3. The slave-market analogy (6:15–23)
4. The Way of Holiness (6:1–8:39)
A. Freedom from sin (6:1–23)
1. A supposed objection (6:1–2)
‘Well,’ someone might say, ‘if God’s grace so abounded over sin, why should we not go on sinning so as to give his grace the opportunity of abounding all the more?’
This is not a completely hypothetical objection. In fact, there have always been people to insist that this is the logical corollary of Paul’s teaching about justification by faith; and unfortunately, in every generation, people claiming to be justified by faith have behaved in such a way as to lend colour to this charge. James Hogg’s Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824) provides an outstanding literary example of such deliberate antinomianism; a notable historical instance may be seen in the Russian monk Gregory Rasputin, the evil genius of the Romanov family in its last years of power. Rasputin taught and exemplified the doctrine of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and repentance. He held that, as those who sin most require most forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin with abandon enjoys, each time he repents, more of God’s forgiving grace than any ordinary sinner. The casebooks of many soul-physicians1 would reveal that this point of view has been commoner than is often realized, even when it is not expressed and practised so blatantly as it was by Rasputin.
Some of Paul’s own converts gave him much cause for concern on this very score. It was bad enough to have his theological opponents misrepresenting his gospel as being tantamount to ‘Why not do evil that good may come?’ (3:8); it was worse when his converts played into their hands by behaving as though the gospel gave them licence to do whatever they liked. Paul’s Corinthian correspondence shows how much trouble his converts gave him in this regard: it is plain that some of them imagined that sexual irregularities, for example, were matters of very small importance. From the terms in which he directs the church of Corinth to excommunicate a man who was living in an incestuous relation, it appears that some members of that church, far from expressing any disapproval of this scandalous state of affairs, thought that it was rather a fine assertion of Christian liberty (1 Cor. 5:1–13). No wonder that other Christians maintained that the only way to inculcate the principles of sound morality in such people was to require them to keep the law of Moses—indeed, to impose that law on them as a condition of salvation, over and above the requirement of faith in Christ. But Paul’s own experience had taught him that all the law-keeping in the world could not bring the assurance of pardon and peace with God, whereas faith in Christ did so at once. He could never consider legalism as the remedy for libertinism; he knew a more excellent way. When men and women yielded their lives to the risen Christ and the power of his Spirit, their inward being was radically transformed: a new creation took place. They received a new nature which delighted to produce spontaneously the fruit of the Spirit, those graces which were manifested in perfection in the life of Christ himself. To many people this appeared (as to many it still does) impracticably optimistic. But Paul trusted the Spirit of Christ in his converts, and in the long run his trust was vindicated, though he had to endure many heart-breaking disappointments in his spiritual children until at last he could see Christ ‘formed’ in them (Gal. 4:19).
In the division of the Epistle to the Romans on which we have now entered we see him expound this teaching at length, in reply to the preposterous argument that one ought really to go on sinning, so that God’s grace might abound the more.
2. The meaning of baptism (6:3–14)
‘Anyone who can argue like that’, says Paul, ‘shows that he has not begun to understand the gospel. Life in sin cannot coexist with death to sin.’ But what is meant by ‘death to sin’?
‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Do you not remember what happened when you were baptized?’ From this and other references to baptism in Paul’s writings, it is plain that he did not regard baptism as an ‘optional extra’ in the Christian life. He took it for granted that the Roman Christians, who were not his converts, had been as certainly baptized as his own converts were. His remarks on baptism in 1 Corinthians 1:14–17, concluding with the statement that he was not sent ‘to baptize but to preach the gospel’, do not mean that he regarded the sacrament itself as unimportant; what was unimportant was the identity of the baptizer. He assumes that all the members of the Corinthian church have been baptized (1 Cor. 1:13; 6:11; 10:1–2; 12:13).
In apostolic times baptism appears to have followed immediately on confession of faith in Christ. The repeated accounts of baptism in Acts give ample proof of this; the incident of the twelve disciples at Ephesus (Acts 19:1–7) is the exception that proves the rule. What is expressly related in Acts is implied in the Epistles. Faith in Christ and baptism were, indeed, not so much two distinct experiences as parts of one whole. Faith in Christ was an essential element in baptism, for without it the application of water, even accompanied by the appropriate words, would not have been Christian baptism.
But when believers were baptized, what happened? This, says Paul. Their former existence came to an end; a new life began. They were, in fact, ‘buried’ with Christ when they were dipped in the baptismal water, in token that they had died so far as their old life of sin was concerned; they were raised with Christ when they emerged from the water, in token that they had received a new life, which was nothing less than participation in Christ’s own resurrection life. ‘Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?’ But how could they continue in sin, if the life which they now lived, even while yet in mortal body, was the life which was theirs by union with the risen Christ? The very idea was a moral contradiction in terms.
