Romans 6:19

“ I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. ”

Several critics (Beng., De Wette, Mey., Philip.) refer the fleshly infirmity of the Romans, of which the apostle here speaks, to their intellectual weakness, their inability to apprehend religious truth adequately. This is the reason which has led him to make use of a human mode of speaking, calling the fulfilment of righteousness a servitude, which, from the divine point of view, is, on the contrary, true liberty. What is well-founded in this explanation is the application of the first words of Romans 6:19 to the term servitude used in Romans 6:18. But what seems to me inexact, is to apply the expression weakness of the flesh to a defect of understanding. Does not this explanation contradict what the apostle recognizes in such forcible terms, Romans 15:14: the high degree of Christian knowledge to which the Church of Rome has already attained? Weakness of the flesh (more literally: proceeding from the flesh) must therefore denote a general state shared by the Romans with the great majority of the members of the Christian Church, consequently a moral rather than an intellectual state; and this is really what the expression used by the apostle naturally indicates. If the obligation to practice righteousness seems to the greater number of believers to be a subjection to a strange principle, it is not in consequence of a want of understanding; the cause is deeper; it is because the flesh, the love of the ego, has not yet been completely sacrificed. From this moral fact there arises even in the Christian the painful impression that perfect righteousness is a most exacting, sometimes even a harsh master, and that the obligation to conform in all points to the will of God makes him a slave. Such is the imperfect moral condition to the impressions of which Paul accommodates his language in the expressions used in Romans 6:18. The ancient Greek interpreters thought this remark, Romans 6:19 a, should be connected with what follows, giving it the meaning: “I do not mean to ask of you what goes beyond your human weakness, caused by the flesh; yield your members only to righteousness in the same measure as you formerly yielded them to sin. I do not ask more of you.” But it is evident that the apostle, in a passage in which he is describing the standard of Christian holiness, cannot think of abating aught of the demands of the new principle. The exhortation which follows cannot be less absolute than that which preceded, Romans 6:12-13, and which was unaccompanied by any such clause. Hofmann and Schott take the two words ἀνθρώπινον λέγω, I speak as a man, as a parenthesis, and join the regimen διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν, on account of the weakness of the flesh, to the verb: ye became subject, Romans 6:18. According to this view Paul recognizes that the practice of goodness is really a servitude for the believer, subjection to a strange will; and that arising from the persistence of the old nature, and from the fact that the flesh requires to be constantly subdued. But it is very doubtful whether the apostle here seriously called by the name of servitude that Christian life which he represents always, like Jesus Himself, as the most glorious emancipation. Undoubtedly, in 1 Corinthians 9:27, he uses the expression δουλαγωγεῖν, to bring into subjection, but in a figure, and in relation to the body.

The imperative yield proves that the second part of the verse is an exhortation. But in this case why attach it with a for to what precedes? Can an exhortation serve to demonstrate anything? Does it not require itself to be founded on a demonstration? To understand this strange form, we must, I think, change the imperative yield into the form: “ ye are held bound to yield.” We can then understand how this idea may be connected by for with Romans 6:18: “Ye were made subject to righteousness henceforth, since, in fact (for), it remains to you only to yield your members.” It must not be forgotten, indeed, that the exhortation: yield your members, was already expressed previously in Romans 6:12-13, and that as logically based on all that preceded (therefore, Romans 6:12), and that consequently the transition from Romans 6:18 b to 19b may be thus paraphrased: “ye became the servants of righteousness, for, in fact, as I have shown you, ye have now nothing else to do than to yield your members to righteousness.” The only difference between the exhortation of Romans 6:12-13 and that of 18b is that Paul said in the former: do; while here, in keeping with the object of this second passage, he says: “And ye cannot do otherwise.” By this relation between the for of Romans 6:19 b and Romans 6:18, it may be proved that 19a is indeed, as we have seen, an interjected observation.

