Romans 6:1-14 contains encouraging realities concerning who we are as believers in Christ and what we have experienced in union with him. These truths have significant implications for how we think about and relate to sin in our lives. It is the passage that I return to and prayerfully recall regularly to renew my mind and help me in the battle against temptation and sin.
This portion of Scripture also contains dense logic. It requires time and careful thinking to properly follow and understand accurately. But it well worth our effort. So, in an attempt to help, the following is a walk through the text in the form of a “Q & A.” I will not address everything in each verse, but hope to elucidate the most crucial parts so that we will better understand what Paul is and isn’t saying. Along the way, I will also touch on some related practical questions and concerns.
Why does Paul anticipate this particular question at the beginning of chapter 6?
At the end of chapter 5, Paul finishes a point he began to make in chapter 3 — that the Jewish believers in Rome had been made right with God through faith alone in Jesus, totally apart from their own efforts to establish righteousness through works of the Mosaic Law. In the same way, all believers in Christ have experienced forgiveness through the grace of God, based upon the death of Jesus. We contributed nothing to our salvation except, as some have said, the sin that made it necessary. We simply received eternal life as a free gift by faith in the Messiah.
In light of that, as chapter 6 begins, Paul expects that someone hearing his letter read aloud may have a question (or possibly an objection in the form of a question): “If the increase of our sin before salvation meant the increase of God’s grace toward us in Christ, then after salvation should we continue to sin like we did before we received the grace of God so that then we will experience an even greater manifestation of it?“ Paul answers with the strongest negative response he could: “May it never be!” (v. 2).
Why such a strong reaction from the apostle? Why will believers not continue in sin?
It is tempting to reason that in Paul’s mind the thought of believers persisting in sin akin to their lifestyle before conversion is abhorrent because it is a perversion of the grace of God in Christ. It would be like a murderer awaiting execution on death row, who is then is pardoned and released, but uses his freedom to only to go out an kill again. It is an unthinkable abuse of the mercy he had received. While that is true, I am more inclined to believe that the cause of Paul’s response is clarified in the following question he asks: “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (v. 2, emphasis mine)
It is a rhetorical question that Paul utilizes, like a wise teacher, for the sake of making an emphatic assertion. So we can reword it into the following statement: “We who have died to sin cannot continue to live in it.” It is especially critical here to note what Paul actually says. Paul does not say “We are dying to sin.” He is not informing us that we are in the present process of dying to sin. He also does not say, “Die to sin.” He is not commanding us to die to sin. Paul may say things like that in other places, but that is not what he is saying here.
What then is he saying?
Simply this: there was a point in the past when believers died to sin. It was a one-time completed event that has ongoing effects for our lives. The reason why believers shall not continue to live in sin is because every believer in Jesus has died to sin. There has been a decisive death blow dealt to our previous relationship with sin. Therefore, we will not live in sin the way we once did before Christ saved us.
When did we die to sin? And how did we die to sin?
First, let me say that while these are, generally-speaking, good questions to ask, think about, and answer, I do not believe Paul’s aim here is to explicitly answer them. I understand his focus not to primarily be on how believers died to sin, or even when believers died to sin, but rather that believers have died to sin.
At the same time I think it is possible to deduce from the words, phrases, and statements Paul uses in verses 3 to 4 that our death to sin happened at the time of our conversion. When we repented of our sins and believed the good news concerning Jesus of Nazareth, we died to sin. Through our positive response to the gospel we were joined to Christ. Then by means of our union with him we experienced his death and his burial in a real and significant way.
If that is the case, then why does Paul refer to baptism here?
Because for the Roman believers their conversion experience presumably involved immediate immersion in water (if the typical New Testament pattern was followed). When the Christians in Rome heard the gospel preached, we can safely assume that they responded to the message with repentance and faith, and they immediately demonstrated their repentant faith by submitting themselves to Jesus’ requirement that they be physically baptized.
