Romans 6:16 “The Choice”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁶Do you not know that to whom you are offering yourselves [to be] servants into obedience, you are servants to whom you are obeying, whether of sin into death or of obedience into righteousness?

I have been studying in the book of Esther for the last several months since I was looking at this chapter in Romans. As I related back there, I left the chapter a little frustrated because it seemed so much like the things Paul was saying were so obvious, that the “objections” he was answering were so ludicrous, I struggled to draw out the benefit.

However, there was one of the verses in chapter 6 that particularly seemed absurdly obvious to me, verse 16, which I would paraphrase as “To whomever you offer yourselves as servants, that’s whose servant you’ll be!” At first pass, that made me want to say, “Duh.” That’s like saying, if you paint your house white, it will be white. Duh. If you offer yourselves to be someone’s servant, that’s whose servant you’ll be. Duh.

What I want to record is that, being away from the passage and having time to live it, it struck me that it is, in fact, a very helpful verse! As it turns out, it is, as I suspected, a statement reflecting a measure of rather enormous stupidity. However, that stupidity isn’t a problem with Paul’s writing or his logic. The problem is entirely us! What do I mean? What I mean is this: Throughout our days, we are constantly faced with the choice to do right or to do wrong, to think or speak rightly or wrongly, to look at right things or look at wrong things. What each of those choices comes down to is “Whom will you serve?”

The very simple truth of Romans 6:16 would tell us, “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.” That should be patently obvious to us, yet it obviously is NOT! We think we can dally with sin but then choose to set it down whenever we wish. We think we can rehearse ugly, negative thoughts “for just a minute,” then “get back to” right thinking. As a man, it seems like I could look at pornography “for just a minute,” then put it aside and “get back to” keeping my mind and my eyes in the right place.

That is where the real “duh” happens. How could we be so stupid? “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.” We need to realize that, when I volunteer myself to allow any sin, I am making myself a servant of that very sin. I will become its slave. As the old saying goes, “Sin will always take you further than you wanted to go, hold you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost you more than you wanted to pay!”

Yes, the statement is logically (even ludicrously) obvious, but, since I am such a stupid sinner, it actually turns out to be VERY helpful. Indeed, you and I need to be very aware that our choices are not just momentary or temporary. They are choices to be a slave to sin (which will kill us) or a slave to God (which will bring love and joy and peace). For myself, the Lord has helped me all my adult life to stay away from pornography. However, one of the challenges to me today is that, everywhere I try to go on the internet, they are constantly flashing pictures of beautiful women, usually wearing less clothes than any woman ought to wear anywhere except at home with her own husband. The “lure” I would say is about 100x what it used to be.

What I found since last studying Romans 6 is that this simple verse helps me, in spite of the lure, to make good choices. “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.” The choice for any man to linger and look isn’t just a choice whether to enjoy it “for a minute.” To make that choice is to head down the path of slavery. A man does not know just how far that slavery will take him or what it will cost, but that is exactly the choice. I suspect our evil souls are probably all saying, “Oh, it’s not that bad!” Then I would ask, is this not the Serpent’s old line, “You shall not surely die…” And oh yes, they did, and oh yes, you and I will.

Anyway, that helps me a lot to constantly remind myself, it’s really that simple, “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.” I would think that truth could even help a person who say had a serious addiction. I’m sure it is extremely painful to break addictions, but what if that person minute by minute by minute practiced this simple dictum, “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.” I wonder if it wouldn’t help to realize every single little choice to give in to that addiction, is a choice to go on being its slave? And then, that same help would be available no matter what sin we might “struggle” with.

So the Lord actually showed me that after I’d put away my study of Romans 6. I wanted to record it for two reasons: 1) Just because I find it so helpful, and 2) Just to give God the glory that, in fact, what He says in the Bible is always helpful, even if us worms “don’t get it!” It really is that simple. Duh. We need to realize, that is the choice: “Whomever you choose to serve, that’s whose servant you’ll be.”