CONCLUSION
CHAPTER TWO
UNION WITH CHRIST
Romans 5:20—6:23
We have discovered from Romans 5 that peace with God—a continuing relationship of grace now and of glory in the world to come—is the first privilege of the believer. The second—unfolded in Romans 6—is his union with Christ, a state which leads to holiness.
The great theme of Romans 6, and in particular of verses 1-11, is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not only historical facts and significant doctrines, but personal experiences of the Christian believer. They are events in which we ourselves have come to share. All Christians have been united to Christ in His death and resurrection. Further, if this is true, if we have died with Christ and risen with Christ, it is inconceivable that we should go on living in sin.
Romans 6 in fact consists of two parallel sections (verses 1-14 and 15-23). Each elaborates the same general theme, that sin is inadmissible in a Christian. But the argument used in the two parts is slightly different. In verses 1-14 it is our union with Christ which is unfolded; in verses 15-23 it is our slavery to God. This is our position as Christians. We are one with Christ and we are slaves of God. The argument for holiness is grounded upon this double fact.
I. ONE WITH CHRIST (6:1-14)
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
a. Objection from the critics
The chapter opens with two questions: ‘What shall we say then ? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?'
In order to understand what lies behind these questions, we need to glance back to the end of the previous chapter, particularly verses 20 and 21. Paul has been comparing and contrasting the work of Adam and the work of Christ. The parallel which he draws between them is so neat and tidy that there might seem to be no room in his scheme for one of the most important events occurring between Adam and Christ, namely the giving of the law through Moses. So, having described the entry of sin in verse 12, he now describes in verse 20 the entry of law (the verbs are similar).
Why was the law given? ‘Law came in, to increase the trespass' (verse 20); and the law is said to have ‘increased' sin because the effect of the law was to expose sin and even to provoke it (see the exposition of 7 :7-12). As Η. P. Liddon comments, ‘Things had to become worse with the human family before they could be better.'
‘But', the apostle continues, ‘where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.' God's purpose in this was the establishment of His reign of grace. To explain and paraphrase verse 21: just as in Old Testament days sin held sway, reigning through Moses' law and resulting in death, so God's will is that in New Testament days grace shall hold sway, reigning through Christ’s righteousness and resulting in eternal life.
It is against this background that Paul now asks his questions: ‘What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?’ The fact that in the past increased sin brought increased grace (5:20, 21) prompts the question whether the same is not still true today. Could I not argue something like this: Ί have been justified freely by the grace of God. If I sin again, I shall be forgiven again, by grace. And the more I sin, the more opportunity grace will have to express and exhibit itself in my forgiveness. So shall I continue in sin that grace may abound?’
Now the apostle was giving expression to one of the objections raised by his contemporaries against the gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone. They maintained that the doctrine of free grace leads to antinomianism (lawlessness), that it weakens our sense of moral responsibility and actually encourages us to sin. Critics objected to the gospel on that ground in Paul’s day, and the same ignorant argument is frequently heard today.
If our acceptance before God depends entirely on His free grace, irrespective of any works of ours, then surely we may live as we please? If God ‘justifies the ungodly’, which He does (Rom. 4:5) and indeed delights to do, there is no point in being godly; rather the reverse. Thus the doctrine of justification by grace is said to put a premium on sin. Some people evidently did argue like this. Jude called them ‘ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ’ (verse 4).
Paul’s answer is one of outraged indignation: ‘Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! ’ Notice that Paul did not deny the doctrine to which his critics took exception, but only their unwarranted deduction from it. He neither contradicted nor withdrew, nor even modified his gospel of free salvation. Salvation is a free and unmerited gift! Indeed, the fact that people could and did object to it in these terms, and that Paul did not withdraw, proves conclusively that this is the gospel.
How then does Paul answer? After his emphatic negative he counters his critics’ question with another question (verse 2). ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it?’ In other words, there is in our critics’ objection to justification by faith a fundamental misunderstanding of it, and so of what it means to be a Christian. The Christian life begins with a death to sin (the phrase is not that we ‘are dead', av, but that we ‘died’, an aorist tense). And in view of this it is ridiculous to ask if we are at liberty to continue in sin. How can we go on living in what we have died to?
