[Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =For when you were slaves of your (τῆς) sin, you were freemen as to righteousness,= God's Righteousness (τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ). It had nothing to do with you, whether to give you peace or to receive your tribute of love and loyalty in reply. Practically, Christ was not your Atonement, and so not your Master; you stood, in a dismal independence, outside His claims. To you, your lips were your own; your time was your own; your will was your own. You belonged to self; that is to say, you were the slaves of your sin. Will you go back? Will the word "freedom" (he plays with it, as it were, to prove them) make you wish yourselves back where you were before you had endorsed by faith your purchase by the blood of Christ? Nay, for what was that "freedom," seen in its results, its results upon yourselves? [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =What fruit, therefore,= (the "_therefore_" of the logic of facts,) =used you to have then,= in those old days, =from things over which you are ashamed now?= Ashamed indeed; =for the end,= the issue, as the fruit is the tree's "end," =the end of those things is--death;= perdition of all true life, here and hereafter too. [Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =But now,= in the blessed actual state of your case, as by faith you have entered into Christ, into His work and into His life, =now liberated from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit,= you possess indeed, at last, the true issues of being for which you were made, all contributing =to sanctification,= to that separation to God's will in practice which is the development of your separation to that will in critical fact, when you met your Redeemer in self-renouncing faith. Yes, this fruit you have indeed; =and as its end,= as that for which it is produced, to which it always and for ever tends, you have =life eternal.= [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =For the pay of sin,= sin's military stipend (ὀψώνια), punctually given to the being which has joined its war against the will of God, =is death; but the free gift of God is life eternal, in Jesus Christ our Lord.= * * * * *