Romans 6

IV. THE WAY OF GODLINESS, 6:1–8:39

Having outlined the way God in Christ justifies sinners, Paul goes on to the way the justified should live (cf. 2 Cor. 13:4; Gal. 5:13). His teaching that salvation is a gift of God, that it is the result of Christ’s death and not our own achievement, that we obtain it by faith and not by any effort of our own, marked a revolution. And it raised all sorts of questions that could never surface while it was held that law in some form was the gateway to godliness. One question that arose naturally enough was this: “If everything depends on what God has done, then what does it matter how we live?“ In one form or another this question has been asked wherever people have come to see salvation as stemming only from God’s grace (cf. 3:8). Sometimes it is raised seriously by people who have an imperfect understanding of what grace means and who do not see how it impinges on daily living. Sometimes it is raised merely as an objection to Paul’s whole position by people who think he must be wrong because, as they see it, he is removing all incentive to upright living (Earle sees this here). In whatever form it is raised Paul’s answer is emphatic: “It matters very much.” He proceeds to argue his case.¹ He chooses to make his point by asking a series of four questions. These had probably been put to him at one time or another, and he found them useful for bringing out the main lines of the life of faith. We should not think of this as a completely separate chapter in the life of the Christian, so to speak, as in treatments which see Paul as dealing with justification, then leaving that to go on to a completely unrelated subject, sanctification. As Calvin remarks, those who separate these two doctrines as though Christ might justify without giving newness of life “shamefully rend Christ asunder”.² Paul is describing one Christian way, the way of grace and faith. Christians reckon themselves as dead to sin and alive to God (v. 11); they do not choose one or the other. The death and the resurrection belong inseparably together.

A. Shall We Continue to Sin That Grace May Abound? 6:1–14

¹What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ²By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

⁵If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. ⁶For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— ⁷because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

⁸Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

¹¹In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹²Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. ¹³Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. ¹⁴For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

An obvious reaction to the thought that we see God’s grace in our salvation and that no merit of our own is involved is to reason that the more we sin the more scope there is for God’s grace. Has not Paul just said that an increase of sin means a greater increase of grace (5:20)? Sinners might reason, “Let us sin lustily and thus give grace its maximum opportunity!” Paul repudiates all such approaches with decision. He points out that grace liberates us from sin; it does not bring us more firmly under its bondage.

1. Then is important. Paul is not going on to some new and quite unrelated subject. Because of what he has said in the previous section, certain things follow. In the light of the fact that we die in Adam and live in Christ he asks, What shall we say? (see on 3:5 for the form of the question). The question leads to a suggestion that Paul repudiates strongly.³ Evidently some had argued that since everything depends on grace our part should be to give grace the maximum scope in which to operate. If we go on sinning⁴ we provide scope for grace to increase: should this not be the Christian way? NIV perhaps does not give quite the same emphasis as Paul. His verb is the verb “to remain” (“shall we remain in sin?”), not the verb “to sin”. He is thinking of sinners staying where they are, declining to budge from their habitual sin. There is method in their projected indolence and evil; it is so that⁵ there may be more and more grace (NEB says “God’s grace”, but Paul takes it as obvious that grace is God’s grace). For increase see on 5:20.

2. Paul repudiates this with his vigorous By no means! (see on 3:4). This is a strong rejection of a conclusion that he thinks might falsely be drawn from what he has said. He will have none of it. It is quite erroneous. NIV omits an important relative pronoun; cf. RSV, “How can we who died to sin… ?” Paul uses the relative of quality,⁶ “we who are of such a quality as to….” He is inviting his readers to reflect on what it means to have become Christians (cf. Barrett, “We who in our essential nature, i.e., just because we are Christians, died”). Previously they had been dead in sin (Eph. 2:1); now they were dead to sin. The aorist in the verb died points to an action rather than a state: “we who died” rather than “we are dead” (“we have died”, GNB). Becoming a Christian is a decisive step; it is the beginning of faith and it means the end of sin. The emphasis falls on the act rather than the continuing state. There is, of course, a sense in which Christians die to sin every day; they constantly commit themselves to God and become dead to all evil. There is also an eschatological sense; after this life sin will be over; believers will be raised up to live without sin in God’s presence. But it is not such senses that Paul’s language evokes here. He is referring rather to the death to sin that marks the beginning of the characteristic Christian life. It is the end of the reign of sin and beginning of the reign of grace (5:21). Since we died to sin⁷ it is a fair question, “How shall we still live in it?”⁸ Paul is bringing out strongly the truth that acquiescence in sin is incompatible with being a Christian.⁹ Knox has a striking translation: “We have died, once for all, to sin; can we breathe its air again?”

3. Paul turns to baptism,¹⁰ which is perhaps surprising. But it helps him make his point emphatically. Or points to the alternative to what he has just been saying. If his readers do not understand what it means to die to sin, they do not understand what baptism means, and baptism comes right at the beginning of the Christian life. His question¹¹ implies that this is something the Roman Christians would be expected to know. Since Paul had not been to Rome he plainly regards this as knowledge common to all Christians. We may perhaps miss something of what he is saying because for us baptized evokes liturgical associations;¹² it points to a comforting and inspiring piece of ceremonial. But in the first century, while the verb could denote this ceremony and Paul certainly means that here, to “baptize” evoked associations of violence. It meant “immerse” rather than “dip”. It was used, for example, of people being drowned, or of ships being sunk (see LSJ).¹³ Josephus used it metaphorically of crowds who flooded into Jerusalem and “wrecked the city” (Bell. 4.137; Loeb translation). It is quite in keeping with this that Jesus referred to his death as baptism (Mk. 10:38; Lk. 12:50). When it is applied to Christian initiation we ought not to think in terms of gentleness and inspiration; it means death, death to a whole way of life. It is this that is Paul’s point here. Christians are people who have died, and their baptism emphasizes that death. Death runs through this passage and is mentioned in every verse up to v. 13. We should not let the modern associations of baptism blind us to the point Paul is making so strongly. He is saying that it is quite impossible for anyone who understands what baptism means to acquiesce cheerfully in a sinful life. The baptized have died to all that.

