9: The Christian’S Struggle With Sin: I (6:1-23)
9: THE CHRISTIAN’S STRUGGLE WITH SIN: I (6:1-23)
Paul showed us that we need justification (1:18—3:20). Then he showed us how to be justified (3:21—4:25). He has begun to describe the wonderful results of justification (5:1-11), and has explained the entrance into the world of both sin and salvation (5:1221). He will now, in chapters 6 and 7, speak of the tragic reality that, even though we are alive in Christ, all too often we live as though we were still dead.
Sarah’s dead womb couldn’t produce life, but through her faith and Abraham’s faith there came life (4:1-22). We have been dead, but now that we have believed in Christ we have become alive out of the dead womb of humanity (4:23—5:21). Those of the human race who still follow in the parade of Adam are still dead, but those of us who have taken Christ as our Savior are the living humanity. Christ is the living vine, and we are connected as branches to that vine. How marvelous this is! But how we must weep when we feel the thrust of God speaking in chapters 6 and 7 and see ourselves in what he is saying—when we see that all too often we who are in the live stream of humanity live as though we were dead.
Paul introduces this theme immediately:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (6:1-2)
Here again Paul speaks of death and life. We have been reconciled to God by Christ’s death, and we shall be saved by His life (5:10). We were dead, but now we’re alive. Adam sinned, and humanity died; but then Christ died, and because He died, we who have believed on Him are now alive. There is a living humanity. We are dead to sin but alive to Christ. But “How,” Paul asks, “shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Surely Paul must have been weeping as he asked this, and we should weep too. If we’re alive to Christ, we should be dead to sin. Yet tragically we often live as though we were dead to Christ and alive to sin.
Remember we have seen that, just as we were justified on the basis of Christ’s shed blood, we can claim cleansing on that same basis whenever we sin. God doesn’t expect us to be some kind of Nietzschean superman. He knows that we will still sin. But why can’t we, after becoming Christians, learn to walk on the same principle of faith by which we were saved? Why can’t we keep drawing on the finished work of Christ through faith so that we do live as living people instead of on the other side of the ledger?
“How shall we, that are dead to sin . . .” More literally from the Greek, “How shall we who have died to sin once for all . . .” When we accepted Jesus as our Savior, we died to sin once for all. So why are we still living “therein”?
Don’t forget for a moment just who is asking this. It is Paul, who in these first few chapters of Romans has emphasized so strongly that we are justified by faith, not by our own ability to avoid sin. It is Paul, who has emphasized the finality of justification by faith. It is this same Paul who now cries out to us for the Christian life. If salvation is a reality and we, who were dead, are now alive; if when we accepted Christ as our Savior we died to sin, why then are we still living in sin? If we as Christians have any sensitivity and if we are allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to our hearts at all, we know that Paul is speaking to us, because this all too often is where we are. Paul is saying to each of us that it is no little thing to sin after we become a Christian. “God forbid. How can it be so?”
Notice that Paul doesn’t say, “Shall you continue in sin?” He says, “Shall we continue in sin?” He identifies himself with the problem. Why? Because, as we will see, even Paul found himself in this unhappy place from time to time. There is a constant danger, when we get on a little further in our Christian life, that we sort of stand in a high church tower and blast down on everyone else: “Look at you!” But we don’t see this kind of spiritual pride in the heroes of faith in the Bible. When Daniel prayed for the Jewish people, he identified himself with them and said, “We have sinned” (Dan. 9:1-19). This is true wherever there is a moving of the Holy Spirit, wherever a real person of God is speaking. It isn’t “you.” It isn’t “them.” It’s “we.” How can we continue in sin?
In chapter 6, Paul deals specifically with the problem of sin in the believer’s life. He will show that how we live our lives as Christians is of utmost importance, even though we are justified entirely by God’s grace apart from any righteousness of our own. Before we begin our study of this important chapter, it would be good to note a few other New Testament passages that stress the importance of how we conduct ourselves as Christians. These passages will show clearly that Paul’s emphasis on personal holiness in chapter 6 is in no way isolated from the rest of New Testament teaching.
The apostle Peter says that Christ died on the cross so that “we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” (1 Pet. 2:24). Notice those same key words that Paul uses: dead and live. Jesus died on the cross not just so that we can go to heaven someday, but also so that we can be two things in this present life: dead to sin and alive to righteousness.
In 2 Corinthians Paul describes Christians as “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor. 4:10-11). We are not to wait till we die and go to heaven to start living the Christian life; rather, in this present life, we are to bear about in our body both the death and the life of Jesus.
