Commentary - Romans 6:1-14

Bird's-eye view

Having just scaled the Everest of justification by faith alone in the preceding chapters, Paul now anticipates the first and most obvious bad inference that sinful men will draw from such a glorious truth. If our sin is what magnifies God's grace, then why not sin all the more so that God can be all the more gracious? Romans 6 is Paul's definitive, knock-down, drag-out refutation of this antinomian lie. He does not argue that our justification merely enables us to be holy; he argues that it makes us holy. The very event that justified us also, and at the same time, definitively broke the back of sin's tyranny in our lives. The argument is not, "Now that you are forgiven, you really ought to stop sinning." The argument is, "You have died. The person you once were was executed with Christ. How can a dead man continue in his old line of work?" Paul grounds our sanctification not in our effort, but in our identity. We are not just forgiven sinners; we are new creatures, united to Christ in the likeness of His death and resurrection. This union is not a metaphor; it is a spiritual reality, publicly declared and sealed in our baptism. Therefore, the Christian life is a matter of living out who we now are. We are to "reckon" or consider the facts to be true, and then act accordingly, presenting our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness, not because we are trying to become something we are not, but because we are finally free to be who we truly are.

Outline

Context In Romans

Romans 6 is the crucial hinge in the entire epistle. Chapters 1-5 have laid out, with devastating logic and glorious clarity, the doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone. Paul has shown that all men, Jew and Gentile, are under the condemnation of sin (Rom 1-3), and that God has provided a righteousness apart from the law, which comes through faith in the atoning work of Jesus Christ (Rom 3-4). He has culminated this argument in chapter 5 by celebrating the peace, hope, and reconciliation we have with God, contrasting the reign of sin and death that came through Adam with the super-abounding reign of grace and life that comes through Christ. The climax of that chapter is the statement that "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom 5:20). This is the very statement that prompts the question of Romans 6:1. So, chapter 6 is not a new topic; it is the necessary defense and explanation of the topic of justification. Paul is showing that true justification is not a mere legal fiction that leaves the sinner unchanged. Rather, it is a radical transplantation from one federal head (Adam) to another (Christ), and this transplantation has profound, necessary, and unavoidable consequences for how we live. It is the bridge from the indicative of our salvation (what God has done) to the imperative of our sanctification (what we are to do).

Key Issues

Dead Men Don't Sin

The logic of the gospel is a beautiful and brutal thing. It is beautiful because it offers a grace that is utterly free, and it is brutal because it accomplishes this by killing you. The central argument of Romans 6 is that the Christian is a person who has died. We often think of our salvation as Jesus dying instead of us, as a substitute who takes our place so we can go free. And that is true, but it is not the whole truth. Paul's argument here is that Jesus died as our representative, meaning we died in Him. When He was crucified, our old, Adamic, sin-loving self was nailed to the tree with Him. When He was buried, that old man was put in the tomb for good. And when He was raised, it was a new man, a new creation, that came out of the grave.

This is not poetry. It is the fundamental reality of the Christian's identity. And it is the reason why the question "Shall we go on sinning?" is so absurd to Paul. It is like asking, "Now that I am a happily married man, should I continue my life as a bachelor?" The question misunderstands the radical nature of the change that has occurred. You are not a patched-up sinner, you are not a sinner on probation. You are a new person who has been judicially and spiritually severed from the dominion of sin. The battle for holiness, then, is not a struggle to become someone you are not. It is the struggle to live in accordance with who you now, definitively, are in Christ.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

Paul begins with a rhetorical question, anticipating the slanderous charge that always dogs the preaching of free grace. If salvation is a free gift, and if God's grace is most gloriously displayed in pardoning the worst of sinners, then the logical conclusion for a scoundrel would be to sin his head off. "Let's give God more opportunities to be gracious!" This is not a straw man argument; it is the natural, fleshly response to a gospel that untethers salvation from human performance. If your gospel is never accused of this, you are probably not preaching the gospel Paul preached.

2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Paul's response is one of horrified shock. The Greek is the strongest possible negative: mē genoito. Absolutely not! God forbid! The very thought is an abomination. And his reason is not, "That would be naughty," or "That would displease God." His reason is far more fundamental. It is an ontological impossibility. How can we, who died to sin, still live in it? He changes the verb tense. The objector asks if we should continue in sin (a present, ongoing action). Paul responds by saying we died to sin (a past, completed action). A dead man cannot continue in his old way of life. The relationship has been severed. To die to something is to be separated from its power, its authority, its claim on you. Sin was our master; in Christ, we died to that master.

3 Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

Paul now appeals to their basic Christian knowledge, to something every believer should have been taught at the outset. "Do you not know?" This is not some advanced, esoteric doctrine. This is Christianity 101. He points to their baptism. Baptism is not just getting wet. It is a divine sign, a seal of our union with Christ. To be baptized into Christ Jesus is to be incorporated into Him, to be made one with Him. And if we are united to Him, we are united to all that He did. The central thing Paul focuses on here is His death. When we went into the water, we were publicly identified with the death of Jesus. Our baptism was our funeral.

4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

The imagery continues. Not only did we die with Christ, we were buried with Him. The burial is the definitive proof of death. There is no coming back from the grave. This burial, signified by baptism, cuts us off from the old world, the old life, the old master. But the grave is not the end of the story. The purpose of this death and burial was "so that" we could be raised. Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the magnificent power of the Father, His "glory", we too are raised. And the result is that we now "walk in newness of life." The Christian life is not a modification of the old life. It is an entirely new kind of existence, empowered by the same resurrection power that brought Jesus out of the tomb. We walk differently because we are different.