There is a slightly ironical touch in the meaning of the second part of Romans 6:19. It concerns the readers to be now in the service of their new master, righteousness, as active and zealous servants as they formerly were in the service of their old master. “Ye were eager to yield your members to sin to commit evil, be ye now as eager to yield them to righteousness to realize holiness. Do not inflict on this second master the shame of serving him less faithfully than the first.” The old master is denoted by the two terms ἀκαθαρσία, uncleanness, and ἀνομία, lawlessness, life going beyond all rule, licentiousness. The first of these terms characterizes sin as personal degradation, the second as contempt of the standard of right written in the law on every man's conscience (Romans 2:14-15). This distinction seems to us more natural than that laid down by Tholuck, who takes the term uncleanness in the strictly proper sense of the word, and who takes lawlessness to be sin in general. The broad sense which we give to the word uncleanness appears clearly from 1 Thessalonians 4:7. The two expressions therefore embrace each, as it seems to us, the whole sphere of sin, but from two different points of view.

From sin as a principle, the apostle passes to sin as an effect. The regimen εἰς ἀνομίαν, unto lawlessness, signifies: to do all one's pleasure without being arrested in the least by the line of demarkation which separates good from evil. This expression ἀνομία, lawlessness, so expressly repeated, and this whole description of the previous life of the readers, is evidently more applicable to men formerly Gentiles than to believers of Jewish origin.

With sin characterized as an evil disposition, as an inward principle, in the two forms of degradation and lawlessness, there is contrasted goodness, also as a principle and as a moral disposition, by the term δικαιοσύνη, righteousness. This is the will of God, moral obligation accepted by the believer as the absolute rule of his will and life. Then with sin as an effect produced in the form of ἀνομία, the rejection of every rule in practice, there is contrasted goodness as a result obtained, by the term ἁγιασμός : this is the concrete and personal realization of goodness, the fruit of perpetual submission to the principle of righteousness, holiness, or sanctification. The word ἁγιασμός is usually translated by sanctification, and this is represented as the progressive amelioration of the individual resulting from his moral self-discipline. It is certain that Greek substantives in μος or σμος are, as Curtius says (Schulgramm. § 342), nomina actionis, denoting properly an action put forth, rather than a state of being. But we must not forget two things: 1. That, from the Scripture point of view, the author of the act denoted by the term sanctify is God, and not man; this is established, as it seems to me, by 1 Peter 1:2; 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and 1 Corinthians 1:30, where this act is ascribed to the Holy Spirit and to Christ. 2. That even in the Old Testament the term ἁγιασμός seems to be used in the LXX. to denote not the progressive work, but its result; thus Amos 2:11, where the LXX. use this word to translate nezirim, the consecrated ones; and Ezekiel 45:4, where it seems to be taken in the same sense as mikdasch, sanctuary. In the New Testament, likewise, it more naturally denotes the result reached than the action put forth, in the following passages: 1 Thessalonians 4:3; 1 Timothy 2:15; Hebrews 12:14. We are thus led to translate it rather by the term holiness. And this seems to be confirmed by the preposition εἰς, for, unto, which expresses the goal rather than the way. If it is asked wherein the term ἁγιασμός, taken in the sense of holiness, still differs from ἁγιότης, (Hebrews 12:10) and ἁγιωσύνη (Romans 1:4; 1 Thessalonians 3:13; 2 Corinthians 7:1), which seem to be completely synonymous, the indication of the shade may be found in the form of the terminations: ἁγιότης denotes holiness as an abstract idea; ἁγιωσύνη, as a personal quality, an inward disposition; ἁγιασμός, as a work which has reached the state of complete realization in the person and life, the result of the divine act expressed by ἁγιάζειν.

The apostle has thus reminded the church of the two principles between which it has finally made its choice, and the necessity laid on the believer to be as thoroughgoing in his new master's service as he had been in that of the former; he now labors to strengthen this choice and decision by presenting the consequences of the one and the other condition of dependence. On the one side, shame and death; on the other, holiness and life. Here is the second part of the passage; Romans 6:20-21 describe the consequences of the service of sin to their extreme limit; Romans 6:22 gives the consequences of dependence on God also to their final goal; Romans 6:23, in an antithesis full of solemnity, formulates this double end of human life.