Roma 6:17-22

6:17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed ¹  from the heart that pattern ²  of teaching you were entrusted to, 6:18 and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. 6:19 (I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) ³  For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness.

6:21 So what benefit ⁴  did you then reap ⁵  from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. 6:22 But now, freed ⁶  from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit ⁷  leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life.

Roma 12:1-2

Consecration of the Believer’s Life

12:1 Therefore I exhort you, brothers and sisters, ⁸  by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a sacrifice – alive, holy, and pleasing to God ⁹  – which is your reasonable service. 12:2 Do not be conformed ¹⁰  to this present world, ¹¹  but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test and approve ¹²  what is the will of God – what is good and well-pleasing and perfect.

[6:17]  ¹ tn Grk “you were slaves of sin but you obeyed.”

[6:17]  ² tn Or “type, form.”

[6:19]  ³ tn Or “because of your natural limitations” (NRSV).

[6:19]  sn Verse 19 forms something of a parenthetical comment in Paul’s argument.

[6:21]  ⁴ tn Grk “fruit.”

[6:21]  ⁵ tn Grk “have,” in a tense emphasizing their customary condition in the past.

[6:22]  ⁶ tn The two aorist participles translated “freed” and “enslaved” are causal in force; their full force is something like “But now, since you have become freed from sin and since you have become enslaved to God….”

[6:22]  ⁷ tn Grk “fruit.”

[12:1]  ⁸ tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.

[12:1]  ⁹ tn The participle and two adjectives “alive, holy, and pleasing to God” are taken as predicates in relation to “sacrifice,” making the exhortation more emphatic. See ExSyn 618-19.

[12:1]  sn Taken as predicate adjectives, the terms alive, holy, and pleasing are showing how unusual is the sacrifice that believers can now offer, for OT sacrifices were dead. As has often been quipped about this text, “The problem with living sacrifices is that they keep crawling off the altar.”

[12:2]  ¹⁰ tn Although συσχηματίζεσθε (suschmatizesqe) could be either a passive or middle, the passive is more likely since it would otherwise have to be a direct middle (“conform yourselves”) and, as such, would be quite rare for NT Greek. It is very telling that being “conformed” to the present world is viewed as a passive notion, for it may suggest that it happens, in part, subconsciously. At the same time, the passive could well be a “permissive passive,” suggesting that there may be some consciousness of the conformity taking place. Most likely, it is a combination of both.

[12:2]  ¹¹ tn Grk “to this age.”

[12:2]  ¹² sn The verb translated test and approve (δοκιμάζω, dokimazw) carries the sense of “test with a positive outcome,” “test so as to approve.”