Paul goes on to characterize baptism as into Christ Jesus (“into union with Christ Jesus”, GNB, NEB), an unusual way of describing this sacrament (though cf. Gal. 3:27; and for “into the name”, Acts 8:16; 19:5).¹⁴ Baptism, so to speak, incorporates the baptized into Christ; they are baptized “into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13), made part of that body which is the body of Christ (cf. SH, “ ‘were baptized into union with’ [not merely ‘obedience to’] ‘Christ’. The act of baptism was an act of incorporation into Christ”). This can be made a little more precise. Those so baptized were baptized into his death, where into his death receives some emphasis from its position. It is the death of Christ that makes anyone a Christian, and apart from that death baptism is meaningless. This is a strong affirmation of the centrality of the cross.¹⁵ Leenhardt sees a connection with 2 Corinthians 5:14, “one died for all, and therefore all died.”¹⁶ Christ’s death alone is the ground of our justification, and when we make that our own by faith we are united with Christ—united with him in his death, united with him in his burial, united with him in his rising again, united with him in life. Paul is affirming strongly that the justified are those united by faith to all that Christ means, and therefore antinomianism is impossible for them. Being united in living out the life is not an option but a necessary part of being saved in Christ.

4. The logical consequence continues (therefore). Not only are we dead, but we are buried with him.¹⁷ Being “with Christ” is an important category for Paul.¹⁸ It is interesting that we are never said to have been born with Christ or to have been baptized with him, as Lagrange points out. But we are crucified with him (v. 6; Gal. 2:20), we died with him (2 Tim. 2:11), were buried with him (here; Col. 2:12), were made alive with him (Eph. 2:5; Col. 2:13), were raised with him and made to sit with him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6), we are co-heirs with him (8:17), sharers of his glory (8:17), and we will reign with him (2 Tim. 2:12). The burial has unexpected emphasis in the New Testament (besides the Gospels, see Acts 13:29; 1 Cor. 15:4; Col. 2:12); it even finds a place in the Creed, a short statement which necessarily omits much that is important.¹⁹ Perhaps the point is that the burial emphasizes the completeness and finality of the death. Christ’s death was no momentary faint but real death, death followed by the tomb. Jesus really died. And our identification with that death is also complete.²⁰ When we are baptized we have died. In baptism²¹ we are buried with Christ.²² An old way of life passes away completely.

But that is not the whole story; the death has purpose; it is with a view to something further.²³ The parallel with Christ is followed through. His death was followed by resurrection, and our death to sin and our baptism into his death are followed by our being raised to new life. Paul uses aorists in his verbs were buried and was raised. They give a note of decisiveness to the rising of new life.

Christ was raised, Paul says, through the glory of the Father, which is a very unusual expression (cf. Eph. 1:17). For glory see on 2:7; it points to the wonder and the greatness of God. We might have expected a reference to “power” or the like, and indeed some take glory here to mean “power”; Harrison, for example, says, “ ‘glory’ here has the meaning of power” (cf. Calvin, “That is, by the splendid power by which He declared Himself truly glorious”). But Paul says glory (NEB, “the splendour of the Father”); perhaps we could say that the meaning is power manifested and not simply power.²⁴ Some see in glory an eschatological reference (cf. 2:10; 5:2; 8:17–18, 21); Christ’s resurrection ushers in the last age. This is true, but it does not seem to be what Paul is saying here. He is talking about the present life of the Christian. Paul, unlike John, does not often speak of “the Father” (though cf. Eph. 2:18; 3:14; Col. 1:12). His use of the term perhaps emphasizes that it was the Father and no other through whom Christ was raised.

We too may live paraphrases a characteristic Pauline locution “we too may walk”.²⁵ Paul invariably uses the verb in a metaphorical sense, as do the Johannine epistles, but this is rare elsewhere. Paul evidently found it a congenial metaphor for the steady, unspectacular progress that should characterize the Christian life. We too means “we as well as someone else”, and the emphatic we underlines the point. Paul clearly means that as the glory of the Father was shown in the raising of Christ from the dead to new life, so it is with us. We walk with Christ. Paul has already said that we died to sin; now he adds that we too rise from that death to new life. Live a new life is more exactly “walk in newness of life”. “Newness”²⁶ is not what we would have expected. The corresponding adjective “new” was available, and Paul uses it seven times. The unusual expression puts some emphasis on the quality of newness. For life see on 2:7. Christ “gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” (Tit. 2:14).

5. The same truth is put another way. Paul’s conditional implies that the condition has been fulfilled, “If (as is the case)….” He assumes that this is so and looks at the consequences. United²⁷ with him points to a close union. According to SH it “exactly expresses the process by which a graft becomes united with the life of a tree” (so Leenhardt, and more cautiously, Barrett; cf. 11:17ff.; Moffatt prefers “we have grown into him”). Cranfield points out that the expression is used much more widely than for grafting; we should not see the expression as a technical term. But we can say that it is appropriate for a graft. Paul’s point is that the spiritual life of the believer is not self-originated but is derived from Christ, with whom he is now one. The union is of the closest sort, and life from Christ flows through to him. The verb have been might be translated “have become”;²⁸ we are not by nature in this state, but “become” united with Christ “in the likeness” of his death (for “likeness” see on 1:23). The word is characteristic of this epistle (four times out of six in the New Testament; Parry thinks that it “implies true assimilation, but of things different”). It is not easy to grasp the force of “likeness” (how does one unite with a “likeness”?), but at least the term brings out the symbolic nature of the death we die when we become united to Christ. Our death “is not the same as Christ’s but is similar to it” (Calvin). His death was physical whereas ours is not. JB has ”If in union with Christ we have imitated his death”, but Paul is not saying this. There is no question of imitation; by faith we become one with Christ and this means a real death to our former life.

