Commentary on Romans 6.3–6.6

“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, you are servants of the one whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? But thanks be to God that you were servants of sin, but you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over. And being freed from sin, you became servants of righteousness.” The wording may perhaps seem less complete where he says, “You are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness,” since reason would have required it to be said: “You are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin or of righteousness, through obedience.” But in one who freely professes himself unskilled in speech, I think it superfluous to look for the art of arranging words, when the sense is plain.

This, then, is what the Apostle teaches in this place: that each one has it in his own hand and in the power of his choice to be the servant either of sin or of righteousness. For to whichever side he inclines his obedience, and whichever side he is willing to obey, that side claims him as its servant. In this, as I said, he shows without any hesitation that freedom of choice is in us. For it is in us to offer our obedience either to righteousness or to sin. But no one “can serve two masters at once,” sin and righteousness. “For either he will hate the one,” namely sin, “and love the other,” that is, righteousness; or he will endure the one, namely sin, and despise the other, that is, righteousness. Like this, then, is what the Apostle said: “You are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin or of righteousness.” And what is said, “Everyone who commits sin is a servant of sin,” looks to this, although he did not add, “And everyone who does righteousness is a servant of righteousness.” Someone else will perhaps think it was left out so that it should be understood, as it were, from what follows. But to me it seems deliberately not added. For it was not fitting to say that everyone who does righteousness is a servant of righteousness. For God himself also does righteousness, and he cannot on that account be called a servant of righteousness, but the Lord of righteousness. Not everyone, then, who does righteousness is a servant of righteousness in the way that everyone who commits sin is a servant of sin. For the devil himself is without doubt a servant of sin, since he departed from the service of righteousness and rebelled in the sight of the almighty Lord, for which he was also called an apostate.

It is established, then, from these words in which Paul says, “that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, you are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin or of righteousness,” that we present ourselves of our own accord, with no one compelling us, to serve either sin or righteousness through our obedience. And therefore we ought always to remember these things, so that we do not bring forward empty complaints in excuse of sin, saying that the devil made us sin, or the necessity of nature, or a fated condition, or the course of the stars. But hear the plain sentence of Paul, in which he says: “To whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, you are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin or of righteousness.”

After this: “Thanks be to God,” he says, “that you were servants of sin, but you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over.” He seems to say this to those of whose life and progress he presumes, and of whom he had already said above: “I thank God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in the whole world.” … [the scan has lost text here] … men first serve sin. For so it is written: “For there is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin.” For first it is necessary that what is written be fulfilled in every man: “But when the commandment came, sin revived.” But what follows is said to few, and to those who are already being amended, namely what he says: “But thanks be to God that you were servants of sin, but you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over.” We were all, then, servants of sin; but when the pattern of teaching was handed over to us, and we chose to obey it, not in any fashion nor in words alone, but from the heart, from the soul, from our whole devotion, we are freed from the service of sin and made servants of righteousness. Hence I fear that perhaps there are many of us who seem to have received the pattern of the teaching of righteousness, and seem in words or by profession to obey righteousness, but in heart obey sin, the vices of the flesh still ruling in us. And therefore before all things we need that putting to death of the members which he taught above.

