<p>6:22&nbsp;<i>But now being made free from sin, and having become slaves of God</i>- See on 6:18. We were made free from slavery, rather than being bought by a slave master from our previous owner. But we chose to become His slaves out of gratitude for His grace. The same Greek is found in 1 Cor. 9:19: &ldquo;I have&nbsp;<em>made myself a slave</em>&nbsp;to all, that I might gain the more&rdquo;. The idea is that made ourselves servants / slaves, having been made free from our old master. The two slave masters are now called &ldquo;sin&rdquo; and &ldquo;God&rdquo;.&nbsp;</p><p><em>You have your fruit </em><i>unto holiness- and the result is eternal life</i>- But Paul&rsquo;s whole intention of writing to the Roman church and ministering to them was so that they would bear fruit (Rom. 1:13 cp. 15:28). If we truly understand that we are no longer in &ldquo;sin&rdquo; but the servants of God, in His sphere of things and His acceptance, then we will bear fruit in practice, it simply has to be like that, it&rsquo;s inevitable. The idea of bearing fruit is connected in the context to baptism into Christ. Jn. 12:24 records the Lord likening His death to a seed falling into the ground, going as it were into a grave under the soil, but rising again and bearing fruit. Again- all that is true of the Lord Jesus is true of us who are in Him. Paul has been saying that we were planted together with Him (6:5), buried with Him, rose with Him- and as He is the plant that bears fruit, so are we. We therefore aren&rsquo;t being exhorted to bear fruit, so much as being told that we have our fruit- for we are in Him. And naturally, this means we will try to live in practice as we are by status. But by status, we do now have our fruit- His fruit- and the end of all this will at the final judgment be &ldquo;everlasting life&rdquo;.&nbsp;And yet it is quite legitimate to read the Greek here as meaning that living a spiritually fruitful life now is the &ldquo;eternal life&rdquo;- an idea in harmony with the repeated promises in John&rsquo;s gospel that we can right now live the kind of life we shall eternally live.</p>