In sharp contrast²⁹ to the death is the resurrection.³⁰ The death of Jesus was not the end; it led on to his resurrection. And the believer’s death to sin points forward to his resurrection (cf. 2 Tim. 2:11). There may be no great significance in that Paul changes his verb “to be”,³¹ but there is perhaps more significance in the future tense, for it gives an eschatological dimension to what Paul is saying.³² Paul is primarily concerned with the present moral life of the believer; this is part of his argument that we should not continue in sin so that grace may abound. He is emphasizing that the believer has already risen to new life. But there is another sense in which the consummation will take place only at the future resurrection of the dead. Paul looks forward.

6. Again Paul appeals to knowledge (see on 2:2).³³ He goes over some of the ground again as he hammers home his point that the believer has died to an old way. Our old self is really “our old man” (KJV), an expression used twice elsewhere in the Pauline writings (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9), in both cases with verbs expressing repudiation. A number of writers in antiquity made the distinction Paul sometimes made between the outer and the inner man (7:22; Eph. 3:16; cf. 1 Pet. 3:4), but the contrast between the old man and the new man appears to be Paul’s own (and incidentally forms a link between Romans on the one hand and Ephesians and Colossians on the other).³⁴ If his word for “old”³⁵ is used strictly, it brings out the idea of “wornness”, the result of the wear and tear of time, the old as outworn. It is not something to be desired. And this old man, Paul says, was crucified with. The verb conveys the thought that the old man was thoroughly destroyed. “The old man” is no longer supreme. This does not mean that the believer lives untroubled by the possibility of sinning. There is a sense in which a death has taken place once and for all in the believer, but there is another in which he dies every day (1 Cor. 15:31). It is believers, not the unregenerate, who are urged to put off the old man (Eph. 4:22; cf. Col. 3:9). But it is another vivid way of saying that the power of sin is broken in the believer. To come to Christ means the complete end of a whole way of life. There may be slips, but they are uncharacteristic (cf. Brunner, “Previously, the ought did not suit us, now sin does not”). The “old man” has been crucified. The verb is a compound, meaning was crucified with. In English we must supply an object (him), but the Greek does not have one and the absolute use concentrates attention on the action of the verb. It is used once each in Matthew, Mark, and John of the thieves who were crucified with Jesus, and again in Galatians 2:20 of being crucified with Christ (cf. also Gal. 6:14). But this is the only place where the verb stands alone. The aorist points to a decisive ending of the old, as the believer enters new life.

Further, this crucifixion has a purpose; it is so that³⁶ the body of sin might be dealt with. The genitive of sin is unusual in such a connection; Paul uses the expression nowhere else. There is a difference of opinion as to whether the body of sin means the physical body characterized by sin (cf. Moule, “the sin-possessed body” [IBNTG, p. 38]), or whether it signifies “the sinful self” (NEB). We may reject without hesitation the view that it means that the body is inherently sinful and that it is the source of sin. This is not a New Testament view, and Paul never gives it countenance. But Murray, Lloyd-Jones, and others argue strongly that Paul means that the body is dominated by sin. The body is sin’s body; it belongs to sin; sin has made it its own (cf. the following “slaves to sin”). Others think that “body” is here used in the fuller sense of the whole man and hold that Paul is saying that man as a totality is a sinner.³⁷ There is truth in both views, but on the whole it seems that Paul is here referring to the physical body which so easily responds to sinful impulses. As a result of crucifixion with Christ this sinful body is rendered powerless, completely nullified.³⁸ The sinner’s terrible situation is completely changed by the work of Christ.

The purpose (or the result)³⁹ of this crucifixion is that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Paul’s no longer means that until the crucifixion of which he speaks we had been slaves to sin. In our natural state we were unable to resist sin and thus were slaves. But no longer. Christ has delivered us. But just as Paul thinks of a wholehearted deliverance, so he thinks that the plight from which we were rescued was thoroughgoing. The verb “to be a slave”, “to serve as a slave”⁴⁰ may be used metaphorically of the service of God (Mt. 6:24; 1 Thess. 1:9, etc.), but it is used only here of the service of sin. As often, Paul personifies sin; he sees it as a master of slaves, assuming full control over those who have not died with Christ. Barrett warns us against the simple interpretation that “the ‘old man’ is the nature of the unconverted man, which upon conversion and baptism is replaced by a new nature, the ‘new man’.” His point is that both here and in Colossians 3 Paul is addressing Christians, who are urged in this very context to “count themselves dead to sin” (v. 11). Barrett goes on, “It is much more exact to say that the ‘old man’ is Adam—or rather, ourselves in union with Adam, and that the ‘new man’ is Christ—or rather, ourselves in union with Christ”.⁴¹

7. Because⁴² introduces an explanation of the preceding. Paul drops his “we”, and the third person introduces a general statement. Some see a reference accordingly to the general truth which we often find among the rabbis, that death cancels all obligations.⁴³ But Paul’s reference to being justified shows that he is not simply repeating a rabbinic commonplace. His anyone who has died is not further defined, but it must be taken to mean “in the way just described” (cf. Harrisville, “death as such does not free from sin”). Paul is not referring to physical death but to dying with Christ. Anyone who has died in this way has been “justified (NIV freed) from sin”.⁴⁴ Robin Scroggs stresses the importance of seeing Jesus’ atoning death behind the passage: “The verse refers to the death of Jesus.”⁴⁵ It may be doubted whether Paul saw Jesus’ death as atoning because it was the death of a martyr, as Scroggs suggests, but that he saw it as atoning is beyond doubt. The person who has died with Christ enters into Christ’s atonement and is justified from his sin.