But how is this going to work out in practice? ‘Yield yourselves to God,’ says Paul; ‘present your bodies to him as instruments for the doing of his will. Formerly you were enslaved to sin, but your old relation to sin has been broken—broken irrevocably, by death. What death? The death that you have died with Christ. Now that you are united to him by faith, his death has become yours; your “old self” has been “crucified” on his cross. Christ had to do with sin, as well as you; you have had to do with it as sinners, he had to do with it as sin-bearer. As the bearer of his people’s sins, he died; but now he lives his resurrection life. He no longer bears his people’s sins; when once he had died for their sins, he rose from the dead, and now death can touch him no more. If you consider yourselves to have died in his death, and risen to a new way of life in his resurrection, sin will dominate you no more. You now live under a regime of grace, and grace does not stimulate sin, as law does; grace liberates from sin and enables you to triumph over it.’
3. Baptized into Christ Jesus. Cf. Galatians 3:27, ‘as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ’—i.e. you have been incorporated in him, have become members of his body (cf. 1 Cor. 12:13), and so have shared by faith-union with him those experiences which were his historically: his crucifixion and burial, his resurrection and exaltation. Further light on Paul’s doctrine of baptism is provided in 1 Corinthians 10:2, where all the Israelites who left Egypt are said to have been ‘baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea’. Baptism thus seals the believer’s exodus, his deliverance from the bondage of sin and his entry into a new life of freedom.
4. Buried … with him by baptism into death. Cf. Colossians 2:12, ‘buried with him in baptism.’ Burial sets the seal on death; so the Christian’s baptism is a token burial in which the old order of life in sin comes to an end, to be replaced by the new order of life in Christ.
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. The ‘glory’ here is more especially God’s glorious power—‘the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead’ (Eph. 1:19–20; cf. Col. 2:12).
We too might walk in newness of life. This is the new mode or quality of life which results from the impartation of Christ’s risen power to the believer. Paul and other New Testament writers frequently use the verb ‘walk’ in this ethical sense (cf. 8:4; 13:13; 14:15).
5. United with him in a death like his. Lit. ‘planted together in the likeness of his death’ (cf. the ‘sowing’ figure of 1 Cor. 15:36–44, although there it is the believer’s personal death that is meant, not, as here, death with Christ).
United with him in a resurrection like his. A reference to the future resurrection-harvest of the people of Christ, patterned on the resurrection of ‘Christ the first fruits’ (1 Cor. 15:23).
6. Our old self was crucified with him. ‘The man we once were has been crucified with Christ’ (NEB). This ‘crucifixion’ is not a present experience but a past event, expressed by the aorist tense in Greek; those who are united by faith to Christ are reckoned as having been crucified with him when he was crucified. Cf. Galatians 2:20, ‘I have been crucified [perfect tense] with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.’ Similarly in Galatians 6:14 Paul boasts in the cross of Christ, ‘by which the world has been crucified [perfect tense] to me, and I to the world’. In the latter passage there may be a side-glance at an alternative meaning of the verb ‘crucify’ (stauroō), namely ‘fence off’. The person I now am (‘in Christ’) has been fenced off by the cross from the person I formerly was (‘in Adam’), when I belonged to the current world-order. (In both these Galatians passages the perfect tense denotes a present state produced by the past event of Romans 6:6.) For the ‘old self’ or ‘old man’ (anthrōpos) cf. Colossians 3:9 and Ephesians 4:22 (quoted on p. 51).
So that the sinful body might be destroyed. ‘For the destruction of the sinful self’ (NEB), lit. ‘the body of sin’—i.e. so that the ‘flesh’, the unregenerate nature with its downward tendency, in which sin found a ready accomplice, might be rendered inoperative. The ‘sinful body’ is more than an individual affair; it is ‘the sin-dominated nature that was ours in Adam’ (J. I. Packer2), the old solidarity of death which has been broken by the death of Christ, with a view to the creation of the new solidarity of life of which believers are made part ‘in Christ’. It is not the human body in the ordinary sense that is to be destroyed or put out of action; baptism does not have this effect. (Cf. 7:24, ‘this body of death’; 8:3, ‘sinful flesh’.)
7. He who has died is freed from sin (lit. ‘has been justified from sin’). The point of this is paraphrased by NEB: ‘a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin.’ Death pays all debts, so those who have died with Christ have the slate wiped clean, and are ready to begin their new life with Christ freed from the entail of the past.
8. We shall also live with him—in our present ‘newness of life’ (cf. verse 11) as well as in the resurrection age.
10. He died to sin, once for all. This adverb (ephapax) is used repeatedly in Hebrews to emphasize the finality of the sacrifice of Christ. In his death he dealt effectively and conclusively with sin, winning a victory ‘that needs no second fight, and leaves no second foe’.
11. You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. This is no game of ‘let’s pretend’; believers should consider themselves to be what God in fact has made them. It is no vain exercise but one which is morally fruitful: the Spirit has come to make effective in them what Christ has done for them, and to enable them to become in daily experience, as far as may be in the present conditions of mortality, what they already are ‘in Christ Jesus’ and what they will be fully in the resurrection life. (This is the subject of 8:1–27.)