The rsv and neb are a little misleading in their phrase ‘how can we’ continue in sin, as if Paul were arguing the impossibility of it. In the Greek the verb is just in the simple future tense. Literally translated it would be, ‘we died to sin (past); how shall we live in it (in the future)?’ It is not the literal impossibility of sin, but the moral incongruity of it, which the apostle is emphasizing. J. B. Phillips catches this rather well in his translation, ‘We, who have died to sin—how could we live in sin a moment longer?’
The big question, however, is this, How and in what sense have we ‘died to sin’? Clearly we will not go on living in what we have died to; but what does it mean to have died to sin? How and when did it happen? The apostle Paul takes the rest of the paragraph to explain this and we shall follow him as he unfolds his mighty argument step by step.
b. Paul's counter-argument
Step one: Christian baptism is baptism into Christ. That is what he says in verse 3, ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus . . .?’ That people can even think of asking whether Christians are free to sin betrays a complete lack of understanding of what a Christian is and what Christian baptism is. A Christian is not merely a justified believer. He is someone who has entered into a vital personal union with Jesus Christ. Indeed, properly understood, justification itself is not a merely legal pronouncement affecting our status without touching our life. We are justified ‘in Christ' (Gal. 2:17, literally). There is no possibility of justification through Christ without union with Christ; the former depends on the latter.
And baptism signifies this union with Christ. Of course baptism has other meanings, including a washing from sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit. But essentially it signifies union with Christ. Again and again in the New Testament the preposition that is employed with the verb ‘to baptize' is not ‘in' (en) but ‘into' (eis). In His great commission the risen Lord said that we were to baptize (literally) ‘into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit'. In Acts, believers in both Samaria and Ephesus were baptized ‘into the name of the Lord Jesus' (8:16; 19:5, literally). Galatians 3:27 speaks of ‘as many of you as were baptized into Christ'. And the preposition is just the same here: ‘baptized into Christ Jesus'.
Baptism in the New Testament is a dramatic sacrament or ordinance. It indicates not just that God washes away our sin, not just that He gives us the Holy Spirit, but that by sheer grace He places us ‘into' Christ Jesus. That is the essence of the Christian life, visibly signified in baptism. Not, of course, that the outward rite of baptism by itself secures our union with Christ. By no means. It is inconceivable that the apostle, having spent three chapters arguing that justification is by faith alone, should now shift his ground, contradict himself and make baptism the means of salvation. We must give the apostle Paul credit for a little consistency of thought. No, when he writes that we are ‘baptized into Christ Jesus', he means that this union with Christ, invisibly effected by faith, is visibly signified and sealed by baptism. Nevertheless, the first point he assumes is that being a Christian involves a personal, vital identification with Jesus Christ, and that this union with Him is dramatically set forth in our baptism. This is step one.
Step two: Baptism into Christ is baptism into His death and resurrection. 'Do you not know’, says Paul (verses 3-5), 'that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (probably meaning "by that splendid revelation of the Father’s power”, J. B. Phillips), we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.’ That is to say, if we condense the apostle’s words, baptism into Christ is baptism into His death and resurrection. The tense of the verb 'shall be’ in verse 5 is future only in relation to our death with Christ; there is no reference here to the resurrection of the body.
These verses probably allude to the pictorial symbolism of baptism. When baptisms took place in the open air in some stream, the candidate would go down into the water—whether he was then only partially or totally immersed really does not matter—and as he went down into the water, whether partially or totally, he would seem to be buried and then to rise again. His baptism would dramatize his death, his burial and his resurrection to a new life. 'In other words,’ writes C. J. Vaughan in his commentary, 'our baptism was a sort of funeral.’ A funeral; yes, and a resurrection from the grave as well.
This, then, is the second stage in the apostle’s argument. A Christian, by faith inwardly and by baptism outwardly, has been united to Christ in His death and resurrection. We are not to think of ourselves as just united to Christ in some vague, general sense. We must be more particular than that. The only Jesus Christ with whom we have been identified and made one is the Christ who died and rose again. So we have actually shared, willy-nilly, by union with Christ, in His death and resurrection.
Step three: Christ’s death was a death to sin and His resurrection was a resurrection to God. This section is a more difficult one to understand. In verses 6-11 Paul writes: 'We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed (literally, "has been justified”, dedikaiotai) from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.'
This needs careful thought. Verse 10 explains how we are to think of the death and resurrection of Christ with which we have been united: ‘The death he died he died to sin . . . the life he lives he lives to God.' Now, what is this death to sin, the death which Christ died (verse 10), and the death which we have therefore died in Him (verse 2, ‘we . . . died to sin', and verse 11, ‘consider yourselves dead to sin')?