It is also possible that the imagery is pointing to a master claiming a slave who proves to be dead. The legal verdict is that the slave is no longer answerable (cf. SH; NEB has “a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin”). But Paul is not speaking only of a cancelling of evil; he refers to a positive act of justification. He has just said that the believer is not enslaved to sin. Why not? Because he has died with Christ and has thus been justified. Our sin deserved death, and we have died (been “crucified with Christ”). Murray speaks of the “judicial aspect from which deliverance from the power of sin is to be viewed”. A slave who dies is quit of his master, and those who die with Christ are acquitted from their old master, sin. Sin has no claim on the justified person, just as the law has none on the one who has died.

8. Now carries the argument along. Shedd infers “that union with Christ in his atonement involves union with him in spiritual life and sanctification.” Certainly the two must not be separated; Paul makes clear what follows if we died (aorist of a decisive act) with Christ. The expression “with Christ” occurs 12 times in Paul⁴⁶ and appears to have been coined by him on the pattern of the frequently occurring Greek “with god” or the “gods”. He also has a number of compounds that use the preposition “with”, some of which occur in this very context (“to bury with”, v. 4; “to crucify with”, v. 6; “to live with”, v. 8).⁴⁷ Paul uses “with Christ” of what will happen at the parousia (1 Thess. 4:14, 17), but the concept is not exclusively eschatological. It is grounded in the historical fact of the death of Christ, a death that was not simply a historical fact, but a death for sinners, a death that is the basis of the whole experience of salvation. As W. Grundmann says, “This dying with Christ is grounded in His substitutionary death for us and it takes effect as appropriation in the renunciation of sin.”⁴⁸

Our death with Christ is not an end in itself; by faith we go on to life with Christ. Paul does not very often speak of “believing that” (again in 10:9; 1 Thess. 4:14), but the truth that genuine trust is based on fact runs through his writings. He strongly emphasizes the reality of Christ’s death, which is the basis of faith for the apostle. Here he speaks of the faith that those who died with Christ will also live with him.⁴⁹ The Christian way is not negative. There is a death to an old way, it is true, but as the believer identifies with Christ in his death he enters into newness of life. Day by day he lives with Christ.⁵⁰ We should probably see an eschatological dimension in the future tense here, but understand it in a way that does not obscure its application to Christian life here and now. The future tense applies from the standpoint of the death we died with Christ. It thus refers to the continuing life of the believer though it is not confined to the here and now. Paul is saying that the believer lives with Christ now and that this union will be even more wonderful in the life to come.

9. Again Paul appeals to the knowledge believers share (cf. vv. 3, 6). What he is saying is common knowledge for Christians (see on 2:2), so there can be no doubt about the force of his argument. H. C. G. Moule sees a reference to “an admitted foundation-truth. Christian faith is always viewed as grounded upon knowledge, upon fact” (CBSC). Our belief that we will live with Christ is not baseless: it rests upon our knowledge of his resurrection life. As commonly in this epistle, the verb raised refers to Christ’s resurrection, which Paul here regards as irreversible; it can never be undone. For Christ death is over and done with: death no longer has mastery over him.⁵¹ Death is powerful, and it reigned, for example, from Adam to Moses (5:14). But now it is defeated. Christ is supreme. The way Paul puts it (no longer) implies that death once did have dominion over him. As Christ trod the lowly path of suffering on behalf of doomed sinners he submitted to the rule of death. But that is all past. There is no more death for him. The resurrection was something very different from the raising of Lazarus. That was an astounding miracle, but it did not deliver Lazarus permanently from death. In due course he would die. But Jesus rose triumphant and entered into glory (Lagrange makes this point).

10. “For” (which NIV omits) carries on the chain of reasoning. It is because of what follows that Paul can say that death had no mastery over Christ. The clause is elliptical, literally “what he died … what he lives….”⁵² His death with all that it means had to do with sin, and his life with all that it means has to do with God. That Christ died to sin is difficult, especially since the same expression is used of believers (vv. 2, 11; cf. 6, 7). Some see a dativus commodi, “with respect to sin”; others, that Jesus died rather than commit sin; still others, that he dealt with the power of sin as well as its guilt. It is best to see Paul as indicating that Jesus’ death was related to sin, but that the case does not prescribe in detail what that relationship was. The context makes clear that Christ died for our sins; he had none of his own to which he might die. But dealing with our sins meant coming into this world of sin and then dying the death that put sin away. That death was a death “to sin”, for it meant the end of Christ’s being in the realm of sin. It was a death to his whole relationship to sin.

Jesus’ death to sin was once and for all, “the great New Testament note” (Robinson).⁵³ Believers face a new contest with sin every day; as long as we are on this earth we are never free from it. But Christ’s death was unique, a once-for-all dealing with sin. God made him sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), and his death dealt decisively with sin, took it out of the way, paid its penalty, removed its sting (1 Cor. 15:55–56), won the victory over it. Look at sin how you will, Christ has effectively dealt with it.

Paul goes on to Jesus’ risen life. The construction is the same as in the first part of the verse, and we are to understand it in the sense “what he lives”, “his life and all that that life involves”. The resurrection marks the victory, the end of the conflict with sin. The life that follows is a life singly devoted to God (for living “to” cf. 14:7–8). This does not mean that on earth Jesus did not live singly devoted to God. He did. But on earth he lived in sin’s realm. God’s purpose for him was directed to the defeat of sin; it meant that Jesus identified himself with sinners. Now all that is over. His life is beyond the reach of death and every evil. It is a life lived positively in and for the glory of God (cf. Jn. 17:5), no longer with the negative aspect of putting away sin.