So, Paul says it was through their response to the gospel and conversion, “baptism” being a shorthand way of referring to it, that they were joined to Jesus. This is the main point that Paul is drawing our focus to: our union with Christ.
What was the result of our being joined to Christ?
Paul says in verse 3, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Through union with Christ, we were joined to his death in a meaningful way. And then in verse 4 Paul draws the inference that since we died with Christ, we were also buried with him: “Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death . . .” Through our response to the gospel we were united to Jesus such that we died with him and were buried with him.
What is the purpose of experiencing Jesus’ death and burial?
The intent is this: that we would also experience resurrection with Jesus and live a completely new life! “We were buried, therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (vv. 4-5).
So believers who have responded to the gospel in repentance and faith have been united to Christ. In union with Jesus we have died with him, been buried with him, and have been raised with him. The end result is that we would live a totally new life. That is why believers will not continue to live in sin as we once did before we were joined to Christ and transformed by him!
Please do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that when a person believes in Jesus Christ and is converted that he becomes perfected in his daily life and will never sin again. Nor am I saying that a believer will never sin in grievous ways, or in particular ways for an extended season of his life. My point is that when we are united to Christ our former relationship with sin is completely and forever changed! We’ll see that more clearly as we continue to walk through the passage.
OK. So what does it mean that we have died to sin?
In verse 6 Paul continues, “We know that our old man was crucified with him . . .” Having established that all believers have been joined to Jesus and undergone a spiritual death, burial, and resurrection, Paul now goes into more detail about what happened when we died with Jesus (and to sin).
He refers to the event as a crucifixion and says that together with Jesus our “old man” was nailed to the cross. This is something that you must not miss if you are going to grasp what Paul is asserting. Paul does not say that our sin was crucified with Jesus. He will say that elsewhere but that is not his point here. Nor does he say that our old or sinful nature was crucified with Jesus. He may say that in another place but that is not his focus here. Here he says that our old man was crucified with Christ on the cross. (“Man” is the literal translation of the word Paul uses, though some English Bibles render it as “self.”)
What does the phrase “old man” refer to? Why is that distinction important?
The phrase “old man” refers to the entire person, the “old you” that was united to the first human, Adam (remember Paul has just been referring to him at the end of chapter 5). This old man was part of the larger old humanity with Adam as your collective head. As such you lived in the realm of sin where it was your master (5:19-21). But the old you was crucified and buried. In your death with Jesus a decisive and permanent disconnection occurred between you and Adam. Your old man is in contrast with your “new man” that has been raised from the dead and made alive by the Spirit of God. This “new you” is in union with Christ, part of the larger “new man” (new humanity) with Jesus as our collective head (cf. Ephesians 1:22, 2:15, 4:10-23; Colossians 3:9-11).
I am emphasizing these distinctions and belaboring this point because there are many genuine Christians, even godly leaders that I highly respect, who promote the teaching that inside a believer there are two natures: the old sinful nature that has always been with us and the new godly nature that has been implanted in us at conversion.
These leaders claim that within the redeemed person there are two “men” who co-exist alongside of each other — the old man and the new man. And the Christian’s ongoing battle with sin is a chronic issue of spiritual schizophrenia, an inward form of multiple personality disorder. As a result of this understanding, some have said that the life of pursuing righteousness and holiness is like having two dogs set against each other inside of you. The one represents the old man and the other the new man, and the dog you choose to feed is going to grow stronger and gain the upper hand over the other dog.
With all due respect to these brothers and sisters, Paul disagrees. He says that if you’re a believer, your old man is gone! He is not still alive and actively harassing you. He does not live inside of you along with a new man, as though they were fighting for control of you. He is dead and buried. Just as you were one entire old man with one old sinful nature, now that you are in Christ you are one entire new man with one new righteous nature.
As we will see a bit later, this is very important because the way we think and talk about ourselves impacts the way we live, particularly how we respond to temptations to sin.