Jesus Himself spoke in similar terms: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). If we are true disciples of Jesus, we will deny ourselves. This is in the context where Jesus had begun to tell His disciples about His approaching death, and Peter had reacted strongly, saying that Jesus would never die. Jesus responded by going even further, saying that not only would He have to suffer death on a cross, but His disciples, if they truly were His disciples, would also be called upon to “take up their cross.” Any Christian who would live a life of joy and of usefulness in this poor, lost world must deny himself and take up his cross daily.
Echoing Christ’s words, Paul describes himself as being “crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:19; see also Gal. 6:14). As Christians, we must in some way identify ourselves with the crucified Christ.
Even if there were no sixth chapter of Romans, these verses put together remind us that the Christian life is not just to be an easy thing. We must always understand that our salvation has nothing whatsoever to do with our works. But we must never forget that, having accepted Jesus as our Savior, we have a calling: It is a calling in this present life, first to die and then to live.
This brings us back to Romans 6:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? (6:1)
Because we are saved only on the basis of Christ’s finished work, without any works on our part, does that mean we should just continue in sin?
God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? (6:2)
If it is true that, in the past, we accepted Jesus as our Savior, how can we, in the present, live any longer in sin? We died to sin, in the past tense, when we accepted Christ as our Savior:
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? (6:3)
Verse 2 tells us that we have died to sin, and verse 3 tells us when this death occurred: It occurred at the moment when we accepted Christ and were baptized by His Holy Spirit “into His death.” This undoubtedly refers to the baptism of the Holy Spirit, rather than water baptism. In 1 Corinthians 12:13 Paul says, “By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body . . . and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” It seems very plain that in both of these passages Paul is speaking of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that occurs for all true Christians at the moment they accept Christ as Savior. Paul will state very strongly in 8:9 that all who have truly accepted Jesus as Savior are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. If we haven’t been baptized by and are not now indwelt by the Holy Spirit, we are not truly Christians. Living in a day when so many like to view the Bible as just a collection of ideas and abstractions, we must keep on reminding ourselves that our salvation rests upon two historical points: the moment in space and time at which Jesus died on the cross; and the moment at which we by faith accepted Him as our Savior. At the moment that you accepted Christ as your Savior, you were baptized by the Holy Spirit into His death.
Perhaps it is easy to emotionally withdraw from the idea of being “baptized into Christ’s death.” We like to think of eternal life. We like to think of the wonder of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We like to think of being united with Christ, of having God the Father as our Father. We like to think of the great promises such as, “He who believes on the Son has life” (John 3:36). But this coin has two sides, says Paul. We need to be assured that we have everlasting life. This is God’s promise to us based on Christ’s finished work. But we must not forget that Jesus said, “You must take up your cross daily and follow me.”
This is far too little emphasized by evangelical Christians today. We like to think of identifying with Jesus in terms of being with Him in the heavenlies (Eph. 2:6), or of His being the bridegroom and our being the bride, or of His being the vine and our being the branches. But let us never forget, as Christians, that if we are going to understand the Christian life we must also understand and then practice our identification, in this present life, with Christ’s death.
Paul develops this thought further:
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (6:4)
At the same time that we accepted Jesus as our Savior, we were buried with Him in baptism by the Holy Spirit. Or, as we saw in Galatians 2:19, we were “crucified” with Him. We were buried with Him by baptism into death in order that, “like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father . . .” This is the introduction to what I have marked in my own Bible as “b.” Throughout chapter 6 in my Bible I have marked all the “deaths” with the letter “a” and all the “being alive’s” with the letter “b.” It makes an interesting pattern. Verse 2 would be an “a,” because it refers to the fact that we died when we accepted Christ as our Savior. Verse 3 says, “We were baptized into Christ’s death,” so that’s an “a” as well. The first part of verse 4 would be “a” again: “Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death.” But that death is for a purpose; we don’t just stay dead. And that brings us to the second part of verse 4, which is a “b”: Having been buried with Christ by baptism into death, we may now “walk in newness of life.” “Should walk in newness of life” is more accurately translated “may walk in newness of life.” It isn’t just something we ought to do, but something that by God’s grace is a very real possibility for us.
This is the key to understanding the Christian life. Many people seem to view the Christian life as some sort of gloomy struggle. It’s as though the deaths of 6:2-4a were the end of the matter. Certainly there are the deaths, but the deaths are for a purpose. We don’t just die in order to die. There is no asceticism here. We die in order to live—and not just in the future life, mind you, but in this present life as well.
