As far as I know, none of us has truly been a Christian our entire life. Sure, maybe some of us grew up in Christian families and went to Church all of our lives, but we all have a dark past; things we wish we never did and wish we could have changed.

Romans 6:20-22 says, “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.”

At first I thought, “What does he mean, free in regard to righteousness?” Then I realized that he was simply making a reference to the fact that we cannot serve two masters. If we are slaves to sin, we are free in regard to righteousness. We do what sins says, yet we are free to ignore the callings of righteousness.

After this Paul asks us to take a look back at our dark past and ask ourselves: “What did I get from that?” He doesn’t say, “Well, when you did this you caused suffering to those around you, and when you did that, you only ended up hurting yourself more.” No, in fact he gets straight to the point. He says, “For the end of those things is DEATH.” Someone could easily argue the instant gratification of many of those things we’ve done that we are ashamed of, but Paul skips right past that and talks about the end game.

He continues in the same manner, speaking about being slaves of God. The fruit we get leads to sanctification and it’s end, which is eternal life. Again Paul jumps to the end! Notice he didn’t say, “The fruit you get will always be satisfying and happy, and then you’ll get eternal life.” I think the case is quite the contrary a lot of the time. When chasing a life after Christ, how often is the fruit we produce hard to swallow? How often does God choose to give us trials that are hard, but will bring us out stronger on the other end? When I say stronger, I mean they sanctify us and bring us closer to Him. The fruit we get from being slaves of God is not always satisfying to our human nature, but it will sanctify us.

Our lives are guaranteed to be a roller coaster of good times and bad; no one one has a flat line life. But what comes at the end? Will it be death, or eternal life? I pray that you are all slaves to God, and you recognize the sanctification that His fruit is producing in you.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
- Romans 6:23