Romans 6:1

The apostle's transition, which joins this discourse with the former, is observable: "What shall we say then? Rom 6:1. What use shall we make of this sweet and comfortable doctrine? Shall we do evil that good may come, as some say we do? Rom 3:8. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Shall we hence take encouragement to sin with so much the more boldness, because the more sin we commit the more will the grace of God be magnified in our pardon? Is this a use to be made of it?" No, it is an abuse, and the apostle startles at the thought of it (Rom 6:2): "God forbid; far be it from us to think such a thought." He entertains the objection as Christ did the devil's blackest temptation (Mat 4:10): Get thee hence, Satan. Those opinions that give any countenance to sin, or open a door to practical immoralities, how specious and plausible soever they be rendered, by the pretension of advancing free grace, are to be rejected with the greatest abhorrence; for the truth as it is in Jesus is a truth according to godliness, Tit 1:1. The apostle is very full in pressing the necessity of holiness in this chapter, which may be reduced to two heads: - His exhortations to holiness, which show the nature of it; and his motives or arguments to enforce those exhortations, which show the necessity of it.

I. For the first, we may hence observe the nature of sanctification, what it is, and wherein it consists. In general it has two things in it, mortification and vivification - dying to sin and living to righteousness, elsewhere expressed by putting off the old man and putting on the new, ceasing to do evil and learning to do well.

1. Mortification, putting off the old man; several ways this is expressed. (1.) We must live no longer in sin (Rom 6:2), we must not be as we have been nor do as we have done. The time past of our life must suffice, Pe1 4:3. Though there are none that live without sin, yet, blessed be God, there are those that do not live in sin, do not live in it as their element, do not make a trade of it: this is to be sanctified. (2.) The body of sin must be destroyed, Rom 6:6. The corruption that dwelleth in us is the body of sin, consisting of many parts and members, as a body. This is the root to which the axe must be laid. We must not only cease from the acts of sin (this may be done through the influence of outward restraints, or other inducements), but we must get the vicious habits and inclinations weakened and destroyed; not only cast away the idols of iniquity out of the heart. - That henceforth we should not serve sin. The actual transgression is certainly in a great measure prevented by the crucifying and killing of the original corruption. Destroy the body of sin, and then, though there should be Canaanites remaining in the land, yet the Israelites will not be slaves to them. It is the body of sin that sways the sceptre, wields the iron rod; destroy this, and the yoke is broken. The destruction of Eglon the tyrant is the deliverance of oppressed Israel from the Moabites. (3.) We must be dead indeed unto sin, Rom 6:11. As the death of the oppressor is a release, so much more is the death of the oppressed, Job 3:17, Job 3:18. Death brings a writ of ease to the weary. Thus must we be dead to sin, obey it, observe it, regard it, fulfil its will no more than he that is dead doth his quandam task-masters - be as indifference to the pleasures and delights of sin as a man that is dying is to his former diversions. He that is dead is separated from his former company, converse, business, enjoyments, employments, is not what he was, does not what he did, has not what he had. Death makes a mighty change; such a change doth sanctification make in the soul, it cuts off all correspondence with sin. (4.) Sin must not reign in our mortal bodies that we should obey it, Rom 6:12. Though sin may remain as an outlaw, though it may oppress as a tyrant, yet let it not reign as a king. Let it not make laws, nor preside in councils, nor command the militia; let it not be uppermost in the soul, so that we should obey it. Though we may be sometimes overtaken and overcome by it, yet let us never be obedient to it in the lusts thereof; let not sinful lusts be a law to you, to which you would yield a consenting obedience. In the lusts thereof - en tais epithumiais autou. It refers to the body, not to sin. Sin lies very much in the gratifying of the body, and humouring that. And there is a reason implied in the phrase your mortal body; because it is a mortal body, and hastening apace to the dust, therefore let not sin reign in it. It was sin that made our bodies mortal, and therefore do not yield obedience to such an enemy. (5.) We must not yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness, Rom 6:13. The members of the body are made use of by the corrupt nature as tools, by which the wills of the flesh are fulfilled; but we must not consent to that abuse. The members of the body are fearfully and wonderfully made; it is a pity they should be the devil's tools of unrighteousness unto sin, instruments of the sinful actions, according to the sinful dispositions. Unrighteousness is unto sin; the sinful acts confirm and strengthen the sinful habits; one sin begets another; it is like the letting forth of water, therefore leave it before it be meddled with. The members of the body may perhaps, through the prevalency of temptation, be forced to be instruments of sin; but do not yield them to be so, do not consent to it. This is one branch of sanctification, the mortification of sin.

2. Vivification, or living to righteousness; and what is that? (1.) It is to walk in newness of life, Rom 6:4. Newness of life supposes newness of heart, for out of the heart are the issues of life, and there is not way to make the stream sweet but by making the spring so. Walking, in scripture, is put for the course and tenour of the conversation, which must be new. Walk by new rules, towards new ends, from new principles. Make a new choice of the way. Choose new paths to walk in, new leaders to walk after, new companions to walk with. Old things should pass away, and all things become new. The man is what he was not, does what he did not. (2.) It is to be alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, Rom 6:11. To converse with God, to have a regard to him, a delight in him, a concern for him, the soul upon all occasions carried out towards him as towards an agreeable object, in which it takes a complacency: this is to be alive to God. The love of God reigning in the heart is the life of the soul towards God. Anima est ubi amat, non ubi animat - The soul is where it loves, rather than where it lives. It is to have the affections and desires alive towards God. Or, living (our live in the flesh) unto God, to his honour and glory as our end, by his word and will as our rule - in all our ways to acknowledge him, and to have our eyes ever towards him; this is to live unto God. - Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Christ is our spiritual life; there is no living to God but through him. He is the Mediator; there can be no comfortable receivings from God, nor acceptable regards to God, but in and through Jesus Christ; no intercourse between sinful souls and a holy God, but by the mediation of the Lord Jesus. Through Christ as the author and maintainer of this life; through Christ as the head from whom we receive vital influence; through Christ as the root by which we derive sap and nourishment, and so live. In living to God, Christ is all in all. (3.) It is to yield ourselves to God, as those that are alive from the dead, Rom 6:13. The very life and being of holiness lie in the dedication of ourselves to the Lord, giving our own selves to the Lord, Co2 8:5. "Yield yourselves to him, not only as the conquered yields to the conqueror, because he can stand it out no longer; but as the wife yields herself to her husband, to whom her desire is, as the scholar yields himself to the teacher, the apprentice to his master, to be taught and ruled by him. Not yield your estates to him, but yield yourselves; nothing less than your whole selves;" parastēsate eautous - accommodate vos ipsos Deo - accommodate yourselves to God; so Tremellius, from the Syriac. "Not only submit to him, but comply with him; not only present yourselves to him once for all, but be always ready to serve him. Yield yourselves to him as wax to the seal, to take any impression, to be, and have, and do, what he pleases." When Paul said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? (Act 9:6) he was then yielded to God. As those that are alive from the dead. To yield a dead carcase to a living God is not to please him, but to mock him: "Yield yourselves as those that are alive and good for something, a living sacrifice," Rom 12:1. The surest evidence of our spiritual life is the dedication of ourselves to God. It becomes those that are alive from the dead (it may be understood of a death in law), that are justified and delivered from death, to give themselves to him that hath so redeemed them. (4.) It is to yield our members as instruments of righteousness to God. The members of our bodies, when withdrawn from the service of sin, are not to lie idle, but to be made use of in the service of God. When the strong man armed is dispossessed, let him whose right it is divide the spoils. Though the powers and faculties of the soul be the immediate subjects of holiness and righteousness, yet the members of the body are to be instruments; the body must be always ready to serve the soul in the service of God. Thus (Rom 6:19), "Yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. Let them be under the conduct and at the command of the righteous law of God, and that principle of inherent righteousness which the Spirit, as sanctifier, plants in the soul." Righteousness unto holiness, which intimates growth, and progress, and ground obtained. As every sinful act confirms the sinful habit, and makes the nature more and more prone to sin (hence the members of a natural man are here said to be servants to iniquity unto iniquity - one sin makes the heart more disposed for another), so every gracious act confirms the gracious habit: serving righteousness is unto holiness; one duty fits us for another; and the more we do the more we may do for God. Or serving righteousness, eis hagiasmon - as an evidence of sanctification.

II. The motives or arguments here used to show the necessity of sanctification. There is such an antipathy in our hearts by nature to holiness that it is no easy matter to bring them to submit to it: it is the Spirit's work, who persuades by such inducements as these set home upon the soul.

1. He argues from our sacramental conformity to Jesus Christ. Our baptism, with the design and intention of it, carried in it a great reason why we should die to sin, and live to righteousness. Thus we must improve our baptism as a bridle of restraint to keep us in from sin, as a spur of constraint to quicken us to duty. Observe this reasoning.

(1.) In general, we are dead to sin, that is, in profession and in obligation. Our baptism signifies our cutting off from the kingdom of sin. We profess to have no more to do with sin. We are dead to sin by a participation of virtue and power for the killing of it, and by our union with Christ and interest in him, in and by whom it is killed. All this is in vain if we persist in sin; we contradict a profession, violate an obligation, return to that to which we were dead, like walking ghosts, than which nothing is more unbecoming and absurd. For (Rom 6:7) he that is dead is freed from sin; that is, he that is dead to it is freed from the rule and dominion of it, as the servant that is dead is freed from his master, Job 3:19. Now shall we be such fools as to return to that slavery from which we are discharged? When we are delivered out of Egypt, shall we talk of going back to it again?

(2.) In particular, being baptized into Jesus Christ, we were baptized into his death, Rom 6:3. We were baptized eis Christon - unto Christ, as Co1 10:2, eis Mōsēn - unto Moses. Baptism binds us to Christ, it binds us apprentice to Christ as our teacher, it is our allegiance to Christ as our sovereign. Baptism is externa ansa Christi - the external handle of Christ, by which Christ lays hold on men, and men offer themselves to Christ. Particularly, we were baptized into his death, into a participation of the privileges purchased by his death, and into an obligation both to comply with the design of his death, which was to redeem us from all iniquity, and to conform to the pattern of his death, that, as Christ died for sin, so we should die to sin. This was the profession and promise of our baptism, and we do not do well if we do not answer this profession, and make good this promise.

[1.] Our conformity to the death of Christ obliges us to die unto sin; thereby we know the fellowship of his sufferings, Phi 3:10. Thus we are here said to be planted together in the likeness of is death (Rom 6:5), tō homoiōmati, not only a conformity, but a conformation, as the engrafted stock is planted together into the likeness of the shoot, of the nature of which it doth participate. Planting is in order to life and fruitfulness: we are planted in the vineyard in a likeness to Christ, which likeness we should evidence in sanctification. Our creed concerning Jesus Christ is, among other things, that he was crucified, dead, and buried; now baptism is a sacramental conformity to him in each of these, as the apostle here takes notice. First, Our old man is crucified with him, Rom 6:6. The death of the cross was a slow death; the body, after it was nailed to the cross, gave many a throe and many a struggle: but it was a sure death, long in expiring, but expired at last; such is the mortification of sin in believers. It was a cursed death, Gal 3:13. Sin dies as a malefactor, devoted to destruction; it is an accursed thing. Though it be a slow death, yet this must needs hasten it that it is an old man that is crucified; not in the prime of its strength, but decaying: that which waxeth old is ready to vanish away, Heb 8:13. Crucified with him - sunestaurōthē, not in respect of time, but in respect of causality. The crucifying of Christ for us has an influence upon the crucifying of sin in us. Secondly, We are dead with Christ, Rom 6:8. Christ was obedient to death: when he died, we might be said to die with him, as our dying to sin is an act of conformity both to the design and to the example of Christ's dying for sin. Baptism signifies and seals our union with Christ, our engrafting into Christ; so that we are dead with him, and engaged to have no more to do with sin than he had. Thirdly, We are buried with him by baptism, Rom 6:4. Our conformity is complete. We are in profession quite cut off from all commerce and communion with sin, as those that are buried are quite cut off from all the world; not only not of the living, but no more among the living, have nothing more to do with them. Thus must we be, as Christ was, separate from sin and sinners. We are buried, namely, in profession and obligation: we profess to be so, and we are bound to be so: it was our covenant and engagement in baptism; we are sealed to be the Lord's, therefore to be cut off from sin. Why this burying in baptism should so much as allude to any custom of dipping under water in baptism, any more than our baptismal crucifixion and death should have any such references, I confess I cannot see. It is plain that it is not the sign, but the thing signified, in baptism, that the apostle here calls being buried with Christ, and the expression of burying alludes to Christ's burial. As Christ was buried, that he might rise again to a new and more heavenly life, so we are in baptism buried, that is, cut off from the life of sin, that we may rise again to a new life of faith and love.

[2.] Our conformity to the resurrection of Christ obliges us to rise again to newness of life. This is the power of his resurrection which Paul was so desirous to know, Phi 3:10. Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, that is, by the power of the Father. The power of God is his glory; it is glorious power, Col 1:11. Now in baptism we are obliged to conform to that pattern, to be planted in the likeness of his resurrection (Rom 6:5), to live with him, Rom 6:8. See Col 2:12. Conversion is the first resurrection from the death of sin to the life of righteousness; and this resurrection is conformable to Christ's resurrection. This conformity of the saints to the resurrection of Christ seems to be intimated in the rising of so many of the bodies of the saints, which, though mentioned before by anticipation, is supposed to have been concomitant with Christ's resurrection, Mat 27:52. We have all risen with Christ. In two things we must conform to the resurrection of Christ: - First, He rose to die no more, Rom 6:9. We read of many others that were raised from the dead, but they rose to die again. But, when Christ rose, he rose to die no more; therefore he left his grave-clothes behind him, whereas Lazarus, who was to die again, brought them out with him, as one that should have occasion to use them again: but over Christ death has no more dominion; he was dead indeed, but he is alive, and so alive that he lives for evermore, Rev 1:18. Thus we must rise from the grave of sin never again to return to it, nor to have any more fellowship with the works of darkness, having quitted that grave, that land of darkness as darkness itself. Secondly, He rose to live unto God (Rom 6:10), to live a heavenly life, to receive that glory which was set before him. Others that were raised from the dead returned to the same life in every respect which they had before lived; but so did not Christ: he rose again to leave the world. Now I am no more in the world, Joh 13:1; Joh 17:11. He rose to live to God, that is, to intercede and rule, and all to the glory of the Father. Thus must we rise to live to God: this is what he calls newness of life (Rom 6:4), to live from other principles, by other rules, with other aims, than we have done. A life devoted to God is a new life; before, self was the chief and highest end, but now God. To live indeed is to live to God, with our eyes ever towards him, making him the centre of all our actions.