1. Death to sin: a misunderstanding. It is necessary in this instance to begin by being negative, to demolish before we can construct, because of a current misunderstanding. There is a popular view of the death to sin described in Romans 6 which cannot stand up to a careful examination but leads people to self-deception, to disillusionment, and even to despair. This interpretation runs as follows: when you die physically your five senses cease to operate. You can no longer touch, taste, see, smell or hear. You lose all power to feel or to respond to stimuli. Therefore, by analogy, the popular view continues, to die to sin is to become insensitive to it. It is to be as unresponsive to sin as a corpse to physical stimuli.
This view lends itself to illustration. I have heard it put like this. One of the signs of life is the ability to respond to a stimulus. As you are walking along a street, you may see a dog or a cat lying in the gutter. You cannot tell by looking at it whether it is alive or dead. But touch it with your foot and you will know. If it is alive there is an immediate reaction. It jumps up and runs away. But if it is dead there will be no response at all. It will just lie there without moving. So, according to this popular view, the fact that we ‘died to sin’ means that we become unresponsive to it. We become like dead men, and when the stimulus of temptation comes we neither feel it nor react to it. We are dead. And the reason for this, so we are told from verse 6, is that our old nature in some mystical way was actually crucified. Christ bore not only our guilt but our ‘flesh’, our fallen nature. It was nailed to the cross and killed, and our task (however much evidence we may have to the contrary) is to reckon it dead (verse 11).
Let me bring you some quotations which express this view. J. B. Phillips seems to hold it. He says that ‘a dead man can safely be said to be immune to the power of sin’ (verse 7) and that we are to look upon ourselves as ‘dead to the appeal and power of sin’, unresponsive to it. C. J. Vaughan writes, ‘A dead man cannot sin. And you are dead. . . . Be in relation to all sin as impassive, as insensible, as immovable as is He who has already died.' Η. P. Liddon comments, ‘This apothanein (having died) has presumably made the Christian as insensible to sin as a dead man is to the objects of the world of sense.'
Despite all this, however, there are serious, indeed fatal, objections to this view. If we consider the matter carefully, we know that this is not the sense in which Christ died to sin; neither is it the sense in which we have died to sin.
It is of great importance to observe that the phrase ‘died to sin' comes three times in this paragraph. Twice it refers to Christians (verses 2 and 11) and once it refers to Christ (verse 10). Now it is a fundamental principle of biblical interpretation that the same phrase recurring in the same context bears the same meaning. We must therefore find an explanation of this death to sin which is true both of Christ and of Christians. We are told that ‘he died to sin’, and that ‘we died to sin\ So, whatever this death to sin is, it has to be true of the Lord Jesus and of us.
Take Christ and His death first. What does verse 10 mean by saying ‘he died to sin, once for all’? It cannot mean He became unresponsive to it, because this would imply that He was formerly responsive to it. Was our Lord Jesus Christ at one time so alive to sin that He needed subsequently to die to it? And indeed was He so continuously alive to sin that He had to die to it decisively once and for all? Of course not. That would be intolerable.
Now how about ourselves and our death to sin? Have we died to sin in the sense that our old nature has become unresponsive to it? Again, No. A second vital principle of biblical interpretation is that you must explain the text within its context, the part in relation to the whole, and the special in the light of the general. So we ask: What is the general teaching of the rest of Scripture about the old nature? It is that the old nature is still alive and active in regenerate believers. Indeed the context of this very text teaches the same truth. In verses 12 and 13 the apostle says, ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. . . . Do not yield your members to sin’—commands which would be entirely gratuitous if we had so died to sin that we were now unresponsive to it. And the rest of the Epistle to the Romans confirms this. At the beginning of chapter 8 Paul urges us not to set our mind on the things of the flesh and not to walk according to the flesh. In 13:14 he says we are not to make any provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. These would be absurd injunctions if the flesh were dead and had no desires. It is these verses to which we must point those who, while agreeing that they are not ‘dead’ or oblivious to the allurements of the world, yet maintain that they have a ‘sanctified disposition' from which the inclination to sin has been removed. But these instructions about not gratifying or yielding to the lusts of the flesh show that our temptations still come from within, not merely from without, i.e. from the flesh, not just from the world and the devil.
Besides, Christian experience proves that this is not the correct interpretation. We must notice that the apostle is not referring to a few exceptionally holy Christians, who may have passed through some special experience. He is describing all Christians who have believed and been baptized into Christ: ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?’ (verses 2, 3).
