Thursday in the 29th Week of Ordinary Time, October 23, 2025

Romans 6, 19-23

I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature. For just as you presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness for lawlessness, so now present them as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free from righteousness. But what profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit that you have leads to sanctification, and its end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

When St. Paul says, “I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your nature,” he acknowledges how difficult it is for the fallen mind to grasp the invisible realities of grace. We are bound by the imagery of servitude and reward, of wages and masters, because our hearts learn slowly. Yet within these “human terms,” Paul reveals a divine paradox: the only true freedom is found in holy bondage—the joyful slavery of love.

Every person, whether saint or sinner, serves something. The modern illusion that one can be “free” in a purely autonomous sense is the very deceit the serpent whispered in Eden: “You shall be as gods.” When man rejects God’s lordship, he does not become his own master; he simply trades one slavery for another. Sin quickly becomes a tyrant. The mind that yields to pride or lust or anger soon discovers that it no longer commands itself. Paul therefore says, “You presented the parts of your bodies as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness.” The sinner thinks he is expressing freedom, yet he is only displaying chains. The passions become his overseers, and the end of that service—its “wages”—is death.

By contrast, the Christian is “freed from sin” precisely by becoming “a slave of God.” This new slavery is not humiliation but healing. In sin, the will is fractured and dissipated; in grace, it is gathered back into unity. The one who serves righteousness is not coerced; he is drawn by love. What once bound him from without now moves him from within, for charity becomes his motive power. The soul learns to say with the Psalmist, “I will run in the way of your commandments, for you have set my heart at liberty.”

Paul’s word sanctification (ἁγιασμός) signifies this gradual transformation by which the soul, belonging to God, takes on the likeness of its Master. Holiness is not an external decoration but the interior shaping of the heart by divine grace. The Christian presents the “members” of his body—his eyes, his tongue, his hands—as instruments of righteousness. What had once been weapons of rebellion become tools of peace. Each act of self-mastery, each quiet obedience, is another stroke in the divine sculpture by which God fashions His image anew in us.

The Apostle then poses a searching question: “What profit did you get then from the things of which you are now ashamed?” Every sinner, when grace has opened his eyes, can recall some moment when pleasure promised sweetness but left only bitterness. The fruits of sin always taste of ashes. Shame itself becomes a gift, for it awakens the memory of our true dignity. Only one who remembers that he was created for holiness can feel the pain of having betrayed it. Yet Paul will not let shame harden into despair. He contrasts the barren end of sin—death—with the living fruit of grace—sanctification leading to eternal life.

Death here is not merely the dissolution of the body; it is the alienation of the soul from its source. To live apart from God is to wither even while breathing. Conversely, to live “as a slave of God” is to enter into the vitality of the divine love that knows no decay. Eternal life is not earned, as wages are earned; it is received as gift. Paul’s final line is a masterstroke of theology and poetry: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The two halves of the sentence mirror the two economies that govern all existence—the economy of merit and the economy of grace. One pays what is owed; the other gives beyond all measure.

To choose Christ, then, is to step out of the marketplace of sin and into the household of God, where the Master calls His servants friends. In that friendship obedience becomes joy, and the heart learns that true liberty is not the right to do as we please but the power to love as we ought.