Romans 6:12-17
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
12 [a]Therefore, sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires.(A) 13 And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness.(B) 14 For sin is not to have any power over you, since you are not under the law but under grace.(C)
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Of course not!(D) 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves,(E) you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?(F) 17 But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.[b]
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- 6:12–19 Christians have been released from the grip of sin, but sin endeavors to reclaim its victims. The antidote is constant remembrance that divine grace has claimed them and identifies them as people who are alive only for God’s interests.
- 6:17 In contrast to humanity, which was handed over to self-indulgence (Rom 1:24–32), believers are entrusted (“handed over”) to God’s pattern of teaching, that is, the new life God aims to develop in Christians through the productivity of the holy Spirit. Throughout this passage Paul uses the slave-master model in order to emphasize the fact that one cannot give allegiance to both God and sin.
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