Devotion #6: Created to Serve Him
“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:20-23
We are all a slave to something. Though we are not now, we were born to be a slave to God and to please Him with our lives. Adam, in the garden of Eden, before being led astray by the temptation of sin, was given a task by God: to tend the garden and to have dominion over creation. In a perfect creation, he was born a slave to God, not in a derogatory sense, but in the sense that his life was created to glorify his Creator. Being a slave in this context is not what we typically think of when we hear the word slave in our culture today. The Word of God teaches us in Genesis chapter 1 that man was given dominion, or responsibility, in the first days. Genesis 1:28 says, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
Genesis 2:15 adds, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” We were made to serve the Lord in our responsibilities and work. The work we were created for, as described in Genesis, was righteous because everything God created was good.
Romans 6:20-23 teaches that though we inherited Adam’s purpose for good work, we also inherited Adam’s sin. In our sin, and apart from Christ, our desires are only sinful all the time. When Adam sinned, the human race became slaves to sin because our desire was no longer for the righteous work God created us for. Nothing we could do produced good fruit. That is what Paul is referring to when he rhetorically asks in verse 21, “But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?”
When we surrender our lives to Christ and give Him His rightful place in our hearts as our Lord and our King, we return to our originally designed state of being a slave to righteousness. Where before we only had the ability to displease God, we now possess the ability to live for Him and please Him through the Holy Spirit, bearing the fruit of righteousness. We have been set free and have become slaves to God.
It is incredible to notice in verse 23 that the wages of our sin (our thoughts and actions apart from Christ) is death, but eternal life comes from Christ Jesus, not our behavior or merit. Thanks be to God for taking imperfect and sinful people who could not produce good fruit and fashioning us into instruments of righteousness in Him. We have been set free for good works, which lead to sanctification, perfecting us in the righteousness of God! I encourage you to take a moment to pray a prayer of thankfulness and reflect on what God has done in your life. Praise God for returning you to your original state and freeing you from being a slave to sin and instead making you a slave for Him!