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. Romans 6:4

Romans 6:1–14– Romans: The Righteousness of God
Second Sunday of Easter   – April 16, 2023 (am)

How are you doing in your battle against old, familiar sins? Even though that probably sounds like a pretty church-y-type question, it’s quite possibly not the one you most wanted to hear right out of the blocks in a Sunday sermon.

You may have come here today hoping to forget about that battle for a little while, like maybe in the company of other believers the temptations in your heart would ease, or that persistent voice in your ear might be quieted. Being at church can help with that. But it’s also entirely possible that at church you meet other’s who’ve learned to ignore those temptations or who’ve made friends with that voice. Persistent, familiar expressions of self-will or self-importance (good or bad) or self-gratification can become so familiar to us that we gradually move them out of the category of sin that’s offensive to God and into the category of personality quirks or vocational habits or societal reactions—that’s just me or that’s just the way we say it at the office or it’s not my fault if other people are idiots—each of these excusing little sins, and before long maybe even big ones.

We can get to the place where these sorts of things barely bother us anymore. Or maybe we have just the opposite problem. We’re convinced that we’re so marred that even what we think we may have done well we probably didn’t. We’re not even confident we chose the right pair of socks this morning, or took the best route to work. Neither of these is at all a good place to be—getting comfortable with our sin or becoming obsessed with the prevalence of it.

For those familiar with these unsettling battles, few texts of Scripture can match the comfort that comes from the final two verses of last week’s passage. 5:20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Not only is there a way of escape through the grace of God that we receive by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, but God’s supply of grace will always run deeper and fuller than our temptation to sin! What could be better news than that?

Now in this next chapter, Paul begins explaining to his readers more about how this happens. He’s moving his focus from justification (5:18), being declared not guilty before God, to sanctification (22), living in the freedom of that not guilty standing—freedom from bondage to sin (1-14) and freedom to pursue righteousness (15-23). That’s a summary of c.6, each half. Let’s walk through our passage in three steps.

What We Should Say – 1-5

Paul asks the natural question that should arise from what he’s just affirmed. If we’ve heard him correctly, we should ask just what he’s written here. 1 … Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? If sin brings grace, why would we want to stop sinning? You might think this sounds like a cheeky question, but we know that some were slanderously charging Paul with saying that very thing (why not do evil that good may come [3:8]). And we have to grant that the question is precisely the one that should be posed in response to what Paul just wrote as he closed our c.5. Even so, if we’ve followed his argument thus far, we know what his answer is going to be. And so it is. 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Change this from an interrogative to a declarative (or imperative) and you’ve got a good theme statement for the first half of c.6. [You who have died to sin, don’t live in it any longer.] You’ve been set free! (cf. 7) Just as we learned that by faith in Christ we’re freed from the penalty of sin (justification [c.5]), now we learn that we’re also freed from the power of sin (sanctification [c.6]) (Moo 1994 1135).

Paul then uses baptism as an illustration, which makes sense. Just as justification describes the invisible work of God in the heart and soul and will of the believer, sanctification describes the visible result in the attitude and behavior and manner of speech of the believer. So Paul employs the visible sign and seal of our saving faith (baptism) to illustrate visible, behavioral results of our saving faith (sanctification, growth in Christlikeness). In short, if we receive Christ in his death, by faith, as our propitiation (3:25), as the One who removes our sin by taking it on Himself at the cross and absorbing in full the just wrath of God against it, then we will surely also receive the power of God displayed in Jesus’ resurrection toward growing in His likeness. These verses are just as stunningly encouraging to us as 5:8-9, 20-21. 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 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. 5 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. Believer, that is your inheritance in Christ! The glory of [God] the Father enables you, empowers you, to walk in newness of life just as certainly as it empowered Christ to [rise] from the dead! (cf. Eph.1:19-20)

6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

What We Should Know – 6-11

Paul spends the rest of our passage today, and indeed the rest of this chapter, drilling into this truth to make sure his readers understand it. We’re calling this section, what we should know because he begins: 6 We know that our old self 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. That’s a big part of why we trusted Christ as Savior, to be set free from sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. Surely that’s true when someone dies physically; they’re no longer tempted to sin, no longer ensnared by sin. They’re free! But Paul is emphasizing something more here, the complementary truth that when someone dies with Christ, meaning they’ve placed their trust in Him so that His death was in place of their own—it removed their sin and absorbed God’s wrath against them—that also frees them from their bondage to sin even before they die physically. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, of one piece together with that, inseparable from it, we believe that we will also live with him, speaking of future resurrection, but also of living for God, living that obedience of faith (1:5; 16:26) between now and the day when we enter God’s presence forever. 10 For the death [Jesus] died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also, like Him, must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in [Him].

What We Should Do – 11-14

From there, Paul turns to a brief string of imperatives, telling us what to do with this knowledge. You may notice in the outline that v.11 is included with both vv.6-10 and with vv.12-14. That isn’t a misprint; it is intentional. It’s a swing verse. It gives a needed conclusion to the last paragraph, but then it also states a foundational idea that is essential to the following paragraph.

