession of the owner but was available to the slaves for their own use’. Thus it was that many slaves were set free and became freedmen when they were able to buy themselves out.

It is most likely that these matters of control and freedom in slavery weighed in Paul’s mind when he wrote to the Romans of how they had been ‘set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness’ (6:18). To Paul’s mind, the Romans were ‘slaves to sin’ (6:16, 17). They had ‘to offer the parts of [their] body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness’ (6:19). Their master was sin. They had to obey every dictate and whim of sin. This slavery to sin could only lead to one result - death (v. 21).

Fortunately, for the Romans, an interruption to their slavery in sin took place. The gospel of Jesus Christ was preached to them and they ‘whole-heartedly obeyed the form of teaching’ (6:17) which brought them salvation, justification and righteousness (1:16-17; 3:21-26). Thus, because of the interposition of the gospel, the Romans were ‘set free from sin’ and in the process they became ‘slaves to righteousness’ (6:18). Though they remained as ‘slaves’ they had undergone a change of masters. Where previously they had to serve ‘impurity’ and ‘wickedness’ which could only result in death; now they served God and righteousness, which actually led to holiness and eternal life (6:22).

Paul in Romans 7:1-6 next explicates more thoroughly his ‘not under law, but under grace’ statement in 6:14. In this explication, Paul uses the illustration of marriage to show that when a person ‘died to the law’ he is no longer under the authority (control) of the law. For the second time in the epistle, Paul addresses his Roman Christian readers as ‘brothers’ (v. 1; see 1:13) and rhetorically asks them ‘Do you not know...’ which is qualified with the declaration: ‘for I am speaking to men who know the law’. In making the qualification, Paul is not only emphasising the fact that he is addressing the Jewish Christians; but at the same time, he is making it clear to them that what he is about to say is easily understandable by them for they ‘know the law’. There is extant a Rabbinic principle developed from Ps. 88:6 that ‘[i]f a person has died, he has become free from the Torah and from fulfilling the commandments’ (Peter Stuhlmacher, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 1994:102).

Paul is using this principle and the marriage illustration to impress upon any Jewish Christian laggers who may not have properly understood the change in their obligations when they obeyed Jesus Christ. Probably, there are still some who believe that they must still observe the law when in fact they have been released from such an obligation the moment they pledged faith allegiance to Jesus Christ. The illustration from marriage is based on Jewish law - the husband has the right to divorce the wife if he finds any fault in her (see Deut. 24:1), but not vice versa. The wife is bound by law to remain in the marriage without any recourse to annul the marriage. She is freed from the marriage only upon the death of her husband. When released in such a manner, she is free to marry another man and she will not be called an adulteress (7:2-3).

Paul then drives home the point: ‘you died to the law’ through the body of Christ (7:4). This is a throwback to what he had discussed in 6:1-14 in relation to baptism. In baptism, the ‘old self’, ‘the body of sin’, died (6:6). This in effect ‘killed’ the law because the law ‘weakened’ by the human ‘sinful nature’ (8:3) can only arouse or awaken the sinful passions (7:5; 7-11). In this manner, it can be said of a Jewish believer in Christ that he has ‘died to the law’. Released from the law, the baptised believer is now at liberty to ‘marry’ another ‘husband’ without being guilty of ‘adultery’, so to speak. In real speak, the Jew can conscientiously leave ‘the old way of the written code’ (the law) and go on to serve ‘the new way of the Spirit’ (see chapter 8) because he is ‘not under law, but under grace’.

Archive
The Romans Series
1. Being the Community of God’s People
2. Ethno-Religious Tensions
3. The Power and the Wrath of God
4. Justification by Faith
5. Justification Brings Blessings
6. While We Were Still Sinners
7. Died to Sin
8. Slaves to Righteousness
9. The Difference of the Spirit
10. The Israel Problem
11. The Gentile Problem
12. Community Living
13. Community Unity
14. Community Ethics
15. Loving the Enemy Ethic
16. Extra-Community Ethics
17. The Weak and the Strong
18. Community Formation
19. Paul, the Minister
20. Gems in Greetings

Articles on The Da Vinci Code, Gnosticism and
the Gospel of Judas
1. The Da Vinci Code: A Christian Response
2. The Nag Hammadi Documents and Gnosticism
3. The Gospel of Judas
4. The Gospel of Judas - A Retake
5. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 1)
6. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 2)
7. Teachings in the Gospel of Judas Compared (Part 3)
8. Canonicity and the Gospel of Judas

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