So this death to sin, whatever it is, is common to every Christian. But are all baptized believers dead to sin in the sense of being inwardly unresponsive to it?
Do they find that they have become insensible to it, that it lies quiescent within them, and that they can reckon it so? No. On the contrary, scriptural and historical biographies, and our own experience, combine to deny these ideas. Far from being dead in the sense of being quiescent, our fallen and corrupt nature is alive and kicking. So much so that we are exhorted not to obey its lusts; and so much so that we are given the Holy Spirit for the precise purpose of subduing and controlling it. And what would be the purpose of that if it were already dead?
What is more, I would add this: one of the real dangers of this popular view—as I know in my own experience, because I was taught it and once held it— is that when people have tried to reckon themselves dead in that sense (although knowing full well that they are not dead), they are torn between their interpretation of Scripture and their empirical experience. As a result, some of them begin to doubt the truth of God’s Word, while others, in order to maintain their interpretation, resort even to dishonesty about their experience.
Let me sum up the objections to the popular view. Christ did not die to sin (in the sense of becoming insensitive to it) because He never was thus alive to it that He needed to die to it. We have not died to sin in this sense either, because we are still alive to it. Indeed, we are told to 'mortify’ it, and how can you kill what is already dead? My intention in saying all this is not to attack the cherished views of other Christians or to hurt people’s feelings, but to open up a new dimension of Christian living and to pave the way to a new liberty in what follows.
2. Death to sin: Paul's real meaning. What then is the meaning of this 'death to sin’ which Christ died and which we have died in Him? How can we interpret the expression in such a way that it is true of Christ and of Christians—all Christians? The answer is not far to seek.
The whole misunderstanding illustrates the great danger of arguing from an analogy. In every analogy (in which somebody is likened to something) we need to enquire carefully at what point the parallel or similarity is being drawn; we must not press a resemblance at every point. For instance, Jesus said we were to become like little children. He did not mean by this that we were to manifest every characteristic of children (including ignorance, waywardness, stubbornness and sin), but only one, namely humble dependence. In the same way, because we are said to have ‘died’ to sin, this does not necessarily mean that every characteristic of a dead man belongs to the Christian, including insensibility to stimuli. We have to ask ourselves: at what point is the analogy made? What is the meaning of ‘death' in this context?
If we answer these questions from Scripture rather than from analogy, from biblical teaching about death rather than from the properties of dead men, we shall find immediate help. Death is thought of and spoken of in Scripture not so much in physical terms as in moral and legal terms; not as a state of lying motionless like a corpse but as the grim but just penalty for sin. Whenever sin and death are spoken of together in the Bible, the essential relationship between them is that death is sin's penalty. And this is true all through the Bible, from the second chapter in Genesis, where God says, ‘In the day that you eat (and therefore sin) . . . you shall die', to the last chapters of the Revelation where we are told about that awful destiny of sinners which is called the ‘second death'. Sin and death are linked in Scripture as an offence and its just reward. That is certainly true in the Epistle to the Romans. In 1: 32 we are told of God’s decree that those who sin ‘deserve to die’, while we read in the last verse of this very chapter, The wages of sin is death’ (verse 23). This, then, is how dying and death are to be understood. And this is the meaning of death which is true both of Christ and of Christians.
Take Christ first (verse 10). The death he died he died to sin, once for all.’ What does this mean? It can mean only one thing; that Christ died to sin in the sense that He bore sin’s penalty. He died for our sins, bearing them in His own innocent and sacred Person. He took upon Himself our sins and their just reward. The death that Jesus died was the wages of sin—our sin. He met its claim, He paid its penalty, He accepted its reward, and He did it ‘once’, once and for all. As a result sin has no more claim or demand on Him. So He was raised from the dead to prove the satisfactoriness of His sin-bearing, and He now lives for ever to God.
If this is the sense in which Christ died to sin, it is equally the sense in which we, by union with Christ, have died to sin. We have died to sin in the sense that in Christ we have borne its penalty. Consequently our old life has finished; a new life has begun.