2. He argues from the precious promises and privileges of the new covenant, Rom 6:14. It might be objected that we cannot conquer and subdue sin, it is unavoidably too hard for us: "No," says he, "you wrestle with an enemy that may be dealt with and subdued, if you will but keep your ground and stand to your arms; it is an enemy that is already foiled and baffled; there is strength laid up in the covenant of grace for your assistance, if you will but use it. Sin shall not have dominion." God's promises to us are more powerful and effectual for the mortifying of sin than our promises to God. Sin may struggle in a believer, and may create him a great deal of trouble, but it shall not have dominion; it may vex him, but shall not rule over him. For we are not under the law, but under grace, not under the law of sin and death, but under the law of the spirit of life, which is in Christ Jesus: we are actuated by other principles than we have been: new lords, new laws. Or, not under the covenant of works, which requires brick, and gives no straw, which condemns upon the least failure, which runs thus, "Do this, and live; do it not, and die;" but under the covenant of grace, which accepts sincerity as our gospel perfection, which requires nothing but what it promises strength to perform, which is herein well ordered, that every transgression in the covenant does not put us out of covenant, and especially that it does not leave our salvation in our own keeping, but lays it up in the hands of the Mediator, who undertakes for us that sin shall not have dominion over us, who hath himself condemned it, and will destroy it; so that, if we pursue the victory, we shall come off more than conquerors. Christ rules by the golden sceptre of grace, and he will not let sin have dominion over those that are willing subjects to that rule. This is a very comfortable word to all true believers. If we were under the law, we were undone, for the law curses every one that continues not in every thing; but we are under grace, grace which accepts the willing mind, which is not extreme to mark what we do amiss, which leaves room for repentance, which promises pardon upon repentance; and what can be to an ingenuous mind a stronger motive than this to have nothing to do with sin? Shall we sin against so much goodness, abuse such love? Some perhaps might suck poison out of this flower, and disingenuously use this as an encouragement to sin. See how the apostle starts at such a thought (Rom 6:15): Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. What can be more black and ill-natured than from a friend's extraordinary expressions of kindness and good-will to take occasion to affront and offend him? To spurn at such bowels, to spit in the face of such love, is that which, between man and man, all the world would cry out shame on.

3. He argues from the evidence that this will be of our state, making for us, or against us (Rom 6:16): To whom you yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are. All the children of men are either the servants of God, or the servants of sin; these are the two families. Now, if we would know to which of these families we belong, we must enquire to which of these masters we yield obedience. Our obeying the laws of sin will be an evidence against us that we belong to that family on which death is entailed. As, on the contrary, our obeying the laws of Christ will evidence our relation to Christ's family.

4. He argues from their former sinfulness, Rom 6:17-21, where we may observe,

(1.) What they had been and done formerly. We have need to be often reminded of our former state. Paul frequently remembers it concerning himself, and those to whom he writes. [1.] You were the servants of sin. Those that are now the servants of God would do well to remember the time when they were the servants of sin, to keep them humble, penitent, and watchful, and to quicken them in the service of God. It is a reproach to the service of sin that so many thousands have quitted the service, and shaken off the yoke; and never any that sincerely deserted it, and gave themselves to the service of God, have returned to the former drudgery. "God be thanked that you were so, that is, that though you were so, yet you have obeyed. You were so; God be thanked that we can speak of it as a thing past: you were so, but you are not now so. Nay, your having been so formerly tends much to the magnifying of divine mercy and grace in the happy change. God be thanked that the former sinfulness is such a foil and such a spur to your present holiness." [2.] You have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity, Rom 6:19. It is the misery of a sinful state that the body is made a drudge to sin, than which there could not be a baser or a harder slavery, like that of the prodigal that was sent into the fields to feed swine. You have yielded. Sinners are voluntary in the service of sin. The devil could not force them into the service, if they did not yield themselves to it. This will justify God in the ruin of sinners, that they sold themselves to work wickedness: it was their own act and deed. To iniquity unto iniquity. Every sinful act strengthens and confirms the sinful habit: to iniquity as the work unto iniquity as the wages. Sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind; growing worse and worse, more and more hardened. This he speaks after the manner of men, that is, he fetches a similitude from that which is common among men, even the change of services and subjections. [3.] You were free from righteousness (Rom 6:20); not free by any liberty given, but by a liberty taken, which is licentiousness: "You were altogether void of that which is good, - void of any good principles, motions, or inclinations, - void of all subjection to the law and will of God, of all conformity to his image; and this you were highly pleased with, as a freedom and a liberty; but a freedom from righteousness is the worst kind of slavery."

(2.) How the blessed change was made, and wherein it did consist.

[1.] You have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you, Rom 6:17. This describes conversion, what it is; it is our conformity to, and compliance with, the gospel which was delivered to us by Christ and his ministers. - Margin. Whereto you were delivered; eis hon paredothēte - into which you were delivered. And so observe, First, The rule of grace, that form of doctrine - tupon didachēs. The gospel is the great rule both of truth and holiness; it is the stamp, grace is the impression of that stamp; it is the form of healing words, Ti2 1:13. Secondly, The nature of grace, as it is our conformity to that rule. 1. It is to obey from the heart. The gospel is a doctrine not only to be believed, but to be obeyed, and that from the heart, which denotes the sincerity and reality of that obedience; not in profession only, but in power - from the heart, the innermost part, the commanding part of us. 2. It is to be delivered into it, as into a mould, as the wax is cast into the impression of the seal, answering it line for line, stroke for stroke, and wholly representing the shape and figure of it. To be a Christian indeed is to be transformed into the likeness and similitude of the gospel, our souls answering to it, complying with it, conformed to it - understanding, will, affections, aims, principles, actions, all according to that form of doctrine.

[2.] Being made free from sin, you became servants of righteousness (Rom 6:18), servants to God, Rom 6:22. Conversion is, First, A freedom from the service of sin; it is the shaking off of that yoke, resolving to have no more to do with it. Secondly, A resignation of ourselves to the service of God and righteousness, to God as our master, to righteousness as our work. When we are made free from sin, it is not that we may live as we list, and be our own masters; no: when we are delivered out of Egypt, we are, as Israel, led to the holy mountain, to receive the law, and are there brought into the bond of the covenant. Observe, We cannot be made the servants of God till we are freed from the power and dominion of sin; we cannot serve two masters so directly opposite one to another as God and sin are. We must, with the prodigal, quit the drudgery of the citizen of the country, before we can come to our Father's house.

(3.) What apprehensions they now had of their former work and way. He appeals to themselves (Rom 6:21), whether they had not found the service of sin, [1.] An unfruitful service: "What fruit had you then? Did you ever get any thing by it? Sit down, and cast up the account, reckon your gains, what fruit had you then?" Besides the future losses, which are infinitely great, the very present gains of sin are not worth mentioning. What fruit? Nothing that deserves the name of fruit. The present pleasure and profit of sin do not deserve to be called fruit; they are but chaff, ploughing iniquity, sowing vanity, and reaping the same. [2.] It is an unbecoming service; it is that of which we are now ashamed - ashamed of the folly, ashamed of the filth, of it. Shame came into the world with sin, and is still the certain product of it - either the shame of repentance, or, if not that, eternal shame and contempt. Who would wilfully do that which sooner or later he is sure to be ashamed of?

5. He argues from the end of all these things. it is the prerogative of rational creatures that they are endued with a power of prospect, are capable of looking forward, considering the latter end of things. To persuade us from sin to holiness here are blessing and cursing, good and evil, life and death, set before us; and we are put to our choice. (1.) The end of sin is death (Rom 6:21): The end of those things is death. Though the way may seem pleasant and inviting, yet the end is dismal: at the last it bites; it will be bitterness in the latter end. The wages of sin is death, Rom 6:23. Death is as due to a sinner when he hath sinned as wages are to a servant when he hath done his work. This is true of every sin. There is no sin in its own nature venial. Death is the wages of the least sin. Sin is here represented either as the work for which the wages are given, or as the master by whom the wages are given; all that are sin's servants and do sin's work must expect to be thus paid. (2.) If the fruit be unto holiness, if there be an active principle of true and growing grace, the end will be everlasting life - a very happy end! - Though the way be up-hill, though it be narrow, and thorny, and beset, yet everlasting life at the end of it is sure. So, Rom 6:23, The gift of God is eternal life. Heaven is life, consisting in the vision and fruition of God; and it is eternal life, no infirmities attending it, no death to put a period to it. This is the gift of God. The death is the wages of sin, it comes by desert; but the life is a gift, it comes by favour. Sinners merit hell, but saints do not merit heaven. There is no proportion between the glory of heaven and our obedience; we must thank God, and not ourselves, if ever we get to heaven. And this gift is through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is Christ that purchased it, prepared it, prepares us for it, preserves us to it; he is the Alpha and Omega, All in all in our salvation.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Ch. Rom_6:1-14. Justification organically connected with sanctification: grace the supreme motive to obedience

1. What shall we say then?] Here begins the direct treatment of a great topic already suggested, (Rom_3:5-8,) the relation of gratuitous Pardon to Sanctity. This discussion occupies ch. 6 and Rom_7:1-6; and is closely connected with the rest of ch. 7.

Let us distinctly note that up to this point it has not been explicitly in the argument at all. The strongest statements of the evil and the doom of sin were made e. g. in cch. 1 and 2; but the argument thus far has been wholly occupied with acceptance; with Justification. No part of the passage from Rom_3:9 to this point, has purification of heart for its proper subject.

continue, &c.] Lit. remain upon sin. The phrase is frequent in other connexions, and tends to mean not mere continuance, but perseverance in will and act. See e.g. 1Ti_4:16.—The objection anticipated in this verse is abundantly illustrated in Church history. It may be prompted either by the craving for sinful licence, or by a prejudice against the doctrine of purely gratuitous pardon under the belief that it does logically favour security in sin. It is all the more noteworthy that St Paul meets it not by modifying in the least the gratuitous aspect of pardon; not by presenting any merit of the pardoned person as even the minutest element in the cause of pardon. He takes sanctity as entirely the effect of Justification, not at all its cause.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_6:1-5

What shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

Grace and sin

1. This question was prompted by a sentence, the very cadence of which seemed to be still alive in the apostles memory (Rom_5:20). It is well to trace the continuity of Scripture--to read the letter of an inspired writer as you would read any other, as an entire composition, through which there possibly runs the drift of one prevailing conception.

2. The tenure upon which eternal life is given, and upon which it is held under the economy of the gospel, Paul makes abundantly manifest by such phrases as grace, and free grace, and justification of faith and not of works, and the gift of righteousness on the one hand, and the receiving of the atonement on the other. And yet the apostle, warm from the delivery of these intimations, and within a single breath of having uttered that where there was abundance of guilt there was a superabundance of grace in store for it--when met by the question of What then? shall we do more of this sin, that we may draw more of this grace? on his simple authority as a messenger from God he enters his solemn caveat against the continuance of sin. Lavish as the gospel is of its forgiveness for the past, it has no toleration either for the purposes or for the practices of Sin in the future. Couple these two verses, and learn from the simple change of tense two of the most important lessons of Christianity. With the first of these verses we feel ourselves warranted to offer the fullest indemnity to the worst and most worthless. Your sin has abounded; but the grace of God has much more abounded. No sin is beyond the reach of the atonement--no guilt of so deep a dye that the blood of a crucified Saviour cannot wash away. But the sinner should also look forward, and forget not that the same gospel which sheds an oblivion over all the sinfulness of the past, enters upon a war of extermination against future sinfulness.

3. The term dead, in the phrase dead unto sin, may be understood forensically. We are dead in law. The doom of death was upon us on account of sin. Conceive that just as under a civil government a criminal is often put to death for the vindication of its authority and for the removal of a nuisance from society, so, under the jurisprudence of Heaven, an utter extinction of being was laid upon the sinner. Imagine that the sentence is executed--that by an act of extermination the transgressor is expunged from Gods animated creation. There could be no misunderstanding of the phrase if you were to say that he was dead unto or dead for sin. But suppose God to have devised a way of reanimating the creature who had undergone this infliction, the phrase might still adhere to him, though now alive from the dead. And in these circumstances, is it for us to continue in sin--we who for sin were consigned to annihilation, and have only by the kindness of a Saviour been rescued from it? Now the argument retains its entireness, though the Mediator should interfere with His equivalent ere the penalty of death has been inflicted. We were as good as dead, for the sentence had gone forth, when Christ stepped between, and, suffering it to light upon Himself, carried it away. Does not the God who loved righteousness and hated iniquity six thousand years ago, bear the same love to righteousness and the same hatred to iniquity still? And well may not the sinner say--Shall I again attempt the incompatible alliance of an approving in God and a persevering sinner; or again try the Spirit of that Being who, the whole process of my condemnation and my rescue, has given such proof of most sensitive and unspotted holiness? Through Jesus Christ, we come again unto the heavenly Jerusalem; and it is as fresh as ever in the verdure of a perpetual holiness. How shall we who were found unfit for residence in this place because of sin, continue in sin after our readmittance therein?

4. But while we have thus insisted on the forensic interpretation of the phrase, yet let us not forbear to urge the personal sense of it, as implying such a deadness of affection to sin, such an extinction of the old sensibility to its allurements and its pleasures, as that it has ceased from its wonted power of ascendency over the heart and character of him who was formerly its slave. So the apostle (Rom_6:5-6) goes on to show that we are planted together in the likeness of His death. He is now that immortal Vine, who stands forever secure and beyond the reach of any devouring blight from the now appeased enemy; and we who by faith are united with Him as so many branches, share in this blessed exemption along with Him. And as we thus share in His death, so also shall we share in His resurrection. By what He hath done in our stead, He hath not only been highly exalted in His own person; but He hath made us partakers of His exaltation, to the rewards of which we shall be promoted as if we had rendered the obedience ourselves. This tallies with another part of the Bible, where it is said that Christ gave Himself up for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify us unto Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.

5. Now how comes it that because we are partakers in the crucifixion of Christ, so that the law has no further severity to discharge upon us, that this should have any effect in destroying the body of sin, or in emancipating us from the service of sin? How is it that the fact of our being acquitted leads to the fact of our being sanctified? There can be no doubt that the Spirit of God both originates and carries forward the whole of this process. He gives the faith which makes Christs death as available for our deliverance from guilt; and He causes the faith to germinate all those moral and spiritual influences which bring about the personal transformation that we are inquiring of. But these He does, in a way that is agreeable to the principles of our rational nature; and one way is through the expulsive power of a new affection to dispossess an old one from the heart. You cannot destroy your love of sin by a simple act of extermination. You cannot thus bid away from your bosom one of its dearest and oldest favourites. Our moral nature abhors the vacuum that would thus be formed. But let a man by faith look upon himself as crucified with Christ, and the world is disarmed of its power of sinful temptation. He no longer minds earthly things, just because better things are now within his reach, and our conversation is in heaven--whence we also look for the Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is in perfect analogy with familiar exhibitions of our nature in ordinary affairs. Let us just conceive a man embarked, with earnest ambition, on some retail business, whose mind is wholly taken up with the petty fluctuations that are taking place in prices and profits and customers; but who nevertheless is regaled by the annual examination of particulars at the end of it, with the view of some snug addition to his old accumulations. You must see how impossible it were to detach his affections from the objects and the interests of this his favourite course by a simple demonstration of their vanity. But suppose that either some splendid property or some sublime walk of high and hopeful adventure were placed within his attainment, and the visions of a far more glorious affluence were to pour a light into his mind, which greatly overpassed and so eclipsed all the fairness of those homelier prospects that he was wont to indulge in--is it not clear that the old affection which he could never get rid of by simple annihilation, will come to be annihilated, and that simply by giving Place to the new one. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

Free grace and sin

1. The foregoing chapters are a proof and defence of the first fundamental truth of the gospel--that the only way in which we can be pardoned is through our trusting exclusively, not to what we have ourselves done, but to Christ and His atonement. Nay; we have the principle that the more sin has abounded, so much the more superabundant and triumphant is the free favour of God.

