Fourth Sunday after Pentecost; The Holy Martyr Julian of Tarsus.
Apostle’s Fast.
Romans 6:18-23; 8:28-39; Matthew 8:5-13; 5:1-16.
Read Romans 6:18-23
It feels horrible to be ripped off. Whether it is a used car, a non-returnable item, or an online purchase, we experience a sinking feeling when we find we’re stuck with something we don’t want. The feeling is even worse if we’ve been scammed. Then, it is not just that something has been done to us but that we’ve been tricked into actively participating in our own loss.
Paul uses that experience as an analogy to clarify not only what we have been set free from, but what we have been set free for. How devastating if in the end we realize that, having been freed from sin by the gift of eternal life, we have all along been actively working for sin, whose wages is death.
Paul apologizes for this crude analogy of slavery applied to our relationship with God. He explains that he is trying to meet his readers where they are at by communicating in this way. The comparison has its limits – slaves are not free to exercise their own will; we still have the God-given dignity of free will. And it is a mixed metaphor – he combines slavery and working for wages in the same analogy. But the point is made with penetrating effectiveness: sin and sanctification have incompatible goals. We have been given the free gift of God – eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord – so that we can apply ourselves to the activity – sanctification – that has eternal life as its goal. This is a wakeup call to come out of any self deception we may harbor that some “impurity and greater and greater iniquity” is somehow compatible with eternal life and to quit that literal dead-end job of working for sin.