Read Romans 6:22 again. It says believers are FREE from sin (also verse 6:18)...and slaves of righteousness. If you believe, you are free from sin because you've been crucified with Christ and born again into Christ as your perfect works before God. Read Romans 6 at the beginning again: How can those who are dead to sin still live in it? It is not possible... just like it is impossible for a dead body to sin.
Except Paul wrote more nonsense than anyone. We are not dead to sin. Use common sense dead means you are 100 percent unresponsive to stimulus around. Jesus knew this He said pick up your ( notice this MY cross not His) cross daily and follow me. It's harder to stimulated by the eyes the flesh and the world lugging that cross around. Dead means no response but we do respond cuz we are not "dead to sin" . There's no magic wand to wave and now I'm dead to sin, it's a war everyday and we need to be willing to deny ourselves no one does that for us.
Here's a great sermon on this topic! www.ligonier.org/learn/sermons/slaves-sin-slaves-god Romans 6: 17 - 18: "But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness." The point Paul is making is that we are all slaves to what we spend our lives worshipping. We are all slaves to one of two categories - slaves to sin, or slaves to God. The choice is not slave or not slave, but rather WHO you will be a slave to your entire life. Without Christ we are slaves to our sinful desires - achievement, selfishness, lust/sex, money, success, you name it. We think it is freedom because our sinful flesh wants it - but we spend our lives worshipping these things and are slaves to pursuing them. And from experience we all know these things don't truly satisfy - they leave us wanting more. And the Bible says that the "wages of sin is death" - that at the end of all that worship and slavery comes death. Following Christ is truly freedom from sin - but to turn from your sin means to turn TO God. We become slaves to righteousness! God gives us the Holy Spirit to be able to conquer sin. It's not that Christians never sin, but with the Spirit working in us we begin to have new desires and are no longer enslaved by those desires - the rest of our lives are spent becoming more and more like Christ through his power - but we will never be truly free until we are glorified when we die. Romans 6:23 "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." At the end of a life spent worshiping and pursing God comes LIFE. When Jesus said in Matthew 11:28 "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He didn't stop there - that we are saved by Christ and then live however we want. He said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Choosing to follow Christ is submitting ourselves to Him as King - the metaphor of putting Christ's "yoke" upon us demonstrates that. But Christ urges us that His yoke, unlike the worlds, is EASY and LIGHT. The Christian life is not easy but our Savior is so gentle and the Holy Spirit is what transforms us from the inside out to be able to follow and love Christ. So two options: slave to sin = death, or slave to God = life! It can seem like following Christ is a huge cost - it is! But it the best deal in the world: we are forgiven and inherit life on the basis of what Christ did, not our own sinful lives! "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?" Matthew 16:25 "If we consider the writings of some of the most important Christian thinkers in history, however, we will find that they are quite clear on the enslavement of our wills to sin. Martin Luther, for example, considered the idea that human beings possess an equal freedom to choose good or evil so foolish that he wrote a lengthy attack on this notion titled The Bondage of the Will. In this famous work, Luther argued that the human will serves one of two masters-God or Satan-and that apart from grace, all people are enslaved to Satan and are not free to escape this bondage on their own. Many biblical passages testify to this truth, including John 8:34, which tells us that those who oppose Christ are enslaved to sin."