2. To many this has always appeared to be very perilous teaching. It seems to offer no security for practical virtue--if, indeed, it does not actually put a premium upon sin. What else is that but to say that we may sin the more in order to make Gods forgiving mercy the more illustrious? Of course, if anything approaching to this were a fair deduction from the doctrine of justification, then such a doctrine would be grossly immoral. But the same objection was taken in St. Pauls day against St. Pauls teaching; and he met it by a vigorous repudiation. Indeed his answer to it formed the second main section of his theological system, since in that answer he developed the whole theory of Christian holiness. And the charge of immoral tendency, which glanced harmlessly off St. Paul and the Church of his time, may very well prove equally harmless against the evangelical Churches of modern date. Remember, the free acquittal of a penitent believer is not the end of the gospel, but only the means. Now, if free justification turn out on trial not to save a man from his sin, but to encourage him in it; then it turns out to be a cheat, like all other gospels or recipes for working deliverance which men have ever concocted or experimented with before Christ and after Him! The question, therefore, is a vital one. It just means this: Is the gospel a success or a failure?

3. St. Pauls instant reply is a blunt and staggering one. It amounts to this: such an abuse of free grace is unthinkable and out of the question. Christians are people who, in the mere fact of becoming Christians, passed through an experience which put a virtual end to their sinful life. Such a difficulty is purely intellectual, arising in the minds of men who try to comprehend the gospel from the outside without having first experienced it. But, then, when once this intellectual difficulty has been started by a non-Christian objector, the Christian craves to find an intellectual answer. That my Christian faith is inconsistent with persisting in sin, I feel. How it comes to be thus inconsistent with it, I want also to see.

4. It is under this view that St. Paul proceeds. Are you ignorant of what every Christian is supposed to know--how as many of us as were baptised into Christ, were baptised into His death? Well, then, it fellows that we were buried along with Him by means of that baptism of ours into His death, for the express purpose, not that we should remain dead any more than He did, but that, just as He was raised from the dead, so we also should walk in a new life. In the case of converts in the primitive Church, conversion was always publicly attested, and its inward character symbolised, by the initiatory rite of baptism. For them nothing could seem more natural than to look back upon their baptismal act whenever any question arose as to what their conversion really meant. Its most general meaning was this, that it put baptised believers into the closest possible relationship with Christ, their Second Adam, of whose body they were thenceforward to be members, whose fortunes they were thenceforward to share. But if baptism seal our incorporation into the Representative Man from heaven; who does not know that the special act of Jesus with which of all others we are brought most prominently into participation, is nothing else than His death and burial? That central thing about Christ on which my faith has to fasten itself is His expiatory death upon the Cross for sin. Am I to be justified through Him at all? Then it is through faith in His blood (Rom_3:25). Have I, an enemy, been reconciled to God by His Son at all? I was reconciled by the death of His Son (Rom_5:10). To that death upon the Cross of expiation which was attested by His three days burial the gospel directs the sinners eye, and on that builds his trust for pardon and peace with God. And the great rite which certified the world and me that I am Christs, was before all else a baptism into the death of Him who died for me!

5. All this St. Paul treats as a Christian commonplace. Its bearing on our continuing in sin is obvious. Conversion through faith in Christs propitiation is seen to be essentially a moral change, a dying to sin. The nerve of the old separate, selfish, sinful life of each man was cut when the man merged himself in his new Representative, and gave up his personal sins to be judged, condemned, and expiated in his Atoners Cross. Now, how can a man who has gone through an experience like that continue in sin? For him the old bad past is a thing dead and buried. Old things are passed away, everything has become new. Such a man can no more go back to be what he was before, feel as he felt, or act as he used to act, than Jesus Christ could rise out of His grave to be once more the Victim for unexpiated guilt and the Sin bearer for a guilty race.

6. The Christian dies to his old sin that he may begin to live to holiness and God. This is the express design God had when He put our sins to death in His dear Sons Cross. Faith in Christ makes us morally incorporate with Him in spirit, as well as legally embraced under Him as our Representative. Christ is our Head in that He represents us before the law, so that in His death all who are His died to sin. Christ is no less our Head to quicken us as His members, and in His living again we all live anew. The will and the power to walk in new moral life are therefore guaranteed to us by our faith. Christian faith is very far from a superficial, or inoperative, or merely intellectual act, such as a man can do without his moral character being seriously affected by it. It is connected with the deep roots of our moral and religious nature. It changes the main current of our ethical life. Those who have been baptised into Christ and say they trust in His death as the ground of their peace with God, are bound to satisfy themselves that their faith is of a sort to kill sin, and to maintain the life of righteousness. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.)

The purity of the gospel dispensation

That the gospel dispensation, instead of relaxing the principles of moral obligation, strengthens and renders the sin committed under its light the most inexcusable, may be illustrated--

I. From the nature and perfections of God. He is a being of absolute purity. Being thus perfect in Himself, He must love every resemblance of His own perfection in any of His intelligent creatures; and the more nearly they resemble Him, the more must they be the objects of His favour.

II. From the character and offices of the Redeemer. The Redeemer is the beloved Son of God, one with the Father; and, therefore, the arguments drawn from the perfections of God, to illustrate the purity of the gospel dispensation, are equally conclusive with respect to the Redeemer. In His several offices, no less than in His personal character, Christ invariably promoted the cause of righteousness. For this He sustained the office of a prophet; for this He became our great High Priest, to restore that intercourse which sin had interrupted. For this end, too, He became our King, and gave us a system of laws suited to that state of reconciliation. Now, such being His character, such the offices which He sustained as our Redeemer, and such the end for which He did sustain them, it follows, by necessary consequence, that the dispensation of the gospel, so far from relaxing the obligations of moral duty, tends powerfully to confirm them.

III. From that perfect rule of moral conduct which the gospel prescribes. It is at once the most simple, the most pure and perfect that ever was delivered to the world; as superior to the much-famed systems of philosophers as its Divine author was superior to them. It lays the foundation of moral duty in the heart, the true spring of action; and by one simple principle of which every heart is susceptible, even the principle of love, it provides for the most perfect moral conduct, and for the proper discharge of the duties of life.

IV. From a consideration of the bright examples which are set before us in the gospel.

V. From the powerful aid which the gospel promises to enable us to observe its precepts and imitate the bright examples which it sets before us. The gracious Author of this Divine influence is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, the third person in the ever blessed Trinity.

VI. From the ultimate end and design of the whole scheme. The great end of the gospel scheme undoubtedly is to bring us to a state of perfect felicity in the glorious kingdom of our God; to the full enjoyment of that immortality which our Saviour hath revealed. With the attainment of this glorious end, holiness, or moral purity, and inseparably connected, both in the nature of things and by the positive laws of Gods moral government.

1. In the nature of things, the unholy or immoral must be excluded from heavenly happiness. They are incapable of it. There is no conformity between the dispositions which they have cultivated and the joys of the celestial regions.

2. It is not only in the nature of things, but by the positive law of Gods moral government, that the unrighteous are excluded from heaven and happiness. (G. Goldie.)

Perversions of evangelical truth

1. What shall we say then? Say to what? To the great affirmation that man is justified freely by Gods grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Shall it be this: Let us persist in sin that grace may multiply? How sharply Paul turns upon the immoral suggestion! It is a corruption not to be endured.

2. But why did the apostle submit a conclusion like that to his readers? He knew that his doctrine did not contain it, but he knew that a corrupt human heart and a perverted understanding could put it in. That the conclusion, or its equivalent, has been asserted, and that often, where if submitted as a proposition it would be rejected with loathing, it is not without a subtle influence, is matter of observation.

I. There are those who think that it is possible to continue in sin and be saved.

1. How often one is forced to notice that men may combine a love of evangelical doctrine with love of money and a shrewdness that makes men who are not evangelical shrug their shoulders. We have known men, great wrestlers in prayer, whose lives, and the whisperings of whose doings, have made us ashamed. Moral confusion is at the bottom of these inconsistencies. Our evangelical doctrines are not to blame. The fault and the failure is in those who profess them while only half-perceiving them, and ignore their moral issues.

2. Paul shows us that grace comprises not only a gracious act of pardon done by God in the believers interest, but also an active principle of sanctification in the believers soul. The abounding of grace is only manifested in the breaking of sins power and the destruction of sins principle. Grace is the enemy of sin, not its covering. He who is saved by grace is not a leper clad in white raiment, but a leper healed. Grace is not beauty thrown over the deformity of some foul sickness; it is health. It is life counter-working death, and no man can continue in sin and yet be saved by grace.

3. But still, Is not grace a gift? Certainly. But God gives life. Yet life is not something external to the creature to whom it is given. It is not like a string of beads round the neck or a ring on the finger. The gift of life to a dead stick after that manner would leave it a dead stick still. Hear a parable. Early one summer morning I came upon an orchard. The trees were beautiful, and fruit was abundant. I wandered on until I came upon a tree having neither bloom nor fruit. I said, You poor, lost tree, what can you be doing here? I marvel you are not removed. Upon which this tree replied, tartly, You are in a great mistake. I am neither poor nor lost. Well, I said, you have neither leaves nor fruit, and, I should judge, no sap. What has that to do with it? it broke out. You seem not to know that a great saviour of trees has been down here, and I have believed his gospel, and am saved by grace. I have accepted salvation as a free gift, and, though I have neither leaves nor fruit, I am saved all the same. I looked at it with pity and said, You are a poor deluded tree; you are not saved at all. You are dead and good-for-nothing, despite all your talk about grace and redemption. Life, that is salvation. When I see you laden with fruit, I shall say, Ah! that poor tree is saved at last; it has received the gospel and is saved by grace. As I turned away, I heard it saying, You are not sound; you do not understand the gospel. And I thought, so it is, as with trees so with men.

II. Another form of this antinomianism of the heart connects itself immediately with the death of Christ. Men talk and act frequently as if in Christs shed blood there was a shelter from the consequence of their sins, even though they remain in their sins. They harbour covetousness, envy, hate, and pride; they stain their hands with dishonesty, and then, with their stained hands uplifted in the face of God, aver that they believe in the death of Christ for their sins, and are saved. This is not the gospel Paul preached. He asks, How shall we who died to sin live any longer therein? He who has by faith appropriated the expiatory death of Jesus, in and by that act died to sin. In the apostles day, baptism was the open signification of the death. It was as the burial of one who had died. It would be a new thing to see a dead man going on as if nothing had happened. So the saved man does not persevere in sin; how should he? He has died to it. Sin has no further claim. Who can claim anything of the dead? He is not sinless. Sin, alas! is not dead, but lie is dead to it. He has not got beyond its trouble, but he has got beyond its bondage. Faith in Christs death as our means of pardon, includes also His life as the principle of our sanctification. As one delightfully said, The Cross condemns me to be holy. (W. Hubbard.)

Distorted doctrines

A mans nose is a prominent feature in his face, but it is possible to make it so large that eyes and mouth and everything are thrown into insignificance, and the drawing is a caricature and not a portrait. So certain important doctrines of the gospel can be so proclaimed in excess as to throw the rest of the truth into the shade, and the preaching is no longer the gospel, but a caricature, and a caricature of which some people seem mightily fond. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Inconsistency

I. The conduct of many professed Christians indicates--

1. That they have some knowledge of grace.

2. That they do not heartily receive it because of sin.

3. That they rather use it as a shelter for sin.

II. Such conduct is abominable, because it--

1. Tempts God.

2. Is irrational.

3. Courts certain destruction.

4. Is impossible where grace is really active. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

The abuse of Divine mercy

A certain member of that parliament wherein a statute for the relief of the poor was passed was an ardent promoter of that Act. He asked his steward when he returned to the country, what the people said of that statute. The steward answered, that he heard a labouring man say, that whereas formerly he worked six days in the week, now he would work but four; which abuse of that good provision so affected the pious statesman that he could not refrain from weeping. Lord, Thou hast made many provisions in Thy Word for my support and comfort, and hast promised in my necessities Thy supply and protection; but let not my presumption of help from Thee cause my neglect of any of those means for my spiritual and temporal preservation which Thou hast enjoined. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?--

Death to sin

Abounding sin is the occasion of abounding grace, but abounding grace is for the destruction of abounding sin. It is absurd to suppose that a medicine should aggravate the disease it cures.

I. Believers are dead to sin.

1. In their condition before God.

2. In their character in consequence of it.

3. Forensically in the eye of the law.

4. Experimentally; in point of fact.

5. In their affection for it.

6. In its power over them. Or, to put it another way, believers have died to sin legally in justification; personally in sanctification; professedly in baptism; and will die completely to it in glorification.

II. This is accomplished--

1. By participation in Christs death who died for it.

2. By communication of the power of Christ in killing it.

3. By profession made in baptism of renouncing it.

Death to sin is the necessary consequence of union with Christ, who delivers from its depraving, condemning, and reigning power. (T. Robinson.)

Converted men dislike sin

An Armenian arguing with a Calvinist remarked, If I believed your doctrine, and was sure that I was a converted man, I would take my fill of sin. How much sin, replied the godly Calvinist, do you think it would take to fill a true Christian to his own satisfaction? Here he hit the nail on the head. How can we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? A truly converted man hates sin with all his heart, and even if he could sin without suffering for it, it would be misery enough to him to sin at all. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Breaking with sin

The Christians breaking with sin is undoubtedly gradual in its realisation, but absolute and conclusive in its principle. As, in order to break really with an old friend whose evil influence is felt, half measures are insufficient, and the only efficacious means is a frank explanation followed by a complete rupture which remains like a barrier raised beforehand before every new solicitation; so to break with sin there is needed a decisive and radical act, a Divine deed taking possession of the soul and interposing henceforth between the will of the believer and sin (Gal_6:14). This Divine deed necessarily works through the action of faith in Christs sacrifice. (Prof. Godet.)

The two lives

(text and Rom_6:11):--

I. The contrasted lives: Life in sin, and being alive unto God. The contrast is such that the unspiritual can perceive it, though unable to understand it. The ungodly may say,

We neither know nor care whether a man is justified or not, but we do know whether he keeps the law of conscience, whether he acts up to his professed principles, whether he does that which, apart from his profession, we know to be right. But how is it that the world is able to form these judgments? Was the civilised world qualified to do this in the days of Cicero or of Pericles? Was there to be found then, or is there to be found now, where Christianity is not, anything approximating the same jealousy of conscience, etc., which those who now boast that they are men of the world often exhibit? Surely not. If worldly men are competent judges of Christian principle, it is because the atmosphere breathed by true Christians has stimulated its life and awakened its conscience. The world is indebted to the Christianity it is ready to revile for its power to call Christians to its bar. Note:

1. What is meant by living in sin. The term has been almost appropriated to describe certain forms of bold and unblushing transgression of moral law. If a man is a known drunkard, adulterer, or rogue, he is said to live in sin; and no one excuses or palliates his conduct. But the corruption of human nature goes down deeper, and the ravages of sin are far more extensive than this. That man is living in sin--

(1) Who can sin without remorse. If a man sins and his only thought is, How shall I escape the indignant scorn of the world? he is taking pleasure in ungodliness, he is only happy in the absence of God.

(2) Who does what he knows to be wrong, but palliates it by pleading the force of circumstances, the nature of society, or the custom of the world.

(3) Who habitually neglects to do that which God and his conscience have often called upon him to accomplish. To him who knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to him it is sin. It is not enough that a man should avoid the practice of evil; he must not be lacking in generosity, good temper, self-restraint, religious emotion, zeal and work for God and man.

(4) Who finds pleasure in the commission of sin, hankers after forbidden sweets, and would like to go where he could escape detection. To sum up, All ungodliness is sin. To be without God, to act irrespectively of His authority, to find pleasure in what is opposed to His will, is to live in sin and bring the consequences of such a life down upon the soul.