At the very moment when we accept Jesus as our Savior, our guilt is gone, and we stand justified forever in God’s sight. But there is still this present life to deal with, and if there is to be real life in the present, it must be preceded by a death. We might think of the death we as Christians are to die as being parallel to Christ’s death. I would hesitate to make this parallel except that Christ Himself did so: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Jesus didn’t die on the cross just to die on the cross. Jesus died on the cross in order that we might be redeemed. Likewise, we are not called upon to die daily just in order to be dead; we are called upon to die daily in order that we might experience the reality of being alive with Christ. Jesus has risen from the dead in space and time and history and now we, on the basis of this, having been baptized into His death, may walk in newness of life in space and time and history. This is the key to the Christian life.
In verse 5, Paul returns to the theme of Christ’s death.
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. (6:5)
If we were united with Christ in the likeness of His death, we shall also, like Him, someday be raised physically from the dead. But this isn’t just something for the future. It means something for the present as well, as we saw in verse 4—“that we may walk in newness of life” right now.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (6:6)
“That the body of sin might be destroyed” could be translated, “That the body of sin might be made powerless.” Notice again the emphasis on the physical body. This doesn’t mean that only the body is sinful. There are sins of the spirit as well as sins of the body. But Paul is trying to show us that he’s talking not about some mystical, abstract thing, not about something merely in the world of ideas: He’s talking about something that is right down in the tough, historical, space-and-time stuff we know so well, including the problems of sin related to our physical body.
We will see this emphasis on the physical body again in verse 12: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” And in 8:23 he will speak of the future “redemption of our body,” when our bodies are raised physically from the dead. But in verse 6 Paul is emphasizing that we don’t have to wait for that future moment when our bodies are raised physically from the dead. Even in this present life, “having been crucified with Christ,” we can experience the reality of “the body of sin” being “made powerless,” in order that “henceforth we should not serve sin.”
Paul isn’t just telling us what we should be; he’s telling us what we may be. “Even so we may also walk in newness of life” (6:4). It is relatively easy to set a standard. A lot of people set standards. The problem is in keeping them. Paul isn’t telling us merely about a standard, he’s telling us how to keep the standard. The possibility of our actually keeping the standard for Christian living is based upon two past facts: the fact of Christ’s finished work at Calvary; and the fact of our having individually accepted Him as our Savior. In that moment when we took Christ as our Savior, we were buried with Him by baptism into death. And because we died with Him, “God forbid” (verse 2) that we should continue to live in sin.
For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. (6:7-8)
It is wonderful to know that, having accepted Christ as our Savior, we, like Him, shall someday be raised physically from the dead; but what Paul is hammering away at here is that the certainty of our future resurrection means something for our lives right now.
Think of it this way: Jesus died in history. Jesus rose from the dead in history. We accepted Christ as our Savior in history. We will be raised from the dead at some real, historical moment in the future. “Now,” Paul is saying, “live like it!” Through faith, we are to live now on the basis of what has happened in the past, as though we were already in the future. Jesus died in history. Jesus rose from the dead in history. We accepted Christ as our Savior in history. We shall, in the future, be raised from the dead. Now the call is, by faith, to live in the present as though we were already in the future. This is the Christian call. It is sobering and beautiful and wonderful all at the same time.
Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. (6:9)
When Jesus died and rose from the dead, that was the end of death as far as He was concerned. As He said from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). When Jesus rose from the dead, death was finished.
For in that he died, he died unto sin once. (6:10a)
Literally the Greek is, “He died unto sin once for all.” We have noted the “once for all” nature of Christ’s death several times already, and that is what is meant here as well. Verse 9 says, in so many words, that Christ died to death once for all; now verse 10 says that He died to sin once for all. This doesn’t mean that Jesus ever sinned. It means simply that His struggle with temptation (Heb. 4:15) is past. The battle is finished.
. . . but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. (6:10b)
Jesus died once for all, but now He continues to live “unto God.” He died, not just to die, but to be alive to God. Likewise, our calling as Christians is never primarily a negative thing. The basic Christian call is a positive thing. The first commandment, said Jesus, is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” (Matt. 22:37). The word don’t does not appear in this commandment. It is true that loving God means there are certain things we will want to avoid doing. These are, for instance, spelled out for us in the Ten Commandments. But our primary calling as Christians is a positive thing. So often Christians act as though the Christian calling is merely to have sort of an unhappy life and say no to this and no to that. But that isn’t the point. There are certain negative things that are involved, which cause pain, but the calling is primarily a positive one. The calling is to be alive to God. The negative commands relate to things that hinder you from being alive to God. “He liveth unto God.” And the only way to be alive to God is to be dead toward something else.
What are we to be dead to? According to what Jesus told Peter in Matthew 16:24, we are to be dead primarily toward ourselves. If we’re to be Christ’s disciples, we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. Being alive to God does not mean being dead to a series of rules; it means being dead toward self. And this death to self is not just so that we might suffer but so that we might be alive to God.
