Romans Chapter 6
Ron Thomas, Highway Church of Christ, Sullivan, IL
Leon Morris introduces this section by asking a question that Paul assumes would be asked: “If everything depends on what God has done, then what does it matter how we live?” (p. 243). Paul deals with this and shows why the objection is misplaced.
What it means to be crucified with Christ (Romans 6:1-5). The question asked of Paul (an assumed objection) is important in light of what he is saying. A Jew might say something like this: “Well, if my sinful life is going to bring out the glory of God, why not continue in sin that His glory comes out all the more?” Paul says this is quite unreasonable because the Christian has died to sin (by one act). We have died to that realm (sphere) of life in which we once were (cf. Ephesians 2:1-6). Why would we want to continue to stay there? When we were baptized (immersed), we were baptized into the death (or blood) of Jesus. To die to sin is not to say that a person will not (or cannot) commit sin, but that one raised with Christ is no longer lives under the sway, influence, and desire to sin; it is a lifestyle that Paul has in mind.
Paul wants them to reflect upon their baptism. He expected them to KNOW something about what they did and why they did it. Christianity is not a life of emotional responses to that which is said, but a life based on knowledge, and a life molded to conform to that knowledge (cf. Romans 10:17; 2 Corinthians 5:7; 2 Peter 1:3). Not only were they to know something about their baptism, but they were to know especially that their baptism was a baptism into the death of Jesus. Moses Lard said this: “You know that you were immersed into Christ, and in the act you were immersed into his death. If now you were immersed into his death, you are dead, dead to the world, dead to sin. How can you continue still to live in sin” (p. 197)? This question, as paraphrased by Lard, is to help them to understand the significance of what it means to be crucified with Christ (cf. Galatians 2:20). Not only had they died to sin (in their baptism), but they have been resurrected with Christ, also in the baptism act (Romans 6:4-5). You will note that they were baptized INTO Christ and INTO His death. There is a picture of finality here. One’s old life (a life of sin) has been crucified (put to death). Since it has been put to death, man is now a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). As Christ died and was raised again, so too will a baptized person rise again. One’s baptism “expresses with finality the end of the old life governed by relationship with Adam. It also expresses the impossibility of a new life apart from divine action” (Harrison, p. 69). Jesus said to Nicodemus that one must be born again (John 3:3-7). It is ONLY when a person is united with His death (in baptism) that he will be united with His resurrection! Though Paul does not mention faith and repentance, it would be a mistake to not include them.
The one who became a Christian, in the uniting with Christ’s death and His resurrection, is now both dead and alive (Romans 6:6-10). A man’s death to the world has a purpose. The purpose of his death to the world is that he should live for Christ. If he allowed his old fleshly nature to live, then he would still be a servant of sin. However, with his death to sin (Romans 6:3-7) he is free from sin and a servant of God. To live in sin is to not only die physically (Heb. 9:27), but the “reward” of that life is spiritual death. On the other hand, the righteousness of Christ, and one’s obedience to His will brings life (cf. 2 Timothy 1:10). Because Christ died, the realm of sin no longer has authority over Him. We do not want to confuse our understanding in this; Jesus never sinned (Hebrews 4:15), but He did come into this world of sin (like us; cf. Psalm 51:5), and He escaped it by obedience to the Father’s will. He died to that which controls the world and lives to that which controls all creation.
Look at verse 10 and compare with verse 11. You’ll note the same phrase used about our Lord is used about man. Why is that? The point is not that Christ had ever sinned, and neither is the point about man having sinned. The point is simply the realm (sphere) in which we live. Man lives in the realm of death (sin). Living in that realm, what remedy is there for sin? For an Israelite, God ordained that the remedy for sin be animal sacrifices. The High Priest would stand before God on behalf of the nation and the priest would mediate between the family and his (its) approach to God. The use of the animal was a substitute, and this action, coupled with a devoted heart to serve the Lord, would remedy the guilt of sin in a person’s life (and his family’s). If one were a Gentile (Ephesians 2:11-12), there is no revealed remedy for sin; the only remedy was physical death. This was not a spiritual remedy, however; all that occurred was that there was a removal of one from this realm of sin physically. The one having died physically was now no longer subject to sin. The gentile would be taken out of this world of sin and death and put into the next world to reap the so-called “reward” (whatever it might have been) for the kind of life lived. (Having said this, I want to be clear about what I am not saying. Nothing in my words addresses the eternal destiny of those Paul mentions in Ephesians 2. God’s judgment of the Gentiles is not told to us; the passage in Ephesians 2:11-13 simply states that in this world they were without hope (i.e. a revealed law), alienated from Israel who had a revealed law.)