2. What is meant by being alive unto God. By being alive to anything is meant a vivid conception of its reality, a joy in its presence, a devotion to its interests. Thus one man is alive to business, another to his reputation, another to truth. One man is alive to beauty in nature or art, he is therefore quick to discern its presence, keen to criticise its counterfeits, filled with joy when surrounded with its exponents. Another man is alive to literature or science, his ear is sensitive to every message from the great world of letters and invention, and the world exists, so far as he is concerned, to sustain and furnish material for his favourite pursuit. One man is alive to the well-being of his own country, and another to the wider interests of man. With the help of these illustrations we may assume that a man is alive unto God--

(1) When he fully recognises the signs of the presence of God. Habitual transgression or neglect of the laws of God is incompatible with the condition of a man who sees God everywhere. That man is alive to God to whom God is not a theory by which he can conveniently account for the universe, or a name for certain human conceptions of nature and its workings, or an invention of priestcraft to terrify the soul, or a philosophic concept the presence or absence of which has little to do with life or happiness, but the great and only reality, the prime and principal element of all his thoughts. No one fully recognises the presence of God unless he has advanced beyond the teaching of nature, and received from Holy Scripture, from the inward operations of the Spirit in his own heart, more than philosophical speculations can give him. If alive unto God, every revelation of His infinite essence suggests to our quickened spirit the presence of our Father and our Friend.

(2) When the sense of the Divine Presence awakens all the energies and engages all the faculties of his nature. If duly conscious of the Divine Presence, we shall render the appropriate homage of our entire being. Then every place is a temple, every act is a sacrifice, every sin the pollution of a sacred place, the defilement of a holy day. It is morally impossible for one who is alive unto God to imagine that he is doing too much to express his sense of reverence, gratitude, or obligation. In one word, self is subdued to Him, and human will is lost in Gods.

(3) When he finds his highest desires gratified. If we are alive unto God, we shall find that we are following the bent of our true nature. He that drinketh of the water given him by Christ, shall never thirst after those draughts of carnal pleasure to be found in the broken cisterns of human invention, and it shall be in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life.

II. The two lives have been described and contrasted, life in sin and life unto God. It would be difficult to conceive of two modes of life more obviously opposed to one another. They cannot coexist in the same spirit.

1. If sin is delighted in, God is dreaded. There is no tendency in human nature by means of which sin can be remedied or undone. The punishment of sin is death, i.e., moral alienation of heart from God, sinful habit and tendency. Consequently every sin carries in itself its own perpetuation and the germ of further transgression.

2. A life unto God supposes a spirit to whom the nearness, the perfections, the work of the Lord are unutterable delights; to whom the whole universe is a transparent medium, through and behind which is seen the face of the Eternal God.

III. How shall those that are living in sin even learn to be alive unto God?

1. The charge had been brought that that gospel looked leniently on sin, and the apostle boldly takes it up, admits its seeming plausibility, anticipates its possible force, and answers it by showing what was involved in that faith which justifies the soul. The life unto God can never supervene in a soul which has been living in sin, except, says he, through a death unto sin. Justification implies the removal of its penalty, its non-imputation, the exhaustion of its sting, the annihilation of its wages. Our new and holy life is not the ground of our justification, nor, strictly speaking, the consequence of our pardon and acceptance with God; but it is in one sense the pardon itself, the way in which the Holy Ghost slays that enmity within us which was the great curse of sin. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?

2. As far as his illustration is concerned, the apostle states a truism when he says that one who is dead to sin cannot live any longer therein. A man who is dead to sin may be carried away from his standing ground by some terrible and novel blast of temptation; but it is a contradiction in terms to assert that he can live in sin.

3. What, then, is meant by death to sin?

(1) Not a desperate fear of the consequences of sin. This fails to repress gross vice and crime. There are no cowards so great as those who often make violent assault on the life and property of others. They choose darkness that they may avoid detection; they are armed to the tooth when they go against feebleness and womankind. Multitudes tremble at the preaching of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, but sin as if they never trembled. Fear may have kept you back from the commission of sin, and warned you to paths of honour and usefulness, and yet never have slats the desire after what is hateful to God.

(2) Not respect to the opinion of the world. The good opinion of our fellow citizens is a powerful motive to virtue; but if it is our only one, there is nothing eternal in our virtue. Then if our circumstances were changed, we should change also. Let us be put back to times when a lower honour prevailed in business or in society, we should be forced back to the undeveloped morality of the past, and live in the practice of what we now see to be sin.

(3) Not mere self-respect. There are those who are careless about the worlds respect as long as they can secure their own. This reverence for conscience, and independence of the judgment of others, is closely akin to the highest virtue, but yet as an ultimate principle it is not sufficient. The proud independence of mankind may speedily run up into an audacious independence of God. Self-respect may rapidly blossom into self-idolatry.

(4) Death to sin is not secured by orthodox creed, ceremonial exactness, or even religious zeal. These are all occasionally confounded with it, but they may be all compatible with a life of sin. Church history is full of proofs that neither articles, nor sacraments, nor profession, nor even great sacrifices for religion, avail to slay the sin of the heart or render the soul alive to God.

(5) By this process of exclusion we have brought the meaning of the phrase death to sin to a much more limited group of experiences. The apostle identifies it with union to Christ, that which he sometimes calls faith in His blood, baptism into Christ, or living by faith on the Son of God, because Christ liveth in us. Paul knew he was appealing to a safe and sure tribunal when he went right to the consciousness of his converts. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is certain that the apostle would not have these Romans reckon thus unless it were true. Observe, it is not merely that they are to reckon that Christ died for their sins, but they are also to reckon that they too are dead unto sin through Jesus Christ.

4. The way, then, in which this change is effected is by union with Christ--

(1) In His Passion. By the Cross the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world; I am crucified with Christ; If we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him. We are buried with Him by baptism into His death. The thought often recurs that our faith in Him nails our own hands to the cursed tree and films our eye on worldly glory. If we have taken up this thought into our entire spiritual nature, that Christ died for our sins, then we are dead. As we become alive to what the death of Christ really is and means, how it prepares the only way by which a new life could enter our race, and a new spirit be given to transgressors, by which God could justify the ungodly, and still be just; it is not difficult to understand that faith in Christ, that union to Christ, involves dying with Christ to sin. A true and deep faith in Christ, a recognition by mind and heart of His work, is such an intuition of law, such a sense of God, such a revelation of the evil of sin, such a burning of the heart against the world, the flesh, and the devil, that the apostle was justified in saying that Christians might reckon themselves dead unto sin.

(2) In His life and resurrection. The new life of the soul is a resurrection life, charged with all the associations and aspirations which would be possessed by one who had passed, through dying, from death to life. The life unto God flows out of the life of God in the soul. (H. R. Reynolds, D. D.)

Christs legislative glory to be preached

The following curious incident once happened to a clergyman. One day, after preaching, a gentleman followed him into the vestry, and, putting a £10 note into his hand, thanked him most energetically for the great comfort he had derived from his sermon. The clergyman was very much surprised at this, but still more so when shortly afterwards the same thing again took place; and he determined to sift the affair to the bottom, and find out who this man was that was so comforted by his discourse. He discovered that he was a person at that very time living in the most abominable wickedness and in the very depths of sin. Certainly, said he to himself, there must be something essentially wrong in my preaching when it can afford comfort to such a profligate as this! He accordingly examined into the matter closely, and he discovered that, whilst he had been preaching Christs sovereignty, he had quite forgotten his legislative glories. He immediately altered the style of his sermons, and he soon lost his munificent friend. I am told that, by preaching Christs legislative glory, I also have driven some from my chapel. Pray for me, my brethren, that I may still preach doctrine, and that Longacre may become too hot for error in principle or sin in practice; pray for me that with a giants arm I may lash both. (Howels, of Longacre.)

The atonement gives no encouragement to sin

There is no influence more mischievous on the morals of a people than to interpret the atonement in such a way as to make it independent of good works, if to the atonement you give any other than purely legal connection. If it includes state of nature and character in its connections, then must it stand forever associated with human endeavour and conditioned upon it. Else the sacrifice of Jesus becomes a harbour for thieves--a port into which sinners can at any moment steer with all their sins on board, the moment that the winds of conscience begin to blow a little too hard and threaten wreck to their peace. And this is what I call a plain accommodation of sinners, and hence a premium on sin. For sin is sweet to the natural man, sweet to his pride, his cruelty, his senses; and who would not sin and have the sweetness of it, if when he found it troublesome he could, by the saying of a prayer, or the utterance of a charmed word, be in an instant delivered from it forever? And yet I believe that in just this supposition multitudes in Christendom are living. Salvation is something to be visited upon them, independent of their conduct; nay, in spite of their conduct. Jesus is a cabalistic word which, no matter how they live, if they but whisper it with their dying gasp into the ear of death, he is bound to pass them up into heaven and not down into hell, where their deeds would consign them and which their characters fit. They cheat, they lie, they slander, they hate, they persecute, but then is not there mercy for all? Will not faith save a man; and have not they faith? And are they not told that God will do anything in answer to prayer; and did you ever see men pray as fast as these fellows can when they are sick? This is what I call making Christ a harbour for thieves and Christianity a premium on sin. This is what I call the most horrible perversion of the gospel plan of salvation conceivable! (H. W. Beecher.)

Death to sin, a difficulty

There is nothing so hard to die as sin. An atom may kill a giant, a word may break the peace of a nation, a spark burn up a city; but it requires earnest and protracted struggles to destroy sin in the soul. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 6:1-2. What shall we say then — What shall we think of this doctrine? namely, taught in the latter part of the preceding chapter, that where sin abounded grace did much more abound? Does it not follow from thence that we may continue in sin, that grace may abound still more, and may appear more glorious in pardoning and saving us? The apostle here sets himself more fully to vindicate his doctrine from this consequence, suggested Rom 3:7-8. He had then only, in strong terms, denied and renounced it. Here he removes the very foundation thereof; proceeding to speak of some further benefits (besides those mentioned Rom 5:1, &c.) of justification by faith in Christ, namely, the promoting of holiness, and not of sin, as some might imagine: to which subject his transition is at once easy and elegant. God forbid — That such an unworthy thought as that of continuing in sin should ever arise in our hearts! We have disclaimed such a consequence above, and we most solemnly disclaim it again, and caution all that hear us, against imagining that our doctrine allows any such cursed inferences. For though it is true, that where sin abounds grace does frequently still more abound, yet this is not owing to sin in any degree; which of itself brings death, Rom 6:23; Jas 1:15; and the more sin, the more punishment; but wholly to the superabounding mercy and love of God in Christ. For how shall we that are dead to sin — By profession, obligation, and communion with Christ our head in his death; or who are freed both from the guilt and the power of it; live any longer therein — In the love and practice of it? Surely it would be the grossest contradiction to our profession, and the obligations we are under to do so: on the contrary, it is apparent that nothing has so great a tendency to animate us to avoid sin, as this doctrine of gospel grace.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

St. Paul has finished his exposition of Justification (Rom_3:19 to Rom_5:21), and now passes to Sanctification. In other words, having shown how the believer is delivered from the guilt of sin, he goes on to show how he is delivered from its power.

Romans 6 shows the Christian abiding in living union with the risen Christ by the power of faith. Romans 7 describes the failure of the most earnest life apart from Christ. Romans 8 shows Christ abiding in the Christian by the power of the spirit: cp. Joh_15:4.

The New Righteousness in Union with Christ

St. Paul's begins by repeating an objection he must often have heard from Jewish adversaries (cp: Rom_3:8), and suggested here by Rom_5:20 -'Does not this teaching of pardon by God's free favour practically encourage sin?' The objection is stated in two forms (Rom_6:1, Rom_6:15). The Apostle not only answers his opponents: he is still more concerned to build up his readers in a holy life. He opposes to the objection the fact of the believer's union with Christ. Faith in Christ means devotion to Christ's Person. The Christian is so vitally joined to Christ that he is dead with Him to sin, and risen with Him to a new state in which sin has no place (Rom_6:1-14). The Apostle then presents the same truth in a form more easily grasped. In coming to Christ, the Christian has experienced a change of service; he is freed from Sin and bound to serve Righteousness (Rom_6:15-23).

1-14. The Christian life should be like Christ's risen life, i.e. it should be lived in God's loving Presence. Sin belonged to the old state, to which the Christian died in baptism.

Paraphrase. '(1) It is objected that by “Justification by Faith” men are encouraged to continue in sin, since the greater the sin, the greater the opportunity that is afforded for the manifestation of God's pardoning love to sinners. (2) But our baptism implied such a breaking-away from the old sinful life as may be compared to death. Therefore, to say that a Christian may live in sin is a contradiction. (3) For our baptism signified an identification of our hearts and wills with Christ which amounted to a real union with Him, so that, while we look to His death as the ground of our acceptance, we also identify ourselves with that alienation from the sin of the world which crucified Him, of which His death was the final stage. (4) Therefore, our immersion beneath the waters of baptism signified death and burial with Christ from the sinful life of the world. But it is not only His death that is ours. We came up out of the water, as He rose from the dead, that we might begin to live in a new condition animated by His risen life. (5) This necessarily follows. For if we are united with Him in dying, we must be united with Him in new life, morally and spiritually now, and physically hereafter. (6) Make no mistake: by His death, Christ finally sealed His life-long refusal of sin, and showed that His followers must do the same. We, therefore, being like-minded with Him through our faith in Him, also repudiated sin at our baptism, slaying our old sinful selves. Therefore, we should realise that the rule of sin over our earthly natures is ended; (7) just as a master's rule over a dead slave is ended. (8) If so, then life with Christ follows, (9) because we are one with Him, and He lives a life in which death cannot touch Him any more. (10) This is certain, for His death ended that earthly state in which He had contact with sin, and His life is now one of unbroken communion with God. (11) Do you, then, look upon yourselves also as dead in regard to sin, but alive to God's presence and love and claims by your union with Christ. (12) Therefore, treat even your bodies as redeemed from sin, and do not yield to the lusts (13) which would use the parts and powers of your body to conquer you again for sin. Rather devote yourselves to God once for all, as if you had risen from the dead, and let all the powers of your bodies be weapons for the good fight in God's service. (14) Do not fear failure. The power which sin has over those who are under law cannot exist in the life-giving atmosphere of the redeeming love of God in which you live.'

2. Are dead] rather, 'died,' i.e. in baptism. Those addressed had been adult converts. Their baptism had been a definite act of attachment to Christ and of detachment from the sinful world. Although to crucify sinful and selfish desires is painful, it is done even joyfully by those who are inspired to the imitation of Christ by the perfect beauty and goodness of His sacrifice, for they have 'that mind' in them 'which was also in Christ Jesus.' This, which is part of the inner meaning of baptism, is the spirit in which the true Christian will live his life.

3. Cp. Gal_3:27. So many of us as] RV 'all we who.'

4. Are buried] rather, 'were buried': cp. Col_2:12. Into death] i.e. into a state of death as regards sin. Glory] i.e. manifestation of love and power: cp. Joh_11:40.

Newness of life] i.e. a newness consisting in life: cp. Joh_3:36; Joh_10:10; Joh_17:3; Rom_8:2; Col_3:3.

5. Been planted, etc.] RM 'become united with the likeness.. with the likeness,' as a slip is united with the tree to which it is grafted.

6. Is crucified] rather, 'was crucified,' i.e. potentially, when Christ was crucified; actually, in faith and baptism: cp. Mat_18:8.; Gal_2:20. Body of sin] i.e. the body as the servant of sin: cp. Col_2:11. Destroyed] i.e. as regards sin.

7. Is freed from sin] As a dead slave has completely escaped from his master's power, so one who has so believed in Christ as to be joined with Him in His death to the sin of the world, should remember that sin has no more, legitimately, to-do with him. So far as its appeal to him is concerned, he should be dead.