What is the goal of our old man being crucified with Jesus?
Paul goes on in verse 6 and says that “our old man was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” The purpose of our old man being crucified with Jesus was to render “the body of sin” inoperative or powerless in our lives. Before we were made new in Christ, our bodies (and we ourselves) were not only susceptible to sin but dominated by sin. Sin hijacked the very members of our physical bodies and held them (and us) in bondage to its demands. But when our old man was crucified with Jesus, those chains were broken such that we are no longer slaves to sin. To borrow Paul’s own words from later in the chapter, believers are those “who were once slaves of sin” but “having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (v. 17).
Then in verse 7, Paul further supports this idea that an event of death has changed the relationship we have with sin and broken sin’s ability to control us. He parenthetically elaborates there, “for one who has died has been set free from sin.”
Why does death necessarily set believers free from sin?
Think of it this way. On the continent of Africa there is one remaining absolute monarchy, the kingdom of Eswatini. It is ruled by King Mswati III who has total authority over the lives of its citizens. If I was a citizen of the kingdom of Eswatini, I would be under the king’s sovereignty and required to fulfill every demand that he made upon me. But if I died, he would no longer have complete power over my life. Why? Because I am dead! I would no longer be alive in the realm of Mswati’s reign. Relationally, I would be free from the king’s rule over me.
This is what every believer has experienced by virtue of the death and burial of his old man. Paul is personifying sin as a king who had absolute dominion over us at one time in the past. But now, because we are in Christ and have died to sin, that former relationship we had with it has ended. And it is the event of our death that has transferred us from sin’s kingdom and rescued us from its tyrannical reign.
Why does our union with Christ necessarily cause us to die to sin and to live a new life?
In verse 8, Paul says that since “we have died with Christ,” then “we will also live with him.” I understand Paul here to be referring to the sure hope believers have of physically living alongside Jesus in the age to come. I take it this way because of what he says next in verse 9: “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.”
There was a time, when Christ was alive, that he was under the authority of death. Because Jesus was a real human being, death had the ability to claim his life at some point. And it did when he was crucified on the cross and physically died. Christ went toe to toe with death, took its best shot, and seemed to be defeated when his lifeless body was laid in the grave.
But that was not the end of the fight. Three days later Jesus rose triumphantly from the dead, ultimately defeating the grave! Just as a honey bee loses its life when it stings its enemy, when death stung Jesus it destroyed its own power over him. Jesus is now alive and permanently freed from the power of death. This is what he told the apostle John, “I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore . . .” (Revelation 1:17-18). Therefore Christ will never die again. He will be alive forever in the age to come and believers will be raised with him and always live with the Lord there.
But how does Jesus’ freedom from the power of death connect with our freedom from sin?
In verse 10 Paul directly connects Jesus’ death and sin by saying that when Jesus died he died to sin. “For the death he died he died to sin once for all . . .” (emphasis added). Paul said earlier that sin reigns through death (5:21). As a real human being with a physical body on earth, Jesus was ultimately under the reign of sin. Sin exercised it’s rule by taking his life in death. So when Jesus died physically and then was subsequently raised, his relationship with death and sin were forever changed. Christ was permanently freed from the realm of sin and death. Now, having been raised from the dead, he lives in a completely new realm.
Notice the parallel Paul makes between Christ’s death and his life: “the death he died he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.” Jesus’ death had to do with dealing decisively with sin; but after his resurrection, he now lives completely unto God without any regard to sin! Then Paul makes the connection to us in verse 11: “In this way you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
We believers, through responding to the gospel in true faith, are united to Jesus. That union means we have spiritually died with Christ and we have been raised with him. In Jesus’ death he died to sin and in his resurrection he was made alive to live for God. In the same way, like Jesus, we too have died to sin and have been made alive to live for God now!
What should we do with this reality? How should it affect the way we think and live?