And as to his saying, “the pattern of teaching to which you were handed over,” I think it must be asked how each one is handed over. For we find that those who did not see fit to have God in their knowledge God hands over according to the desires of their hearts to uncleanness, so that they dishonor their bodies among themselves; and others who “exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God” he hands over to passions of disgrace; of which we have spoken in their places as we could. These too, then, who present themselves as servants of righteousness through obedience, God has handed over so that they may be instructed and trained according to the pattern of the teaching of righteousness. And this too moves me, that he did not say, “You obeyed from the heart the teaching to which you were handed over,” but set down “the pattern of teaching.” Nor do I think the Apostle held the teaching and the pattern of teaching to be one; but it seems to me that he knew the pattern of teaching to be less than the teaching itself; and now, in the present life, while we are in this body, and “this earthly dwelling weighs down the mind that thinks many things,” we have the pattern of teaching, not the teaching itself; as the same Apostle says elsewhere: “But now we see through a mirror …” [the scan has lost text here] … but the virtues themselves then, when the things that are perfect have come. And therefore the righteous man now lives, as it seems to me, rather in the shadow of the virtues than in the virtues themselves. And for this reason perhaps Jeremiah says in Lamentations: “The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said: In his shadow we shall live among the nations.” And if Christ is righteousness and wisdom and truth, and we say, “In his shadow we shall live among the nations,” then we live in the shadow of righteousness and in the shadow of wisdom and in the shadow of truth, even if we seem to be righteous and wise and lovers of truth. For this reason, then, it is said: “If anyone thinks he has known, he has not yet known as he ought to know.” For perhaps the very Word of God too, according as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, is known in one way in the present state of life, and in another when that which is perfect has come; and he is perceived one way now in the form of a servant, but another way then in the form of God and in equality with the Father. Because of all these things we seem to live among the nations either “in the pattern of teaching,” as the Apostle says, and not yet in the teaching itself, or “in the shadow of Christ,” as Jeremiah named it, and not yet in Christ himself.

“And being freed from sin, you became servants of righteousness.” This is an explanation of what he said above. For if you no longer serve sin, it is certain that, freed from it, you have become servants of righteousness. But it is asked who it is that frees from sin. Without doubt, the knowledge of the truth. For so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him: “If you believe my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” It is the truth, then, that frees from sin, and the knowledge of the truth. And it is certain that everyone who has been freed from sin serves righteousness. And when we say he serves righteousness, since righteousness is one of the choir of the virtues, it is as though we said that if someone has been freed from sin, he will serve truth, and will serve wisdom, and will serve chastity, and will serve piety. For so I hear also what is said: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, and entering into them I will confess to the Lord.” For he who wishes to confess to the Lord enters not only the gates of righteousness, but also those of truth and wisdom and piety and chastity. For of all the virtues there is one hall, whose doors the righteous man asks to be opened to him under the name of righteousness.

“I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification.” By these words the Apostle strikes a certain shame into his hearers, so that they may at least pay to righteousness and sanctification this much service, which they had before rendered to uncleanness and iniquity. What, then, is so human, that is, what so light, what so free of burden, and what no weakness of the flesh can excuse at all? “As you presented,” he says, “your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification.” It is indeed no glory that someone should serve the virtues just as he served the vices; for righteousness is to be honored far more and far more earnestly. But I, he says, deal in a human and ordinary way: I ask the same things, I require like things. Formerly your feet ran to the temples of demons; now let them run to the Church of God. Before they ran to shed blood; now let them run to deliver it. Before, your hands were stretched out to plunder what belonged to others; now let them be stretched out to give away their own. Before, your eyes looked round at a woman or at something belonging to another, to desire it; now let them look round at the poor, the weak, the needy, to pity them. Your ears delighted in hearing vain things or the disparagement of good men; now let them be turned to hearing the word of God, to the explanation of the law, and to receiving the discipline of wisdom. Let the tongue that was accustomed to insults and curses and foul talk be turned now to blessing the Lord at all times; let it bring forth sound and honorable speech, so that it may give grace to the hearers, and let it speak truth with its neighbor. But what need is there to go through each point, when it is plain to you too how to fit the service of each member, which it gave to the vices, to the virtues, and to turn the action which it gave to uncleanness now to chastity and sanctification?

He seems indeed to have named righteousness here for all the virtues together, just as, on the contrary, he set down iniquity for all the vices together. And he added “righteousness unto sanctification,” namely so as to commend the part of chastity both generally with the others and especially by itself. And see this too, that everywhere by these words he marks freedom of choice, and shows that each one has it in his power that the services which before he paid to iniquity unto iniquity he may, his purpose being turned to the better, pay to righteousness and sanctification; which certainly could not be done if either nature were opposed, as some think, or the course of the stars stood in the way.