8. Be dead] rather, 'died.'

10. In that he died, etc.] RV 'the death that he died.. the life that he liveth.' Once] RM 'once for all.'

11. Through Jesus Christ our Lord] RV 'in Christ Jesus,' a phrase by which St. Paul often expresses our union with the glorified Christ.

12. Obey.. lusts] RV 'obey the lusts.'

13. Yield] RV 'present.'

Instruments] RM 'weapons.'

14. Under the law] RV 'under law.' A code of precepts gives no power of fulfilment. It only (1) shows what is right, (2) reveals man's sinfulness, (3) stimulates him to opposition: cp. Romans 7. 1Co_15:56; Gal_4:5. 'To be “under the law,” in St. Paul's language, means to avoid sin from fear of penalties attached to sin by the law. This principle of fear is not strong enough to keep men in the path of duty. Union with Christ can alone give man the mastery over sin' (Conybeare and Howson).

15-23. The Christian is to regard sin as a master from whom death has freed him. He is now the bondservant of righteousness.

Paraphrase. '(15) Some assert that if they are no longer under law they may indulge in sin. (16) Impossible! You belong either to sin or to God; you cannot belong to both. (17) And although you were the servants of sin once, you have now taken the Christian teaching as your rule of life, (18) thus exchanging the service of Sin for the service of Righteousness. (19) The illustration is inadequate, for you are better than slaves, you are God's children. But I want you to see that you must now devote your bodies to righteousness and sanctification as unreservedly as once you devoted them to impurity and licence. (20) Formerly, you served sin only, (21) and the only reward you had to look for was eternal death. (22) Now you serve God only, a service leading to sanctification, with everlasting life in prospect. (23) Make no mistake. Those who serve sin receive the death they have deserved. But God gives to His servants what they could never earn, even everlasting life in union with Christ.'

15. The law] RV 'law': cp. Gal_5:13.

16. Cp. Mat_6:24. Unto] i.e. resulting in. Obedience] personified; the mark of the lives both of the Redeemer and of the redeemed: cp. Php_2:8; Heb_5:8.; Heb_10:7.

17. That form, etc.] RV 'that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered,' i.e. simple instruction in Christian truth and morality: cp. Act_2:42.

19. After the manner of men] i.e. I use an illustration drawn from human affairs, because you have not had that deep spiritual experience to which I might appeal differently: cp. Rom_3:5. Flesh] i.e. unspiritual human nature. Have yielded] RV 'presented.' Iniquity] lit. 'lawlessness.' Unto iniquity] i.e. iniquity leading to iniquity with the result of a lawless life. Yield] RV 'present.' Holiness] RV 'sanctification,' i.e. growth in holiness.

20. From] RV 'in regard of.'

22. Holiness] RV 'sanctification.'

Everlasting life] i.e. future bliss.

23. Gift] RV 'free gift.' Through] RV 'in': cp. Rom_6:11, 1Jn_5:11.

J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

Rom_6:2.—Necessary connection between faith in Christ’s death and abhorrence of sin. Heathen writers speak of the wise and good as dead to sensualities and animal pleasures (Wordsworth).

Rom_6:3. Baptised into His death.—In relation to His death—i.e., faith in it, acceptation, appropriation, and imitation of it. The relation symbolised by baptism is in its own nature moral and spiritual.

Rom_6:4.—Baptism by immersion—and where that cannot be conveniently done, by effusion—represents death and burial, as the emerging again figures a new life (Dean Stanhope).

Rom_6:5.—For if we become connate with Him by the likeness of His death, surely we shall also become by the likeness of His resurrection (Wordsworth).

Rom_6:6.—Sin is here personified. The body of sin is our own body so far as it is the seat and the slave of sin.

Rom_6:7.—The maxim in its physical sense proverbial among the Jews. Thus in the Talmud it is said, “When a man dies, he is freed from the commands.”

Rom_6:10.—Died unto sin once.—Made sin for the Church—a sin offering.

Rom_6:11.—To both, our oneness with Him being the ground of our dying to sin, etc. To fulfil God’s will, live to Him alone.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Rom_6:1-11

Buried, but living.—An evil propensity was generated by the first Adam. A good propensity was generated by the Second Adam. The carnal Adamites moved along a descending scale, while the spiritual Adamites move along an ascending scale. Death brooded over the race—a death that had in it no compensating qualities. Christ undertook death that He might educe life. He died unto sin once, that He and the race might live unto God. Christ’s death was a death for sin and to sin. On Calvary sin received its deathblow. It is true that sin still works, but it works as a maimed force, and finally it must be for ever destroyed. He that is dead is freed from sin’s power, and must walk henceforth in newness of life. Grace does not lead to licentiousness, but to holiness of heart and of life. This is confirmed by a consideration of:—

I. The spiritual facts.—The great spiritual, central, and foundation fact of Christian life is that the old man is crucified with Christ.

1. Crucifixion was a process of suffering. How true is the symbolical teaching! What suffering is sometimes endured while the old man is being crucified! There are gentle natures, good creatures, that seem to be good from their birth and give a negation to the doctrine of original sin, who do not understand the suffering entailed by the moral process called the crucifixion of the old man. But even they sympathetically suffer as they enter into the sufferings of the crucified Saviour. Even they may feel that there is in them an old man that must be crucified. However, there is in other natures—perhaps the natures of the noblest—great suffering as the old man is being crucified. The noblest heroes have strong passions and fierce conflicts. The greatest battles are fought and the sublimest victories won not on earth’s gory battle-fields, but in soul spheres.

2. Crucifixion was a lingering death. It was a surprise to find that Christ was dead already. In some the old man of sin is long in dying. We think he is dead. We rejoice in our freedom; and the moment of rejoicing is the moment of disaster. The old man shakes the bonds, loosens the nails, and gives immense trouble. Perhaps the fault with some is that the crucifixion is not complete. A partial crucifixion is a mistake. Crucified with Christ, we must be crucified entirely. The old man in every limb must be slain if there is to be complete victory.

3. Crucifixion was a sure death at last. There could be no ultimate escape. The old man may seem to assert himself, but he has been nailed to the tree, and must die. If we have been crucified with Christ, then we cannot live in sin with pleasure.

II. The moral teaching.—For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. This is a moral likeness. Christ’s death is lifted out of the mere material aspect. We do not sufficiently consider the death of Christ in its moral and spiritual relations. Socinianism derives some of its false force from our materialism. Morally we are assimilated with Christ in His death, and so are we in His resurrection. And resurrection is not a resurrection of skin, nerves, bones, and muscles, but a resurrection of soul power. Christ rose to be the dispenser of blessings, to live a crowned life. The believer rises to live a crowned life—the life of peace, of joy, and of holiness. The believer rises to be in his sphere the dispenser of blessings. The believer is a king and a priest—royal being master and king over himself, sacred being dedicated to God and to the promotion of the universal sanctities. He walks in newness of life. If there can be anything new to Jesus, then we may say that He walks in newness of life amid the bright sons of life and of glory,—newness of life to the Unchangeable—newness of life, for He is now the mediator and intercessor. Being assimilated with Christ, we walk in the spirit world. Life is ever new. Fresh breezes blow over earth’s dreary plains. Heaven’s zephyrs fan the brows of the new immortals.

III. The public profession.—The early Christians were baptised into Jesus Christ, into the name of Jesus Christ, into the death of Jesus Christ. There was first the change and then the profession. Public profession is against open sin. Some say that the doctrines of grace promote sin, and these objectors would not be the last to point the finger of scorn against the professor who leads an unholy life. The man who professes to be a Christian should be Christlike. We profess in baptism by our sponsors. How few earnestly take up the obligation! Some few profess too much. A vast number practise too little.

IV. The inward account.—This reckoning should be constantly carried on. “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This moral arithmetic is ennobling. Dead to sin. Alive to God,—alive to the Source of the highest life; alive to the infinite goodness; alive to the enriching outcome of the divine nature; alive to all the stirring motives to nobility of character which come from the eternal throne. The outcast from God becomes the friend of God, being alive to and by God. The soul of man is ever reaching upwards when it is reckoning itself to be alive unto God. It is opening itself out to be kissed into moral beauty and sweetness and fragrance by the refreshing beams that flow from the eternal Light.

Rom_6:4. Newness of life.—If Christ died for our sins, He rose for us too—He rose for our justification. If He is our model in His death, He is also our model in His resurrection from the dead. We have been “buried with Him by baptism into death,” says the apostle, “that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” The great apostle cannot be understood to ascribe Christ’s resurrection to the Father in such sense as to exclude the agency of the Son or of the Spirit. St. Paul’s point is, that the Resurrection is the work of God, and as such it occupies a common ground with the new birth or conversion of the soul; for, indeed, no truth is so clearly revealed to us as this—that spiritual life, whether given us at the first in our new birth to Christ, or renewed after repentance in later years, is the free, fresh gift of the Father of our spirits. Nature can no more give us newness of life than a corpse can rise from the dead by its unassisted power. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” A sense of prudence, advancing years, the love of society around us, family influences, may remodel the surface form of our daily habits; but divine grace alone can turn the inmost being to God—can raise it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness—can clothe it in that “new man which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness.” There are three characteristics of the risen life of our Lord which especially challenge attention. The first is its reality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a real resurrection of a really dead body. The piercing of our Saviour’s side, to say nothing of the express language of the evangelists, implied the literal truth of His death; and being thus truly dead, He really rose from the dead. As St. Luke says, epitomising a history in a single expression, “He showed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs.” The nearer men came to the risen Jesus, the more satisfied they were that He had risen indeed. So it is with the soul. Its newness of life must be, before everything else, real. What avails it to be risen in the imagination and good opinion of other people, if, in fact, we still live in the tomb of sin? Were it not better for us if we were dead than that men should think and speak of us as being what we are? Even if our new life be not purely an imagination on the part of others, what is the value of a mere ghost of a moral renewal, of prayers without heart in them, of actions without any religious principle, of religious language far in advance of our true convictions and feelings? The first lesson which the risen Christ teaches the Christian is reality, genuineness. A second characteristic of Christ’s risen life—it lasts. Jesus did not rise that, like Lazarus, He might die again. “I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death.” So should it be with the Christian. His, too, should be a resurrection once for all. It should be. God’s grace does not put any sort of force upon us, and what it does in us and for us depends on ourselves. The Christian must reckon himself to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ. A last note of Christ’s risen life. Most of it was hidden from the eyes of men. They saw enough to be satisfied of its reality; but of the eleven recorded appearances five took place on a single day, and there is accordingly no record of any appearance on thirty-five days out of forty which preceded the Ascension. His visible presence after the Resurrection is the exception rather than the rule. Here is a lesson for the true Christian life. Of every such life the most important side is hidden from the eyes of man. It is a matter of the very first necessity to set aside some time in each day for secret communion with God. In these three respects the true Christian’s life is modelled upon the Resurrection. It is sincere and real. It is not a passing caprice or taste, for it lasts. It has a reserved side apart from the eyes of men, in which its true force is nourished and made the most of.—Canon Liddon.

Life in Christ here and hereafter.—The death and resurrection of Christ constitute the substance of the gospel, and our concern with them as doctrinal truths includes more than our admitting them into our creed. They must become internal principles, and produce in us corresponding effects. He died, and we must be dead,—dead to the law, not as a rule of life, but as a covenant of works; dead to the world, not as the scene of God’s wonderful works, nor as a sphere of duty, nor as a field of usefulness, but as the enemy of God and our portion; dead to sin—this includes nothing less than our avoiding it; but it intends much more: we may be alive to it even while we forsake it; but we must no longer love or relish it, and thus no longer live in it. “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” We must be dead with Him. We are dead with Him virtually; for He is the head and representative of His Church, and therefore what He did for His people is considered as done by them. We are dead with Him efficiently; for there is an influence derived from His cross which mortifies us to sin; and this influence is not moral only, consisting in the force of argument and motive—though this is true, and nothing shows the evil of sin or the love of the Saviour like Calvary—but it is spiritual also. He died to purify as well as to redeem; and He not only made reconciliation for the sins of His people, but received gifts for men, and secured the agency of the Holy Spirit. There is no real holiness to separate from the grace of the cross. There He draws all men unto Him. We are dead with Him as to resemblance. We are planted together in the likeness of His death, and therefore our death is called, as well as His, a crucifixion. “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.” I am, says the apostle, not only dead, but crucified, with Christ. Because Christ lives, we shall live also. For we are quickened together with Christ, and are raised up and made to sit together in heavenly places—that is, in His company. “Where I am, there shall also My servant be.” We have much in heaven to endear it. We may live with another, but not live like him; we may be with another, and behold his estate, but not share it. But “when He who is our life shall appear we shall also appear with Him in glory.” “I appoint unto you,” says He to His disciples, “a kingdom, as My Father hath appointed unto Me; that ye may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Even our vile body shall be fashioned like His own glorious body. And the same duration attaches to His blessedness and ours. “I am alive,” says He, “for evermore”; and our end is everlasting life. Finally, Paul believed all this. And let us do the same; but let us believe it as he did—that is, let us believe that we shall live with Him if we be with Him. Some believe it without this. Their faith is only presumption Whatever they rely upon, whether their knowledge, or orthodoxy, or talking, or profession, they are only preparing for themselves the most bitter disappointment—if they are not dead unto sin and delivered from the present evil world; for if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.” But let us also believe that “if we be dead with Him we shall also live with Him.” The inclusion is as sure as the exclusion, and takes in every diversity and degree of grace. Whatever be their apprehensions of themselves, none of them all shall come short of this glory. It is as certain as the promise and oath and covenant of God, and the death and intercession of the Saviour, and the pledges and earnests of immortality, can render it. Therefore “be not faithless, but believing.” It was used by Christians to animate and encourage each other in the apostle’s days, as a common and familiar aphorism; and they gave it full credit: “It is a faithful saying: for if we be dead with Him, we shall also live with Him.”—W. Jay.

Rom_6:1. Was the Sabbath abrogated?—The apostle wrote thus because certain men had perverted a gracious doctrine into an excuse for continued indulgence in wickedness. They heard of the grace of God, and then concluded that, since the presence of sin in the world gave God a splendid opportunity for exhibiting His grace, it were well to sin so that the grace of God might never cease to be manifested. Paul refutes this in this chapter. Bearing this in mind, we may pass on to the question, If we say that we may continue in sin so that grace may abound, may we not take any of God’s laws, and say, “I will break this, and thus afford God greater scope for the exercise of His grace”? If we answered affirmatively, we should clear the way for a violation of all the moral laws. To arrive at a conclusion as to whether God’s commandments are binding on Christians, we will take the fourth. Was the Sabbath abrogated? If not, then argue that the whole law stands good to-day. Arguments advanced to prove that the Sabbath is of universal and perpetual obligation:—

I. The historic aspect of the question proves that the Sabbath was not an exclusively Jewish institution, and therefore the advent of Christianity did not annul it.—

1. Evidence coming from times before the Christian era.

2. Evidence from history of other nations. Uniformity of a septenary division of time throughout the Eastern world. The ancients—Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, and others—indicate the seventh day as sacred.

3. Evidence from the doings of Christians. A change of day, but not a change of principle.

II. Which of the laws was abrogated by the advent of Christianity?—[Note.—There were three separate deliverances of the law—the civil, the ceremonial, and the moral.] Christ did not come to destroy the moral law; but His advent did away with the necessity for the civil and ceremonial.

III. Notice the relation of the fourth commandment to the other portions of the Decalogue.—Objectors say it differentiates from the other nine; but no reason for declaring it ceremonial and the others moral, and that Christ therefore sifted the law and eliminated that which referred to the Sabbath.

