Your Fruit. Romans 6:19-23 V.19. It is impossible for us to be without some form of service as human beings. We all are serving someone or something. To say I am “independent” is a deception, because there are moral powers at work that we submit to. We cannot avoid serving something. Neutrality is not possible. We are either serving uncleanness inwardly, and iniquity and lawlessness outwardly, or we are serving righteousness. We choose masters but we can’t choose the consequences. Those are given by the one we serve. As slaves of righteousness, we need to know that this slavery is not harsh nor downgrading, but it does demand obedience to obtain godliness and purity.
V.20. There are those who declare they are “free-thinkers” and deceive themselves into thinking they are thinking beyond the influence of others. They fool themselves into thinking no one else has ever had the intellectually free thoughts they have. Such people insist that they are not influenced by anything but their own independent opinions. This, of course, is not possible. We were under the control of our sinful nature received from Adam at the very beginning of our life. It is in our gene pool received from our parents that we have the inherent tendency to willful sin.
V.21. When a person receives Christ by faith, everything is changed and there is a new ability given to serve righteousness. There was the illusion before we were saved by grace that we were free to do what we wanted. At first, it was unknown to us that we were not at liberty at all until we tried to break free from those things that had us under their control, like the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Evil thinking led to evil speaking. Evil speaking led to evil activities. Evil activities led to inevitable consequences over which we had no control. The results, “the fruit” of sin, ended up in the “wages of sin” - death. The fruit of the service of sin only made us ashamed. Freedom to sin as we want and fruitless as to any good result because God is not in our thoughts, only results ultimately in shame and death.
V.22. But now there is the new, true freedom to be a willing bondservant of Jesus Christ. There is a new life because of a free gift that focuses on the central point of the Gospel. There are wages when we are separated from God by sin, and death is the final permanent separation from Him. The old master had insatiable demands. The New Master motivates us by His “great love wherewith He loved us.” This gift of eternal life is the end of this path we have started on, but it is also the present possession in life that guides us to be faithful and useful servants of God.
V.23. We don’t earn a wage from God. His gifts are truly free and abundant. The incredible gift of eternal life is just that – it never ceases. The blessed fruit of holiness is all the things that are involved in the living out of this eternal life. It becomes the delight of the servants of God to know God is working in us “to will and to do His good pleasure.” Sin is an awful master with awful wages. Grace has bestowed the wonderful gift of eternal life. This free gift of God was given to us by Jesus Christ our Lord. Everything about this new life is in Him. He was the propitiation for us at the beginning of God's work for us. All through life God's grace is manifested to us in all of the aspects of our living presently. Looking ahead into the eternal future, nothing will separate us from “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Union with God is accomplished because of what Christ did for us on the cross once and for all. God's grace is the reason behind every blessing we have in Christ now and forever. We started with Adam, our representative head, in need of God's grace. In grace, Christ came into the world “full of grace and truth.” In the death of Christ on the cross, He saved us by His grace. Now Christ is our representative Man, our federal Head, “the second Adam.” Our standing in Him now is by His grace. We are accepted before God in Christ now and will, through the eternal ages yet to come, show “the exceeding riches of His grace.”