October 2018: TRANSCTIPT

Romans Class SRL, Medellin

1) ON VERSES 15-16: What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom

you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?
a) Paul anticipates objection: If not under law, but grace, don’t restraints become non-existent? By no means!
b) By no means! the highly negative and emotionally charged expression, “Certainly not!” (μὴ γένοιτο)1
c) Richard Longenecker:Paul uses the analogy of the institution of slavery by way of contrasting
i) (1) “enslavement to impurity that leads to ever-increasing wickedness,” which people always
experience in their commitment to the world apart from God, and
ii) (2) “enslavement to righteousness that leads to holiness,” which Christians experience in their
commitment to God through the person and work of Jesus Christ
iii) Paul was attempting to reach for Christ in the Greco-Roman world of his day.
iv) Likewise, it would have been understood by Paul’s Christian addressees at Rome.
(1) For slavery was not only a practice condoned within Greco-Roman society, but also an institution
legally protected.
(2) It is estimated that slaves accounted for more than one-third of the population of the Roman
Empire, and were from three to five times more numerous than Roman citizens; slaves and former
slaves (“freedmen”) constituted the majority of the population
v) Seneca the Younger (c. 4 b.c.–a.d. 65), the Roman Stoic philosopher, speaks of the defeat in the Roman
Senate of legislation to compel slaves to wear a particular type of clothing to distinguish them from
free men because it was feared that slaves would then recognize how large and powerful a group they
were, and so might revolt2
d) Calvin John (vs. 16) “If you be servants, then of course sin has the dominion.”
i) It is God alone, to whose authority consciences ought to be subject.
ii) Obedience then, though the name of God is suppressed, is yet to be referred to him, for it cannot be a
divided obedience.3
e) Repeatedly Paul anticipates objections. Freedom from the law does not translate into freedom from God.
i) It is not hard to imagine Paul saying to his kinship as R.C. Sproul would say, knowing his listeners
were wrong about what they saying or thinking, he would say something like, “What’s the matter with
you people, what were you thinking.”
f) Freedom from the Law does not mean freedom from God but freedom for (toward) God.”
g) Sproul, R.C. Sometimes Paul has a marvelous way of stating the obvious. If I yield myself as a slave to
God, then what am I? I am a slave of God.

1
Longenecker, R. N. (2016). The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (I. H. Marshall &
D. A. Hagner, Eds.) (p. 619). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
2
Longenecker, R. N. (2016). The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text. (I. H. Marshall &
D. A. Hagner, Eds.) (pp. 619–620). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
3
Calvin, J., & Owen, J. (2010). Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (p. 235).
Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
 i) If I bow before God, that makes me a slave of God.
ii) If, on the other hand, I yield myself to sin, then that obviously makes me a slave of sin.
iii) Remember in the very first verse of this letter, how Paul identified himself: ‘
(1) Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ.’ The very first thing that Paul said about himself after he gave his
name.
(2) The conclusion is clear: whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience,
which leads to righteousness? (verse 16b).
(3) ‘Sin which leads to death’ or ‘obedience which leads to righteousness’ are the only options:
(4) Either serve sin, and if you do you are doomed to death, or you serve obedience, in which case you
will be moving towards righteousness.4
2) ON VERSES 17-19: But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from
the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have
become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For
just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness,
so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
a) Moo, D. J: (17) “παρεδόθητε” “to which you were committed” ESV, “delivered” NKJV: The verb “hand
over” might connote the transfer of a slave from one master to another—an image appropriate to this
paragraph. Paul wants to make clear that becoming a Christian means being placed under the authority of
Christian “teaching,” that expression of God’s will for NT believers. The new convert’s “obedience” to
this teaching is the outgrowth of God’s action27 in “handing us over” to that teaching when we were
converted.5
b) Morris, Leon: (18) Christians have been set free from sin, liberated permanently from their taskmaster.
(1) Sin no longer has dominion. Freedom is an important category that Paul uses more than any other
New Testament writer.
(2) He can speak of Christians as being free from “the law of sin and death” (8:2), or from sin (v. 22),
and of creation as being freed from “its bondage to decay” (8:21),
(3) Often he simply speaks of freedom: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). People
were in the grip of tyrants like sin and death and decay.
ii) The freedom there is in Christ is so liberating that slavery to men matters little beside it.
iii) For him freedom in Christ is not an invitation to splendid self-centeredness.
iv) The freed in Christ have become slaves to righteousness. They are not aimless, purposeless.
v) They have been freed from sin in order that they may give themselves over wholly to worthwhile
causes,6
c) Sproul, R.C. Sin breeds sin, which breeds sin, which breeds sin. Sanctification is the goal of our Christian
life, and the more we yield ourselves in obedience to righteousness, the more that righteousness brings
about holiness.7

