"What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Don'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? But 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. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness."
~ Romans 6:15-18
People sometimes say that Christianity is limiting, that it keeps us from doing what we want to do, that God is a killjoy who doesn't want us to have any fun. I've heard atheists say that even if there is a God, if God is like Christianity portrays Him, they'd rather burn in Hell than serve a tyrant.
I see a couple of problems with this kind of argument, though. First, they ignore that if they don't serve God, they're serving Satan. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, it might be the devil, or it might be the Lord, but we've all gotta serve somebody. We may not consciously choose to serve Satan, but if we're not with God, we're against Him. So it's not a choice between serving a so-called “tyrant” (God) versus going to Hell. It's a choice between serving the loving Creator or the hateful Destroyer, and we shouldn't forget that.
Second, they assume that God's Biblical guidelines for our lives are there because He doesn't want us to be happy, which is so not true. They're there to protect us. If you have kids, this makes sense. If you don't, pretend for a minute. You're burning a candle in the living room. It's pretty, it smells good, and your two year old wants to touch it, maybe even put it in her mouth. You tell her not to touch it or she'll get burned. She doesn't really understand why she shouldn't touch it. To her it's just pretty and maybe it smells like apples or something and she wants to reach out and taste it, because that's what two year olds do. The problem is, you know it's bad for her and she doesn't. So when you tell her not to touch the candle, you're setting that guideline out of love. You're guiding her because you care about her and about what happens to her.
And really, it's the same way God is with us. His Word and His Holy Spirit serve as guidelines and standards for our lives, because He loves us and wants us to be happy – not because He's a tyrant who wants to ruin our fun. God knows what we don't: that some things that look like fun (premarital sex, drug use, gossip) are actually carefully orchestrated tricks of Satan that lead to destruction (STDs and abortion, death from overdose, trashed relationships). God warns us to stay away from sin not only because it has consequences here on earth, but because it drives a wedge into our relationship with Him. Sin is what separates us from God and from eternal life.
Thankfully, we don't live under the Law anymore. Under the Law, if we violated just one part of it, we broke the whole Law. It was nearly impossible to be found righteous by God's standards (who hasn't, for instance, told a white lie in their entire life?).
So what did Jesus come to do? He came to fulfill the Law so that we would not be bound by it anymore. He came so that we could get rid of the distance between God and ourselves and be reunited with Him. Because of His sacrifice, He can extend His grace to us instead of binding us by the Law.
Still, Paul is warning us here that freedom from the Law is not the same thing as a license to sin. Either we're slaves to God or slaves to Satan, slaves to righteousness or slaves to sin.
We can't serve two masters (Matthew 6:24), but we're going to have to serve somebody.
“And if it seems evil to you to serve the LORD, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15).
Seems to me you've got a choice to make. (We all do.) Today, think about who you're serving in your day to day life. Are you a slave to sin, or to righteousness? Are you serving the devil or the Lord? Whose team are you on?
(Note: I read all the way to the end of the Book, and God totally wins. Just something to think about...)
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