11. This has consequences (In the same way points to similarity); it leads to the classic “Be what you are” situation (or perhaps, “Don’t be what you are not”).⁵⁴ Believers must act in the same way; there is emphasis on yourselves,⁵⁵ “you, in addition to Christ.” Faith means seeing things as Christ sees them and then acting on the vision. Count is a favorite Pauline word (see on 2:3); it conveys the idea of reckoning or calculating. Perhaps here “regard” or “recognize” would help us understand that Paul is arguing that his readers should come to see the truth of their situation. Christ’s death and resurrection has altered their position, and they should live in accordance with the new reality. The verb might be indicative (so Bengel), but the context demands the imperative here. We should not overlook the fact that this is the first exhortation in the epistle; Paul has laid a strong foundation in doctrine and in the recital of what God has done before he turns to the importance of right conduct. The present tense points to a continuing process; this goes on throughout the Christian life. The believer is to take seriously his death with Christ (v. 8) and Christ’s death to sin (v. 10). Since Christ died to sin and since the believer is dead with Christ, the believer is dead to sin and is to recognize the fact of that death. This does not mean that he is immune to sinning. Paul does not say that sin is dead but that the believer is to count himself as dead to it. He feels temptation and sometimes he sins. But the sin of the unbeliever is the natural consequence of the fact that he is a slave to sin, whereas the sin of the believer is quite out of character. He has been set free. Paul tells him that he is to recognize that where sin is concerned he is among the dead. He has been delivered from its dominion. And death is permanent. Once united to Christ he must count himself as dead to the reign of sin forever. He is to reckon also that he is alive to God. His life now has a positive orientation; it is directed to the highest there is, the service of God. The Christian way is not just an emotional experience (though, of course, the emotions are involved). It is a life of service.

Paul speaks of all this as being in Christ Jesus. This is the first use in Romans of being “in Christ” (3:24 is not quite the same), which is one of Paul’s great concepts and one that he keeps on using (the number of occurrences is variously estimated according as “in him” and the like are included, and how one estimates the authorship of certain writings; Deissmann spoke of 164 passages and A. M. Hunter of about 200). Paul never explains what he means by the expression, but clearly it points to the close tie that unites believers to their Lord. Some think it should be taken to mean membership in the body of Christ; others that it is to be understood in terms of corporate personality, or of mysticism. Probably we cannot now recover all that Paul understood by the expression, but at least we can say that it emphasizes the closeness of the tie between the saved and the Saviour and that it also indicates something of the unity that binds all Christ’s own. The blessings Christians receive they receive because of their contact with Christ. Here we should see that it is only as we are “in Christ” that we live to God. And the expression reminds us that God sees us not as we are “in ourselves” but as we are “in Christ.”⁵⁶

12. Therefore ties this closely in with the preceding. In the light of the truth Paul has been setting forth certain things follow. The apostle is addressing believers, not the general public. Such an exhortation as this would be fruitless addressed to people who did not know the redeeming power of Christ. But it is the duty of those who do know this power to live in the way Paul is suggesting. Godly living is a necessity, not an option. They are no longer sin’s slaves. They must not (for Paul’s negatives see on 1:13) let sin reign (cf. 5:21 for sin’s reign, and 5:14, 17 for that of death). This of course assumes that sin is still there; believers do not have a serene existence from which sin has been blissfully excluded. They are still “in the flesh” as well as “in Christ”. Sin is still a force, but Paul’s point is that it is not supreme. Believers are to make sure accordingly that they do not deny their freedom by allowing sin to rule them. They are to enter into the heritage that Christ has won for them. Murray points out that to say to a slave “Do not behave as a slave” is to mock him, but it is a meaningful thing to say to someone who has been set free. He must now give up thinking and living like a slave and start behaving like a free person.

Paul specifically mentions the body⁵⁷ in connection with this reign (cf. v. 6 for the connection of the body with sin). And the folly of letting sin reign is subtly brought out by characterizing the body as mortal. Sin’s pleasures take place in a body which is at best mortal and will soon pass away, whereas Paul has been speaking of the life in Christ that brings eternal joy. It is stupid to allow that which will die to have the supreme position. Paul is not arguing that the body is the cause of sin, but that it is the organ through which sin manifests itself, so that believers obey it.⁵⁸ For evil desires (“lusts”) see the note on 1:24. The word sometimes means good desires, but here it is clear that evil is in mind. There is a textual problem, with some MSS reading “obey it”, some “obey its lusts”, and some “obey it in its lusts”. This may be an example of the longer reading being right, for it is awkward and could be improved by dropping something. But its attestation is primarily late, and it looks like a conflation of the other two readings. The text behind NIV is probably correct.

13. Paul adds another negative command, Do not offer.⁵⁹ The tense is present, pointing to the cessation of an activity (cf. NEB, “no longer put…”). The verb is sometimes used of the sacrifices, with a meaning like “offer”, “present” (cf. 12:1). It is such a meaning that it has here.⁶⁰ What are to be presented are the “members”⁶¹ of the body, regarded as instruments.⁶² Once more sin is personified; it is sin that is the potential recipient of the members of the bodies of Paul’s readers. If used in this way, these “members” would promote wickedness.⁶³ But rather⁶⁴ introduces a strong contrast. There is a change of tense and a change from the members to the whole person. The aorist tense signifies a wholehearted and total commitment: “Do not keep on presenting your members to sin … but once and for all present yourselves to God.” They are to do this as⁶⁵ “living people from the dead”, a striking and vivid way of referring to Christians. They have died to sin with Christ, so death can be used of them as it has been throughout this section of the letter. But they are not dead. They are living and they are separated “from”⁶⁶ the dead. With this comprehensive exhortation Paul links another which concerns the members of the body just as did that which began this verse. But now “your members” are to be presented to God as instruments of righteousness. Since the believer belongs to God, his body is to be used for God’s righteous purposes.