12. To make you obey their passions. Cf. 13:14, ‘to gratify its desires.’
14. Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. The law demanded obedience, but grace supplies the will and the power to obey; hence grace breaks the mastery of sin as law could not. See pp. 163–164.
3. The slave-market analogy (6:15–23)
Paul repeats the objection of verse 1 in slightly different terms (suggested by the wording of verse 14) and uses the analogy of the slave-market to answer it.
Paul’s language about believers’ being no longer enslaved to sin because, having died with Christ, they are dead to sin might have led him to point out that, when a slave has died, the master’s authority over him is at an end. Instead, he points out that the master’s authority over a slave is at an end when the slave passes into the ownership of a new master. ‘Once’, says Paul, ‘you were slaves of sin. Sin was your master, and you were forced to do all the evil things that sin ordered you to do; you had no power to say “No”. But now you have passed from the service of sin into the service of God; your business now is to do what pleases God, not what sin dictates. There is a big difference indeed between the kind of thing you will do as servants of God and the kind of thing you used to do as servants of sin. Moreover, to serve God “under grace” is a liberating experience, as different as can well be from slavery to sin. And not only is there a great difference in character between the two forms of service; there is a great difference between the ends to which they lead. Sin pays wages to its servants, the wages being death. God does not pay his servants mere wages: he gives them something better and much more generous. In his grace he gives life eternal as a free gift—that life eternal which is theirs by union with Christ.’
What is to be said of this argument? Is it a legal fiction, or an exhortation to pull ourselves together and make a new start, a good resolution to do better in the future? ‘Consider yourselves dead in relation to sin, but alive in a new relation to God by virtue of your incorporation into Christ,’ Paul has said (verse 11). Is this just an exertion of the will, or an effort of the imagination? No, it is not. It is something that has proved its reality in the lives of many, and such people have no difficulty in understanding what Paul means. For the God of whom he speaks is the living God, and when men and women present themselves to him, to be used in his service, he accepts them as his servants and gives them the power to do his will. The Christ of whom Paul speaks is the Christ who truly died and rose again, and in the lives of those who put their trust in him ‘He breaks the power of cancelled sin’.
15. Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? The antinomian argument of verse 1 is reworded in terms of verse 14. Paul’s repeated By no means! implies that anyone who talks like this has not the remotest inkling what divine grace means. Those who are ‘under grace’ share the life of Christ. As the life of Christ was (and is) characterized by spontaneous and glad obedience to the Father’s will, so the life of those who are ‘in Christ’ will be characterized by the same obedience. ‘Love and do as you please’3 is a maxim which, in those who have God’s love poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit, can only result in their doing those things which please God. To treat being ‘under grace’ as an excuse for sinning is a sign that one is not really ‘under grace’ at all.
16. Obedience, which leads to righteousness. One might have expected ‘… which leads to life’, to balance the preceding sin, which leads to death, but righteousness (justification) and life are two sides of the same coin (cf. 5:18, 21).
17. You … have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed. The ‘standard’ or ‘pattern of teaching’ (NEB) is probably the summary of Christian ethics, based on the teaching of Christ, which was regularly given to converts in the primitive church to show them the way of life which they were thenceforth to follow. It is the body of teaching which Paul elsewhere calls ‘the tradition’ or ‘the traditions’ (cf. 1 Cor. 11:2; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6)—the noun (paradosis) being from the same root as the verb ‘commit’ or ‘deliver’ (paradidōmi). It has been inferred from various summaries of this teaching in the Epistles that it was arranged in catechetical form at an early period. But the ‘pattern of teaching’ was embodied in Christ, to whom they now belonged (cf. 13:14).
18. Having been set free from sin. That is, having been liberated from the tyranny of sin, not ‘justified’ from sin as in verse 7.
19. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations (lit. ‘because of the weakness of your flesh’). That is, I am using a human analogy (cf. 1 Cor. 15:32) in case you fail to grasp my meaning. See p. 50.
20. You were free in regard to righteousness. That is, sin and not righteousness was your master then.
21. But then what return (lit. ‘fruit’) did you get …? Probably a complete question, to which the answer is, The things of which you are now ashamed.
The end of those things is death. Cf. ‘fruit for death’ (7:5); also 1:32, ‘God’s decree that those who do such things deserve to die.’
22. The return you get is sanctification. Lit. ‘you have your fruit for sanctification’ (in contrast to the shameful and deadly ‘fruit’ of verse 21). Those who have been justified are now being sanctified; those who have no experience of present sanctification have no reason to suppose they have been justified.
23. Death … eternal life. Repeated from verses 21–22. Both the death and the life belong to the coming age, but by God’s free gift (charisma) believers in Christ receive a share in his risen life here and now, and enjoy it in advance of its consummation at their own resurrection.