But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. 18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (Rom 6:17-18)

    Prior to God regenerating his elect, we were all servants of sin and under the dominion of sin. Most people automatically go to outward immoral acts when they think of being a servant of sin, and those things are sin, but those things are all products of a selfish sin nature that all men are born with, a nature inherited from Adam. A nature or principal that is full of self righteousness and religious pride. What did Adam do when he knew that God had discovered his sin of disobedience? He selfishly made himself a fig leaf covering in an attempt to hide his sin. 

    When I think of being a servant of sin, I think of all that time before God revealed grace to me. I did not know the true and living God. I worshiped a god of my imagination. A God that would save me if I would just straightened up my act and started living right, and the living right standard changed according to what religion you were brought up in, or what your mother and father taught you. It says here “that ye were the servants of sin”. Then it says “but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you”. This speaks of God calling His elect by the preaching of the gospel, which is “that form of doctrine which was delivered you”.

    The gospel of how God saves a sinner based on the imputed righteousness of Christ and that alone. God, in time and in each successive generation, delivers the gospel message to that sinner, and God the Holy Spirit regenerates the sinner and causes that sinner to believe the gospel and flee to Christ alone for all of salvation. The sinner will then and only then “obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you”. This is when Gods elect, His sheep, all those that God the father give to Christ in eternity, and that Christ redeemed at the cross; this is when the elect of God became free from sin in their own mind, conscious and experience. 

    It says in Rom 6:18 Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. When God brings us from darkness to light, when He opens our blind eyes and reveals Himself to His elect, we’re then free from that sin that deceived us and kept us going about to establish a righteousness of our own. We then “became the servants of righteousness”. When God performs this miraculous work of grace in the hearts of His elect, they are able to serve Him in “obedience unto righteousness”. They are then able to behold God as He is “a just God and a Savior”. A God that is right and just when He saves sinners based on the blood and righteousness of Christ.