14. For introduces the reason. There is a great fact which Paul sees as justification for what he has just said. Again he personifies sin, and views it as a master of slaves. But this time there is a negative: sin shall not be your master. Believers are no slaves to sin! In v. 9 Paul has said that death no longer has any lordship over Christ; now he adds that sin has no lordship over those who are Christ’s. Moffatt renders, “Sin must not have any hold over you” (and others see an imperatival future, as O’Neill, TH, etc.), but Paul’s statement is stronger. As Parry says, it is “a promise, not a command”. Paul has, of course, given commands, and he is never afraid to introduce another. But here he is pointing to the reason why commands like those he has just given can be obeyed. Believers can present their members to God for righteousness precisely because sin has no lordship over them. They are free.

Because introduces the reason. Dunn points out that it is a new thing to have law and grace set over against one another as they are here. He comments, “It is not that anyone said, ‘Righteousness is by law and not by grace’; no one posed grace and law as alternatives; rather they saw law as the gift of grace. It was Paul who posed them as alternatives”.⁶⁷ Paul saw clearly that law and grace do not go together. If one is “under”⁶⁸ the one, he is not “under” the other. In view of the place Paul’s Jewish contemporaries ascribed to the law we must be clear that the apostle saw it as in opposition to the way of grace and thus an impossible way of salvation for the Christian. Paul held that the law was given, not as the way of deliverance, but in order that every mouth might be stopped and all people be held accountable to God (3:19); it gives knowledge of sin (3:20); it makes the offence abound (5:20); it works wrath (4:15); no one will be justified by law (3:20); sin brought about all kinds of lust through the commandment, indeed sin is dead apart from law (7:8); it was “through the commandment” that sin deceived and slew Paul (7:11); people’s sinful passions work through the law (7:5); the law is weak through the flesh (8:3). Outside this epistle Paul carries on with much the same teaching. The law never justifies people (Gal. 2:16; 3:11); the law is sin’s strength (1 Cor. 15:56); it is there only to lead people to Christ (Gal. 3:24); those under the law were in need of redemption, and Christ came to be under the law in order to redeem those under the law (Gal. 4:5). We should be clear as to the radical novelty and the great importance of Paul’s attitude to law. Were Christians “under law” their inability perfectly to keep the law would have left them still subject to sin. “It would be pointless to say to a man who is struggling along under the domination of legalism, ‘You will eventually be completely free.’ He will always be bound” (Cragg). But Christians are not bound. Their salvation is God’s free gift. They are not dependent on their own ability to keep the law. They are free from the tyranny of sin and of law. As Kertelge puts it, “The new rule of grace claims man completely and tolerates no compromise with sin.” For grace, see on 1:5.

B. Shall We Sin Because We Are under Grace, Not Law? 6:15–7:6

Having established that the Christian cannot take up the position that it is all right to continue in sin with a view to making grace abound, Paul proceeds to his second rhetorical question in this section of his argument. This proceeds from the point the apostle had reached at the end of his answer to the first question, namely that the believer is not under law but under grace. Then does that mean that sin does not matter? His answer divides into two parts. First he establishes that Christians are not slaves to sin but rather to God; then he gives an illustration from marriage.

1. We Are Not Slaves, 6:15–23

¹⁵What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? ¹⁷But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. ¹⁸You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

¹⁹I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. 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. ²⁰When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. ²¹What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! ²²But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. ²³For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in^a Jesus Christ our Lord.

15. What then? is similar to the opening of verse 1.⁶⁹ Indeed, the whole verse is similar, and some scholars hold that Paul is simply repeating the objection he stated there. There are, however, some differences. In verse 1 the verb is in the present and points to a continuing attitude. The objector there was impressed with Paul’s contention that the more sin there is the more grace there is (5:20), and thought he could multiply grace by multiplying sin. This time the verb is in the aorist⁷⁰ and points rather to a single act, a particular instance. And the objector is not suggesting that we sin “so that grace may abound” but “because grace abounds.” The thought this time is something like this: “It is grace that saves, not the way we live. Therefore the odd sin is neither here nor there. Once we have put our trust in Christ it does not matter whether we slip into sin or not.” Paul repudiates this with decision.⁷¹ The Christian can never say, “Sin does not matter. It will all be the same in the end.” As Brunner puts it, “Freedom from the Law does not mean freedom from God but freedom for God.”

16. A somewhat complicated rhetorical question drives the point home. Once again Paul appeals to knowledge in his readers.⁷² They were familiar with slavery, and Paul is reasoning from the well-known fact that a slave was completely at the disposal of his master. No man could serve two masters (Mt. 6:24), for by definition he belonged totally to one and had nothing over for the other.⁷³ Paul is emphasizing the impossibility of compromise. For all of us in the last resort it is sin or God. It cannot be both. He talks about people offering themselves as slaves, a situation not unknown in the ancient world, when people sometimes became slaves voluntarily in order to secure at least a livelihood. For Paul the basic assumption is that all are slaves before they become believers in Christ; they are not free to do as they will, for they are subject to the bondage of sin. Notice that he is not saying that slaves are required to obey their master. He is looking at it the other way around. The master we obey shows whose slaves we are. Unbelievers are slaves to sin, and this leads inevitably to death. But believers are slaves to obedience. We might have expected Paul to say “slaves to God”, and he does say this in due course (v. 22).⁷⁴ He also speaks of belonging to “the form of teaching” (v. 17) and of being slaves of righteousness (vv. 18, 19). The point is that this is a complex situation and Paul does not oversimplify.⁷⁵ Obedience was an essential ingredient in slavery: it was the function of the slave to do what he was told. And, of course, a change of owner meant that the slave no longer obeyed his former master. He still obeyed, but his obedience was transferred to his new owner. The obedience he rendered showed whose slave he was. Here Paul insists that obedience is an important part of the life lived in grace (cf. 1:5; 15:18; 16:26). The essence of sin is disobedience of God, while contrariwise to be obedient to God is the hallmark of the slave of God. The quality of our living shows whose we are.

