The Benefit of Sanctification

November 1st, 2024
by Dr. D. Lance Waldie

Nov 1, 2024

Dr. D. Lance Waldie

Romans 6:20-23 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. 22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul now brings this section of teaching to a close with a pointed question about the former lives of the Christians in Rome. Writing sometime around AD 57 Paul knew that no one in Rome had been a believer for much more than 20 years, and no doubt many of them had only known Christ for a much briefer time. So he tells them to think back to the time before they knew Christ and ponder their slavery to sin, that which they were born into through Adam (cf. 5:12-14).

Formerly, they were free in regard to righteousness, since their slave-master was sin, and they had no compulsion to live righteously. The supposed “benefit” they enjoyed as slaves to sin would have been the same “benefit” unbelievers today experience. Those addicted to drugs go bankrupt and end up in prison. Sexual immorality leads to STDs, aborted children leads to guilt and shame. Covetousness leads to materialism and worldliness, envy leads to jealousy, lying leads to a ruined reputation, etc. What benefit are any of these actions which are the rotten fruit of sin? They all lead to shame, as all converts to Christ from such lifestyles can attest.

Paul’s question was designed to make his audience consider the benefits of their old way of life. His prompting must have also made them rejoice since they were now saved from their slavery to sin, knowing that their former way of life led to death. These kinds of reminders are what prompts true worship—the realization of one’s past state of being versus the reality of their present state as redeemed children of God, sealed for eternity (cf. Eph. 1:13-14).

Now again Paul makes the point with the use of a past tense verb that these believers “have been freed,” using the passive voice to signify that it was God who saved them, not themselves. The work they do, however, as redeemed children of God concerns their new work as slaves of Jesus Christ, having been set free from their former slave owner which was sin. And the fruit of their work as slaves of Christ leads to “sanctification and its outcome, eternal life” (v. 22). Sanctification is the ongoing growth of a true convert to Christ, one who obeys God. Jesus spoke a parable about this in Matthew 21:28-32 with two sons and their father. The father told one son to go and work in the vineyard, and although he told his father “no,” he later repented and ultimately obeyed his father. The other son agreed to do the work but never did. This parable illustrates that fruit is born from those who obey, not those who say they will and fail to do so. So, those who obey God grow in their sanctification, and they have eternal life as their reward.

Verse 23 summarizes the entirely of Romans 5-6. The fair “wage,” or earning, of being a servant of sin—what all are born into—is death. Death is not physical here, for it concerns an eternal death, a destruction that endures for eternity (2 Thess. 1:9) handed down by a taskmaster who is cruel and oppressive. On the other hand, the “free gift” that God gives—not earned by man, for it is a gift—is eternal life “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is Jesus Christ who redeemed believers—purchasing them for the purpose of setting them free from their slavery to sin. He did so on the cross, dying in order to pay their penalty for sin so that they might be employed by a new slave-owner, God, who freely gives eternal life, not death.

Food for Thought

Your former party days brought no benefit to your life, only shame. So how can you look back on them with fondness? That behavior had one wage for you: death. It’s the free gift of God, Jesus Christ, that leads to holiness and eternal life. Let us bask in that, not in past shame.