Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 3. Our Holy Father and Wonderworker Tychon of Amathus (408-50).
Apostles’ Fast.
Romans 6:18-23. Matthew 8:5-13.
Read Romans 6:18-23
Being told that we are “set free from sin” can seem at odds with our experience – we still sin. We may be tempted to lower our expectations and believe that what is being talked about is possible for the saints but not for us.
But the language of freedom from sin that St. Paul uses in today’s epistle reading isn’t language of finality but language of beginning. It isn’t about losing all necessity of dealing with sin, it is about gaining a capacity to grow in righteousness. Whatever we engage in, we get more of – “lawlessness lead(s) to more lawlessness” or “present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness… and the end, everlasting life.”
It is metaphorical language to clue us into what is going on. How do we get wages? We work for them. Sin is like the worst job in the world – we work at it and we get paid with death. But no matter how long we act on the freedom to grow in righteousness, we gratefully find that we can never earn eternal life, that it still comes to us as “the gift of God…in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The essential point is that we are free from so that we can be free to. In Christ, our growth in righteousness is something that can now be freely engaged in without an eternal death sentence hanging over our heads.
The verse immediately preceding our reading reveals the context: those to whom St. Paul is writing “obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which (they) were delivered.” So also us: a healthy, well-informed, persevering engagement with God in the sacraments of confession and communion will enable us to experience holiness in our lives now, “and the end, everlasting life.”