What kind of questions does the Apostle Paul attempt to answer in Romans six? Unless we keep the questions in mind we will likely come up with an improper and maybe even dangerous interpretation, leading to some huge missteps in the Christian life. Many have taken a faulty view of this chapter and thus deprived themselves, however good the intentions, of the provisions of Christ in the gospel for their daily walk.
So, what is Paul trying to answer? The primary question has to do with how one views grace. Paul had declared the wonder that grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ (5:21). Since the Law is not the means to eternal life (5:20), but rather it comes through grace, then does it not make sense to increase our sinning to add more grace to our lives? “Are we to continue in sin so that (in order that) grace may increase?” Is additional sinning, even creative ways of adding sin to our lives, actually a means to experiencing deeper, more fulfilling levels of grace? If no merit is gained through adherence to the Law but rather all merit before God comes only through the grace of God in Christ, then does it not make sense to put oneself in a better position to receive grace by doing more sin?
That’s the line of reasoning that Paul sought to address. How does he answer the question before us in the first verse? First, he makes a definitive declaration: “May it never be!” Second, he answers the question with a question, and in doing so sets forth the position of this chapter. “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” Something wonderful happened to the sinner who by the grace of God trusted in Jesus Christ, so wonderful that it affects everything in his life.
What does he mean, “we who died to sin”? To whom does he refer? He identifies this group as “all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus,” with baptism as a part that stands for the whole. It is the outward, non-meritorious symbol that affirms the saving work of Christ. Those who were baptized into Christ “have been baptized into His death.” Now he begins to drive home the point of the chapter which will enable us to understand the passage under consideration today. He explains the details of the believer’s union with Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. What happened to Christ has happened to the believer because of his union with Christ. If Jesus was crucified, so are you who are in union with Him. If Jesus was raised from the dead, so are you as well who are in union with Him.
“All of that is fine in theory,” someone may quip, “but what I’m interested in is how this works out in daily life.”
That is precisely what Paul has concern for in Romans six! How does this death and resurrection of Christ affect the Christian in his daily walk? He explains: (1) now the believer can “walk in newness of life,” a term describing the distinctness from the world, even a strangeness of life when compared to those without Christ (6:4). (2) Now the believer is no longer a slave to sin (6:6). He had been sin’s slave all his life until his union with Christ in His death and resurrection. That relationship changed everything. Sin is no longer master over the believer (6:14). (3) Now the believer has been freed from sin and entered into a new mastery--a slave of righteousness (6:18).
How does this passage change the way that you and I live each day? If we do not understand its implications then it likely changes very little. However, if we see and embrace what Paul is teaching, then we will probably agree with Martyn Lloyd-Jones who wrote, “...this sixth chapter has been to me, since I came to understand it, the most liberating chapter in my whole Christian experience” [Romans: The New Man, An Exposition of Chapter 6, 144]. Let us embark on investigating this text which lays groundwork for the practical imperatives of Christian living found in Romans six.
Paul has explained the believer’s union with Christ in His death in verses 3-7; now he explains the union with Christ in His resurrection. But he does not presume at this point that everyone is in union with Christ in His resurrection. The “if” that begins the sentence shows it to be conditional. In other words, what he explains is not true of everyone in the world. Only those in union with Christ through faith benefit from His death and resurrection.
If we jump down to verse 11, we find one of the most common phrases that Paul uses concerning Christians. Who is a Christian? He is one who is “in Christ.” What does that mean? I have used the term union quite frequently in our study of Romans 5 and 6. It is a word of identity: the many are together in the One. It is a word of relationship: the many are related to the One. It is a word of position: what is true of the One is true of the many.
We use the term to describe our nation as a union. We identify the 300 million citizens as one people joined together. The 300 million relate uniquely to each other with common rights and privileges. The Constitution guarantees that the rights of one person are the same as the rights of the other 299, 999, 999 citizens. The British, though our friends, are not in union with us. They do not share the common rights provided by our Constitution.
