Know Ye Not to Whom Ye Yield Yourselves Servants to Obey, His Servants You are to Whom You Obey?

Romans 6

16 Know you not, that to whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey (the Believer is either a slave to Christ, for that’s what the word “servant” means, or else a slave to sin, which he will be if he doesn’t keep his Faith in Christ and the Cross); whether of sin unto death (once again allow us to state the fact that if the Believer attempts to live for God by any method other than Faith in the Finished Work of Christ, the Believer will fail, no matter how hard he otherwise tries), or of obedience unto Righteousness? (The Believer is required to obey the Word of the Lord. He cannot do that within his own strength, but only by understanding that he receives all things through what Christ did at the Cross and his continued Faith in that Finished Work, even on a daily basis. Then the Holy Spirit, Who Alone can make us what we ought to be, can accomplish His work within our lives.)
17 But God be thanked, that you were the servants of sin (slaves to the sin nature, what we were before we were saved), but you have obeyed from the heart that form of Doctrine (Jesus Christ and Him Crucified; understanding that all things come to the Believer from God by the means of the Cross) which was delivered you (the Lord gave this “form of Doctrine” to Paul, and he gave it to us in his Epistles).
18 Being then made free from sin (being made free from the sin nature; it has no more power over the Believer, but only as we continue to look to the Cross), you became the servants of Righteousness (whereas you were formerly a slave to the sin nature, you are now a slave to Righteousness; if Faith is maintained in the Cross, there is a constant pull of the Believer toward Righteousness).

Swaggart, J. (2005). The Expositor’s Study Bible (p. 1979). Baton Rouge, LA: Jimmy Swaggart Ministries.