Paul proceeds to set out the alternatives. He sees only two possibilities, being slaves to sin with the end result death, and to obedience, which leads to righteousness.⁷⁶ Death here is more than physical death. Its connection with sin shows it to be a horror, greatly to be feared. Sin leads finally to the loss of everything that can really be called life. Obedience is a general term, but in this context it probably refers especially to obedience to the gospel call, the obedience of faith. It is this that leads to righteousness, which in turn is probably complex. Since Paul has been stressing the importance of upright living, it is impossible to rule this out at this point. On the other hand, to confine it to morality is to overlook the fact that in this epistle righteousness is so often the righteousness that believers attain by faith, and the contrast with death shows that this is in mind here (cf. GNB, “of obedience, which results in being put right with God”). Paul is not distinguishing between the right living that characterizes the servants of God and “the consummated righteousness of the new heavens and the new earth” (Murray).

After the thought that slavery to sin leads to death we expect that obedience will lead to life, but Paul speaks instead of righteousness. A Jewish reader might indeed accept the view that obedience to God, and specifically his own obedience, would lead to life. But Paul is not saying that; he is giving no countenance to any view of salvation by works. So he saves up his references to life until verses 22 and 23.

17. This leads to an outburst of thanksgiving for what has happened to the Roman Christians. Notice that Paul does not praise them for what they have done, but thanks God for what he has done in them. He gives thanks for the past, not, of course, for the Romans’ former slavery to sin, but for the fact that that slavery is over; they were then slaves to sin, but are no longer.⁷⁷ Simeon points out that, while all were slaves to sin, all were not slaves to the same sin; but whatever the sin, it alienates from God. It is this last point that matters to Paul. All sin alienates from God, and he rejoices that as regards the Roman Christians this is all in the past. They have “obeyed from the heart”, where the aorist tense points to the decisive act of obedience when they turned to God. Paul does not elsewhere use the expression “from the heart”;⁷⁸ clearly it shows that he is referring to a deeply felt experience, one that is “voluntary and sincere” (Hodge).

He goes on to speak of the form of teaching, which means the accepted Christian teaching. Some see a reference to the essential Pauline position, over against, say, the Petrine or the Johannine teaching, but, as Denney points out, this is an anachronism. As far as he knew, Paul preached the same gospel as did the other apostles (1 Cor. 15:1–11). He is referring to the teaching commonly accepted among the Christians.⁷⁹ We would expect him to say that the teaching had been delivered to the Romans, but instead he says that they had been delivered to the teaching.⁸⁰ The rabbis might view themselves as the masters of their tradition (so Barrett), but the Christians are in subjection to the teaching God has given them. They do not have godliness, but godliness has them. There is no special concentration of the word “teaching” in the New Testament (Paul has it six times out of its 30 occurrences); it is spread widely. It points to the importance of authentic Christian teaching. This is not seen as a series of bright ideas some early believers thought up, but as God-given teaching which grips people.

18. In strikingly bold imagery Paul sets forth the new situation for his readers. They have been set free from sin,⁸¹ liberated permanently from their taskmaster. This will mean freedom from every aspect of sin; “Believers are free from the condemning power of sin, and from its enslaving power” (Shedd). Sin no longer has dominion. Freedom is an important category for Paul, one that he uses more than any other New Testament writer.⁸² He can speak of Christians as being free from “the law of sin and death” (8:2), or from sin (v. 22), and of creation as being freed from “its bondage to decay” (8:21), but often he simply speaks of freedom, as when he says, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1).⁸³ People were in the grip of tyrants like sin and death and decay. It mattered intensely to Paul that Christ brought real freedom. He can call on the man caught in the bondage of actual, physical slavery not to let that trouble him, for “in the Lord” he is Christ’s freedman (1 Cor. 7:21–22). The freedom there is in Christ is so liberating that slavery to men matters little beside it. Most religions have a strict set of rules, and even Christianity has often been viewed as something like “the new law”. We should not take Paul’s great emphasis on freedom too lightly, as though he were pointing out the obvious. Nobody saw the freedom implied in the gospel as clearly as Paul did, or gave it such emphasis.

But Paul does not confuse liberty with license. For him freedom in Christ is not an invitation to splendid self-centeredness. The freed in Christ have become slaves to righteousness.⁸⁴ They are not aimless, purposeless. They have been freed from sin in order that they may give themselves over wholly to worthwhile causes, boldly expressed here as being enslaved to the right. Elsewhere Paul tells us that, while the slave is Christ’s freedman, the free man called to be a Christian is Christ’s slave (1 Cor. 7:22). We remember that Jesus said that a good tree “cannot” bear bad fruit (Mt. 7:18). Paul is saying much the same in his own way. Those set free do not wander in a moral vacuum. They are slaves to righteousness.

19. To speak in human terms is to speak “as people do in daily life” (BAGD). Paul uses the expression three times in 1 Corinthians and nowhere else (though cf. 3:5). He is not so much apologizing for using an illustration from slavery as explaining why he did it. Slavery was regarded as such a degrading state and it was so firmly repudiated in the contemporary world that it would not normally be regarded as an acceptable metaphor. But it makes things very clear to his readers, and they needed such clarity. “On account of the weakness of your flesh” (NIV, natural selves) has been understood as referring to moral weakness, a view strengthened by the words that follow (Gifford points out that “the ancient interpreters” take it in this way). But, while Paul can use the word “flesh” in a pejorative sense, he has not done so in this epistle to this point. Moreover, it is not only the morally weak who need help in understanding Paul’s point. Many accordingly think of the term as pointing to intellectual rather than to moral weakness. It is better to decline both alternatives and see it as referring to the weakness proper to this life (Lenski speaks of the “foolish tendency under a false show of logic to draw wrong conclusions from the great spiritual facts”). The natural man lacks spiritual discernment, and Paul evidently fears that some of his readers did not readily comprehend spiritual truths. Because of the weakness that is part and parcel of this life, it is well for him to use an illustration that will make the position perfectly clear.

