VII. Dead to Sin, Alive to Christ (Romans 6:1-23)

VII. Dead to Sin, Alive to Christ (6:1-23)

6:1 Paul anticipates a misunderstanding: Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? People often make the mistake of seeing grace as license to do whatever they want: If more sin means more grace, why not just sin on purpose? Why not just live it up? This is why some people come to Communion on Sunday, hoping to get just enough of God to cover their debauchery on Monday. But no judge shows mercy to a criminal so that he can go out and commit more crimes.

6:2 Paul had absolutely zero patience with this kind of nonsense. “Keep sinning because of grace?” Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? The fundamental issue here is one of identity. Anyone who says that salvation makes him free to sin has totally misunderstood his new identity in Christ. When we battle sin, we usually try to do it in our own power, fighting the flesh with the flesh. But Paul knows that won’t work. So instead of giving us principles for stomping on the flesh, Paul reminds us we are dead to what once controlled us.

6:3-5 Who are we, as Christians? We are the people who were co-baptized with Christ, co-buried with him, and co-resurrected with him. So when all of us . . . were baptized into Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death (6:3). When he died two thousand years ago, we died two thousand years ago. When he was buried, we were buried with him (6:4). What is true of Jesus physically is true of us spiritually.

Paul uses baptism to illustrate how this works. In Greek, the word translated baptism meant to plunge or dip (6:4). It was the word used for dying clothes. You would dip a cloth in purple dye, let it soak (or be “baptized”), and it would absorb the color. The properties of the dye became part of the cloth. That’s what happens to Christians: we are dipped in the blood of Jesus, so that the properties of Jesus become a part of us (see Gal 2:20).

Paul again reminds us that we’ve been united to Jesus. Why? Because unity fuels power. We walk in newness of life (6:4) only when we intimately know that we have been united with Christ. The same power that led to his resurrection (6:5) is available to us—not by working for it, but by steeping ourselves in our Christian identity.

6:6-8 This raises a question: if the Christian has the resurrection power of Jesus to overcome sin, why is it so hard to do? If our old self was crucified with him (6:6), why does that old self still have such power?

I’ve heard that cadavers can do some odd things. A mortician I know says that their muscles sometimes twitch. He even saw a twitch that actually catapulted the cadaver off the table! (One reason why I will never be a mortician.) But after sharing that insight, he told me, “That stuff doesn’t bother me, because I know that dead is dead, even when it acts alive.” Indeed, it’s the same with our body of sin. Yes, it’s moving around like it’s still in charge. Yes, we’ll still sin. But previously we had to, because we were sin’s slaves. Now we no longer need to be enslaved to sin (6:6). If we continue to sin, it’s because we’ve forgotten our true identity.

6:9-10 Our main problem with sin is not a lack of willpower, but a lack of vision. We take our eyes off of the cross, and Paul wants us to look back there. He can’t talk about it enough. Jesus died to sin once for all (6:10), which removes any power sin has over our lives. He was raised from the dead, proving that sin and death no longer [rule] (6:9). Before you and I were saved, we were like radios with only one frequency. When we came to Christ, he added a new one. The problem is that many of us are still tuning in to the old frequency. But as sure as Jesus lives to God (6:10), he can live in us and through us.

6:11 That one little word “consider” is the key to the entire passage. It means, “calculate” or “reckon.” Count it to be so. To experience victory over sin, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That is, you need to buy into the new identity bought for you at the cross. Jesus died to sin in our place; we don’t have to die too.

During the Civil War, it was legal for men who wanted to avoid the draft to pay for personal replacements. In one particular instance, a man paid for another to go into battle for him, and that individual was killed. A few months later, the man who paid for the replacement received a second draft notice. But he took the legal agreement to the draft board, saying, “The second draft is invalid. Someone already went to war and died in my place.” This is a picture of the Christian’s situation. When Satan wants to re-draft us into sin, we must oppose him by pointing to Jesus’s victory: “Satan, you can’t force me to that old life anymore. The payment has already been paid. Jesus died in my place.”

6:12-14 After understanding your identity in Christ and reckoning that identity to your account, you must also yield to it. You have a choice before you, either to let sin reign in your mortal body (6:12) or to offer yourselves to God (6:13). Sin wants to boss you around, using your passions and lusts as weapons for unrighteousness (6:13). And though we usually wish that God would just take the desires of the flesh away at the point of salvation, he doesn’t. Those desires remain with us, but since he gives us the Spirit, we now have the power to say, “No.” The key to enjoying this power is a recognition that we as believers are under a different authority. When we realize and submit to Christ’s rule over us, regardless of our emotions, the flesh progressively loses its domination, and the grace of God is activated in our lives. We then obey because of our relationship. We are no longer bound to the fleshly based legalistic rule of law.

6:15 Some carnal Christians might think that living under grace means they can go on sinning. But Paul shoots that down. If you are living under grace, you will actually keep the law. And if you don’t keep the law, it only proves you’re not operating under the grace of God. Christians obey the standard, but the motivation isn’t the standard. The motivation is God’s grace.

6:16-18 Paul shows Christians a choice: we can be slaves of sin leading to death or servants of obedience leading to righteousness (6:16). There is no third choice where we choose not to serve anyone. Every one of us serves somebody. The sobering danger is that people may be Christians and still offering their bodies up to sin.

In January of 1863, President Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all slaves throughout the Confederacy. But even years later, there were certain places where that announcement had been kept secret. Thus, even after being declared free, African Americans were still acting like slaves. No one had told them the truth of their situation! How foolish is it for those of us who know we’re free in Christ to keep saying “yes” to sin?

6:19-22 Paul brings up the issue of life and death to amplify his point. Serving sin leads to greater and greater lawlessness (6:19). And while serving sin means you were free with regard to righteousness (6:20), what did it really gain you? Sure, you were free from righteousness. But the outcome of those things is death (6:21). If you become a slave of sin, you get some short-term pleasure, but that pleasure led to death. What kind of a trade-off is that? If, however, you become a slave of God, you get sanctification and righteousness—both of which lead to life (6:22).

6:23 Another way to put this is to say that the wages of sin is death. Although we like to quote this to non-Christians, Paul is writing to Christians. And whether physical death or a spiritual separation from the enjoyment of the eternal life of God is in view—since believers can’t lose their salvation—the payment of sin is always the same. Indeed, Christians can lose their joy because sin separates us from fellowship with God. They can also lose out on the will of God. The point is that believers can still choose sin, but when they do, they collect their rightful wages: weakness, sickness, meaninglessness, and death.