IV. Christ did not repudiate the Sabbath.—

1. Would He expose the whole race to the disabilities Jehovah designed to save the Jews from? If men were to be free in the one point, why restrict them in nine other directions?

2. In dealing with Pharisees, etc., not a word did Christ speak which tended to degrade the Sabbath. He set the Sabbath right; Jews had deified it, and degraded man.

3. While admitting that Jesus modified Jewish notions regarding the Sabbath, modification is not abrogation.

V. The New Testament does not countenance any contention for the abolition of the Sabbath.—

1. Some say Rom_14:5 implies a revocation of the divine institution at the dawn of Christianity (see following outline).

2. They also rely on Gal_4:10.

3. The Colossian Christians thought good works a necessary security of salvation (Col_2:16-23).

VI. The presumption is against the abrogation of the moral law, and therefore against the abrogation of the Sabbath.—

1. Suppose the abrogation of the seventh commandment. What terrible results might be anticipated, considering the awful wickedness of the pagan world when Christ lived!

2. Suppose the abrogation of the first commandment. Think of the idolatry of the Greek and Roman worlds in Christ’s time, and the character of the idol-worship was so bad.

3. Suppose the abrogation of the sixth commandment. The world, in Christ’s time, reeked with blood—e.g., the arena. Could it be supposed Christ would abrogate any of these laws? Surely there was no slackening in any of them, and why suggest a slackening in the fourth?

VII. The Sabbath is a “sine quâ non” of human life.—Hence abrogation, in the light of our knowledge of God’s feeling for man, is impossible.

1. Man has always required a day of rest.

2. Never more so than now.

3. The growth of secularising tendencies rendered a Sabbath necessary, to afford opportunity for spiritual growth and worship. So long as human nature holds sway, so long will men require safeguards in things moral and social. The spirit of the age is such that men need such safeguards; hence God will not remove those which He has established. The foregoing arguments having established the continued necessity for the Sabbath, so it is argued that all the other commandments remain in force to-day. All God’s commandments are binding on Christians, who have no right to ignore any of His laws under the plea that they do not belong to the present dispensation.—Albert Lee.

I. Sabbath not a Jewish institution.—The Sabbath not an exclusively Jewish institution.

1. Evidence coming from times before the Christian era—e.g., the periodical worship of Cain and Abel. Also, the Sabbath mentioned as a well-known solemnity before the promulgation of the law. It is expressly taken notice of at the fall of manna; and the incidental manner in which it is then mentioned is convincing proof that the Israelites were no strangers to the institution.

2. Evidence from history of other nations leads us to believe that the Israelites were not alone in their observance of a week of seven days—e.g., the Assyrians and Babylonians in the native account of the Creation speak of Anu having put the finishing touches to the work, and “on the seventh day a holy day appointing, and commanding on that day a cessation from all business.” Uniformity of septenary division of time throughout all the Eastern world—Israel, Assyria, Egypt, India, Arabia, Persia, etc. Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus, and others constantly indicate the seventh day as sacred to their countrymen. No one would venture to suggest that this idea was borrowed from Moses; for Linus, e.g., who flourished before Moses, speaks of the seventh day as observed by pious persons.

3. Evidence culled from the doings of Christians. There was a change of day, but not a change of principle.

II. Moral law now in force.—It must be remembered that there were three separate deliverances of the law to the Jews—the civil, the ceremonial, and the moral. We admit that there was a repeal in the case of the first two; but nowhere do we find a particle of evidence to sustain the contention that the moral law was abrogated. Those who contend that this was the case forget to clear their minds of local considerations. They need to be reminded that the civil law, rehearsed in the wilderness, was set forth only for the Jews, for their especial guidance, under the peculiar circumstances of their residence, both in the wilderness and Canaan. When we consider the typical or ceremonial law, then, inasmuch as that law was a “type of Christ and good things to come,” we are fully prepared to see it pass away when Christ appears upon the scene. To declare that the Sabbath, together with the whole law, had its fulfilment in Christ is a strange idea to spring upon the Church. Christ certainly did not annul the moral law, whatever action He may have taken in regard to the civil and ceremonial. He distinctly rehearsed the moral law in a comprehensive sentence or two: “Thou shalt love,” etc. It is true that the Sabbath receives a large share of attention in the civil and ceremonial laws; but it is equally true that it is brought into prominence in the moral law. Since Christ did not come to destroy this last, and actually insisted upon its observance, who shall say that He eliminated the Sabbath portion, but left the others undisturbed?

III. Review of disputed passages.—Passages presented by anti-Sabbatarians.

1. Rom_14:5. It is contended by them that this passage implies a revocation of the divine institution at the dawn of Christianity.

(1) But the discussion had reference only to the peculiar customs of the Jews, to the rites and practices which they would attempt to impose on the Gentiles, and not to any questions which might arise among Christians as Christians.

(2) Alford, predisposed to argue the abolition of the Sabbath, says that Paul’s language is so sweeping as to do away with the divine obligation of keeping the Sabbath. And yet the apostle says, “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Could such a vital question as that of Sabbath observance be left to men to interpret, according to every crotchet, especially of the ignorant and godless? It is a question whether there was any allusion to the Sabbath; and even if so, it would not be a question of observing the Sabbath, but rather one of observing the seventh day rather than the first, as Christians were beginning to do.

(3) One of the most able comments on this passage runs thus: “It will not do to take it for granted that the Sabbath was merely one of the Jewish festival days, simply because it was observed under the Mosaic economy. If the Lawgiver Himself said of it, when on earth, ‘The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day,’ it will be hard to show that the apostle must have meant it to be ranked amongst those banished Jewish festival days which only ‘weakness’ could imagine to be still in force, a weakness which those who had more light ought, out of love, merely to bear with.”

2. Gal_4:10. Objectors use this to prove that the observance of the Sabbath is a matter of indifference. Note that in the passage the terms “Sabbath” or “Lord’s day” are not here mentioned; but assuming that they are implied, we must convict Paul of instability, and shall have reason to doubt his authority if he should allow the Romans to take one course and the Galatians another. Paul, as Olshausen observed, wished to assure the Galatians that the solemnisation in itself of certain ceremonies is not blamed (the old Church, too, had already its festivals), but what was superstitious in it—i.e., the opinion that it was necessary to salvation. Men were not to rest their hopes upon the false assumption that if they observed days and months and times and years superstitiously, they had done all that was necessary to salvation. Findlay, in his work on the Galatians, explains the attitude of the Christians in Galatia. They had already fallen in with the directions of the Jewish teachers. These had made the keeping of holy days a prominent and obligatory part of Christianity, and, as the Romish Church has done, multiplied them superstitiously beyond all reason. Paul called such things “beggarly elements,” and meant, doubtless, to convince the Galatians that they were falling into the mischievous tendency to regard the observance of certain days as meritorious. There is not a particle of evidence to prove that Christians were freed from the observance of the Sabbath day.

3. Col_2:16-23. In the Colossian Church there was the idea that good works were a security of salvation. This would tend to divert Christians from relying solely on the complete work of Jesus. This explanation is applicable to Col_2:16-23. They had trusted to philosophy, and vain traditions, and worshipping of angels, and to legal ceremonies, whereas all these things had ended in Christ. Some might be disposed to think themselves under obligation to keep the last day of the week, and the first. If so, they were not to judge those who kept the Lord’s day only. Dr. Maclaren points out that Paul does not say, Therefore let no man observe any of these distinctions of meat, feast, and Sabbaths any more; but takes up the much more modest ground, Let no man judge you about them.—Albert Lee.

Rom_6:9. One victorious life.—Two things we are said to know in connection with the death of Christ. The one is the resurrection of Christ as an historical fact. We have no reason to suppose that sacred history is less reliable than secular history. The former more reliable than the latter, for it has been assailed, and yet its testimony is unshaken. The witnesses of the Resurrection are numerous and unimpeachable. We too often lose sight of the fact that our Lord was seen after His resurrection by the large number of five hundred brethren. St. Paul could not have mentioned this number to the Corinthian Church if it were not a well-authenticated fact. The other is a revealed truth that Christ dieth no more, and arises as a natural consequence—perhaps rather a moral consequence—from the Resurrection. If He rose from the dead—and certainly He did rise—then there is no need for a second encounter with death. Let us look at the:—

I. One death.—What a vast multitude is that of the dead! It seems almost impossible for us to grasp the number of the living that tread this thickly peopled planet! When a man who has led a lonely life in the country goes to London, he is astonished and bewildered as he gazes at the seething mass of humanity. What would be our feelings if from some eminence we could look at the race collected together on an extensive plain? But what is the army of the living when compared with the army of the dead? We see, as we look at the living, one or two generations; while, as we consider the dead, we have to consider generation after generation, through thousands of years, that have passed into the dark and silent shades. Now of all the multitude of deaths which have occurred from the time of Adam to the present day, the death of Christ is pre-eminent and conspicuous; so that we speak of it as the one death to which the ages before Christ’s coming look forward, and to which the ages after His resurrection look backward—the one death in its solemn grandeur, in its sublime portents, in its moral and spiritual significance.

II. One conquest.—Christ died once, but, being raised from the dead, He dieth no more. And why?

1. Because the conquest is complete and final. We fight our battles, both natural and moral, over and over again. One nation conquers another, but the conquered nation recovers strength, recruits its exhausted resources, and then returns to the attack. Individually we conquer our vices, and suppose them dead, when they astonish us by a return, and the conflict is renewed. Christ, by His one death, conquered death and sin—so conquered that they cannot appear as formidable opponents. They may skirmish and do immense damage, but we must believe that their ancient power has departed. Death and sin still work, but surely not as regnant forces in Christ’s redeemed world. They move about in chains, and can only do as He permits who has the keys of Hades and of death.

2. Because the conquest has served the designed moral purpose. The death of Christ is the one death, for it answered to the movings and designs of infinite love. The death of Christ is the darkest mystery of our humanity if there be no demand for it in the moral government of the infinitely just, holy, and merciful. It is said, Why should Jesus suffer because a vindictive God so demanded? It may be asked, Why should Jesus suffer if He only died the death of a martyr? Let us remember that His sufferings were more than physical. He suffered in soul. He suffered as no martyr ever did or ever could suffer, for He suffered as sin’s victim. The sharp iron of suffering entered into His holy and sensitive soul; the burden of the world’s sinful load bowed His sacred head, and made the bead-like drops of sweat stand on His immaculate brow. Grief broke His heart of infinite love. The gloomy desolateness of the fatherly love being withdrawn crept over His darkened spirit. Why this intense sorrow? We are not here to satisfy the critical minds who do not earnestly desire satisfaction, but we feel that the only consistent explanation of Christ’s death is the old one of evangelical teachers. And if Christ died as a sacrifice, and His death was accepted, then there is no need that He should die any more.

3. Because the death has evidenced the divine love. If men will not believe in the love of God as shown in the mediatorial scheme, neither would they be persuaded though Christ should come again from the invisible world and go through the same career that He enacted in the land of Palestine. We may say it with all due reverence, that the infinite God exhausted His resources when He spared not His Son to convince men of His vast love. Christ once died at love’s call. He dieth no more to convince unconvinceable creatures. A second death could not accomplish that which the first death has failed to procure. O Love divine, touch unloving hearts, and lead them to see and feel Thy infinite love!

III. One victorious life.—Death hath no more dominion over the risen and glorified Christ. On His sacred head are many crowns—the brightest is the crown of redemption—and He will never be any more as an uncrowned being. The sceptre of life will never again be wrested from His grasp. Strange that the Prince of life should be subject unto death; but the marvel is lessened as we think of the moral purpose, as we consider the infinite love, as we contemplate the victorious life. He sees of the unimagined travail of His soul, and is abundantly satisfied. Can there be new joys, fresh emotions, to an infinite nature? In some way or other there must be fresh emotions stirred in the soul of Jesus, for He, when on earth, looked to the joy before, and now He delights in the newly gained pleasure. He sits euthroned the Prince of life in the kingdom of life and blessedness. He dieth no more.

IV. One blessed consequence.—All true believers live with Him—live with Him in a larger sense than would have been before or otherwise possible. Life is enlarged and glorified by the risen life of the once crucified Saviour. Christ dieth no more: then we have an ever-living intercessor. Christ dieth no more: then we have an abiding helper. Christ dieth no more: then we need no other sacrifice and no other priest. Christ dieth no more: then we need not fear, for the Good Shepherd will ever watch over His sheep, and lead them in pastures of delight.

Rom_6:9. Christ risen, dieth no more.—In these words we have two points which are at the bottom of all true Easter joy:

1. The reality of the Resurrection, “Christ being raised from the dead.”

2. The perpetuity of Christ’s risen life, “Christ being raised, dieth no more.” The Resurrection is not merely an article of the Creed, it is a fact in the history of mankind. If the testimony which can be proved for the Resurrection concerned only a political occurrence or a fact of natural history witnessed some eighteen hundred years ago, nobody would think of denying its cogency. Those who do reject the truth of the Resurrection, quarrel, not with the proof that the Resurrection has occurred, but with the prior idea that such a thing could happen under any circumstances. No proof would satisfy this class of minds, because they have made up their minds that the thing cannot be. We Christians may well say it is the first of miracles, and as such it must be unwelcome to those who make their limited personal experience of the world of nature the measure of all spiritual as well as all physical truth. This is the joy, the happiness, which is brought to many a human soul by such a fact as the resurrection of Christ. It tells us that matter is not the governing principle of this universe. It assures us that matter is controlled; that there is a Being, that there is a will, to which matter can offer no effective resistance; that He is not bound by the laws of the universe; that He, in fact, controls them. The Resurrection was not an isolated miracle, done, and then over, leaving things much as they had been before. The risen Christ is not, like Lazarus, marked off from every other man as one who had visited the realms of death, but knowing that He must again be a tenant of the grave. “Christ being risen, dieth no more.” His risen body is made up of flesh, bone, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man’s nature, but it has superadded qualities. It is so spiritual that it can pass through closed doors without collision or disturbance. It is beyond the reach of those causes which slowly or swiftly bring down our bodies to the dust. Being raised from the dead, it dies no more. The perpetuity of the life of the risen Jesus is the guarantee of the perpetuity of the Church. Alone among all forms of society, the Church of Christ is ensured against complete dissolution. Christ, risen from death, dying no more, is the model of our new life in grace. I do not mean that absolute sinlessness is attainable by any Christian here. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.” But faithfulness in our intentions, avoidance of known sources of danger, escape from presumptuous sins—these are possible and necessary. Those lives which are made up of alternating recovery and relapse—recovery, perhaps, during Lent, followed by relapse after Easter—or even lives lived with one foot in the grave, without anything like a strong vitality, with their feeble prayers, half-indulged inclinations, with weaknesses which may be physical, but which a regenerate will should do at once away with—men risen from the dead, yet without any seeming promise of endurance in life,—what would St. Paul say to these? “Christ being … no more.” Just as He left His tomb this Easter morning once for all, so should the soul once risen be dead to sin. The risen life of Jesus tells us what our own new life should be. Not that God, having raised us by His grace from spiritual death, forces us, whether we will or not, to live on continuously. But how, you ask, how can we rejoice in our risen Lord if we are so capable in our weakness of being untrue to His example? I answer, Because that resurrection life is the strength of our own as well as its model. Pray then in the spirit of this text that at least if you have risen you may persevere. Perseverance is a grace, just as much as faith, hope, charity, contrition. The secret strength of perseverance is a share in the risen life of Jesus. Perseverance may be won by earnest prayer for union with our risen Lord.—Canon Liddon.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Rom_6:1-11

Christians dead to sin.—The words, according to their most obvious meaning, seem to refer merely to the engagement to avoid sin, which is implied in the act of becoming Christians. God forbid! exclaims the apostle, that any person should so grievously pervert the doctrine of Christ as to think that it encourages continuance in sin in order to afford the more ample scope for the exercise of divine grace, for by the very act of becoming Christians we became dead to sin. This strong expression means simply that we professed ourselves ready to die unto sin, to resist all its temptations, and through the aid of divine grace to overcome them; and how then can we continue in the practice of that which we have so solemnly renounced? This would be contradicting, in our conduct, the profession which we have made, and showing that our profession is insincere and hypocritical, and that we have no title to the sacred character of Christians to which we lay claim. No true Christian can act on a principle so directly incompatible with the engagements implied in assuming the Christian character.—Ritchie.