Christians constantly say to me, “I can’t seem to find a reality in my Christian life.” If there is to be a reality to our fellowship with God, there is a price to be paid. In order for Jesus to be alive to God, He had to die. In order for us to be alive to God in our daily walk, a daily death is needed. We must die daily to selfishness, to self-centeredness, to self-sufficiency. The death isn’t the important thing. The being alive to God is the important thing. But if I’m going to be alive to God, there first must be the death.
Jesus died and rose from the dead. We died with Christ. We will someday be raised physically from the dead. But we are to walk in the present in light of that future truth. We will not be raised physically from the dead in the future if we have not died with Christ in the past. And in the present life we are to be experiencing this, both in terms of dying daily to sin and of living daily to God.
Do you want to be alive to God? Not just in the sense of being justified. Not just in the sense of one day having your body raised from the dead. Not just in the sense of one day being in heaven. Do you want the reality of being alive with God today, as a Christian? Then there must be a death. You can be active in Christian work. You can be a missionary. You can be a pastor. You can be a theology professor.
You can be a thousand things. But if you want the reality of being alive with God and in fellowship with Him day by day, there must be the daily death. There is no other way.
Paul does not, however, just tell us what to do; he also tells us how to do it. We are now coming to the how.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (6:11)
Every word here is precious. “Likewise,” just as Christ died to sin and now lives unto God (verse 10), we are to “reckon” ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. You’ll remember that word reckon from our discussion of Abraham in chapter 4. Reckoning has to do with faith. By faith, we are called to reckon, or consider, ourselves dead to sin but alive to God. When we grasp the simplicity and truth of what Paul is saying, it is like the breaking of chains in our Christian life. “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God.” Our sense of being alive to God does not depend on the reality of our coming physical resurrection, although Paul has indeed said much about this wonderful reality. Our aliveness to God is deeper than this. Even deeper than the reality of our coming resurrection is the reality that Jesus, having died once for all, now lives to God. On the basis of this wonderful reality, we are by faith to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in this present life.
Now, if we are honest at all, we cry out within ourselves, “But how?” “I will try to reckon myself dead to sin and alive to God, but where will I get the strength to do so?” The last phrase of verse 11 is our shout of hallelujah: “Through Jesus Christ our Lord!” It is always “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” We are not asked to live to God in our own strength. We’ll see this phrase again in 6:23 and 7:25; it’s like the “Hallelujah Chorus” in Handel’s Messiah : “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Then in 8:13 it’s, “through the Spirit,” and in 8:37, “through him that loved us.” The similar wording of these verses isn’t accidental. They are the cords that bind these great chapters together. Chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8—they roll out with a rolling of drums, and these verses tie these great chapters together. The Bible never says that we can live perfectly in this life; but neither, on the other hand, does it ever suggest that we have to be bound with the chains of our sinful past. There is a power that breaks those chains, and it is the power of the shed blood. It is the power of the living Christ. Jesus died, but He is alive. His work is finished. He is the living Christ. Through this finished work of Christ and the reality of who He is and what He is doing for us now, there is the possibility of a truly Christian life—“through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Let’s give those verses a closer look: “Alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11). “But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:23). Then there is the cry of 7:24, “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” followed by the joy of verse 25: “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In 8:13, there is the same thought, with the emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Then in 8:37: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us,” referring again to Christ.
Paul isn’t just talking about an abstraction, about a standard without meaning in the present life. He’s talking about something that is possible, and he has told us the basis on which it is possible: It is possible through Jesus Christ our Lord, through who He is and what He did upon the cross, through what He is and what He is doing for us now.
So how do I lay hold of all this? The answer is in verse 11: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves . . .” We lay hold of it through the “reckoning” of faith. Let me repeat again what a calling this is: Jesus died in history. Jesus rose physically from the dead in history.We died when we accepted Jesus as our Savior, once for all. We will be raised in history in the future. Through faith we are now to live on the basis of all these great truths. We are to live as though we already have been physically raised from the dead.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body . . . (6:12a)
There are three key words in verses 11-13: In verse 11 we saw that the key word was reckon; in verse 12 the key word is reign; and in verse 13 the key word will be yield. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” Paul is not saying that you are ever going to be perfect in this life; but there’s an overwhelming difference between failing to be perfect, and letting sin reign in your life.
First of all, there’s a difference between temptation and sin. Jesus “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). It is possible to be tempted without falling. Temptation is not sin. We can be tempted without sinning.