Those are great questions. And they are timely since verse 11 contains the first command that Paul gives in this entire passage. He will go on to give us three more instructions in verse 12-13. But before we consider them, I want to encourage you to go back and read verses 1 through 10. You will notice that they are full of statements concerning who we are as believers in Christ and what we have experienced in union with him.
Do you see how Paul orders things? First he lays a solid foundation of gospel truth concerning our union with Christ and how that has affected our relationship to sin and to God. Only then he turns and tells us how to live. And even then the initial directive Paul gives us is to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ” (emphasis added). Concerning this command, former pastor Steven J. Cole has written:
“Consider” is in the present tense and means, “keep on counting it to be true.” You don’t count it to be true because you feel dead to sin and alive to God, but rather because God says that it is true. And the truest thing about you is not what you feel, but what God declares to be true. Victory over sin begins with your mind, how you think. This isn’t just a mind game, where you tell yourself over and over that it’s true until it actually becomes true. Paul isn’t saying to deny reality by thinking positive thoughts. He isn’t saying, “Visualize yourself as being dead to sin and then you’ll act that way.” Rather, he is saying, “This is the fact of who God has made you in Christ. You are no longer in Adam, alive to sin, but dead towards God. Rather, you are now in Christ Jesus . . . dead to sin and alive to God. Think on that truth. As you think, so you will act. So consider it over and over as often as you face temptation.” Living in light of your union with Christ is the key to overcoming sin (“Lesson 32: Dead to Sin, Alive to God [Romans 6:5-11],” located at www.bible.org).
Later in chapter 12 Paul will basically say the same thing: that the essential means by which we will present ourselves alive to God is through the renewing of our minds with gospel truth. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (12:1-2; emphasis added).
This is the way that you and I will be enabled to actually do the following three commands in 6:12-13.
What are those three commands?
Let’s read the verses first and then identify them. “Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness” (emphasis added).
- Do not let sin reign in your mortal body
- Do not present your members to sin
- Present yourselves and your members to God
First, Paul says we should no longer let sin reign in our physical bodies and allow it to lead us to obey its desires. Second, and related to that, we should not stand at attention before “Lord Sin,” ready to carry out his orders. We should not permit Lord Sin to wield the members of our bodies as his weapons to accomplish unrighteousness through us. Rather, third, we should stand at attention before “Lord God,” ready to carry out his commands. We should permit him to wield the members of our bodies as instruments to accomplish righteousness through us.
But I thought you said that sin is no longer our master and will not rule over us any longer?
I did. Or really, Paul did. He has said that we have “died to sin” (v. 2) and are “dead to sin” (v. 11), that our old man has died with Christ by crucifixion and has been buried with him (vv. 3-6), that the body of sin has been rendered powerless over us, and that we are no longer slaves to sin, but have been set free from sin (vv. 6-7). In fact, in verse 14 he says emphatically, “sin will have no dominion over you . . .”
Then, why does Paul tell us not to let sin reign in us?
Just because sin has ceased to be our master, it does not mean that sin will stop trying to rule over us. It is like when Yahweh told Cain, “sin is crouching at the door [and] its desire is for you” (Genesis 4:7). As I said earlier, Paul is personifying sin here as an entity that seeks to work even through the natural desires of our minds and bodies that God has placed within us according to his good design. Sin tries to seize our desires for food, drink, rest, companionship, sexual pleasure, marriage, meaning, fulfillment, children, work, accomplishment, success, peace, security, satisfaction, and honor. It wants to to pervert, distort, and misplace them so that they become destructive to us and others.
And sin attempts to exercise its reign in and through our physical bodies. Though our inner man has been regenerated, our bodies are yet to be redeemed (Romans 8:23). That means in each believer there are years, sometimes decades, of established patterns of unrighteous ways of thinking, desiring, emoting, and responding to certain sensations. So sin seeks to accomplish its evil ends by means of the good physical members of our bodies, just as it absolutely did in our old man (Romans 7:5, 23-24). It endeavors to commandeer our brains, eyes, ears, noses, mouths, tongues, hands, fingers, feet, glands, organs (and more) as conduits for sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, idolatry, anger, wrath, malice, slander, obscene talk, and lying (Colossians 3:5-9).