Similarly, Paul narrows his teaching to a particular group: those who are “in Christ.” As those in Christ, believers also “died with Him” and “shall live with Him.” Every Christian is identified with Jesus Christ. No hierarchy exists with an inner circle that benefit from Christ’s death and resurrection while the rest clamor to get in. What happened to Christ happened as well to all that trust in Him. When He died, we died; when He rose from the dead, we rose from the dead. When God accepted the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, He accepted it as though we had each fully paid the debt owed to Him due to our sin. The identity with Christ is so strong, so exact that what is said of Christ is declared to be true of us. Certainly, Jesus Christ is uniquely Son of the Father, yet in union with Him we are “children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (8:17). Jesus Christ singly died on the cross as our Substitute, removing the curse of the Fall, yet in union with Him “our old self was crucified with Him” (6:6). The old you, what you were in Adam, was put to death “with Him.” Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father (6:4) in that unique event of the Resurrection, yet in union with Him, you are “in the likeness of His resurrection,” that is, what happened to Him happened to you (6:5). The certainty of your future resurrection is bound up in Christ’s own bodily resurrection and your union with Him (cf. 1 Cor. 15).
But the question that we must pause to consider is this: are you in union with Jesus Christ? The truths that Paul seeks to convey concerning the resurrection of Christ applied to daily life are not yours because you are a church member or a good person or a very religious person. “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” Unless it is true of you that you have died with Christ then it is not true of you that you will live in resurrection life with Him.
Some might wonder why Paul inserts “we believe” as he refers to resurrection life. Did this mean that he had some doubt about it and therefore hoped that if one was true the other would be too? Instead of using it as a wish or an unfounded hope or an unsubstantiated conviction, Paul uses “believe” as a fact of reality. If you died with Christ then know for certain that you will live with Him! If one is true, then, since you are in union with Christ, the other is also true. “We believe” states the certainty not the mere supposition.
But are not death and resurrection both painful and exhilarating experiences? Certainly, that is the case with our Lord. He felt the agony of death in all of its horror, especially because it came as a consequence of the payment of our sins. In the same way, the resurrection of Christ from the dead “through the glory of the Father” was no mild experience! It was a death- conquering resurrection. The master that held humanity in its grip lost its power in that resurrection that followed the propitiatory death of Jesus Christ.
So, does this mean that when Paul talks about believers uniting with Christ in His death and resurrection that it also means that believers feel something of the pain and exhilaration? Does it also mean that due to this death and resurrection that Christians are now totally numb to the effects of sin and death? Some have taken this passage in that way. They have concluded that any temptation they have is not real; sin is not real; they really do not sin since they are dead. Yet Paul does not mean that we deny that we still struggle with sin; instead it shows us that we have a new strength and power to deal with sin. It does not mean that we deny the presence of sin or it’s influence or the possibility that we can fall into it. John Stott expressed it well, “It is not the literal impossibility of sin in believers which Paul is declaring, but the moral incongruity of it” [Romans: God’s Good News for the World, 169].
In other words, Paul is not stating that a literal death took place in the believer so that he is essentially taken out of the reality of the fallen world. He is not referring to experience but to position in Christ. He states what is true of you because you are in Christ not because of an experience.
So what was true of Christ in regard to His death and resurrection? That brings us to the heart of this passage before Paul offers the first exhortation in the entire Roman Epistle.
Death is the consequence of sin (6:23). But Jesus never sinned; so why did He die? Death had no claim upon Christ. Rather, He willingly laid down His life on our behalf, bearing the penalty of sin that is ours and treating it as though it were His. The full reality of that legal penalty in death met complete satisfaction in the sinless Son of God at the cross. If we strip the legal aspect of death from Romans six then we miss Paul’s meaning and application for the believer. We see this especially in verse 7 when he uses the same word that is found throughout Romans and translated as justified, yet for some reason is translated as “freed” in the NASB and some other translations. “For he who has died is freed from sin.” There is another word that would work much better in this case had Paul intended to express some kind of freedom of detachment from sin (e.g. 6:22, eleuthero). But he used the same word found throughout chapters 3-5 and also uses the same in chapter 8--in each case with the same meaning: justified (3:4, 20, 24, 26, 28, 30; 4:2, 5; 5:1, 9; 8:30, 33). Since verse 7 precedes our text and is obviously connected to our text’s meaning, should we not make sure that this word’s proper meaning is understood before we try to see how Paul applied it in verses 8-11?
