Romans6chapter 6

Romans 6:1-2

What shall we say then, Paul asks in the diatribe style that will recur across the letter, shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? The objection follows naturally from chapter 5’s last words, where grace was said to abound all the more as sin abounded, and Paul answers it with his strongest negative, God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein: the question assumes a fact rather than merely commanding a duty, that something has already happened to the believer’s relation to sin that makes continuing in it a contradiction of what he now is.

Romans 6:3-4

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death, the verb baptizo carrying the sense of union or identification rather than a bare ritual, so that the believer’s baptism proclaims a real joining to Christ’s death rather than merely a picture of one. 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. Burial follows death and precedes resurrection in the pattern Paul names, and the new walk he describes is the intended outcome of the whole union, not an optional addition to it.

Romans 6:5

For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: the word translated planted together, symphytoi, pictures a graft grown into the very life of the plant it joins, an image stronger than mere association. Union with Christ in his death is Paul’s guarantee of union with him in his resurrection, the two never separated in the believer any more than they were separated in the Lord himself. The single verse states in miniature the argument the whole chapter will spend itself proving.

Romans 6:6-7

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: the old man names what the believer was in Adam, put to death at the cross so that sin’s mastery over him is broken rather than merely forgiven. For he that is dead is freed from sin, Paul stating a plain fact of nature, a dead man is beyond the reach of any further claim, and applying it to the believer’s standing in Christ’s death. The freedom named is judicial before it is felt, a legal discharge from sin’s claim rather than a promise that its pull will no longer be felt at all.

Romans 6:8-10

Now if we be dead with Christ, Paul states the settled confidence that follows, that life with him is equally certain, since the same union already accomplished in his death cannot fail to reach into his life. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him: the resurrection was not a temporary reprieve but a final victory, and Christ’s risen life is now permanently beyond death’s reach. For in that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God, the once marking the finality of the cross and setting the pattern the believer’s own life in Christ is meant to follow.

Romans 6:11

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord: the verb is logizomai, the same accounting term from chapter 4 where faith was reckoned for righteousness, now turned into a command the believer applies to himself. Reckoning is not pretending something false into being true; it is counting as true, and acting on, a fact already established by union with Christ in verses 3 through 10. The single verse is the pivot of the chapter, moving from what has been done for the believer to what the believer is now called to do in light of it.

Romans 6:12-13

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof: the command assumes sin’s dominion has already been broken in principle, so that its continuing reign in daily life is a permitted rather than a necessary thing. 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. The same body once offered to sin is now to be offered to God, a decisive act of the will Paul commands rather than merely hopes for.

Romans 6:14

For sin shall not have dominion over you, Paul states, grounding the promise in a change of governing order: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. Law, by naming sin’s demands without supplying the power to meet them, left the sinner exposed to sin’s dominion; grace supplies what law could not, and so breaks sin’s rule at the root rather than merely restraining its actions. The verse answers in advance the objection Paul raises in verse 15, that grace might be read as license.

Romans 6:15-16

What then, shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? Paul meets the objection his own gospel of grace invites with the same strong negative as verse 2, God forbid. 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 introduces the slavery image that will run through the rest of the chapter, every person a servant of one master or the other, with no third, neutral option available.

Romans 6:17-18

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: the thanksgiving looks back at a real and total change, obedience not merely performed but rendered from the heart, to a pattern of teaching the Roman believers had received and been shaped by. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness, the freedom Paul names never leaving a person masterless, only transferring him from one service to the other. Freedom from sin and service to righteousness are, in Paul’s account, the very same event seen from two sides.

Romans 6:19

I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh, Paul says, apologizing for the crudeness of the slavery image even as he presses it further: 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. The parallel is exact and deliberate, the same intensity of former service to sin now asked for present service to righteousness, holiness named here as a goal reached by the same decisive yielding commanded in verse 13.

Romans 6:20-21

For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness, Paul says, the freedom named being no true freedom at all, merely an absence of any claim righteousness had on a life given wholly to its opposite master. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? The shame the Roman believers now feel toward their own past is Paul’s evidence that their standard has already changed, and he lets the question answer itself: for the end of those things is death.

Romans 6:22-23

But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life, Paul setting the two harvests, shame and death against holiness and life, side by side one final time. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord: wages is what is earned and owed, while gift is what is given without being earned, and the chapter closes on the same contrast between debt and grace that opened chapter 4. Every thread of the chapter, union with Christ, reckoning, yielding, service, comes to rest in this one closing sentence.