Freedom is Slavery to the Lord
Romans 6:19-23
August 3, 2025 anno Domini
Freedom is slavery and slavery is freedom. That’s the mystery and paradox of the Christian faith we learn from God’s Word to the Romans.
In the Garden of Eden, Adam had perfect freedom and he was a perfect slave. Moses describes Adam’s confines in the Old Testament reading. He was put in the garden of Eden, a bountiful orchard, from which the headwaters of the Pishon, the Gihon, the Tigris and the Euphrates flowed. Adam was put in the garden to work it and keep it. He was not free to do whatever he wanted. He had his place – Eden. He had his work – gardener. He had a restriction – you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he also had a warning – on the day you eat of it you shall die.
Freedom, according to God’s Word is to be confined, to be under the Lord’s will, to be where He has put you, and to do what He has told you. How does that square with your idea of freedom? Or does your definition go something like this? Freedom is when I can do whatever I want. Freedom is the absence of prohibitions, obligations, and restrictions. Freedom is a vacation from work, from family commitments. Freedom is when I don’t need to restrain my appetites and passions.
American culture inculcates freedom – guaranteeing the rights of free speech, freedom to assemble, to travel, to own property, freedom to worship according to your conscience, to own a gun and defend yourself. But even in the United States there’s an irony. The founding fathers crafted laws and carefully constituted a government full of regulations to protect freedom. They acknowledged that freedom only works where people have morals, where they refrain from evil. Ben Franklin famously wrote, Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
So, let’s return to Adam in the garden. Adam was a slave and yet he was the freest man ever created. He was bound to a specific place – Eden, to a specific job – gardener, and to a specific diet – everything but that tree. His Creator was His Master. Adam was not free to do whatever he wanted, yet he was free to do whatever he wanted because all he wanted to do was to please God, and – once Eve was created – to love and care for her.
Imagine for a moment that you are Adam. You have absolutely no desire to sin or to serve yourself. You have no worries about your mortgage or losing your job. The price of apples never goes up. The price is picking them and they are always fresh. You are in perfect health and never need to worry about a lump here or an ache there. You don’t need to follow the stock market or count the days to retirement. You don’t fear death, because there’s no such thing. Everything you experience in life is good and pleasing and delicious and once God creates Eve it gets better. Now, you have someone to love. You have no guilt, no shame, no disappointment, no tears, no taxes, no death. Adam is completely free because he (in Saint Paul’s words) is a slave to righteousness. He is free because he is confined to the garden, to his occupation as a gardener, and to being Eve’s husband. His freedom is to be under God’s will entirely. The Lord is His master and Adam is a slave. He is free to enjoy God’s gifts, to work, and to love Eve with all he has.
But this was not forced slavery. Adam was completely free. He could choose to disobey God. He could choose to serve himself, leave the garden, throw Eve under the bus, and walk away from peace, joy, and love.
The text for today contains one of those verses every Christian should memorize. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the difference between slavery to sin and slavery to God. Enslaved to sin you will die. Enslaved to God you will live. So, who is your master?
You were born as a slave to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness. Sticking with the garden analogy a rotten tree bears rotten fruit – a slave to sin only produces more sin, and the paycheck for sin is death. That is who you were by birth.
But that is not who you are now. That is not where you are now. In the middle of the text Saint Paul writes, “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification, and its end, eternal life.”
This chapter of Romans – Romans six – begins with baptism, because baptism is where God changes you from slave of sin to slave of God, from earning death to living life. Your baptism connected you to Christ’s cross – to that emancipation proclamation declared by Jesus’ final word before death – “it is finished.” The price of your redemption from slavery to sin has been paid by Christ. He gets your paycheck – death and you get what He earned – everlasting life. You are forgiven. Your sins are taken away. Sin does not rule you. Death does not own you. Christ rules over you with forgiveness and life.
Being outside the confines God has given us is the worst slavery of all. One of the great problems for younger men and women is that they have no place, no anchor in our culture. Young men have been told since their infancy that men are worthless – husbands and fathers in particular are goofs and idiots. So young men hide away in their basements playing video games where they find a phony value in a fake reality, and and learn relationship skills from pornography. Young women have been told that the last place they should be is married and/or pregnant. The waves of feminism that have swept Western culture in the last 100 years have made women more unhappy than ever before. The T-shirts worn at the WNBA all-star game show the disconnect. Those amazing women athletes are unhappy with their pay, yet without the NBA their careers would have ended in college. Instead of being grateful, they’re grumbling.
You have place and it is a new Eden. The headwaters of this new paradise flow in baptism. In those waters God created a new man, a new Adam in you. Now you have work that bears good fruit, that leads to life. A new heart was created in you – a heart that beats in accord with God’s will. By faith you don’t need to worry about your mortgage. You have a home in heaven. You don’t need to fear a lump or dread a doctor’s visit – you have eternal life. You don’t need to despair of all the evil in the world, because you have good work to do. You have people to love – most especially those closest to you – husband or wife, mother or father, son or daughter. God has confined you to keep you safe – His fence is not the four rivers of Eden, but the 10 commandments at Sinai. Have no other gods. Live a life of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving to His name. Confine yourself to His house on His day. Honor your parents. Defend Life. Guard sex with a chaste and decent life. The only good sex is confined to marriage where it produces the good fruit of children. Work for your possessions and respect your neighbor’s property. Don’t lie. Don’t covet. Be content where God has placed you and with what He has given you to do. A slave to God is enslaved to righteousness, free to live a holy life, and the reward of that life – is more life, eternal life, everlasting freedom, in the name of Jesus. Amen.