Secondly, there is a difference between not being perfect in this present life and letting sin rule your life. Paul is saying, don’t let sin be king in your mortal body. Notice the emphasis on the physical body, as we saw in verse 6. Paul surely has in mind the sins of the spirit as well as the sins of the body, but it is all in the context of this present life, while we are living in our mortal body. “At this present time,” Paul is saying, “don’t let sin be king.”
. . . that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. (6:12b)
Paul now introduces the theme of slavery to sin, which he will deal with more strongly beginning in verse 16.
Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (6:13)
Here is our third key word: yield. We have died to sin. We are, in the present tense, alive from the dead. We have, in the present tense, everlasting life (John 3:36). All right, then, let’s yield ourselves to God!
The word instruments is the Greek word for “arms” or “weapons.” Don’t yield yourselves as “arms of unrighteousness” to sin, but yield yourselves and your members as arms or weapons of righteousness to God. Sadly, it is all too possible for a Christian to give himself to the devil and become a weapon in the devil’s battle against God. When you and I let sin reign in our mortal body, when we yield ourselves to the devil, he uses us with saber-like sharpness in his battle against God.
If we are sensitive at all and love the Lord, this should make us weep. There is no room for mere exegesis here. There must be some tears. To have been purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ on Calvary’s cross, to already have eternal life, to already be indwelt by the Holy Spirit . . . and to then yield ourselves as a weapon of the devil . . . There are some things we do as Christians that may seem morally neutral, but in most of the choices we make we are either yielding to the power of Christ or we are letting sin reign in our mortal body as we yield ourselves to the devil.
Yet, for the Christian, this yielding to the devil is so unnecessary.
For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. (6:14)
As Christians we have the possibility of living by faith, on the basis of the blood and in the power of the Spirit. Therefore, it isn’t necessary that sin should have dominion over us. As Paul will say later, “. . . that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (8:4). If we were just living under the law, in the sense of being told, “Don’t do this. Here is what God wants of you, now do it,” Paul is realistic enough to know that we would have no chance of succeeding. But that isn’t the point. We are not under the law in this sense. Christ has kept the demands of the law for us. We are under grace. The finished work of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit are ours. It is possible for us to yield to the power of Christ. Therefore, it isn’t necessary to always be in defeat. It isn’t necessary to be on the devil’s side.
What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey? (6:15-16a)
Being under grace does not diminish the demands of the law. In response to God’s grace, we should want to obey Him. However, when we fail to do so and instead yield ourselves as the weapons of Satan (6:13), we in fact become his slaves.
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? (6:16)
When we yield ourselves to the devil as his slave, we begin to produce death. “The wages of sin is death” (6:23a). Why should we yield ourselves to working for the devil’s wages when, by wonderful contrast, the “gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:23b)!
People often tell me they can’t understand why 6:23 is here and not somewhere in the first four chapters. Verse 23 is in chapter 6 because, while it is true concerning justification, it is also true concerning sanctification. “The wages of sin is death,” and the horrible reality is that, though we as Christians are alive from the dead, it is entirely possible for us to be death-producing machines—grinding out death and more death, living contrary to the reality of the universe, living contrary to our calling, yielding ourselves to the devil and therefore producing death in this poor world.
Each of us has great significance, as Christians and also as human beings. Each choice we make has an effect upon all of history. The effects of our choices are real, they are not just part of a dream of God, as the Hindu would say. Each choice we make as a Christian and as a human being has a reality in history, and it affects all those about us. When you and I yield ourselves as slaves to the devil, we are death-producing machines. We can be perfectly orthodox. We can be in a “separated” church that tries to keep itself pure from the world. We can say the creeds and confessions and catechisms forward and backward. We can be all these things and yet be death-producing machines. We become death-producing machines when we “yield ourselves to obey” Satan rather than the Lord.
When you yield yourself to God you are His slave, but this is beautiful and good because God is not a tyrant. We were created for the purpose of loving the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind (Matt. 22:37). He is not a tyrant; He is a loving God. To yield ourselves as a slave in this sense, as the creature yielding ourselves to the God who is there—this is beautiful. This kind of slavery produces life.
We produce either death or life as people around us either accept or reject God because of what we say to them and how we live before them. To realize that our words and actions are that significant should make us tremble. We can be either a death-producing machine or a life-producing machine for those who are still lost. And, as we have seen, we can produce either death or life in the ongoing battle between God and the devil, depending on which side we support on any given day. “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?”
Paul has said that some believers yield themselves as servants of sin. He now expresses thanks for those who have indeed become obedient servants of God.
