Date: August 2 & 3, 2025
Festival: 7th Sunday after Trinity
Text: Romans 6:19-23
Preaching Occasion: Zion Lutheran Church, Harbor Beach, MI
Appointed Scriptures: Genesis 2:7-17; Romans 6:19-23; Mark 8:1-9
Sermon Hymn: LSB #819 Sing Praise to God, the Highest Good
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh” [Rom. 6:19]. Thus Paul condescends to us—to our ears, our frailty, our stubbornness. He stoops to our dusty understanding and puts before us a metaphor as old as man’s rebellion: slavery. Harsh, humiliating, and degrading—yes. But accurate. All of you are slaves, and so am I.
We don’t like to think this way—not in a world that sings of independence and preaches personal freedom as gospel. “Live your truth,” we like to say. “Follow your heart.” “You do you.” But as the Lord says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” [Jer. 17:9]. Truth unmoored from the God who formed us from dust becomes nothing more than opinion inflated with pride.
We are all slaves to something—to someone or something that has mastered us. We don’t live as free agents, as though we are gods unto ourselves. That was the very lie whispered in Eden: “You will be like God” [Gen. 3:5]. And so, we reached for the fruit, desiring knowledge on our own terms, independence from the Giver of all things, and autonomy from the One who had formed us and breathed into our nostrils the breath of life [Gen. 2:7]. We wanted life and freedom, but what we got in exchange for our self-proclaimed autonomy is slavery to sin and death—no matter what we do, we sin, and we receive its wages: death.
Paul teaches us, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness” [Rom. 6:20]. Yes, we were “free”—free from God. Free from holiness. Free from peace. Free from meaning. But not truly free. Each of us here were yoked, chained, and owned; and our former master, Sin, is never gentle.
There are many taskmasters of Sin to which we once clung, and every now and then run back to like victims of Stockholm syndrome. We were slaves to Lust—not just the erotic, but also the eyes that cannot stop looking for more, and the heart that craves what does not belong to it. We were slaves to Envy, always peering over the fence at greener grass, hungering after the curated lives of others. We were slaves to Anger, the kind that festers beneath the surface, turning homes into warzones and marriages into lonely silences. We become slaves to screens, to social media approval and dopamine, and to headlines that agitate but do not edify.
We were slaves to pleasure, pornography, productivity, escapism, substances, and to gluttony—not just of food but of entertainment, information, and novelty. We’re drunk on whatever’s new and become allergic to discipline. We are slaves to the image of ourselves that we project—the false self we build and maintain.
God’s Word asks each of us today, “What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed?” [Rom. 6:21b]. Think back to the things you’re ashamed of. What harvest grew from these fields of sin? Bitterness, regret, emptiness—a sense that no matter how much you chase happiness, you can never arrive. Your heart promises paradise, but your soul finds a desert. And always, behind it all, whispers the payment of your sinful labor: “The wages of sin is death” [v. 23a]. This is not hypothetical; this is the soil in which we have planted our lives. And it grows thorns and thistles.
But the Spirit of God does not let you remain a slave to the shame of all your taskmasters. You have a new Master now. He is not cruel like Sin, or manipulative like the devil, or empty like the flesh. He is the Lord who bled for you, and His blood brought you from darkness into His marvelous light [1 Peter 2:9].
For remember the previous section of Romans 6: you have been baptized, buried with Christ in His death, and raised with Him in a new life now and to inherit a resurrection just like His on the Last Day. You no longer belong to the old taskmaster, Sin. You now belong to the One who made you His own by dying your death and giving you His life. As Paul says, “But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life” [Rom. 6:22].
Slaves of God. Now, that may still jar our modern ears because we associate slavery with degradation and injustice. But this slavery is unlike any other, for this Master does not demand; He gives. This Lord does not burden; He bears your burdens. This King does not exploit; He exalts. To be bound to Him is not to be crushed—it is to be healed, and not to be silenced when Sin abuses you but permitted to speak of it.
To be His slaves is to be restored to what you were made to be: a creature who receives from the Giver, a heart that adores life, and a soul that lives in harmony with its Creator. It’s to be a tree rooted by streams of living water [Psalm 1:3]. It’s to walk in the cool of the day with the One who formed you from dust. Slaves of God are not given chains but are mounted up with wings like eagles [Is. 40:31].
So now, the fruit you bear is different. You bear the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control [Gal. 5:22-23]. You speak words that heal instead of wound. You delight in God’s Law not as a ladder to climb but as a lamp to your feet that Jesus already walked [Ps. 119:105]. You serve your neighbor not to earn salvation but because salvation has already been poured over you. You become, in the end, what you were always meant to be: fully human. You therefore return to Eden by grace, not by sword or fire; for the tree of death on Golgotha has become for you the tree of life.
Look again at that crowd in Mark 8: 4,000 Gentiles in the wilderness, hungry and faint. And Jesus says, “I have compassion on the multitude” [Mark 8:2]. He does not turn them away; He feeds them, He satisfies them—He does what no tyrant would ever do: He serves, He gives, He blesses, and they are filled. Seven baskets of leftovers bear witness to His overabundant grace.
Such is the slavery of God. You are yoked to compassion and mercy—to a Shepherd who feeds His sheep and calls them by name. As Paul writes elsewhere, you are no longer your own, “for you were bought at a price” [1 Cor. 6:19-20]. And that price was not gold or silver or a contract for a certain number of years of service. That price was the innocent, pure, righteous blood of Jesus [1 Peter 1:18-19], placed into His pierced side as an ark in our wicked generation, whose Body is not a prison but a pasture where we can freely roam.
“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” [Rom. 6:23]. Do you see the contrast, dear saints? The wages versus the gift. Sin pays, but what it pays is death. God gives, and what He gives is eternal life. You earned the grave, but Christ earned salvation, and He gives it to you as a gift—no strings attached. I know it’s August, but this is why Christmas is such a beautiful holiday, because we freely give gifts to one another just as freely as Christ gave Himself to us. Santa Claus and legalistic parents give gifts based on how well one has behaved, but Jesus gives grace so abundantly that there are leftovers despite what you’ve done.
So now, as baptized children of God, you live as one who belongs to Another. Let the words of the world fall away. Let the false promises of sin rot in the grave. Let your heart be bound to Jesus, for you are His, you are fed by His hand in the Supper, you are clothed in His righteousness by Baptism, and you are alive to God. And the end is everlasting life.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Lutheran Column 