“For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness.”
When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. — Slavery to sin freed from righteousness's claim; the life of sin experienced itself as liberty but was actually bondage. This inverts apparent freedom: the unbeliever is freed from the good. The grammar traces the historical arc: past slavery, present liberation.
Church Fathers on Romans 6:20
“For when you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.” Now what he says is somewhat of this kind, When ye lived in wickedness, and impiety, and the worst of evils, the state of compliance ye lived in was such that you did absolutely no good thing at all. For this is, “you were free from righteousness.” That is you were not subject to it, but estranged from it wholly. For you did not even so much as divide the manner of servitude between righteousness and…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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