Some may object that we surely cannot speak of our bearing the penalty of our sins in Christ, since we cannot die for our sins; He alone has done that. It has even been suggested to me that this is a veiled form of justification by works! But it is nothing of the kind. Of course Christ’s sin-bearing sacrifice was altogether unique, and we cannot share in its offering. But we can and do share in its benefits by being in Christ. And the New Testament expresses this truth by saying not only that Christ died for us, but that we died in Christ. See, for example, 2 Corinthians 5:14, 15, where Paul argues that because, ‘one has died for all; therefore all have died’ (i.e. in Him).
We return now to verse 6, which speaks of our death. It is in three parts. Something happened, in order that something else might happen, in order that something else might happen. Departing from the rsv text I would translate it like this: (1) 'We know that our old self was crucified with him’; (2) 'in order that the sinful body might be destroyed’; (3) 'in order that we might no longer be enslaved to sin’. There are three clear stages.
The ultimate stage is plain: 'that we might no longer be enslaved to sin’. And surely this is our heart’s desire—to be delivered from the slavery and bondage of sin. It is the last thing mentioned in verse 6. How does it happen? We must look back to the two earlier stages which lead to this deliverance. The first is called the crucifixion of the old man, the second the destruction of the body of sin, and the second is dependent on the first. Indeed, our old man was crucified, we are told, in order that the body of sin might be destroyed, in order that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. It may be helpful to take these phrases in the opposite order.
First, the destruction of the body of sin. Now 'the sinful body’ or 'the body of sin’ (av) is not the human body. This body is not sinful in itself. It means rather the sinful nature which belongs to the body. (See verse 12.) The neb helpfully renders it 'the sinful self’. Now it is God’s purpose, according to this verse, that the sinful self should be 'destroyed’, so that we should no longer serve sin. The Greek verb (katargethi) occurs again in reference to the devil in Hebrews 2:14. It means not to become extinct, but to be defeated; not to be annihilated, but to be deprived of power. Our old nature is no more extinct than the devil; but God’s will is that the dominion of both should be broken. In fact, the sinful nature has been overthrown by something which happened on the cross, and which is described in the first phrase of verse 6.
This is the crucifixion of our ‘old man’ (av) or our ‘old self. What is this ‘old self? It is not the old nature. How can it be if the ‘body of sin’ means the old nature? The two expressions cannot mean the same thing or the verse makes nonsense. No. The ‘old self denotes, not our old unregenerate nature, but our old unregenerate life—what the neb calls ‘the man we once were’. Not my lower self, but my former self. So what was crucified with Christ was not a part of me called my old nature, but the whole of me as I was before I was converted. My ‘old self is my pre-conversion life, my unregenerate self. This should be plain because in this chapter the phrase ‘our old self was crucified’ (verse 6) is equivalent to ‘we . . . died to sin’ (verse 2).
One of the causes of confusion regarding this verse is Paul’s use of the word ‘crucified’. Many people associate it in their minds with Galatians 5:24, where ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus’ are said to ‘have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’. A mental link between the two verses would naturally suggest that in Romans 6:6 Paul is alluding to the crucifixion of the ‘flesh’ or old nature. But the two verses are quite different. This should be clear because Romans 6:6 describes something which has happened to us (‘our old self was crucified with him’), whereas Galatians 5:24 refers to something which we ourselves have done (we ‘have crucified the flesh’). There are, in fact, two separate and distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of the Christian’s spiritual death in connection with holiness. The first is a death to sin, and the second a death to self. Our death to sin is through identification with Christ; our death to self is through imitation of Christ. First, we have been crucified with Christ; but then we not only have decisively crucified (i.e. repudiated) the flesh with its passions and desires, but we take up our cross daily and follow Christ to crucifixion (Lk. 9:23). The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable: I died (in Christ) to sin once. The second belongs to the present, and is continuous and repeatable: I die (like Christ) to self daily. It is with the first of these two that Romans 6 is concerned.
We can now take the three stages of verse 6 in the right order. First, our old self was crucified with Christ; that is, we were crucified with Christ. We became identified with Him by faith and baptism, and so we shared in His death to sin. We were thus crucified with Christ, secondly, in order that our sinful nature might be deprived of its power. And this took place, thirdly, in order that we should no longer be enslaved to sin.
The question now is, How can this crucifixion with Christ lead to an overcoming of the old nature, and so to a deliverance from the bondage of sin? Verse 7 supplies the answer. It is because (lit.) ‘he who has died has been justified from his sin’. The av and rsv have taken an unwarranted liberty in translating the Greek verb (dedikaidtai) as ‘freed’. It occurs fifteen times in Romans, and twenty-five times in the New Testament, and it always means ‘justified’.
