 |  |
A
|
a
| Servants of sin.
b | Free from righteousness.
B | c | Fruit of shame.
d | End - death.
A
|
b | Free from sin.
a | Servants to God.
B | c | Fruit unto holiness.
d | End - aionian life.
Here again we find aionian life related to service and fruit, a very distinct conception,
and not to be summarily swept aside by a generalizing of the subject in favour of the one
aspect presented by John's Gospel. It must not be forgotten that the oft-quoted verse
(Rom. 6: 23), commences with "for", and is a direct conclusion of the argument that has
occupied the better part of the chapter.
The apostle speaks of our state by nature as being a condition of service; he speaks of
the past time of our lives in the words, "ye were the servants of sin", and contrasts that
service with the present, "being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of
righteousness". The service of sin is "unto death" (16), "the end of those things is death"
(21); so in verse 23, the figure of the servant and his wages is used, "for the wages of sin
is death, but the grace gift of God is aionian life through Jesus Christ our Lord". The
argument that is often developed from this verse (by taking it out of its context), while
indeed truth, is not the truth that the apostle is here teach. The verse is often used in
gospel preaching, the first statement being used as the basis of the teaching concerning
the condition of the unsaved, the second as the setting forth of the grace of God in the
gospel. This, however, is rather outside the scope of Romans 6: The doctrine of
justification by faith and the question of salvation has been dealt with in the first five
chapters of the epistle; Rom. 6: passes on to consider the question of the new life, and
the new service (6: 4; 7: 6), and here the apostle presents the believer with the
alternative services, sin or righteousness. "Know ye not", says the apostle to these
believers, "that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to
whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness"? It is a
question of "yielding"; "neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness
unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God". The "end" of one service was death, or, as
verse 23 puts it, "wages"; the "end" of the other is life, or as the same verse puts it, "the
grace gift". No service that a believer renders earns anything. Rom. 12: 1 speaks of the
yielding of our bodies a living sacrifice as but our reasonable service. Each one of us
must realize, as we contemplate our utmost effort, that after all we are "unprofitable
servants", and if the Lord has been pleased to promise a recognition of such service it
must be taken as an act of grace. Rom. 8: 13 speaks very solemnly to the believer in
relation to this question of life and death, which is somewhat parallel to the reference in
Gal. 6: 8.
This passage in Galatians is the next in order of occurrence, and the context will be
found to speak of service and work:--
"Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone,
and not in another, for every man shall bear his own burden."