The following is a brief Bible study BFiC has composed from the NIV Bible utilizing Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the subject of righteousness.
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Romans 6:15-23
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! 16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!
(v. 15): What is more black and ill-natured than responding to a friend’s extraordinary expressions of kindness and good-will by insulting him? To spit in the face of such love, is that which, between man and man, all the world would cry out shame on. Matthew Henry (MH)
16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
(v. 16): All the children of men are either servants of God, or servants of sin; these are the two families. So we must ask, which of these masters we will obey. Obeying the laws of sin will be evidence that we belong to that family on which results in death. As, on the contrary, obeying the laws of Christ will be evidence of our being in Christ’s family. (MH)
17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.
(v. 17): This is not who we are, but what we had been and done formerly. (MH)
18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
(v. 18): We need to be often reminded of our former state. Paul frequently remembers it concerning himself, and those to whom he writes. You who are now the servants of God would do well to remember the time when you were the servants of sin, to keep them humble, penitent, and watchful, and to quicken them in the service of God. (MH)
19 I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness.
(v. 19): It is the misery of a sinful state that the body is made a slave to sin, like the prodigal that was sent into the fields to feed swine. Sinners are voluntary in the service of sin. The devil could not force them into the service, if they did not yield themselves to it. This will justify God in the ruin of sinners, that they sold themselves to work wickedness: it was their own act and deed. Every sinful act strengthens and confirms the sinful habit. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind; growing worse and worse, more and more hardened. This he speaks after the manner of men, that is, he fetches a similitude from that which is common among men, even the change of services and subjections. [3.] You were free from righteousness. (MH)
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.
(v. 20): You were not free by any liberty given, but by a liberty taken, which is immorality: “You were altogether void of that which is good, void of all subjection to the law and will of God, of all conformity to his image; and this you were highly pleased with, as a freedom and a liberty; but a freedom from righteousness is the worst kind of slavery.’’ But now you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. (MH)
21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death!
(v. 21) “Did you ever get anything by it? Sit down, and cast up the account, reckon your gains, what fruit had you then?’’ Besides the future losses, which are infinitely great, the very present gains of sin are not worth mentioning. What fruit? The present pleasure and profit of sin do not deserve to be called fruit; they are but chaff, ploughing iniquity, sowing vanity, and reaping the same. We are now ashamed —ashamed of the folly, and the filth. Who would willfully do that which sooner or later he is sure to be ashamed of? To persuade us from sin to holiness here are blessing and cursing, good and evil, life and death, set before us; and we have to choose. The end of sin is death. Though the way may seem pleasant and inviting, yet the end is dismal: at the last it bites; it will be bitterness in the latter end. (MH)
22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
(v. 22): Conversion is freedom from the service of sin; it is the shaking off of that yoke, resolving to have no more to do with it. Secondly, it is a resignation of ourselves to the service of God and righteousness, to God as our master, to righteousness as our work. (MH)
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(v. 23): Death is due to the one who sinned as much as wages are to a servant when he has done his work. This is true of every sin. Death is the wages of the least sin. Sin is the work for which the wages are given, or the master by whom the wages are given. If the fruit is holiness and we are growing in grace, the end will be everlasting life! Though the way be up-hill, narrow, thorny, and overwhelming, our everlasting life at the end of it is sure. Christ purchased it, prepared it, prepares us for it, preserves us to it; he is the Alpha and Omega, All in all in our salvation. (MH)