The only way to be justified from sin is to receive the wages of sin. There is no other escape but to bear its penalty. To illustrate this from the administration of justice in our country: How can a man who has been convicted of a crime and sentenced to a term of imprisonment be justified? There is only one way. He must go to prison, and pay the penalty of his crime. Once he has served his term, he can leave the prison justified. He need no longer fear the police or the law or the magistrates. The law no longer has anything against him, because he has paid the penalty of breaking it. He has served his sentence; he is now justified from his sin.
The same principle holds good if the penalty is death. There is no way of escape or justification except by paying the penalty. You may say that in this case to pay the penalty is no way of escape. And you would be right if we were talking about capital punishment on earth. Once a murderer has died (in countries where capital punishment survives), his life on earth is finished. He cannot live again on earth justified, like a man who has served a prison sentence. But the wonderful thing about our Christian justification is that our death is followed by a resurrection in which we can live the life of a justified person, having paid the death penalty (in Christ) for our sin.
For us, then, it is like this. We deserved to die for our sin. By union with Jesus Christ we did die—not in our own person (that would have meant eternal death) but in the Person of Christ our Substitute, with whom we have been made one by faith and baptism. And, by union with the same Christ, we have risen again to live the life of a justified sinner, a life that is altogether new. The old life is finished. We have died to it. The penalty is borne. We emerge from this death justified. The law cannot touch us, because the penalty of sin is paid.
With this in mind we can move on to verses 7-11. ‘He who has died is freed (literally “has been justified”) from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. For we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again;
death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.'
Let me put it in a rather more homely way. Suppose there is a man called John Jones, an elderly Christian believer, who is looking back upon his long life. His career is divided by his conversion into two parts, the old self—John Jones before his conversion—and the new self—John Jones after his conversion. The old self and the new self (or the ‘old man’ and the ‘new man’) are not John Jones’ two natures; they are the two halves of his life, separated by new birth. At conversion, signified in baptism, John Jones, the old self, died through union with Christ, the penalty of his sin borne. At the same time John Jones rose again from death, a new man, to live a new life to God.
Now John Jones is every believer. We are John Jones, if we are in Christ. The way in which our old self died is that we were crucified with Christ. By faith and baptism we were united to Christ in His death. The death He died to sin became our death; its benefits were transferred to us. So, having died to sin with Christ, we have been justified from our sin (verse 7); and having risen with Christ we are alive, justified, to God (verses 8, 9). Our old life finished with the death it deserved. Our new life began with a resurrection. Christ died to sin once for all and lives to God continuously (verse 10). So we (verse 11), who are one with Christ, must reckon, i.e. realize, that we too have died to sin and live to God. This brings us to the fourth step.
Step four: Since we have died to sin and live to God, we must reckon it so. Let me put it in this way: If Christ’s death was a death to sin (which it was), and if His resurrection was a resurrection to God (which it was), and if we have been united to Christ in His death and resurrection (which we have), then we ourselves have died to sin and risen to God; and we must reckon it so. 'So you also must consider yourselves (av "reckon . . . yourselves”) dead to sin and alive to God in (that is, through union with) Christ Jesus’ (verse 11).
Now 'reckoning’ is not make-believe. It is not screwing up our faith to believe something we do not believe. We are not to pretend that our old nature has died when we know perfectly well that it has not. We are rather to realize that our old self—that is our former self—did die, thus paying the penalty of its sins and putting an end to its career. So Paul says ‘reckon yourselves’ (av), or better 'consider yourselves’ (rsv), or better still ‘regard yourselves’ (neb), as being what in fact you are—dead to sin and alive to God. Once we realize that our old life has ended—the score settled, the debt paid, the law satisfied—we shall want to have nothing more to do with it.
I find it helpful to think in these terms. Our biography is written in two volumes. Volume one is the story of the old man, the old self, of me before my conversion. Volume two is the story of the new man, the new self, of me after I was made a new creation in Christ. Volume one of my biography ended with the judicial death of the old self. I was a sinner. I deserved to die. I did die. I received my deserts in my Substitute with whom I have become one. Volume two of my biography opened with my resurrection. My old life having finished, a new life to God has begun.
We are simply called to ‘reckon’ this—not ro pretend it, but to realize it. It is a fact. And we have to lay hold of it. We have to let our minds play upon these truths. We have to meditate upon them until we grasp them firmly. We have to keep saying to ourselves, ‘Volume one has closed. You are now living in volume two. It is inconceivable that you should reopen volume one. It is not impossible, but it is inconceivable.'
