Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Part of our work of sanctification may be helping others be set free from systems that bind

photo of someone pouring water into a mug

Commentary on Romans 6:12-23

Carolyn B. Helsel

With last week’s commentary, we began looking at a potential four-week sermon series on theological understandings of sin from Romans 6–8.

Paul is continuing to address the situation of the Roman church, in which gentiles (non-Jews) were wondering whether they had to be circumcised and otherwise follow the Law in the Torah in order to follow Christ. Paul says no, but that does not mean that gentiles are free to sin.

What does Paul mean by “sin” in this text?

In last week’s passage from the first 11 verses of Romans 6, Paul describes baptism as a way of connecting our new identity in Christ with how we should live: Because we have been baptized with Christ, we have died to sin, and we are raised to the new life that Christ has enabled us to live. Sin is something we have died to, and now through baptism, we have a new way of living.

This week’s reading connects sin with slavery and death, encouraging Christ-followers to become slaves to righteousness, or right living, rather than to sin.

The reason we should not be slaves to sin, Paul says, is that sin leads to death.

We have in verse 23 one of the texts often used in the “Roman Road,” a set of biblical passages used to share the gospel and try to convert another person to Christianity. If you are not familiar with this “Roman Road,” it begins with Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” and then continues with this passage in 6:23, “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” I have seen it shared in pamphlet form with an infographic of a person standing on one cliff edge, unable to cross to the other cliff, which represents God. The gap between cliffs is sin, and what enables the person to cross over is, literally, the cross.

But when used in a manipulative way, such as telling someone they will go to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus, this “Roman Road” is merely a dead-end alley where someone is waiting with a bully club.

Talk of sin should lead to life-giving good news; if it doesn’t, it’s not the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, many people may have experienced one too many conversations in which someone has called them a sinner, so any talk of sin is an instant turn-off. If anyone has ever directed the non-biblical line “Love the sinner, hate the sin” toward you, then you may feel a natural resistance to any kind of sin-talk.

If you are in a denomination that includes a prayer of confession in worship, there is a chance that someone visited your church once and never came back, because they did not like having to confess sins they did not feel responsible for (I have heard this anecdote repeated from two different church pastors after they followed up with one-time visitors).

The reason some churches have corporate (all together) prayers of confession is to name the reality of sin in our lives and receive forgiveness, as part of our worship experience. This relies on an understanding of sin as being bigger than individual acts or moral failings—sin is, rather, the broken state of the world.

Sin is the reality that there are many things that distance humanity from God and one another: things we do on purpose, things we fail to do, as well as larger social realities that reveal the brokenness of the human situation.

Paul speaks here of sin being a kind of slavery, and a kind of death.

How might listeners understand sin as slavery today?

Again, language may create obstacles. Because of the terrible history of human slavery, talking about slavery as a metaphor may feel very off-putting and insensitive. Knowing your congregation will help you discern whether talking about sin as slavery would lead to fruitful conversations on the one hand, or hurt feelings on the other.

But if your congregation feels comfortable using Paul’s metaphor of sin as a kind of slavery, what examples of sin exist for us to talk about? In my book Preaching about Racism, I have a chapter on connecting traditional language of sin such as idolatry, estrangement, and bondage (slavery) to help us understand the ongoing impact of racism.¹

For instance, you may not intentionally hold biases against particular groups of people, but when a person from that group is put up for promotion or to be hired at your organization, maybe you are more hesitant to support them than someone from a background similar to yours. Many of these reactions are subconscious, so they are harder to see in ourselves as racism.

Sin can also be seen in larger systems—things not attributable to one person individually or even to a group of people, but rather to a series of traditions, rules, laws, expectations, cultural attitudes, and financial investments (and lack thereof).

For instance, look at the way our society treats mental illness. Historically, people with mental illness were often judged to be the way they were as a result of sin. While people who are struggling with mental illness can commit crimes, this is by far a small minority of people with mental illness. Still, our society continues to stigmatize mental illness, viewing people through a negative lens, when such people deserve compassion.

But lack of compassion is not the least of the sins committed by our society regarding the mentally ill. The history of abusive psychiatric facilities led to a great defunding of most public mental health services, and with many states not accepting federal Medicaid extensions, these public services are becoming even more scarce. If a person needs help today, they may go to a hospital, only to be turned away because there is no psychiatric bed available. If a person commits a crime during an episode of mental illness, police can commit the person to a psychiatric institution against their wishes, but again, if there are no beds available, the person is often just released back to the streets with no support.

This example of sin is not an easy target of blame. The patterns of defunding public health care services are political in nature, so are voters who support these politicians the sinners? The politicians themselves? The police officers involved? The community who stigmatizes the person who needs help?

Human brokenness and the larger systems we are a part of point to a web of sin in which we are caught. And yet, though we have been “slaves to sin,” Paul declares that we have been set free. Part of our work of sanctification, or the work we do as we live as new creatures in Christ, may be to help others be set free from the systems that continue to bind, as well as to pray for God to free us and to help us see where we can make a difference.