But sin no longer has the power to make us obey its demands and do what it says. It can no longer compel us and control us to continue to live in it as we once did. When you are faced with any temptation, you are able to say “no” to it. Believer, the only thing you are a slave to now is righteousness (Romans 6:17-18)! You have been set free from sin through your union with Jesus. And in Christ you have the ability to resist all bodily urges and temptations to sin.
When Paul says that we have died to sin, he means that sin no longer has absolute authority over us. It cannot compel us to continue to live in it anymore. The grace of God in Christ does not only set us free from the penalty of our sin and bring forgiveness. It also sets us free from the power of our sin and brings transformation to our lives. It gives us the desires and the ability to not continue living in sin as we once did.
So if in Christ, we are really dead to sin and free from it’s mastery, then why do we still commit sin?
To answer that, let me share a historical illustration I once heard, and have since adapted. On January 1st, 1863, United States President Abraham Lincoln issued the final form of what is known as the “Emancipation Proclamation.” For the sake of argument, let us assume that this executive order authoritatively declared all slaves to be free from their masters. Their relationship with their former lords was radically and forever changed. Remember though that many slaves at that time had not known any other life or way of relating to their previous masters. Some had been born into their bondage and had lived all their lives under their master. But now they had “died” to their former lords. Their old masters’ power over them had been broken and they didn’t have to obey them or live under their authority any longer. They were declared free and they were really free, even if they didn’t feel free just yet.
Imagine that one day a group of former slaves is walking down Main Street in their hometown. As they do so, they hear a familiar voice yell, “Hey!” They look up and see their old master across the street. He then shouts, “Come over here right now!” The former slaves begin to shake in fear and instinctively run over and stand at attention in front of him. He then proceeds to bark orders to them: “Go to the house and get my wheelbarrow. Then go fetch ten bags of corn seed. Dig up the field west of the house and plant them there.” The former slaves, now freemen, choose to yield their physical bodies to the service of their previous lord and promptly obey his desires.
What just happened? What were these men doing? Although they were no longer slaves, although they had been truly set free from their former master’s authority, they were thinking that they were still enslaved to him. They were acting as though he still had authority to make absolute demands upon them that they couldn’t resist, but they were required to obey. To use Paul’s language here in our passage, they were allowing their former master to “reign over them.” They were “presenting themselves” and “the members of their bodies” as obedient slaves to him, instead of remembering their old relationship had ended, refusing to allow him to rule, and choosing to present themselves and the members of their bodies as those who had been set free.
Do you get the picture? Even though we as believers have been set free from sin, it is still possible for us to wrongly think and act as though we are still slaves to sin. In a case of momentary amnesia, we may forget that our old relationship with sin has ended and that we have been set free from it’s power over us. At those times we relate to sin as though it were still our master rather than denying its claims on us and living as the true free men that Christ has made us.
But even when we commit individual acts of sin, the good news is that we are not slaves of sin. Though we suffer in an occasion from forgotten identity, and present ourselves and our bodies to sin as our master, the reality is that in Christ we are no longer sin’s loyal servants. We belong to Jesus now.
So, Christian: do not let sin reign over you and through the physical members of your body. Do not take the members of your bodies and present them to sin so that it will use them as instruments through which it carries out wickedness. The grace of God has set you free from the power of sin. It has caused you to die to sin and it has made you alive now unto God.
Therefore instead, take the members of your body and present them in service to God who has saved you in Jesus Christ. Offer yourself alive to God and your body as a living sacrifice to him. Allow the Spirit of Christ to make proper use of your members as instruments through which righteousness is accomplished in your life and to produce the gracious fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).