Romans 6 Freedom from sin's grasp

1-14 Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ

Why do we not sin? Thoughts:
- Experienced God's love -> Chose to die to sin as an act of loving back -> Automatically reject sin because it's against God's way (counter argument: non-believer also knows what's wrong/right, and may choose not to sin either)
- Gratefulness of salvation
- Choose to believe in God and die to sin (out of knowledge) -> because it's the right thing to do

before becoming believer:
- out of fear of the consequence (or conscience)

after becoming believer:
- love -> commitment
- why love God? because he's good -> from personal experience (not only knowledge). Consequence: try not to sin anymore


15-23 Slaves to Righteousness
The answer to previous question:

16.Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

- 2 choices: slaves to righteousness or to sin
- slaves always obey their master
- slave to sin -> sin -> death
- slave to righteousness -> obey -> try not to sin (sanctification process)

why the term "slaves"? slaves have to follow the master's path. imperfect analogy because we still have free will, and allowed to choose your master. we cannot manipulate the consequence of our choice though.

now there's a time when say someone ask you, why are you not gossiping?
some ppl would say I'm not gossiping because I love him... now, the three of us... we still cant say those words easiliy like that. is it something wrong with us? or we're in fact in the right way afterall... its only we havent got that far yet.

now in that case? what is the meaning of "I love Him"?
if we havent got that far (see case above), does it mean that we *dont* love Him? or we *havent* got that far.

there's indeed certain passage in the bible, forgot where that is right now.. that says "if you love Him, you obey what he said." so it's answering what we've been asking all this time. obeying, having commitment, *is* love... or some part of love at least. so... now when we answer the question "why you are not gossiping" with "I do that because I'm committed with that".. that still means we're in love with Him nevertheless.

love is combination of feeling, and commitment.
strangely this applies both to human-human relationship and also to human-god relationship.