“Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”
You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. — The paradox crystallizes: freedom from sin is simultaneously enslavement to righteousness (δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē). The ἐλευθερόω (eleutherōō, "freed") is completed action; the subsequent δουλεία is the new status. Christian liberty is not autonomy but theonomous bondage—willing service to justice.
Church Fathers on Romans 6:18
“Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness.” There are two gifts of God which he here points out. The “freeing from sin,” and also the “making them servants to righteousness,” which is better than any freedom. For God has done the same as if a person were to take an orphan, who had been carried away by savages into their own country, and were not only to free him from captivity, but were to set a kind father over him, and bring him to very great…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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