Romans 6

Romans 6:1-11 . THE BEARING OF JUSTIFICATION BY GRACE UPON A HOLY LIFE.

1. What, &c.--The subject of this third division of our Epistle announces itself at once in the opening question, "Shall we (or, as the true reading is, "May we," "Are we to") continue in sin, that grace may abound?" Had the apostle's doctrine been that salvation depends in any degree upon our good works, no such objection to it could have been made. Against the doctrine of a purely gratuitous justification, the objection is plausible; nor has there ever been an age in which it has not been urged. That it was brought against the apostles, we know from Romans 3:8 ; and we gather from Galatians 5:13 , 1 Peter 2:16 , Jude 1:4 , that some did give occasion to the charge; but that it was a total perversion of the doctrine of Grace the apostle here proceeds to show.

2. God forbid--"That be far from us"; the instincts of the new creature revolting at the thought.
How shall we, that are dead, &c.--literally, and more forcibly, "We who died to sin (as presently to be explained), how shall we live any longer therein?"

3. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ--compare 1 Corinthians 10:2 .
were baptized into his death?--sealed with the seal of heaven, and as it were formally entered and articled, to all the benefits and all the obligations of Christian discipleship in general, and of His death in particular. And since He was "made sin" and "a curse for us" ( 2 Corinthians 5:21 , Galatians 5:13 ), "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and "rising again for our justification" ( Romans 4:25 , 1 Peter 2:24 ), our whole sinful case and condition, thus taken up into His Person, has been brought to an end in His death. Whoso, then, has been baptized into Christ's death has formally surrendered the whole state and life of sin, as in Christ a dead thing. He has sealed himself to be not only "the righteousness of God in Him," but "a new creature"; and as he cannot be in Christ to the one effect and not to the other, for they are one thing, he has bidden farewell, by baptism into Christ's death, to his entire connection with sin. "How," then, "can he live any longer therein?" The two things are as contradictory in the fact as they are in the terms.