Christ died a sin offering.—“For in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.” To die unto sin, by the common Scripture use of the words, means to cease to commit sin. But this cannot be affirmed of any but those who have lived in the practice of it, and therefore it is wholly inapplicable to our blessed Saviour, who did no sin. No doubt the words may be so paraphrased as to make them applicable to Him without any paraphrase: “For in that He died, He died by sin once”—that is, died on account of it; sin was the cause of His dying. Or perhaps still more appositely, He died for sin—that is, for a sin offering. The expression He died for “sin once” indicates that this once offering up of Himself was sufficient, and that therefore no further sacrifice was necessary “But in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.” This clause admits of being rendered like the former: “He liveth by God”—that is, by the power of God; the allusion being to what is said in the fourth verse, that Jesus was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father. But the more obvious and natural idea suggested by the words is that He liveth to the praise of God—He lives to promote the glory of God by carrying the plan of providence founded on the mediatorial dispensation forward to its appointed issue, and thus accomplishing the holy and gracious purposes which the Almighty hath determined to bring to pass. The verse might therefore be paraphrased: “For in that He died, He died once for all as a sacrifice for sin; but in that He liveth, He liveth for ever to promote the glory of God.” Thése words convey the important and consoling doctrine, so often quoted in Scripture, that the death of Christ is a sacrifice for sin, all perfect in its nature and sufficient to reconcile us to God, and that therefore He needed not repeat it, the once offering of Himself being sufficient “to perfect for ever them that are sanctified.” And they convey the further encouraging truth that Christ, being raised from the dead, is now vested with all power as mediator of the new covenant, and “able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him.”—Ritchie.

Believer’s death to sin gradual.—We conclude by saying that death to sin is not an absolute cessation of sin at any moment whatever, but an absolute breaking of the will with it, with its instincts and aspirations, and that simply under the control of faith in Christ’s death for sin. The practical application of the apostle’s doctrine regarding this mysterious death, which is at the foundation of Christian sanctification, seems to me to be this: The Christian’s breaking with sin is undoubtedly gradual in its realisation, but absolute and conclusive in its principle. As in order to break really with an old friend whose evil influence is felt half measures are insufficient, and the only efficacious means is a frank explanation, followed by a complete rupture which remains like a barrier raised beforehand against every new solicitation; so to break with sin there is needed a decisive and radical act, a divine deed taking possession of the soul, and interposing henceforth between the will of the believer and sin (Gal_6:14). This divine deed necessarily works through the action of faith in the sacrifice of Christ.—Godet.

Purpose of our death in Christ.—Christ once lived under the curse of sin and in a body over which death ruled. He died, and arose from the dead. By dying once He escaped for ever from the curse of sin, and from death, the result of sin. He now lives a life of which God is the only aim. In former days we did the bidding of sin, and were thus exposed to the anger of God. To make it consistent with His justice to save us, God gave Christ to die, and raised Him from the dead. His purpose is to unite us to Christ, so that we may share Christ’s life and moral nature. For this end we were formally united to Christ in baptism. We were thus joined to One who was by death set free from death, and was raised by God into a deathless life. Therefore if the purpose of God be realised in us, we are practically dead with Christ. And if so, all law proclaims us free. We therefore infer that the purpose of our death with Christ is to free us from the service of sin. And if so, we also infer that our union with Christ is more than union with His death. For we see Christ not only free from sin, but living a life devoted to God; and we know that such devotion to Himself is what God requires from us. Therefore we are sure that God designs us to be united to Christ, both in His freedom from sin and in His active devotion to God. Consequently to live in sin is to resist God’s purpose for us, and to renounce the new life to which baptism was designed to lead us.—Beet.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6

Rom_6:4. A converted Bechuana.—The missionary Casilis told us that he was one day questioning a converted Bechuana as to the meaning of a passage analogous to that before us (Col_3:3). The latter said to him: “Soon I shall be dead, and they will bury me in my field. My flocks will come to pasture above me. But I shall no longer hear them, and I shall not come forth from my tomb to take them and carry them with me to the sepulchre. They will be strange to me, as I to them. Such is the image of my life in the midst of the world since I believed in Christ.”

Rom_6:5-7. Carthage must be destroyed.—It is reported of Cato that he never spake in the Senate upon public business, but he ended his speech by inculcating the necessity of destroying Carthage; his well-known maxim was, “Delenda est Carthago.” The believer’s motto is, “The old man must be crucified.” Destruction of sin.—Five persons were studying what were the best means to mortify sin: one said, to meditate on death; the second, to meditate on judgment; the third, to meditate on the joys of heaven; the fourth, to meditate on the torments of hell; the fifth, to meditate on the blood and sufferings of Jesus Christ; and certainly the last is the choicest and strongest motive of all. If ever we would cast off our despairing thoughts, we must dwell and muse much upon and apply this precious blood to our own souls; so shall sorrow and mourning flee away.—Mr. Brooks.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

Second Section.—The contradiction between sin and grace. The calling of Christians to newness of life, since they were translated by baptism into the death of Christ from the sphere of sin and death into the sphere of the new life.

Rom_6:1-11

1What shall we say then? Shall [May]1 we continue in sin, that grace may 2abound? God forbid[Let it not be!].2 How shall we, that are dead [who died]3to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as [all we who]3 were baptized into Jesus Christ [Christ Jesus]4 were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we are [were] buried with him by [through] baptism into death: that [in order that] like [omit like] as Christ was raised up from the dead by [through] the glory of the Father, even [omit even] so we also should walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been planted together in [become united5 with]6 the likeness of his death, we shall be also in [with] the likeness of his resurrection: 6Knowing this, that our old man is [was] crucified with him, that [in order that]7 the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforthwe should not serve [be slaves to]8 sin. 7For he that is dead [hath died]9 is freed [acquitted] from sin. 8Now if we be dead [died] with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:10 9Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him [dominion over him no more]. 10For in that [or, the death that]11 he died, he died unto sin once 11[for all]: but in that [or, the life that] he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise [Thus] reckon ye also yourselves to be [omit to be]12 dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord [ἐν Χριστῶ Ἰησοῦ, in Christ Jesus, omit our Lord].13

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

The section Rom_6:1-11. Survey. The death of Christians to sin, and their new life.

a. The effect and demand of grace: death and life, Rom_6:1-2.

b. According to baptism, Rom_6:3-4.

c. According to the connection with Christ in His death and resurrection, Rom_6:5-6.

d. According to the power and import of death, especially as a dying with Christ, Rom_6:7-8.

e. According to the power of the new life as an incorruptible life with Christ, Rom_6:9-11.

Rom_6:1. What then shall we say? The οὖν introduces the true conclusion from the previous verses, Rom_5:20-21, by repelling the false conclusion which might be deduced from what is said there. [ἐπιμένωμεν, the deliberative subjunctive. See note on ἔχωμεν, p. 160.—P. S.]

Rom_6:2. Let it not be [μὴγέοιτο]. See Rom_3:4; Rom_3:6 [and Textual Note6, p. 112.—P. S.]

How shall we who died to sin [οἱτινες ἀπεθάνομεν τῆἁμαρτία.] οἵτινες [decribing the quality], as such who. Living in sin is utterly contradictory to the character of Christians. And the contradiction is very intense, not simply because of the aversion and repulsion between natural death and life referred to by Rungius (see Tholuck).14 The Christian is specifically dead to sin; and the life in sin, as a definitely false life, is opposed to this definite death. We have here an expression, therefore, not merely of “freedom from all life-fellowship with sin” [so Meyer], but also of the positive contradiction and repulsion between sin and Christian life. The reality of this contradiction is decided, figuratively exhibited, and sacramentally sealed by baptism. Yet the Apostle does not simply borrow his expression of it from baptism; but, rather, the death and resurrection of Christ underlie the figurative meaning of baptism.

[ἀπεθάνομεν, we died (not, are dead, E. V.), is the historic aorist, as ἥμαρτον, v. 12, and ἀπεθάνετε σὺν τῶ Χριστῶ, Col_2:20; comp. Gal_2:19, νόμω̣ ὰπὲθανον; Rom_7:4. The act of dying refers to the time of baptism, Rom_6:3 (Bengel, Meyer, Philippi, Alford, Wordsworth), which, in the Apostolic Church, usually coincided with conversion and justification, and implied a giving up of the former life of sin, and the beginning of a new life of holiness. The remission of sin, which is divinely assured and sealed by baptism, is the death of sin. Sin forgiven is hated, sin unforgiven is cherished. This, too, shows the inseparable connection between justification and sanctification; and yet they are kept distinct: the justified is sanctified, not vice versâ; first we are freed from the guilt (reatus) of sin, then from the dominion of sin; and we are freed from the one in order to be freed from the other. τῇἁμαρτία, as far as regards sin; it is the dative of reference, as Gal_2:19; 1Pe_2:24; while in Col_2:20 Paul uses ἀπό with the genitive in the same sense. A similar phrase is σταυροῦσθ αι τῶ̣χόσμω̣, Gal_6:14, to be crucified to the world, so as to destroy all vital connection with it, and to have no more to do with it, except to oppose and hate it. πῶς expresses the possibility, which is denied by the question (Meyer), with a feeling of indignation (Grotius: indignum est si loti in lutum revolvimur). ζήσομεν covers the whole future. To live in sin, to hold any connection with it, is henceforth and forever incompatible with justification.—P. S.]

Rom_6:3. Know ye not [Or are ye ignorant, ἢἀγνοεῖτε;]. This form of speech, like Rom_7:1, is undoubtedly a reminder of something already known to the readers (Tholuck), yet it imparts at the same time a more definite consciousness and a fuller view of what is known. “It is very questionable,” says Tholuck, “whether other apostles exhibit baptism with the same mystical profoundness as Paul did.” But 1Pe_3:17-22 is a modification of the same fundamental thought. So, too, 1Jn_5:4-6. [Paul evidently regarded baptism not merely as a sign, but also as an effective means of grace (comp. Gal_3:27; Col_2:12; Tit_3:5; Eph_5:26); else he would have reminded his readers of their conversion rather than their baptism. We must always remember, however, that in the first missionary age of the Church the baptism of adults implied, as a rule, genuine conversion—the baptism of Simon Magus being an exception.—P. S.]

That so many of us (all we who were). “Οσοι, quotquot. [It denotes universality, as many of us as, all without exception, but it is not stronger than οἵτινες, which indicates the quality, such of us as.—P. S.] The phrase βαπτίζειν εἰς retains the most direct figurative reference of baptism. It means strictly, to immerse into Christ (Rückert)—that is, into the fellowship of Christ. [Comp. Rom_6:4 : βάπτισμα εἰς θάνατον; Gal_3:27 : εἰς Χριστὸν ἐβαπτίσθητε; Mat_28:19 : εἰς τὸ ὄνομα. Alford: “ ‘ Into participation of,’ ‘into union with’ Christ, in His capacity of spiritual Mastership, Headship, and Pattern of conformity.”—P. S.] The explanation of Meyer [accepted by Hodge], that it never means any thing else than to baptize in reference to, with relation to, and that the more specific definitions must arise from the context, fails to do justice to this original meaning. [Comp. Lange and Schaff on Matthew, pp. 555 (Textual Note6), 557, 558, 560.—P. S.] But the baptizing into the full, living fellowship of Christ, is, as the Apostle remarks, a baptism into the fellowship of His death. And there is implied here, according to the idea of a covenant, the Divine adjudication of this saving fellowship on the one hand, and the human obligation for an ethical continuance of the fellowship on the other. The explanation of Grotius and others, the idea of imitation, is digressive, and weakens the sense. See Gal_3:27; Col_2:11; Tit_3:5.

Rom_6:4. Therefore we were buried with him [συνετάφημεν οὖναὐτῷ διὰτοῦ. βαπτίσματος εἰς τὸν θάνατον. To be buried is a stronger expression than to die, for the burial confirms death and raises it beyond doubt; it withdraws the dead from our sight, and annihilates him, as it were. The same figure in Col_2:12. The mystic σύν in συντάφομαι, as also in συναποθνήσκω, συσταυροῦμαι, &c., signifies the life-union of the believer with Christ; comp. the remarks of Tholuck, p. 281 f.—P. S.]. Buried in death; an oxymoron, according to which burial precedes and death follows, as is illustrated in the immersion into the bath of baptism. The analogous feature in the life of Christ was His rejection by the world, and His violent death on the cross. The expression denotes not only a burial before death and for death, but it is likewise an expression of the decision and completion of death, and, finally, a reference to the transition from death to the resurrection. The finished κατάδυσις, as the bringing about of the ἀνάδυσις; Col_2:12.15

Into death [εἰς τὸν θάνασον]. The death of Christ is not merely a death of the individual Jesus, but the death which, in principle or power, comprehends all mankind, and which absolutely separates the old world and the new world. Therefore it must not here be particularized (Calov.: the declared death of sin; others give different interpretations). [Εἰς τὺν θάνατον must be closely connected with βαπτίσματος, baptism into the death of Christ for the appropriation of its full benefit, viz., the remission of sins and reconciliation with God.—P. S.]

In order that, as Christ was raised up [ἵνα ὥςπερ ἠγέθη Χριστος ἐκ νεκρῶν διὰ τῆς δόξης τοῦ Πατρός, κ.τ.λ.]. The purpose of dying with Christ. The power that raised our Lord was the δόξα of the Father. Thus the resurrection of Christ is traced back to the highest Cause. God is the Father, as Origin and Author of the spiritual world comprehended in Christ. Before the Father’s name the creature-world ascends into the spiritual world, and the spiritual world is conjoined in the Son. The glory of the Father is the concentrated revelation of all the attributes of the Father in their unity, especially of His omnipotence (1Co_6:14; Eph_1:19), wisdom, and goodness; or of His omnipotent love in its faithfulness, and of His personality in its most glorious deed.16 Before the glory of the Father the whole living world goes to ruin, is doomed to death, in order that the dead Christ may be made alive as Prince of the resurrection. Applications of the δόξα to the divinity of Christ (Theodoret [ἡ οἰκεία θεότης], and others); in gloriam patris (Beza [inadmissible on account of διά with the genitive]); in paterna gloria resurrexit (Castalio).

From the dead, ἐκ νεκρῶν. The world of the dead is regarded as a connected sphere. Also antithesis to εἰς θάνατον.

So we also should walk in newness of life [οὕτως και ἡμεῖς ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν]: In newness of life; that is, in a new kind and form of life, which is subsequently denoted as incorruptibility, and therefore also by implication as continual newness and perpetual renewal of existence. Consequently, more than ζωὴκαινή (Grotius).17 [Meyer, Alford: “Not ‘a new life;’—nor are such expressions ever to be diluted away thus.”—P. S.] Walk gives prominence to the practical proof of this newness in new, free conduct of life.

