“Slavery” is such a bad word. We don’t like the word because we see slavery as degrading and an insult to human dignity. Indeed it is, but each of us is a slave. That’s not my opinion; it’s a fact stated by the Holy Spirit of God.
16Don’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? 17But 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. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19I 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. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But 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. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:16-23)
Even though we may not be physical slaves in service to a physical master, we’re slaves to whatever it is that is lord of our life. If your job is your lord, you are a slave to your job. If family if your lord, you are a slave to your family. If Jesus Christ is your Lord, you are, as Paul described, a slave to righteousness.
And that’s the paradox.
I am a slave, yet I am set free! How can this be? Because “Those things [that] result in death” are things that truly ensnare, but “if the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed!” (John 8:36)
And the retirement plan is out of this world!