5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,

Paul reinforces the unbreakable connection between Christ's death and resurrection, and our own. The word for "united" is a powerful one, meaning to be grown together, like a graft onto a tree. We have been grafted into Christ's death. The "if" here is not an "if" of uncertainty, but of logical argument: "Given that we have been united..." The conclusion is inescapable. If you get the one, you get the other. Union with His death guarantees union with His resurrection. You cannot have a crucified Savior without having a risen Savior, and you cannot be united to the one without being united to the other. His history has become our history.

6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;

Here Paul defines what "died." It was our "old man," or our "old self." This refers to who we were in Adam: corrupted, rebellious, enslaved to sin. That person was judicially executed. He was crucified with Christ. This was a co-crucifixion. The purpose of this execution was so that the "body of sin" might be "done away with." This does not mean our physical bodies are evil, nor that our sin nature is eradicated in this life. It means that sin's organized power over us, its ability to rule and reign in our mortal bodies, has been broken. The result is freedom: "so that we would no longer be slaves to sin." A slave has no choice but to obey his master. We were once slaves to sin. Now, the master has been overthrown. We are free.

7 for he who has died has been justified from sin.

This is a legal maxim. In human law, a dead man cannot be prosecuted. Death pays all debts. In the same way, because we have died in Christ, sin's legal claim on us has been nullified. The word "justified" here can also be translated "freed." We have been cleared of all charges. Sin can no longer act as a prosecuting attorney, dragging us into court and demanding our condemnation. The judge has already declared the sentence carried out in the death of Christ, a death in which we participated.

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

Paul restates the central argument. Death with Christ is the foundation. Life with Christ is the certain consequence. This life is not just a future hope of heaven, but a present reality. We live with Him now, in this newness of life, and we will live with Him forever.

9-10 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Our confidence in our new life is based on the finality of Christ's victory. He was raised, and He will never die again. Death has lost its dominion over Him. His death was a one-time, definitive event. He "died to sin," meaning He died to deal with the problem of sin, to exhaust its penalty. That work is finished, "once for all." In contrast, His life is an ongoing, eternal reality. "The life that He lives, He lives to God." His entire existence is now oriented toward the Father in a new, resurrected humanity. And because we are in Him, our lives are to be oriented the same way.

11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

This is the central command, the pivot point of the chapter. Based on all the glorious, objective truth of what God has done in Christ (the indicatives), we are now commanded to do something (the imperative). The word "consider" is an accounting term. Logizomai. It means to reckon, to count, to calculate as true. We are to take what God says is a fact and live in light of it. We are to post this truth to our ledger. By faith, we are to look at our relationship with sin and write "DEAD" over it. We are to look at our relationship with God and write "ALIVE" over it. This is not a matter of pretending. It is a matter of believing God's reality over our feelings or experiences. Our life of holiness begins with this act of faith: reckoning God's verdict to be true.

12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,

The "therefore" flows directly from the command to reckon. Because you are dead to sin, you must now act like it. Do not let sin reign. Sin is a deposed tyrant. It will try to reassert its authority, to bark orders, but it has no legitimate right to the throne of your heart. It remains in your "mortal body" as an insurgent, but it must not be allowed to rule. We dethrone it by refusing to obey its "lusts" or desires.

13 and do not go on presenting your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

He gets even more practical. Our "members", our hands, feet, eyes, tongues, minds, are the weapons in this spiritual warfare. We used to lease them out to sin, and sin used them as tools to produce unrighteousness. We are commanded to stop this. The old lease is cancelled. Instead, we are to make a decisive act of presentation. We are to offer our whole selves to God, as men and women who have been raised from the dead. And then, we are to offer up our individual members as "instruments of righteousness." Our hands are for serving, our feet for going, our mouths for praising. They are now weapons in the service of the rightful king.

14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

Paul concludes this section with a glorious promise that is also the foundation for his entire argument. "Sin shall not be master over you." This is not a suggestion or a hopeful wish; it is a divine declaration. Victory is assured. And why? Because of our new location. We are no longer "under law," but "under grace." To be under law is to be in the realm of Adam, where the law comes to us as a list of demands we cannot meet, and which therefore only provokes and condemns our sin. To be under grace is to be in the realm of Christ, where the law is fulfilled for us, and the power of the Spirit is given to us. Grace is not just pardon for sin; it is the power to overcome sin. Grace is God's active, enabling, transforming presence in our lives. Because we are under this new administration, sin's mastery is broken forever.

Application

The teaching of Romans 6 is the essential foundation for all Christian holiness. If we get this wrong, our entire Christian life will be skewed. We will either fall into the ditch of antinomianism, thinking that our behavior does not matter, or we will fall into the ditch of legalism, trying to clean ourselves up through strenuous effort in order to please God.

The biblical path is to understand that holiness is not about trying, but about trusting. It is about training. It begins with a radical belief in who God has declared you to be in Christ. You are dead to sin and alive to God. You must start your day with this. You must preach this to yourself when temptation comes. The power to say no to sin does not come from gritting your teeth, but from reckoning on the fact that the "you" who wants to sin has been crucified. The power to say yes to righteousness comes from reckoning on the fact that you have been raised with Christ and are animated by His resurrection life.

This means we must take our baptism seriously. It was not a graduation ceremony; it was our funeral and our birth day. It is the sign and seal of our new identity. When we are tempted, we should point back to the water and say, "I can't go back to that. That man is dead and buried."

And finally, this truth gives us a robust confidence in our fight against sin. Sin will not have dominion. This is a promise. God is not setting us up for failure. He has placed us under grace, a system designed for victory. Therefore, we can present our bodies as instruments of righteousness with the full assurance that God's grace will be sufficient to make that offering effective for His glory.