Romans 6:20

For when you were servants of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

World English Bible

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Other translations

WEBBE

For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.

BSB

For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness.

KJV

For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.

ASV

For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free in regard of righteousness.

BBE

When you were servants of sin you were free from righteousness.

Original Greek

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ὅτε hote When G3753 γὰρ gar for G1063 δοῦλοι douloi slaves G1401 ἦτε ēte you were G1510 τῆς tēs (the) G3588 ἁμαρτίας hamartias of sin G266 ἐλεύθεροι eleutheroi free G1658 ἦτε ēte you were G1510 τῇ tēa (the) G3588 δικαιοσύνῃ dikaiosunē from righteousness G1343

The early church

Now what he says is somewhat of this kind, When ye lived in wickedness, and impiety, and the worst of evils, the state of compliance ye lived in was such that ye did absolutely no good thing at all. For this is, "ye were free from righteousness." That is ye were not subject to it, but estranged from it wholly. For ye did not even so much as divide the manner of servitude between righteousness and sin, but gave yourselves wholly up to wickedness. Now, therefore, since ye have come over to righteousness, give yourselves wholly up to virtue, doing nothing at all of vice, that the measure you give may be at least equal. And yet it is not the mastership only that is so different, but in the servitude itself there is a vast difference. And this too he unfolds with great perspicuity, and shows what conditions they served upon then, and what now. And as yet he says nothing of the harm accruing from the thing, but hitherto speaks of the shame.

John Chrysostom · d. 407Homilies on Romans

Commentary

Matthew Henry · Verses 16–20

Every man is the servant of the master to whose commands he yields himself; whether it be the sinful dispositions of his heart, in actions which lead to death, or the new and spiritual obedience implanted by regeneration. The apostle rejoiced now they obeyed from the heart the gospel, into which they were delivered as into a mould. As the same metal becomes a new vessel, when melted and recast in another mould, so the believer has become a new creature. And there is great difference in the liberty of mind and spirit, so opposite to the state of slavery, which the true Christian has in the service of his rightful Lord, whom he is enabled to consider as his Father, and himself as his son and heir, by the adoption of grace. The dominion of sin consists in being willingly slaves thereto, not in being harassed by it as a hated power, struggling for victory. Those who now are the servants of God, once were the slaves of sin.

Read Matthew Henry on Romans 6 →

Cross-references

Topics

Depravity Of Man

Cross-references: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge. Hebrew and Greek data from STEPBible.org (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0. Library: sources.