With his Just as … so now Paul makes the point that the Roman Christians are to be just as wholehearted in walking in the ways of God now as they used to be in their bondage to sin. His aorist tenses point to wholehearted commitment. They had given themselves wholeheartedly to sin; let them now give themselves equally wholeheartedly to righteousness. As in verse 13, Paul speaks of offering their “members”, not strictly the limbs but every part that goes into making up their person. In verse 13 he spoke of offering them as “implements” of evil, here as “slaves”⁸⁵ to impurity or “uncleanness”. Sin defiles; it brings about the degradation of the sinner. With this is coupled “lawlessness” (NIV, wickedness), which can be regarded as the essence of sin (1 John 3:4); it is “contempt of the standard of right written in the law on every man’s conscience (ii.14, 15)” (Godet). Many translations agree with NIV in taking the following expression in the sense ever-increasing, but “wickedness for wicked purposes” (GNB) reflects the Greek better.⁸⁶ Paul is saying that their lives had proceeded from lawlessness and aimed at (or arrived at) nothing better than lawlessness. Incidentally, this way of putting things is more applicable to Gentiles than to people who had been adherents of the Jewish way prior to conversion. Jews could scarcely be accused of being soft on law.

Now Paul urges them to a different course. Now that Christ has come, now that atonement has been made, now that they are living in a time of eschatological significance, they must act differently. They have given up slavery to evil; they must accept slavery to righteousness (see on v. 18) with all that that means. This is “with a view to sanctification”⁸⁷ (CBSC), that is, to becoming holy as befits the slave of God. The lives of the Roman Christians are to reflect the reality of their full commitment to the service of God.

20. Paul looks back to their pre-Christian days. In accordance with his view that a slave belongs to one master he reminds them that, belonging to sin completely as they had been, they had been free with respect to righteousness.⁸⁸ This did not mean that they had never done anything that was right (evil people sometimes do good things). But it meant that they were not subject to the rule of righteousness; they saw no compulsion to do what was right. Their freedom was a grim one.

21. Paul advances his argument with a rhetorical question, but there is considerable doubt as to where his question ends. Many agree with NIV that it goes on to ashamed (e.g., Murray, Lenski, Hodge), but others take it as NEB, “what was the gain? Nothing but what now makes you ashamed….” The arguments are so finely balanced that a final decision is perhaps impossible. Perhaps the words after time do not naturally follow in the same question, which leads us to accept the shorter form of the question. Interestingly, NIV removes the agricultural metaphor by translating benefit where the noun means “fruit” and then inserts it by rendering reap where the verb means “have”. Godet considers this verb significant; it means “they possess and keep it in themselves.” “Fruit” is mostly used by Paul in a good sense and some argue for a good sense and here, but F. Hauck is probably right when he comments, “the pre-Christian man is under the power of sin and brings forth the corresponding fruits” (TDNT, III, p. 615). Paul is inquiring what really significant result had followed from their living in those evil ways of which they are now ashamed. The end⁸⁹ of those things, he emphasizes, is death. We should not miss the force of his now. While they were the slaves of sin they were not ashamed of those things (cf. Jer. 8:12). To be without shame is a mark of the sin-dominated life. But when they became Christians they came to see sin for the evil thing it is and their past deeds for the shameful things they were.

22. But now opposes the present state to the past. Being a Christian means that all things are made new (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17). Whereas previously Paul’s correspondents had been free with regard to righteousness, now they have been set free (the aorist points to a decisive action) from sin. Then they had been slaves to sin, now they have been enslaved to God. The strong term marks the wholeheartedness involved in Christian commitment. Paul goes on to the consequence of all this. “You have your fruit”, he says, “unto sanctification”. He does not say what the fruit is, but only what it leads to,⁹⁰ the process of becoming holy. Lloyd-Jones emphasizes the importance of “have”: “ ‘you have your fruit.’ You have got it! This is true of every Christian. There is no such thing as a Christian who does not bear fruit; you cannot be a Christian without bearing fruit” (p. 296; he goes on to point out that in John 15 Jesus speaks of “fruit”, “more fruit”, and “much fruit”). The present possession of “fruit” gives assurance that the fulness involved in “eternal life” will in due course be attained. For eternal life see on 2:7; it can be viewed as a present possession, and this is not uncommon in the New Testament. But here the future consummation seems to be in mind. As in verse 21, result will signify the final member of a series rather than the aim (though the latter may not be completely out of sight).

23. The wages⁹¹ of sin is death, writes Paul, transferring his imagery from sin as a slave owner to that of a general paying his soldiers. But the wage sin pays is death. “Death here is the negation or absence of a life that is truly life. Sin robs life of its meaning, purpose, fulfillment” (Smart, p. 91).⁹² As Heidland puts it, sin “promises life and gives death.”⁹³ A sense of equivalence is involved. Sinners get what they have earned. Death is no arbitrary sentence, but the inevitable consequence of their sin.

Over against that Paul sets the gift of God, where his word for gift stresses the element of freeness, of bounty.⁹⁴ Eternal life is not a reward for services rendered. There is no element of pay or requital. Michel and others see a reference to the donativum, a gift given by the Emperor to soldiers on special occasions, but this seems unlikely. That might suit the present context, but Paul’s word is one he uses quite often and in places where donativum would be quite impossible. As Denney puts it, “Paul could hardly use what is almost a technical expression with himself in a technical sense quite remote from his own.” His sharp contrast emphasizes that sinners do nothing at all to merit salvation. Eternal life comes as God’s free gift or it does not come at all. As in the previous verse, eternal life seems to be used to include both the present possession and the glorious consummation at the end of the age. Paul rounds this off by saying that this life is in Christ Jesus our Lord (see on v. 11 for “in Christ”). In 5:21 eternal life is “through” Christ; here it is “in” him. It is doubtful whether we should try to draw too hard a distinction between the two; both insist on the fact that eternal life is bound up with the person and the work of Christ.

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