It is not that Paul is trying to get the Roman believers to deny the existence of sin or to deny that they are affected by sin due to being “freed from sin.” Rather, their relationship to sin has been drastically and forever changed because they have been justified from sin. It is the truth of justification, that the believer is counted righteous in Christ and no longer guilty for his sin, that Paul insists will serve as the doctrinal foundation for holiness in daily life.
Paul explains that the believer’s union with Christ in His death is the certainty that he is united with Christ in His resurrection: “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” We must keep in mind what Jesus did in His death. Did He have any personal debt to sin? Of course not; He was sinless. So the death that He died to sin had nothing to do with Him but instead, with us as our Substitute. Yet we may struggle with how effective His death was in delivering us from sin’s penalty. Guilt may dog us. Despondency over our sin may trot along with our every step. Consequently, we live under a cloud of distress and with an impetus to do something to remove the guilt ourselves. So many of our deeds are motivated by the desire to rid ourselves of guilt. If we can just labor enough then maybe God will truly take the guilt away and fully accept us.
Now, what happens to a Christian that lives under that kind of mental and emotional strain? Does he have good success in dealing with sin in his life? Is his motive for the glory of God or rather for some kind of emotional relief? Is he not working from the point of defeat rather than from the certainty of Christ’s triumph? Does he not spend his time trying to secure something that is already secured? Does he not fret over that which Christ has fully absolved?
Start from the position that every sin was laid on Christ and full atonement completed by Christ’s death. “We have died with Christ!” No more guilt belongs to me; no more labor to secure pardon from God is needed. And how do I know that? Because having died with Christ “we believe that we shall also live with Him.” The resurrection shouted the effectiveness of Christ’s death for us! How effective was that death? “Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.” Death, as a legal consequence of sin, has no more claim on us because in union with Him, Jesus Christ “is never to die again.” If the penalty was fully satisfied in Christ, verified by the resurrection, then why should I live with a view as a Christian of trying to improve my standing with God? But further, the legal demand of death as the consequence of the fall and the cumulative affect of our sin has no more claim on the believer. Why is that? It is not because the believer has progressed far enough in the way he deals with sin so that death has no more legal claim on him. Rather it is because “death no longer is master over Him,” Jesus Christ. What does that have to do with you as a Christian? Everything! You are in union with Christ, so the effect of His death ended death’s mastery over you. Jesus Christ not only severed death’s reach, He ended it with regard to all in union with Him. Twice in verse 9 Paul uses a strong negative (outketi)--no longer, never again, to assert this finality with the legal demands of death as a consequence of sin.
Now, does Paul deal with our dying to sin? Yes, but that is primarily the subject of chapter 7. Right now he is concerned, in chapter 6, with the certainty of justification and its effects as the foundation for action. We will see in verses 11, 12, 13, and 19 that he commands actions on the part of every believer: consider yourselves dead to sin, alive to God; do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts; do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as weapons of unrighteousness but instead to God as weapons of righteousness; present your members as slaves to righteousness. Are those important actions in the Christian’s sanctification? Yes indeed, but only when built upon the foundation of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the legal effects they have had upon you. You can obey those commands because you are in union with Christ in His death and resurrection--and only because of that union.
Verse 10 points to the finality of Christ’s work on the cross and the only focus of resurrection life. “For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” Why is that first clause so important? Keep in mind the emphasis on the believer’s union with Christ. What He did, He did in our place; so the effects of His actions are just as if we had completed those actions ourselves. When He died, “He died to sin once for all.” The language is strong. There is no more penalty for sin left. Death has no more claim for those in Christ. Sin cannot demand more payment for those in Christ. Even for sins committed after we believe, sin cannot demand more--or else Jesus would have to die yet again and again. How does that change the way that we think? Instead of living under a cloud of laboring to secure God’s favor--we already have it through the death of Christ. You cannot work off guilt. “But,” someone says, “I still have guilt so I must work it off.” You have the guilt because you are not relying upon the finality of Christ’s work. The adversary has duped you into thinking that Christ is not enough; He needs your penance, fretting, and toil. No! “He died to sin once for all.”