But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. (6:17)
The believers in Rome had been slaves of sin, but then they had obeyed God “from the heart.” Theirs was a true profession of faith, a true conversion, and it was because of “that form of doctrine which was delivered you,” or, in the more literal sense of the Greek, “that form of doctrine whereto you were delivered.” What was it that broke our absolute slavery to the devil? It was a certain “form of doctrine” that did so. Today there are great efforts to tone down the content of all religions, including Christianity. The resurgence of fundamentalism in reaction to this trend notwithstanding, we face a loss of content, clarity, and truth claims. This is one of the hallmarks, perhaps the hallmark, of our age—thinking of religious things as merely meeting psychological needs and therefore having no real content.
This is not the biblical view. The biblical view is that there is a truth, a reality, in the universe, and that it is possible to state this truth in words that humans can understand. The Bible claims to give, and in fact does give, sufficient answers to the basic questions about life in the real world. I’m not saying for a moment that we can ever exhaust this truth or understand any part of it completely; but we can understand it truly. It is the content of the gospel, this truth about God, mankind, and history, this “form of doctrine,” which saves us. This is why Paul could so boldly proclaim to people of all intellectual levels in his day, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (1:16). The gospel has content. It is not merely something to meet psychological needs.
Our slavery to sin was broken by the truth of the gospel. And it was broken when we “obeyed” that truth, that “form of doctrine.” It wasn’t just believing the gospel that saved us, but also “obeying” it. Salvation involves an obedience to the truth. It is not just obedience to God. It is also obedience to the universe as it is. When a man isn’t a Christian, he is trying to live in a universe that isn’t there. There is a truth in the universe, and when we accept Christ as our Savior, when we bow before the God who is there, we obey the truth of God, which is also the truth of the universe.
Our obedience to the gospel has freed us, absolutely, from the power of sin. And we can experience this freedom in the reality of our daily walk.
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. (6:18)
In God’s sight, on the day when He declared you justified, you were made free from sin and you became the servant of righteousness. “Now,” says Paul, “live this way.” The way you were freed absolutely from sin is the way to be freed now from its prevalence in your daily life. First, there is the acknowledgment of sin; then the laying hold of the blood of Jesus; and then the thankful heart and mind. These are the realities. It is through Jesus Christ our Lord, in the power of the Spirit, “reckoning ourselves in faith to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11). This is what I would describe as being the “creature glorified.”
Later, in 8:18-39, we will consider the subject of glorification, which is the aspect of salvation that we will enjoy forever in heaven. But even in this life we can in a sense be the “creature glorified.” We have to be creatures anyway, because we can’t be anything else. We are not the Creator, we are only a part of His creation, only creatures. When the humanist tries to set himself up as God, he is fooling himself. He is just a creature. He is a creature bound by human limitations, and he is a creature bound by his own sin. When, however, we freely choose to love God, we are His creatures by choice. We willingly deny ourselves (Matt. 16:24) so that we can be alive to God (Rom. 6:10).
Being the creature glorified, being God’s creatures by choice, means not only rejecting the bad things about ourselves, but also not relying on the good things about ourselves, so that we want only to be alive to God, so that we want only to put ourselves in His hands and be truly His slaves. I have known people who have sought to live their Christian lives on this level, and I’ve always been intrigued by how hard other Christians make it for them to do so. I’m thinking of a Christian friend who is a great singer. She understands that she must be willing to be dead to the using of that voice for her own importance, even in what would seem to be God’s service, in order that she might be quiet and learn what God really wants her to do. Many of her fellow Christians have made it hard for her to remain true to that decision. They tell her again and again that she ought to be using her voice in some “big” capacity for God. But our greatest human talent may have nothing to do with our greatest usefulness to God. If we could only learn this, we would be saved from ever so much pride and ever so much failure. We must be dead to the big things, even those that seem to be good, if we’re to be alive to God.
There is no proof whatsoever that our greatest natural talent is going to be the key to our service. It may be so, but it also may not be so. If a person can speak to hundreds or thousands of people, he or she may need to die to self and be willing not to speak to hundreds or thousands of people. It is only after we are the creature glorified, in the sense of being dead to self in that which seems to be good as well as that which is bad, that we’re ready to be alive and useful in God’s service. “In that he liveth, he liveth unto God” (6:10). The Christian’s chief calling is to love God and to be in fellowship with Him. If we are seeking to be big in the eyes of the world, we will not be alive to God.
The Christian life does not mean always being as active as possible. The Christian life means being quiet and still in our fellowship with God, so that we can be alive to Him.