How did death have dominion (authority) over our Lord (cf. 1 John 3:4; Romans 3:32; Romans 6:23)? He never sinned, so how was it possible that death had authority over Him? It is not talking of the specific activities of our Lord, but about the realm our Lord lived in. Because He came to the earth He subjected Himself to that which every man experiences; that which each man will experience is death (Hebrews 9:27). This is the realm in which man lives, and man is subject to death because he lives in a world of death and dying. This is how death had dominion over the Lord just as it as dominion over man. Jesus came to remove man from this realm (cf. 2 Timothy 1:10), and if man will accept the invitation of our Lord and submit to His baptism, he will be removed from one realm and placed into another. To live in the realm of death is to offer oneself to be a slave to sin (Romans 6:6). Since Christ died to the realm of death (sin; cf. Hebrews 4:15, Matthew 3:15) at His baptism, we too have died to the realm of death (sin) at our baptism.
With this understanding in view, Paul now exhorts them to make a choice for righteousness and not sin (Romans 6:12-23). Paul is quite aware of man’s weakness (Romans 6:12-23). Note his words in verse 12. He said that sin is not to reign in our bodies. Man, being the weak creature he is, will sin. When we sin, our Advocate is Jesus Christ (1 John 2:1); it is to Him we turn and seek forgiveness. There is a vast difference between the weakness of the individual man and his sinful activities (on occasion and trying to overcome) and allowing sin to reign in the body. One struggles and keeps fighting, the other fights against righteousness. One is trying to keep sin out, the other righteousness. To have sin reign in our mortal bodies is to allow sin to control us to the point that our body is used by sin to bring about our death. As the body will pass away because of decay, if sin reigns in our body, we too will pass away (spiritually). This point is important to grasp because in chapter 7, Paul will deal with it again. We know that when we obeyed our Lord, we died to the world. Thus, sin is not to have dominion (authority) over (or in) our individual lives. Sin will only have authority over a person if it is allowed to have that authority. Christians are not to allow sin to reign supreme in their lives. To not heed the Lord on this has an end result: death (Romans 6:23).
Paul brings the Law into discussion once again (he continues this through chapter 7). Earlier, Paul said the Law had a purpose (Romans 3:20; Romans 4:15), and that purpose had been served. Now, we are no longer under the Law, but under Grace. What does that mean? It does not mean that we are without law (of any kind) because the Scriptures teach that we are under the law of Christ (Galatians 6:2). Paul is speaking of the system of justification. The Law (of Moses) could not justify (Acts 13:39) and neither can any law. Law (any law) is designed to show what is right/expected of the servant (subject), and one who fails in this is judged a lawbreaker; the penalty for such is judgment (1 John 3:4). Though the Lord “nailed to the cross” the Law of Moses, and even though we died to the Law (Law of Moses and law as a system), that does not give us liberty to sin (Romans 6:15).
The Law given by God to the people of Israel was not designed to save a person from sin. The Law, among other things, made the person recognize sin in his (or her) individual life. The Law did not make man’s hope clear; grace does (cf. Titus 2:11; 2 Timothy 1:10). Disobedience to the Law had one verdict: guilty! To be guilty was to have God’s wrath upon oneself. Under the old covenant, that guilt of sin was not removed, but remembered each year on the Day of Atonement (cf. Hebrews 10:1-4). It was not removed because, by God’s design (Acts 13:39), the Law of Moses did not make anyone perfect (Hebrews 10:2), that is, it did not present one before the Lord sinless (or without sin). Though remembered each year on the Day of Atonement, it was not until God’s Savior to man came, lived, died, and was resurrected that there was no longer any need for “remembrance.” The sins committed under the Law of Moses were forgiven (in the ultimate sense) when Jesus came. Even though Jesus, in the ultimate sense, forgave our sins that does not mean Christians are allowed to sin. When we present ourselves to a master, we obey that master (Romans 6:16-19). If our master is sin, then sin as our master controls us. If we choose to obey righteousness, then righteousness as our master controls us. In saying all of this, Paul had come to recognize that this was difficult for them to understand. Why? It was not because the teaching was particularly hard, but because Paul was speaking about things not quite familiar; their attention was focused upon that which was familiar, and Paul was trying to use the familiar to make things clear (as he does in the next chapter). He asked them a practical question (Romans 6:21); “What was the fruit of living the way you once did?” The spiritually honest person would know. The shame brought by the kind of life lived (which resulted in spiritual death) was to help them understand why they were to make a choice for righteousness. The decision made earlier to identify one’s self with Christ in His death brings eternal life; that fruit is much better!