Notice the liberating truth in the second clause. “But the life that He lives, He lives to God.” We know that Jesus lived with a pursuit of the Father’s good pleasure in all things. So what does Paul mean in this case that He lives to God? Jesus devoted His life on earth to the purpose of ending sin and death’s mastery. He spent each day aiming to put away sin forever. With the resurrection, nothing more is left to do with regard to sin and death. Jesus is devoted to live “positively in and for the glory of God” [Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, 255].
So what is the point with regard to the Christian? We know that Jesus lives for the glory of the Father, so how does that affect us? Since you are in union with Him, and since He has already died to sin once for all so that sin and death have no more claims on Him or you, then even as Jesus Christ lives for the glory of the Father, so too shall you. As one that has no more work left regarding sin, you too live for the glory of God since you are not under the strain of the Law, trying to merit righteousness. There is a massive difference between living in and for the glory of God and living to earn something from God. One is a singe focus that satisfies the believer with the peace of God. The other takes a low view of God (as though one can merit anything from God) and an exalted view of the law as the means to God’s glory rather than the sufficiency of Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection.
But how do we apply this truth in our daily walks concerning our union with Christ in His death and resurrection? The answer is found in verse 11.
For five and a half chapters, Paul has not offered one command in Romans. Not one! Now comes the first imperative of the book. More will follow but there is great significance in this first command for those who are “in Christ Jesus.” That phrase declares the believer’s union with Christ and the real key to applying His death and resurrection.
Keep in mind that we are not talking about experience but position, that is, not what one has felt or done but rather what God has declared is true of you because of your union with Christ. “Even so” brings the doctrinal foundation to a point of application. “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The plural “yourselves” reminds us that he is not singling out a few ‘super-saints’ but rather he focuses on the entire church. Here is the way that you are to live and think as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Consider yourselves” points to a new way of thinking. Paul has used the word fourteen times already in Romans, especially in chapter 4. There it is translated as “credited” (vv. 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 22, 23, 24) and “take into account” (v. 8), showing that Paul has chosen an accounting term to go along with the legal ramifications in the death and resurrection. “Consider yourselves to be dead to sin” means that the believer counts this as a finished transaction. Count it up, regard it as reality--you are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. There is no more debt to pay; Christ has paid it all. No longer are you left to strain toward achieving merit with God; God raised you with Christ so that you might live to God. Perhaps John Stott’s explanation will prove as helpful to you as it did to me.
This ‘reckoning’ is not make-believe. It is not screwing up our faith to believe what we do not believe. We are not to pretend that our old nature has died, when we know perfectly well it has not. Instead we are to realize and remember that our former self did die with Christ, thus putting an end to its career. We are to consider what in fact we are, namely dead to sin and alive to God (11), like Christ (10). Once we grasp this, that our old life has ended, with the score settled, the debt paid and the law satisfied, we shall want to have nothing more to do with it [p. 179].
Let me illustrate this in a simple way. Why do you that are married not continue living as though you are single? Why do you not go on dating others? You remember the union that took place by which you died to singleness and were made alive to marriage. You remember the vows that you took; you see the wedding band on your finger; you recall the announcement of your union before family and friends. What happened then continues to affect how you live and what you enjoy now. You cannot return to singleness because of what took place on your wedding day.
To consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God are not duties to perform or command for you to die to sin or promise that you will no longer face the strain of temptation to sin or that you will no longer sin. Rather you are called to count on what Jesus Christ has done for you in His death and resurrection. Think differently about life as one that is in union with Christ. Live in this reality of the debt paid, sins forgiven, death conquered, and new life implanted. Realize over and over that “volume one” in your life is over and by the grace of God “volume two” is who you are in Christ. Because Christ did these things for you, now you can say “no” to sin; now you can refuse to let sin reign; now you can refuse to give your mind, thoughts, eyes, ears, and voice as instruments of unrighteousness but instead you can give them as instruments of righteousness to God. Consider and keep considering yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let that truth sink deeply into your thoughts and motives each day. Let that truth motivate you toward holiness.
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by South Woods Baptist Church.
Please include the following statement on any distributed copy:
Copyright South Woods Baptist Church. Website: www.southwoodsbc.org. Used by permission as granted on web site. Questions, comments, and suggestions about our site can be sent here.
Copyright 2011, South Woods Baptist Church, All Rights Reserved