BODY NOT TO SERVE SIN.

16. Even reason teaches that, being no more subject to sin and unrighteousness, you are no longer to serve them with your body and members—your whole physical life. And further, having yielded yourselves to obey God and righteousness, you are in duty bound to serve them with body and life. To put it concisely and clearly, Let him who formerly was evil and lived contrary to his own conscience and to God's will, now become godly and serve the Lord with a good conscience. Or, as Paul says, "Let him that stole steal no more," Eph 4, 28.

17. Formerly, he tells them, their members—eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet—even the whole body, served uncleanness. For "vice" he uses this term "uncleanness," readily intelligible to reason and inclusive of all forms of sin. "You permitted your members to serve unrighteousness," he would say, "and devoted them to every sort of unholy life, every wicked work, committing one iniquity after another and exercising all manner of villainy that can be named. Now reverse the order. Reasoning according to your own logic: while before you willingly witnessed, heard and uttered things shameful and unchaste, and sought lewdness, lending your bodies to it, let impurity now be distressing to your sight and hearing; let the body flee from it; be pure in words and works. All the members of the body, all its functions, are to be devoted to righteousness."

Thus your members, your whole bodies, are to become holy—to be God's own—and given over solely to his service. The longer and the more ardently they serve, the more cheerfully will they honor and obey God, being devoted to all that is divine, praiseworthy, honorable and virtuous. The instructions God has written upon your own heart would teach you this principle, even were there no Word of God. It is useless for you to protest: "Yes, but you have taught that good works do not save," for that doctrine is not inconsistent, but beyond your understanding. Indeed, it is the true light whereby you may fulfill the teachings of reason.

"For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of [free from] righteousness."

18. All these expressions Paul uses "after the manner of men," adapting them from the laws and customs of the times concerning slavery, service and freedom. Then servants were bondmen, purchased by their masters, with whom they must abide until set at liberty by those owners, or otherwise freed. His allusion to a former service of unrighteousness and a present service of righteousness implies two conditions of servitude and consequently two conditions of freedom. He who serves sin, the apostle teaches, is free from righteousness; that is, he is captive under sin, unable to attain to righteousness and to do righteous works. Even reason can comprehend the principle that he is free who does not serve—who is not servant. Again, servants of righteousness means service and obedience to righteousness, and freedom from sin.