Can a married woman live as though she were still a single girl? Well, yes, I suppose she can. It is not impossible. But let her feel that ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, the symbol of her new life, the symbol of her identification with her husband, let her remember who she is, and let her live accordingly. Can a born-again Christian live as though he were still in his sins? Well, yes, I suppose he can. It is not impossible. But let him remember his baptism, the symbol of his identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, and let him live accordingly.
We need to keep reminding ourselves who we are and what we are. When Satan whispers in our ear, ‘Go on. You sin. God will forgive you’, and we are tempted to presume upon the grace of God, we are to say to him, in the words of verse 2, ‘God forbid, Satan. I died to sin; how can I live in it? Volume one is closed. I am in volume two.' In other words, the apostle does not state the impossibility of sin in the Christian, but the utter incongruity of it. He asks the astonished, indignant question, ‘How can we who died to sin still live in it?’ To have died to sin and to live in it are logically irreconcilable.
So the secret of holy living is in the mind. It is in knowing (verse 6) that our old self was crucified with Christ. It is in knowing (verse 3) that baptism into Christ is baptism into His death and resurrection. It is in reckoning, intellectually realizing (verse 11), that in Christ we have died to sin and we live to God. We are to know these things, to meditate on them, to realize that they are true. Our minds are so to grasp the fact and the significance of our death and resurrection with Christ, that a return to the old life is unthinkable. A born-again Christian should no more think of going back to the old life than an adult to his childhood, a married man to his bachelorhood, or a discharged prisoner to his prison cell.
By union with Jesus Christ our whole status has changed. Our faith and baptism have severed us from the old life, cut us off from it irrevocably, and committed us to the new. Our baptism stands between us and the old life as a door between two rooms, closing upon the one and opening into the other. We have died. We have risen. How can we live again in what we have died to?
Step five: As those who are alive from the dead, we must not let sin reign within us, hut yield ourselves to God. In verses 12-14 we have the negative and the positive set over against one another. First the negative : 'Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions’ (verse 12); do not let sin be your king. 'Do not yield (or, do not go on yielding) your members to sin as instruments of wickedness’ (verse 13a). That is, do not let sin rule you; and do not let sin use you (your members) in furthering its unrighteous purposes. Do not let sin be your king or your lord. Then the positive: Instead 'yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life’ (verse 13b), which is precisely what you are. You have died to sin, bearing its penalty. You have risen again. You are alive from the dead. Now 'yield yourselves to God as men who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness’. In other words, do not let sin be your king; let God be your king to rule over you. Do not let sin be your lord to use you in its service; let God be your lord to use you in His service.
Now why? What is the ground of this exhortation? What is the basic reason for yielding ourselves to God, and not to sin? The answer is, we are alive from the dead! We have died to sin, and we have risen to God. So we cannot yield ourselves to sin; we must yield ourselves to God. You see the irresistible logic of it, step by step? Because we are alive from the dead, sin shall not be our lord. Sin no longer has any business to be our lord, because now we are ‘not under law, but under grace’ (verse 14). God in grace has justified us in Christ. In Christ, sin’s penalty is paid and the law’s demands are met. Neither sin nor the law has any more claim upon us. We have been rescued from their tyranny. We have changed sides. Our status is new. We are no longer prisoners of the law, but children of God, and under His grace.
So it is that, to know that we are under grace, and not under law, far from encouraging us to continue in sin that grace may abound, actually weans us away from the world, the flesh and the devil. Because by grace we have opened a new volume of our biography, we cannot possibly reopen the first. Because by grace we are alive from the dead, we cannot possibly go back to the old life to which we have died.
II. SLAVES OF GOD (6:15-23)
What them? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 1 am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have becomes slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The second half of the chapter (verses 15-23) is much less difficult than the first. It concerns not our union with Christ, but our slavery to God.
Notice that it begins in exactly the same way as the opening verses of the chapter. First comes a question: 'What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?’ (verse 15). This is the same question as in verse 1, 'What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?’ This question is followed in verses 2 and 15 by the same answer, an emphatic negative, 'By no means I ’ or 'God forbid’ (av). Then comes another question explaining this negative and beginning ‘Do you not know?’ Verse 3: 'Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?’ Similarly, verse 16: 'Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to any one as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?’