4
Sproul, R. C. (1994). The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (pp. 115–116). Great Britain: Christian
Focus Publications.
5
Moo, D. J. (1996). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 401). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
6
Morris, L. (1988). The Epistle to the Romans (pp. 263–264). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B.
Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.
7
Sproul, R. C. (1994). The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (p. 117). Great Britain: Christian Focus
Publications.
3) ON VERSES 20-21: 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But
what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those
things is death.
a) Calvin, John: (20) the liberty of the flesh, so frees us from obedience to God, that it makes us slaves to
the devil.8
b) And most do not understand this.
c) Moo, D. J: (20) As “slaves to sin,” people are “free” from conduct that pleases God.9
d) Morris, Leon: (21) Paul is inquiring what significant result had followed from their living in those evil
ways of which they are now ashamed. The end of those things, he emphasizes, is death. We should not
miss the force of his now. While they were the slaves of sin they were not ashamed of those things (cf.
Jer. 8:12). To be without shame is a mark of the sin-dominated life. But when they became Christians they
came to see sin for the evil thing it is and their past deeds for the shameful things they were.10
e) Sproul, R.C. Think back, O Christian, to your non-Christian days: what kind of fruit did you have? You
can only be ashamed of the style and character of your life when you were a servant to sin. 11
4) ON VERSES 22-23: 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the
fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift
of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
a) Moo, D. J: Two situations are parallel. Once “slaves of sin” and “free with respect to righteousness” (v.
20), Christians have been “set free from sin” and “enslaved to God.”
i) But Paul’s focus in this verse, is on the results of that past “transfer “you have your fruit leading to
sanctification. The fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
ii) “Life,” while it begins for the believer at the moment of conversion (cf. 6:4 and 8:6), is not granted in
its full and final form until “that which is mortal is swallowed up by life” (2 Cor. 5:4).
b) Morris, Leon: Eternal life is not a reward for services rendered. There is no element of pay or requital.
i) Eternal life comes as God’s free gift or it does not come at all.
ii) Paul rounds this off by saying that this life is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In 5:21 eternal life is “through”
Christ; here it is “in” him. It is doubtful whether we should try to draw too hard a distinction between
the two; both insist on the fact that eternal life is bound up with the person and the work of Christ.12
c) Sproul, R.C. Servants of sin earn wages; they get what they deserve. But eternal life in Jesus Christ our
Lord is a gift from God. A gift cannot be purchased, a gift cannot be earned, a gift cannot be merited. It is
something that God gives freely.13

8
Calvin, J., & Owen, J. (2010). Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (p. 241).
Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
9
Moo, D. J. (1996). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 406). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
10
Morris, L. (1988). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 266). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B.
Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.
11
Sproul, R. C. (1994). The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (p. 117). Great Britain: Christian Focus
Publications.
12
Morris, L. (1988). The Epistle to the Romans (p. 267). Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B.
Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press.
13
Sproul, R. C. (1994). The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans (p. 118). Great Britain: Christian Focus
Publications.