What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 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? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 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. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 6:15-23

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary tells us that a slave is “one that is completely subservient to a dominating influence.” When Paul speaks of slavery to sin, this tells us that the will is dominated by and subservient to the influence of sin. He also speaks of slavery to righteousness, which would mean that the will is dominated by and subservient to God. This slavery has the benefit of holiness, and the result of eternal life. Slavery to sin only produces death.

Why does Paul use the imagery of slavery here? I think it is because the one thing that God has given us that he has fixed beyond his control is our will. He has given us the freedom to choose our master—but we will be mastered! Either sin will dominate us, or we will yield ourselves back to the one who gave us life. There is no middle ground for whenever we remove our wills from submission to God we immediately fall back under the bondage of the sinful nature we inherited from Adam.

Even Jesus found himself in a place of trouble where he had to cry to God, “Not my will, but yours be done.” The writer of Hebrews says that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. Have you said that you want to be like Jesus? We must heed his words that have been passed on to us through his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”