In the last paragraph, it was a logical conclusion. Given what takes place when we trust in Christ as Savior, when we’re united with him in his death and therefore also in his resurrection, 11 [then we] must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in [Him]. That’s just a given.

But now in the next paragraph v.11 provides the biblical-theological foundation for the follow-up actions Paul is charging to his readers: 11 … you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 [Therefore let not sin] reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 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. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

2 … How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Conclusion

So, what is our takeaway today? We need to let this charge, this teaching from Paul, sink in—these truths about our sanctification, about our obedience of faith (1:5; 16:26), which begin with our freedom from the reign of Adam, the flesh, sin, and death, and our entry into the reign of Jesus, the Spirit, righteousness, and life through our union with Jesus in His death and resurrection—and begin to appreciate more and more fully what it’s telling us.

We’re being charged to live into the freedom that has been granted to us by faith in Christ, but it’s a freedom we may not fully understand right from the start. Our battle to appreciate it will be spelled out in more detail in the next chapter, but here and now we’re being called to reject sinning as a means of attaining grace and instead to grasp that our freedom from sin has been purchased for us through the death and resurrection of Jesus that we have received by faith such that we are now dead to the power of sin and alive to the righteousness of God. While we’re still in the flesh, we’ll still battle sin. But, make no mistake, we have been freed from its reign in our lives! We are united with Christ! We need to know that, and live into it!

Following the Emancipation Proclamation and especially the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution back in the 1860s, slaves were freed. But many were overwhelmed by their new circumstances and great struggle ensued for them to know how to live into their freedom. They just had no experience with it and the road to learning how to do it successfully and well has been a long and bumpy one.

With that as a backdrop, John Murray (Romans 1.227) has made an insightful observation in his commentary on this text. To say to the slave who has not been emancipated, “Do not behave as a slave” is to mock his enslavement.  But to say the same to the slave who has been set free is the necessary appeal to put into effect the privileges and rights of his liberation. We who’ve been freed from slavery to sin need that instruction, that help, to live into the freedom from sin that is now ours in Christ.

This is not at all easy to do. But this is how it works. We just keep preaching the truth to ourselves from this passage that we’ve been freed from the power of sin and, a bit at a time, that truth begins to take root in our hearts and sensitize us to the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying voice.11 So, from our hinge verse, [we]… must consider [ourselves] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Resources

Arnold, Clinton E., gen. ed. 2002. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Background Commentary. Vol. 3, Romans-Philemon. Romans, by Douglas J. Moo, 2-95. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Barnhouse, Donald Gray. 1952. Romans, four volumes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans

Beale, G. K., & D. A. Carson, eds. 2007. Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Romans, by Mark A. Seifrid, 607-694. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

Carson, D. A., R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham, eds. 1994. New Bible Commentary 21st Century Edition. Romans, by Douglas J. Moo, 1115-1160. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

Chadwick, Henry, gen. ed. 1957. Harper’s New Testament Commentaries. A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, by C. K. Barrett. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

Comfort, Philip W., gen. ed.  2007. Cornerstone Biblical Commentary. Romans, by Roger Mohrlang. Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale.

Cranfield, C. E. B. 1990. Romans: A Shorter Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Dever, Mark. 2005. The Message of the New Testament. Ch. 6, The Message of Romans: Justification, 146-166. Wheaton: Crossway.

Dockery, David S, ed. 1995. New American Commentary. Vol. 27, Romans, by Robert H. Mounce. Nashville: Broadman & Holman.

Green, Joel B., ed. 2018. The New International Commentary on the New Testament. The Letter to the Romans, by Douglas J. Moo. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Hodge, Charles. 1989. The Geneva Series of Commentaries. Romans. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth.

Hubbard, David A., and Glenn W. Barker. 1988. Word Biblical Commentary. Vol. 38ab, Romans, by James D. G. Dunn. Dallas: Word.

Longman III, Tremper, & David E. Garland, eds. 2008. Expositor’s Bible Commentary. Vol. 11, Romans-Galatians. Romans, by Everett F. Harrison and Donald A. Hagner, 19-237. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Luther, Martin. 1976. Commentary on Romans. Translated by J. Theodore Mueller. Grand Rapids: Kregel.

Moo. Douglas J. 2000. The NIV Application Commentary. Romans. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

Morris, Leon, ed. 1985. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. Vol. 6, Romans, by F. F. Bruce. Downers Grove: InterVarsity.

Moule, H. C. G. 1977. Studies in Romans. Grand Rapids: Kregel.

Murray, John. 1968. The Epistle to the Romans, 2 Vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Nygren, Anders. 1949. Commentary on Romans. Philadelphia: Fortress.

Owen, John, ed. Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, by John Calvin. Translated by John Owen.

Sproul, R. C. 2005. The Gospel of God: An Exposition of Romans. Ross-shire, Great Britain: Christian Focus.

Stott, John, NT ed. 1994. The Bible Speaks Today. The Message of Romans, by John Stott. Leicester, Eng.: InterVarsity.

Yarbrough, Robert W., and Joshua W. Jipp, eds. 2018. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Romans, by Thomas R. Schreiner. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic.

 

 

NEXT SUNDAY: Thanks Be to God, Romans 6:15-23