If someone were to ask me what is the thing that most Christians never seem to learn, I would say this is it. Our calling as Christians is not primarily to find some particular ministry on the basis of some natural talent we possess. Our calling is to be dead to all things good and bad alike, in order to be quiet before God. And then what? And then comes the wonder. Then comes the possibility, through faith, of seeing myself as though already alive and raised from the dead, stepping back into this space-and-time historical life in the power of the Spirit, to live for the glory of the Lord, yielding myself to His hand as a weapon sharpened for His use, yielding myself to be a slave of my lovely Lord. This is what Paul is talking about. We are creatures, but we may be the creature glorified. It is possible to live now, through faith, at this one burst of moment, as though I were already raised physically from the dead.
The Bible never suggests that we will ever come to this place once for all. But can’t we understand that life is only one moment at a time? On this point the existentialist speaks truthfully. There is a moment. It is the present. The calling is not for tomorrow. The calling is for this moment and every moment, because life is only a succession of moments. It is our calling in this moment, through the finished work of Christ, in the power of the Spirit, through faith, to be dead to that which is good as well as that which is bad, as though I were already in the tomb.
If suddenly a great catastrophe were to happen, if the place where you live were to be shaken with a giant earthquake and your house were to fall down upon you, you would be dead, sealed beneath the bricks and mortar. You would not be interested in and you would not be called upon to use your fleshly talents one bit. You would be dead to the whole thing. That’s the way we are to live our Christian lives: As the creature glorified, in faith making our rational and moral choices, yielding ourselves to God. We can then step forth from the bricks and the timber that have buried us, as it were. We step forth with our resurrected bodies, as it were, and in this burst of the moment, we can descend down the narrow streets through the darkness, out into our world. In that moment we are yielded to God.
Paul said he knew of a man (most Bible scholars think it was Paul himself) who went to the third heaven, where God is, then came back again (2 Cor. 12:1-4). If you and I were transported to heaven right now, and we saw its glory and purity and wonder and joy, and then came back to this poor, sordid world, do you think we would ever look at the world in the same way again? Why, the richest among us would be poor, and all our earthly joys would seem like sorrows. Well, that’s the way we’re to live. This moment, through faith, reckon yourself to be what you will be when Jesus has raised you from the dead. This is the Christian life. To think that the Christian life is personal activity in the light of personal talent—a speaking talent, a singing talent—to think that this is all there is to it, how bad, how poor this is compared to God’s real claim to be Master of our life.
Let me say it as soberly as I know how: There is no real Christian work done except as people are dead to both good and bad at that moment and are yielded only to God. People may be saved, work may be done, hospitals built, churches enlarged, organizations founded, denominations begun. But it’s all defective. None of us are perfect and we have no perfect moments, when compared with the perfection of Jesus Christ. But here and there across church history, we see a flaming fire, when men and women were truly yielded to God. This is the difference between what is mundane in Christianity and what is living and what is breathing and what has shaken the souls of men.
Do you want to enjoy life? This is the only time and the only way you will ever really enjoy it. It is the very opposite of asceticism. It is not death for death’s sake. It is death for life’s sake. It includes service for the Lord, but it also includes the enjoyment of this present life. This is the way God intended us to live. What is the chief end of mankind but to glorify God and enjoy Him forever? There is no real glorification of God and no real enjoyment of Him, even amid so-called “Christian work,” no real basic and profound enjoyment of God’s present world, except as we die moment by moment, purposely yielded to God on the basis of Christ’s blood, in the power of the Spirit, through faith. Then we step back into the present world in order to glorify and enjoy our God.
When we come to this place of being totally yielded to God, we will not only enjoy Him more deeply, we will find far greater enjoyment in all our natural human relationships as well. When man sinned, the great relationship of man to God was broken. But there was broken also the relationship of man to himself, of man to other men, of man to nature. At some great future moment, at the resurrection of all Christians, all these relationships will fall into perfect and glorious place; but through faith we can know something of this healing even in this present life. As we live moment by moment “unto God” as the creature glorified, all of our human relationships begin to fall substantially into place—not perfectly, mind you, but substantially and really. Your relationship with yourself, your relationship with other people, your relationship with nature: These relationships, all of them secondary to our relationship with God Himself, will be enjoyed to the extent that in that moment we are dead to all things by choice, and flamingly alive to God, in fellowship with Him and loving Him. This is what Paul is saying, and he is saying nothing less.
Paul doesn’t just give us this standard for our Christian life; he also gives us the how: “through Jesus Christ our Lord” (verses 11 and 23). By the grace of God, may we know something of the reality of this, and may we increasingly help each other, that through the reality of being dead to all things we might be alive to God; that through faith we might live now as though we already had our resurrected body; and that in this moment, moment by moment, we might bring forth not death but life, to the glory of God—so that we might truly enjoy God and all that He puts before us.
Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. (6:18-19)
There again is the word yield. Before you were saved, you yielded yourself absolutely as a slave to sin, as a slave to rebellion against God. Someone might say, “Look at that woman over there, that prostitute walking the streets; I have never yielded myself the way she has.” But Paul is talking about yielding ourselves to the slavery of sin and rebellion against the God who made us. This speaks to things like prostitution, but it includes all other sins as well, everything that involves rebellion against God—intellectual and moral and practical rebellion.
“Even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” Holiness is a calling. It is a command. One of the great weaknesses of many of the creeds, even the creeds that I love best, is the lack of emphasis on what I would call the “conscious side” of our faith, especially in terms of sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit. Certainly we must guard against any teaching that claims the possibility of absolute perfection in the Christian life. But we should not overreact by failing to teach the necessity of consciously yielding ourselves to the Holy Spirit. This yielding is a command. It is a privilege. It is a calling. It is a duty. It is a joy.
And it is not a mechanical thing. We of all people should know it is not mechanical. We must reject the twentieth-century concept of man as a machine. We live in a world of real personalities. God is a personal God. Our relationship to Him is above all individual and personal. We are not machines. He is not a machine. He calls upon us to act in our capacity as moral and rational creatures, to yield ourselves to Him.
For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. (6:20)
Before we came to faith in Christ, we were free from all righteousness, but the end of this freedom was absolute death. As James explains, “When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:15). Before you became a Christian, you may have thought yourself free and independent, but in reality you were bringing forth death. You were a death-producing machine, to yourself and to everyone and everything else. You were a rebel in God’s creation, bringing forth death to yourself and to other people.
Abetter translation of the Greek would be, “For when ye were servants of sin, you were free as far as righteousness is concerned.” In other words, before you were saved, you certainly were no slave to righteousness! It had no claim upon you at all. In fact, you never really did anything righteous. There were comparative “goodnesses,” but no real righteousness. You were completely free from righteousness.
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. (6:21)
“What fruit were you having?” asks Paul. And the answer must be, “I was having plenty of fruit!” Before becoming Christians, we did many things of which we can now only be ashamed. Before coming to Christ, much to our shame, we were totally “free from righteousness” (verse 20).
But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. (6:22)
Before you were a Christian, you were totally free from righteousness. Now, in Jesus Christ, you are also totally free, absolutely free—but this time it is freedom from sin! Through justification, the guilt is gone. We have become slaves to God. That’s what we should be now, after we have accepted Christ as our Savior. And our new life in Christ should produce fruit. “. . . ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life.” Paul is choosing his words carefully here. Before we were Christians, the “end” of our way of life was “death” (verse 21). Now, the end of what we are and what we should be, is “everlasting life” (verse 22). It is not just by chance that the last word of verse 21 is “death” and the last word of verse 22 is “life.”
Then comes the well-known verse 23. As we have noted, it isn’t a mistake that it is in this particular place rather than with the earlier section on justification.
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (6:23)
If, in considering the last few verses, you have come to the point of despair, wondering, “Am I really a Christian at all?” Paul now quiets your heart. He reminds you that in the absolute sense, in God’s sight, having accepted Christ as your Savior, you are now free from sin and your ultimate destiny is everlasting life, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Paul quiets our hearts, but he reminds us that as Christians we are producing something all the time, and that it’s possible, even after becoming a Christian, to offer ourselves to the devil’s service. Even as a Christian, I can choose the wrong side in the battle of the heavenlies.
The key to producing life rather than death is in yielding ourselves to God. “Neither yield ye your members as arms of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead” (verse 13). “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey?” (verse 16). “As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness” (verse 19).
We tend to think of yielding as a passive thing, yet repeatedly in these verses it is a command: “Yield yourselves.” Perhaps an illustration would shed some light on the active nature of this yielding.
When the angel came to Mary and said, “You are going to bear the Messiah,” Mary had three options. She could have said, “I won’t,” and she wouldn’t have borne the baby. She could have said, “I’ll do it in my own strength,” and she wouldn’t have borne the baby Jesus. But she had a third possibility, which she chose. She said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). She handed her body to the Lord to be the womb out of which the body of the Messiah would be born, and He was born.
You and I have the possibility every moment of our lives to hand ourselves to the Lord, to be that out of which He will bring forth all that is wonderful. “Yield yourselves” (6:13) is an “active passivity.” People are naturally afraid of that which is only passive, but we should be afraid of that which is only active as well. Our calling is to active passivity. God will bring about our sanctification, but we are called to be active partners in the process as we yield ourselves to Him.
And as we do so, we will discover the possibility of a truly Christian life, both now and in eternity, “through Jesus Christ our Lord.”