Schreiner: " In other words, unbelievers are slaves to sin in that they always desire to carry out the dictates of their master."

Rom 6 v 19

19 I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification.

This verse opens an interesting window on the Pauline conception of slavery to sin. Unbelievers are totally subservient to sin as a power that exerts authority over their lives, but the slavery envisioned is not coercion.

People don’t submit to sin against their will. Rather, they “freely” and spontaneously choose to sin. In other words, unbelievers are slaves to sin in that they always desire to carry out the dictates of their master.

This does not mean that those with addictions (e.g., to alcohol, pornography, or gambling) never wish to be freed.

It means that the desire for these things is ultimately greater than the desire to be freed from them.

Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, ed. Robert W. Yarbrough and Joshua W. Jipp, Second Edition., Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic: A Division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 336.

Comments

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

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