Romans 6 - Who is your master?
 8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. Â
 11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
Being under grace does not remove the evil desires of your body. You must make the choice to live as instruments of God, of righteousness, of justice. You are now justified to do so.
Notice also, that for a Jew who was given the Law of Moses, Jesus has fulfilled the law for your by being your lawful sacrifice. The unblemished lamb described in the Law was always symbolic of Christ, and always meant to point at Him. Therefore, He is your lawful sacrifice, having “died to sin once for all.” And because He died once for all, he also died for the Gentile who was not under the law, but still was under the reign of Adam, under the reign of death. Christ also died for that, so that the Gentile can be free from sin as well. However, as verse 12 intimates, we may be free from sin, but that does not mean we have no sinful desire. We can still sin if we choose. The difference now is that Christ has already died for it.
 15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
Believing God is accounted as righteousness; obeying Him is your righteousness. Paul enforces this… being slave to obedience (i.e., believing Christ died for you) yields the righteousness through which you will obey.
 19I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The wages of righteousness is eternal life; the wages of sin is death.
You cannot have both. You are either a slave to one or the other.
Now, here is where the rubber meets the road.
Before you were saved, surely you did good things. Surely you did things that God would have looked upon with favor, right? However, during that time, you did not yet believe God, that He sent someone to die for your sins; you did not obey Him and repent… not yet anyway. And so, for that time of your life, though you did good things, you were a slave to sin, not to righteousness, and your wages were death.
Similarly now, you still sin. However, you now believe God, that He send Jesus to die for your sins; you have obeyed Him and repented, and are showing fruit in your life, and are helped through your walk as Jesus requested by the Holy Spirit. You have now died to that previous life, that life in which you earned death as your wages… you are no longer earning death. In the righteousness in which you now live, you earn the wages of eternal life.
If I can summarize Paul’s message here: Don’t believe sin. Don’t obey sin. Don’t be zealous for sin. Before your cleansing in Christ, before your commitment to righteousness, to God, while you were still sin’s slave, God did not look upon your good works; now He does not look upon your sin. You can still sin now (just as you still did good works before); surely you can sin again… just don’t. You are no longer sin’s slave; obedience to sin is now an option.
I’d like to close with that, but I know there is some young Christian out there (because I was one) who would then say, “but what if I do sin?” Well, that is your choice. Just ask yourself, who is your master? If Christ is your master, then your sinful action was in disobedience; if sin, then obedience. If Christ be your master, then your disobedience pains Him, so repent and sin no more; if sin be your master, then stop pretending to be righteous, because you aren’t fooling God… do “good” if you will, but stop pretending it’s for Him if it’s just for recognition. Basically, the sin you commit is no longer the point; neither in fact are the good works. In fact they never were. The point is the relationship in which both are done. Who is your relationship with? It is either God or it is not. If it is not God, then your sin condemns you despite your good works. If you relationship is with God, your sin is forgiven and good works will result. So, choose your relationship. Make your choices. Admit your failures. And your fruits will be evident to all.
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