It is worth getting the parallel clear in our minds, so that we grasp what it is Paul wants us to know. In verses 1—14 what we are to know is that through faith and baptism we are united to Christ, and therefore dead to sin and alive to God. In verses 15-23 what we are to know is that through self-surrender, through yielding ourselves, we are slaves of God and therefore committed to obedience. This is what the beginning of verse 16 says: Once you have chosen your master, you have no more choice but to obey. This is true as a principle, whether you yield to sin, ending in ‘death’, or to obedience, ending in ‘righteousness’, acceptance with God. In the next verses these two slaveries are contrasted: the slavery of sin and the slavery of God. The contrast is seen from their beginning, through their development, to their end.
Two slaveries contrasted (verses 17-22)
1. Their beginning (verses 17, 18). ‘You who were once slaves of sin.’ The tense of the verb is imperfect and suggests that this is what we are by nature, what we have always been. ‘But . . . you . . . have become obedient (aorist tense) from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed’—that is, the gospel. When the gospel was delivered to you, or you to it, you obeyed it from your heart. Paul’s ‘thank God’ indicated that their response to the gospel was due to His grace. Our slavery to sin, then, began at our birth; it is our natural condition; but our slavery to God began when by grace we obeyed the gospel.
2. Their development (verse 19). Ί am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification.’ This shows that the result of the slavery of sin is the grim process of a moral deterioration, whereas the slavery of God results in the glorious process of a moral sanctification. Each slavery develops; neither stands still.
In one we get better and better, and in the other steadily worse.
3. Their end (verses 20-22). 'When you were slaves of sin . . . what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed (“you blush to remember”—J. B. Phillips)?' To this question there is no answer, for ‘the end of those things is death'. So he goes on: ‘But now that you . . . have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life.' Then verse 23 sums it up. Sin pays the wage we deserve, which is death, while God gives us a gift that we do not deserve, which is eternal life.
Here then are two completely different lives, lives totally opposed to one another—the life of the old self, and the life of the new. They are what Jesus termed the broad road that leads to destruction, and the narrow road that leads to life. Paul calls them two slaveries. By birth we are slaves of sin; by grace and faith we have become slaves of God. The slavery of sin yields no return, except a steady, moral deterioration and finally death. The slavery of God yields the precious return of sanctification and finally eternal life. The argument of this section, then, is that our conversion —this act of yielding or surrender to God—leads to a status of slavery, and slavery involves obedience.
CONCLUSION
‘Shall we continue in sin?' That is the question with which both sections of this chapter began; a question posed by Paul's critics who intended by it to discredit his gospel; a question that has been asked ever since by the enemies of the gospel; a question that is often whispered in our ears by the greatest enemy of the gospel, Satan himself, who seeks to entice us into sin. As he asked Eve in the garden, 'Did God say so he whispers in our ear, ‘Why not continue in sin? Go on! You are under grace. God will forgive you.'
When this happens, how do we answer the devil? We must begin with an outraged negative, ‘God forbid’, ‘By no means! ’ But then we need to go further and confirm this negative with a reason. And there is a reason, a solid, logical, irrefutable reason, why the subtle insinuations of the devil must be repudiated. It is most important, because it brings all this great theology down to the level of our practical everyday experience.
What is the reason we must give in rebutting the devil’s enticements? It is based on what we are, namely that we are one with Christ (verses 1—14) and slaves of God (verses 15—23). We became united to Christ by baptism (at least outwardly and visibly). We became enslaved to God by the self-surrender of faith. But whether we emphasize the outward baptism or the inward faith, the point is the same. It is that our Christian conversion has had this result: it has united us to Christ, and it has enslaved us to God. This is what we are, every one of us: one with Christ, and a slave of God.
Further, what we are has these inescapable implications. If we are one with Christ (which we are), then with Christ we have died to sin and we live to God. If we are enslaved to God (which we are), then ipso facto we are committed to obedience. It is inconceivable that we should wilfully persist in sin, presuming upon the grace of God. The very thought is intolerable.
We need constantly to remind ourselves of these truths. We need to talk to ourselves about them, and ask ourselves, ‘Don’t you know?’ . . . ‘Don’t you know that you are one with Christ? That you have died to sin and risen to God? Don’t you know that you are a slave of God and therefore committed to His obedience? Don’t you know these things?’ And we must go on asking ourselves these questions until we reply, ‘Yes, I do know, and by the grace of God I shall live accordingly.’