John Calvin Commentary Romans 6:16

"Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves [as] servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" — Romans 6:16 (ASV)

By no means: do you not know? This is not a mere denial, as some think, as if he preferred to express his abhorrence of such a question rather than to disprove it. A refutation immediately follows, derived from a contrary supposition, and to this effect: “Between the yoke of Christ and that of sin there is so much opposition that no one can bear them both. If we sin, we give ourselves up to the service of sin; but the faithful, on the contrary, have been redeemed from the tyranny of sin so that they may serve Christ. It is therefore impossible for them to remain bound to sin.”

But it will be better to examine more closely the course of reasoning Paul pursued.

To whom we obey, etc. This relative pronoun may be taken in a causative sense, as it often is. For example, one might say—there is no kind of crime a parricide will not commit, who has not hesitated to commit the greatest crime of all, one so barbarous as to be almost abhorred even by wild beasts.

Paul presents his reason partly from the effects and partly from the nature of correlatives. First, if people obey, he concludes that they are servants, because obedience proves that the one who thus brings another into subjection to him has the power of commanding. This reason regarding service is from the effect, and from this the other arises: “If you are servants, then of course sin has the dominion.”

Or of obedience, etc. The language is not strictly correct, for if he wished to have the clauses corresponding, he would have said, “or of righteousness unto life.”

But as the change in the words does not prevent understanding of the subject, he preferred to express what righteousness is by the word obedience. In this, however, there is a metonymy, for it is to be taken for the very commandments of God.

By mentioning this without addition, he implied that it is God alone to whose authority consciences ought to be subject. Obedience, then, though the name of God is suppressed, is still to be referred to Him, for it cannot be a divided obedience.