“For when you were servants of sin, you were free of righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have at that time in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, having been freed from sin and made servants of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.” How someone is a servant of sin has already been sufficiently said above, when we were expounding that place: “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obey, you are servants of the one whom you obeyed, whether of sin or of righteousness?” When, then, someone serves sin, he is free of righteousness, that is, a stranger to righteousness. For here he calls a stranger “free,” and rightly. For no one can serve sin and righteousness at the same time, as the Savior also said, that no one can serve two masters. But we have spoken of these things more fully above. This, indeed, must be noted, that there is both a blameworthy freedom and a praiseworthy servitude. For to be free of righteousness is a crime; but to be its servant is praiseworthy. And when he speaks of becoming a servant of righteousness, understand at the same time of wisdom and piety and chastity and all the virtues together; just as, on the contrary, he who is a servant of sin is at the same time a servant of evil desire and anger and fury and shamelessness and robbery, and serves all vices and crimes together. Hence we ought always to examine ourselves in each thing we do, and in each act consider whom we serve, sin unto iniquity, or righteousness unto sanctification.

“What fruit, then,” he says, “did you have at that time in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.” Divine Scripture teaches that there is fruit both of good things and of evil, as the Savior himself says in the Gospels: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” In these words the purpose and will of man seems to be called the tree, whether good or bad, and its fruit his works. If someone turns his soul and purpose to righteousness, without doubt he is ashamed and reproaches himself for the former deeds he did while placed under sin, because “the end of those things is death.” But I ask what death. It is certain that it is not this common one. For no one is turned to righteousness after death, or is ashamed of past evil deeds. What is it, then? Does he seem to mean the death of sin, since “the soul that sins, it shall die”? Or can it rather be understood that he means that death by which we die to sin with Christ and put an end to vices and crimes, so that for this reason he seems to have said, “for the end of those things is death”?

“But now, having been freed from sin and made servants of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.” He compares fruits with fruits; and the fruits of sin, for which now, that is, after being freed from sin and made servants of God, the saints are ashamed, he declares are ended by death; but the fruits of righteousness, which are unto sanctification, he says receive as their end eternal life. In this, first, it must not be passed over that he did not wish to name in what the fruits consist for which we are now ashamed, but says that the fruit of those who have been freed from sin and made servants of God is unto sanctification. For the memory of good things is to be kept more often than that of evil. And that he first mentioned evil fruits and their end, and afterward the fruits which are unto sanctification and their end, which is eternal life: see that this is like that prophetic saying in which he says, “I will kill and I will make alive”; and again, “I will strike and I will heal”; and again in Job: “He causes pain and gives remedy; he strikes, and his hands heal.” All of these look to this, that one must first die with Christ and so live with him, and first suffer with him and so reign with him. For unless we first die to sin through repentance, we cannot live to God through righteousness.

And this too: above he said, “And being freed from sin, you became servants of righteousness”; but now, when he has likewise said, “But now, having been freed from sin,” he did not likewise say, “you became servants of righteousness,” but “made servants of God.” The distinction is not idle. For by it it is shown that after someone has been freed from sin he ought first to serve righteousness and all the virtues together, so that from there by progress he may ascend to this, that he becomes a servant of God; although to serve righteousness is to serve God. For Christ is righteousness, and to serve Christ is to serve God. Yet there is an order of progress, and there are degrees in the virtues; and for this reason Christ is said to reign, namely according as he is righteousness … [the scan has lost text here] … the comparison which we said the Apostle made between evil fruits and good fruits: that there, where he was speaking of evil fruits, he did not say, “You had your fruit in the things of which you are now ashamed,” but said, “What fruit, then, did you have?”; but where he speaks of good fruits he adds “your.” For so he writes: “You have your fruit unto sanctification.” By this he seems to me to indicate that the evil fruit, the fruit to be ashamed of and repented of, is not our fruit. For God did not plant an evil tree in us to bear evil fruits; as he himself says through the prophet: “I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you turned into the bitterness of a strange vine?” So even if we bear evil fruits, they are not ours but another’s, that is, sin’s; but if we bear good fruits unto sanctification, they are our fruits. For human nature received from its Creator that it should bear these fruits. For those others, which are strange, were not sown in us by God. Do you wish to know that the Lord does not sow evil fruits? Hear him saying in the Gospel: “Did we not sow good seed in the field? Whence then does it have tares? And he answered and said: An enemy has done this.” And do you wish to learn still more that these fruits of the flesh are not ours but another’s? Again the Lord himself says in the Gospel: “If you have not been faithful in what is another’s, who will give you what is your own?” So, then, by the mystery of a deep reason, the Apostle did not add “your” to the evil fruit, but says of the good: “You have your fruit unto sanctification.”

