<p>6:19&nbsp;<i>I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your human nature; but as you presented your limbs as slaves of uncleanness and iniquity, now present your limbs as slaves of righteousness unto holiness</i>- In Paul&rsquo;s case, being all things to all men meant that at times He sacrificed highest principle in order to get through to men; he didn&rsquo;t just baldly state doctrinal truth and leave his hearers with the problem of whether to accept it. He really sought to persuade men. He magnified his ministry of preaching to the Gentiles, he emphasized the possibility of Gentile salvation, &ldquo;If by any means I may provoke to emulation &lsquo;incite to rivalry&rsquo; them which are my flesh the Jews, and might save some of them&rdquo; (Rom. 11:13,14). This hardly seems a very appropriate method, under the spotlight of highest principle. But it was a method Paul used. Likewise he badgers the Corinthians into giving money for the poor saints in Jerusalem on the basis that he has boasted to others of how much they would give (2 Cor. 9:2), and these boasts had provoked others to be generous; so now, they had better live up to their promise and give the cash. If somebody promised to give money to charity and then didn&rsquo;t do so, we wouldn&rsquo;t pressurize them to give. And we wouldn&rsquo;t really encourage one ecclesia to give money on the basis of telling them that another ecclesia had promised to be very generous, so they ought to be too. Yet these apparently human methods were used by Paul. He spoke &ldquo;in human terms&rdquo; to the Romans, &ldquo;because of the infirmity of your flesh&rdquo; (Rom. 6:19 NIV); he so wanted to make his point understood. And when he told husbands to love their wives, he uses another rather human reason: that because your wife is &ldquo;one flesh&rdquo; with you, by loving her you are loving yourself. &lsquo;And&rsquo;, he reasons, &lsquo;you wouldn&rsquo;t hate yourself, would you, so &ndash; love your wife&rsquo;. The cynic could reasonably say that this is pure selfishness (Eph. 5:29); and Paul seems to recognize that the higher level of understanding is that a husband should love his wife purely because he is manifesting the love of Christ to an often indifferent and unappreciative ecclesia (5:32,33). And yet Paul plainly uses the lower level argument too. It is possible to discern an element of human appeal in some Biblical statements. Thus the Spirit encourages husbands to love their wives as themselves, because effectively they are loving themselves if they do this (Eph. 5:29). Yet we are also warned that a characteristic of the last days will be a selfish loving of our<em>selves</em>. Paul speaks of how he puts things &quot;in human terms&quot; (Rom. 6:19 NIV); e.g. he suggests that fear of the judgment alone ought to at least make us sit up and take our spiritual life seriously (2 Cor. 5:11), even though the tenor of Scripture elsewhere is that this shouldn't be our motivator.</p><p>We should note that Paul is almost apologizing for his metaphors, as if he had put something too crudely. His metaphors are &lsquo;humanly&rsquo; quite acceptable- from the courtroom, slavery etc. Given the height and wonder of the grace we are considering, any metaphor, any similitude, any language- is inadequate and even borders on the inappropriate. And note that Paul is writing all these things, both the metaphors and the apology for them, under Divine inspiration.&nbsp;</p><p>The changeover from the downward spiral to the upward spiral ought to have begun at baptism; but as with some of the Roman believers in the first century, a believer can slip back into the downward spiral: &quot;Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness&quot; (Rom. 6:19 NIV). The life of sexual impurity is an &quot;ever increasing&quot; downwards path; the endless quest for new relationships and sexual novelty doesn't need to be described.</p><p>Rom. 6:19 speaks of how the ever increasing downward spiral of obedience to sin is turned around at baptism, so that we begin an upward spiral of obedience to righteousness. God does good unto those that are good, but leads those who turn aside even further astray (Ps. 125:4,5). Those who are &quot;born of God&quot; are able to hear and understand God's words (Jn. 8:47)- and baptism is surely how we are born of God (Jn. 3:3-5). This seems to open up the possibility of yet higher growth once we are baptized- it's all an upward spiral, like any functional relationship.<br />Rom. 6:19-23 makes the contrast between how serving sin leads to ever increasing sin, whilst serving Christ results in ever increasing righteousness. We are all too aware of the upward (downward) spiral of sin- we well know the feeling of losing our spiritual grip for an hour, day or week, and sensing how sin is ever increasing its hold over us. But by our union with Christ in baptism it is quite possible, indeed intended, that we should get into an upward spiral of obedience, in which one spiritual victory leads to another.</p>