“I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.”
I am using an example from everyday life because of the limitations of your human nature. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness. — Paul acknowledges the slavery metaphor's inadequacy (διὰ τὴν ἀσθένειαν τῆς σαρκὸς ὑμῶν, "because of the weakness of your flesh"); yet it illustrates the transfer of allegiance. Escalation characterized sin's path (μᾶλλον, mallon, "ever-increasing"); righteousness progresses toward ἁγιασμός (hagiasmos, "sanctification/holiness"), the actual transformation of life.
Church Fathers on Romans 6:19
Since he had required great strictness of life, charging us to be dead to the world, and to have died unto wickedness, and to abide with no notion towards the workings of sin, and seemed to be saying something great and burdensome, and too much for human nature; through a desire to show that he is not making any exorbitant demand, nor even as much as might be expected of one who enjoyed so great a gift, but one quite moderate and light, he proves it from contraries, and says,…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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