And that he calls those whom he names servants of God more perfect than those whom he first said serve righteousness is proved also by this, that he placed their fruit in sanctification; and these can be understood to be those who have vowed themselves to chastity and continence; while those whom he called servants of righteousness may also be seen to be those who, placed in marriage, nevertheless give their effort to righteousness and all the virtues.

And about eternal life, although it has often been spoken of by us in other places, yet it must be touched on briefly in the present one too: that eternity in the Scriptures is sometimes set down to mean that which knows no end; sometimes that which has no end in the present age, but has one in the future; sometimes the space of some time, or even of the life of one man, is called eternity; as is that written in the law about the Hebrew servant: “If he loves,” it says, “his wife and his children, and wishes to remain in servitude for their sake, … [the scan has lost text here] … with an awl,” it says, “you shall pierce his ear at the door-post, and he will be your servant forever.” Here without doubt he set down “forever” for the time of a man’s life. And again in Ecclesiastes it is said: “A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever”: here “forever” shows the time of the present age. But where he says eternal life, one must look to what the Savior himself said: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent”; and again: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” And the Apostle himself says elsewhere that we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. As, then, to be always with the Lord has no end, so eternal life too is to be believed to have no end.

“For the wages of sin is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What he said, “The wages of sin is death,” is like what he had said above: “But the end of those things is death.” Of what things? Without doubt of those for which you are now ashamed, whose fruit he does not even think worth naming. And again, “But the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” is like what he said: “You have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.” And he well keeps the metaphor, that is, the figure of military service set out from the beginning, so as to say that to those serving under sin as king, or rather obeying his tyranny, death is paid as the wages due. But it was not worthy of God to give his soldiers wages as something owed, but a gift and grace, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. I do not think that this is empty either, that to eternal life he added “in Christ Jesus our Lord”; but … [the scan has lost text here] … of which it is written that “the soul that sins, it shall die.”

And although much has already often been said by us about the variety of death, yet since the place has warned us to repeat the same things more plainly and to gather into one what has been said here and there, let it be neither tedious to me nor burdensome to the readers. Death in the Scriptures is indeed one name, but signifies many things. For the separation of the body from the soul is named death. But this can be called neither evil nor good: for it is intermediate, what is called indifferent. And again the separation of the soul from God is called death, which comes through sin. This is plainly evil, which is also named the wages of sin. This death God did not make, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living; but by the envy of the devil this death entered the world. And again the author of this death himself, the devil, is called death, and he it is who is said to be the last enemy of Christ to be destroyed. And the place of hell too, in which souls were held by death, is itself also called death. And that death too is spoken of as praiseworthy by which someone dies to sin and is buried with Christ, through which amendment comes about for the soul and eternal life is gained.

Since, then, there is so great a difference in this one name of death, if you hear God saying, “I will kill and I will make alive,” you ought to understand what death it is fitting for God to bring: without doubt that which confers life, that is, that one should die to sin and live to God. “When he killed them,” it says, “they sought him and returned”: most plainly teaching by this that him whom God kills he kills for this reason, that he may die to sin and seek God. So I hear also what is written, that God killed Er, the son of Judah, because he was wicked; and anything else of this kind that we read written of God. So too the Apostle handed over a sinner for the destruction of the flesh, so that he might save the spirit, that is, that he might die to sin and live to God. And in the present place, then, the wages which sin gives are said to be death: not this death which separates the body from the soul, but that by which, through sin, the soul is separated from God. And again we are said to have been baptized in the death of Christ, in that … [the scan has lost text here] … is that, even if God is said to kill and hand over to death, the death that is given by God is of such a kind as to confer life. For nothing evil is given by the good; although it is sad, although it is full of pain, yet it is brought with a view to healing and in contemplation of health, so that the austerity of severity may separate from sin the soul which the allurement and sweetness of sin had separated from God. But, on the contrary, whatever sin gives, whatever it bestows, is the death of the soul, even if it lavishes wages.