Rom_6:5. For if we have grown together [εἰ γὰρ σύμφυτοι γεγόναμεν]. The expression σύμφυτος, denoting originally inborn [innate]; born with [congenital, connate], means here the same as συμφυν́ς, grown together by nature. [Grotius: coaluimus; Tholuck, Philippi, Meyer: zusammengewachsen, verwachsen mit, concretus; Stuart: become homogeneous; Alford: intimately and progressively united.—P. S.] The expression complantati (Vulgate, Luther [E. V.: planted together]) goes too far, and is not justified by the language;18 while the interpretation grafted into (Erasmus [Calvin, Estius, Conybeare and Howson], and others) does not express enough here [and would require ἐμφύτευτος, insititius.—P. S.] The figure denotes: believers as a unity of different branches in one root or one trunk. These characters, which are united in one spirit, as the grapes of a cluster, have sprung from one gospel or new principle of life. Thus believers have grown into an image or analogue of the death of Jesus (τῷ ὁμοιώματι, dative of direction), but not with such an analogue (Meyer, Tholuck), with which we cannot connect any clear thought. [Philippi and Meyer explain: grown together, or, intimately connected with the likeness of His death; the ὁμοίωμα being spiritual death, so that the meaning is: If we are spritually dead to sin, as Christ was physically dead, &c. So in the other clause our spiritual resurrection is the ὁμοίωμα of the bodily resurrection of Christ.—P. S.] Neither can τῷ ὁμοιώματι be the dative of instrument: We have grown together with Christ [τῷ Χριστῷ being understood as in Rom_6:6] through the resemblance of His death-baptism, the likeness of His death (Erasmus [Beza, Grotius], Fritzsche, Baur [Van Hengel], and most others). For [this would require αὺτῶ̣ after σύμφυτοι, and] believers are not grown together by the likeness of the death of Christ, but by His death itself in a religious sense, as cause (through the medium of the gospel), in order that, as an organism, they should now exhibit as a copy His death in the ethical sense.

We shall be also with his resurrection [ἀλλὰ καὶ τῆς ἀναστἅσεως ἐσόμεθα]. The antithesis is strengthened by ἀλλά [which is used sometimes also by the classics for the rapid and emphatic introduction of the antithetical idea, in the apodosis after a hypothetical protasis; see Meyer in loc., and Hartung, Partikellehre, ii. p. 40.—P. S.]. We shall also be grown together with Him into the likeness of His resurrection (Beza, Grotius, Meyer, Philppi; Tholuck: “abbreviated comparative”). Not σύμφυτοι τῆς ἀναστάσεως (Erasmus, Calvin, Olshausen, and others).19 The reference of the expression to the resurrection of the body (by Tertullian, and others) is not in harmony with the context (see Rom_6:4); yet is altogether authorized by Rom_6:9, if we regard the new life as continuing to the bodily resurrection (therefore an ethical and physical resurrection, which Meyer and Tholuck oppose). The future, ἐσόμεθα, is indeed not imperative (Reiche [Olshausen, Stuart: expressive of obligation]); nor does it denote willingness (Fritzsche), but the certainty of the result, the necessary consequence of dying together with Christ [Tholuck, Meyer, Hodge], if we understand thereby not merely a natural consequence, but an ethical one, which involves an ever-new willingness. This is likewise indicated by what immediately follows.

Rom_6:6. Knowing this. That objective relation of the resurrection is not only confirmed by the subjective consciousness (Meyer), but it is also conditioned by it.

That our old man [ὁ παλαιὸς ἡμῶνἄνθρωπος]. Meyer: our old ego. This is liable to misunderstanding, and expresses too much. Meyer further explains: “Personification of the entire state of sinfulness before the παλιγγενεσία (Joh_3:3; Tit_3:5; Eph_4:22; Col_3:9).” This expresses too little. The old man is the whole sinfulness of man, which, proceeding from Adam, and pervading the old world and making it old, has become, in the concrete human image, the pseudo-plasmatic phantom of human nature and the human form20 (see Rom_8:3). Tholuck’s explanation is almost unintelligible: “Indication of the ego of the earlier personality; as in ἔσω ἄνθρωπος, ὁ κρυπτὸς ἐν τῆ καρδία ἄνθρωπος, 1Pe_3:4.21

Was [not is, as in the E. V.] crucified with him [συνεσταύρω θη, comp. Gal_2:20 : Χριστῷ συνεσταῦρωμαι· ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοἰ Χριστός]. “Namely, at the time when we were baptized,” says Meyer [referring to Rom_6:3-4]. But this is rather a superficial view. Baptism has actually and individually realized a connection which had already been realized potentially and generally in the death on the cross; see 2Co_5:14-15; Gal_2:19; Col_3:1. Tholuck: “Calovius says very properly against Grotius: σύν non similitudinem notat, verum simultatem, ut ita dicam, et communionem. The accessory idea of pain, or of gradual death [advocated by Grotius, Stuart, Barnes], could hardly have been thought of in this connection by the Apostle.” Yet we are also reminded of the violence and effective energy of the death on the cross by the following: in order that the body of sin might be destroyed. The destructive power of the death on the cross involves not merely pain and sorrow, but also the ignominy of the cross of Christ. According to Meyer, Paul only made use of the expression because Christ had died on the cross.

In order that the body of sin might be destroyed [ἵνα καταργηθῇ τὸ σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας; comp. τὸ σῶμα τῆς σαρκός, Col_2:11, and τὸ σῶμα τοῦ θανάτου τούτου, Rom_7:24]. It is self-evident, from Paul and the whole Bible, that there is not the slightest reference here to a [literal] destruction of the body [i.e., of this physical organism which is only dissolved in physical death, and which, instead of being annihilated, is to be sanctified; comp. 1Co_6:20; 1Th_5:23; Rom_13:14.—P. S.]. As “the old man” is the pseudo-plasmatic phantom of man, so is “the body of sin” the phantom of a body in man consisting of his whole sinfulness; and so, further on, is the body of death (Rom_7:24) the phantom of a corporeal power of death encompassing man. It is remarkable that most of the later expositors (with the exception of Philippi, p. 210 ff.) reject the constructions that are most nearly correct, to substitute for them others which are dualistic.

1. Figurative explanations. Sin under the figure of a body.

a. The totality of sin (Origen, Grotius). [Chrysostom: ἡ ὁλόκληρος ἁμαρτία. Calvin: “Corpus peccati non carnem et ossa, sed massam designat.” More accurately: Sin is personified as a living organism with many members (vices), which may be put to death. So Philippi: “Die Masse der Sünde als gegliederter Organismus.” Bloomfield: “Τὸ σῶμα τῆς ἁμαρτίας is the same with ὁ παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος, and means that sin is a body consisting of many particular members or vices, an imperium in imperio.”—P. S.]

b. The nature or substance of sin (Schöttgen).

c. The figure of sin with reference to the figure of the crucifixion (Calov., Wolf, and others).

d. “The tendency of alienation from God and conformity to the pleasures of the world” (J. Müller, and others; Tholuck, p. 290).

e. More strongly: The whole man in his departure from God; the natural man (Augustin, Luther, Calvin [Hodge: “The body of sin” is only another name for “the old man,” or rather for its concrete form]).

f. Reduced to a minimum: Bad habit (Pelagius).

2. Literal explanations:

a. The flesh as flesh of sin, σὰρξ ἁμαρτίας (Rosenmüller).

b. “The body belonging to the principle of sin, the body ruled by sin.” The old man had such a body, and this σῶμα, as far as it is a body of sin, should be completely destroyed by crucifixion with Christ” (Meyer). An utter confusion of the figurative and literal construction. [Winer, Gramm., p. Rom 177: the body which belongs to sin, in which sin has its existence and dominion, almost the same with σῶμα τῆς σαρχός, Col_1:22. Similarly Alford, after De Wette: the body, which belongs to or serves sin, in which sin rules or is manifested, = τὰ μέλη, Rom_6:13, in which is ὁ νόμος τῆς άμαρτίας, Rom_7:23. Wordsworth: the body of sin is our body, so far as it is the seat and instrument of sin, and the slave of sin.—P. S.]

c. The body as σῶμα τῆς σαρχός, and the latter the seat of sin (Semler, Usteri, Rückert, Ritschl, Rothe, Hofmann; see Tholuck, p. 290).22

3. The anti-dualistic expositors, who interpreted this σῶμα as the real body or the natural man, were compelled to render improperly the καταργηθῇ, as: evacuaretur, might be made inoperative and powerless. [Tertullian, Augustin; also Stuart and Barnes: might be deprived of efficiency, power, life. Alford: rendered powerless, annulled, as far as regards energy and activity.—P. S.]

That henceforth we should not be slaves to sin. [Calvin: “finem abolitionis notat.”] Sin is regarded as the controlling power (see Rom_6:16); Joh_8:44. If this power is to be broken, the body of sin must be crucified. The reason for this is given in what follows. [τοῦ μηκέτι δουλεύειν ἡυᾶς τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ is a more concrete expression of the aim than the preceding clause, ἵνα χαταργηθῇ, χ.τ.λ.. See Winer, p. 569.—P. S.]

Rom_6:7. For he that hath died is acquitted from sin. [̔Ο γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας; comp. 1Pe_4:1 : ὅτι ὁ παθὼν ἐν σαρχὶ, πέπαυται ἁμαρτίας. The interpretations of this passage depend upon the meaning of ἀποθανών, whether it is to be taken in a physical, or in a moral (legal), or in a spiritual (mystic) sense—P. S.] The chief and only question here is not ethical dying, or dying with Christ (Erasmus, Calvin, Cocceius, Bengel, Olshausen [De Wette, Philippi], and others. And the reason for this is, first, because justification must not be regarded as the consequence, but the cause of the ethical dying with Christ. Second, because not merely the being justified or freed from sin should be proved, in and of itself, but the being justified or freed from sin by death. An earlier, already present, universal, moral, and theocratical law of life is thus used to illustrate the new, religious, and ethical law of life in Christianity, in the same way that Rom_7:1-6 has reference to such a law. The universal principle which the Apostle makes his groundwork here in the figurative expression, is the word in Rom_6:23 : The wages of sin is death. The Grecian and Roman form of this antithesis was: by execution the offender is justified and separated from his crime (Alethæus, Wolf, and others). The theocratic form was the same decree of death for sin, according to Gen_2:17; Gen_9:6; Lev_23:1 ff. The sinner who was made a curse-offering, Cherem, was morally destroyed in a symbolical sense, but, at the same time, his guilt also, as well as his life of sin, was destroyed in a symbolical sense. According to Gen_2:17, the same thing held good of natural death, not so far as it, as a momentary power, put an end to the sinner’s present life (Chrysostom, and others), but rather because it made a penal suffering extending into eternity (Sheol) the punishment of sin. All these modifications are grouped in the primitive law: death is the wages of sin; and this is the law which the Apostle makes the image of the Christian law of life. The Christian dies to sin by being crucified with Christ. Now, the being justified does not mean here justification by faith in itself (although dying with Christ is connected therewith), but justification as a release from sin by the death of the sinner himself. Because Meyer ignores the complete Old Testament idea of death, he attacks the statute of Jewish theology: death, as the punishment of sin, atones for the guilt of sin. He explains the Apostle’s declaration thus: “He is made a δίφραιος by death, not as if he were now free from the guilt of his sins committed in life, but so far as he sins no more.” The explanation of ethical death with Christ (Rothe, Philippi, and others already mentioned) here makes what is to be proved the proof itself (as Meyer properly remarks). Meyer refers the passage to physical death as exit from the present life—a view in which regard is not paid to penal suffering.23 Better than this is the view: As activity ceases in the dead, and sin with it, so should it also be with you who have died with Christ (Theodoret, Melanchthon, Grotius). But there is the same inadequateness of the comparison. Tholuck’s exposition is utterly untenable (with reference to Calvin, Bengel, Spener, and others), that sin should here be regarded as a creditor who has just claims on man, &c.; for, while a debtor is released by death from his creditor, there is by no means a δικαιοῦσθαι of the debtor from his debt.24

Rom_6:8. Now if we died with Christ, &c. [Εὶ δέ ἀπεθάνομεν σύν Χριστῷ]. δέ announces the transition to the new thought, that believers, having died with Christ, would also live with Him. But this is not a mere conclusion from the being dead to the new life; the accent rests on the qualification with Christ, because Christ lives. As we are dead with Christ in His death, in its profoundest meaning and effect—which death comprises the separation from the entire old world, and its sin and vanity—so do we believe that we shall also live with him [ὅπιστεύομεν ὅτικαί συνζήσομε ναὺτῷ] in the supremely highest and most intense life—which life is eternal, and is an eternal life. Meyer emphasizes simply the inference from the ethical death with Christ to ethical participation in the new and enduring life of Christ. He is much in error in excluding here [with Philippi] the idea of the Christian’s future share in the blessedness of the glorified Saviour (see chap. 8), as Origen, Chrysostom, Grotius, Reiche, and others are in confining συζήσομεν to the future life. Rosenmüller, Tholuck, and others, have properly comprised both these elements; yet the chief emphasis rests upon the assurance of the new ethical life as implying the full freedom from all sin in the fellowship of Christ. Tholuck, with Erasmus, Calvin, and others, emphasizes once for all [ἐφάπαξ, Rom_6:10] as an eternal destination to new life. This destination is commensurate with the certainty of being dead with Christ. Yet, granting full force to the conclusion, it is still an object of faith (πιστεύομεν), which rests mainly on Christ as the risen One. (Different interpretations of πιστεύομεν: Confidence in Divine assistance, Fritzsche; in the Divine promise, Baumgarten-Crusius; in God as the Finisher of the commenced work of grace, Philippi [comp. 1Th_5:24; 2Th_3:3; 2Ti_2:11]).

Rom_6:9. Knowing, &c. From faith in the risen One there arises the certain knowledge that henceforth He can never die; because He could die but once, inasmuch as, with the guilt of sin, He had assumed also the judgment of death. [Alford: Death could not hold Him, and had no power over Him further than by His own sufferance; but power over Him it had, inasmuch as He died. Meyer: The κυριεύειν of death over Christ was decreed by God (Rom_6:8-10), and brought about by Christ’s voluntary obedience (Joh_10:18; Mat_20:28). The conviction that Christ lives for ever furnishes the ground and support to our own life-union with Him.]

Rom_6:10. For in that he died, or, the death which he died. The expression, ὅἀπέθανεν, may mean: as far as His death is concerned (Winer); or, as far as the death which He died is concerned (De Wette); or that which He died, so that ὅ is viewed as the subject [or rather as the accusative of the object; comp. Gal_2:20 : ὁ δέ νῦν ζῶ.—P. S.]. We prefer the last exposition, but do not refer the ὅ, with Benecke (after Hilarius, and others) to the mortal part of Christ [that which died in Christ], but to Christ’s great and unexampled experience of death. All his dying was abhorrence of sin, induced by sin, directed against sin.—Unto sin he died [τῇ ἀμαρτίᾳ25 ἀπέθανεν]. Explanations: ad expianda peccata (Grotius, Olshausen); or, ad expianda et tollenda p. (Tholuck [Reiche, Fritzsche], Philippi); [or, to destroy the power of sin (Chrysostom, Beza, Calvin, Bengel, Ewald]). Indefinite reference to death (Rückert, De Wette [Alford], and others). Meyer: His death paid the debt to sin, and now it can have no more power over Him. Hofmann: With His death, all passive relation to sin has ceased. Certainly the parallel in Rom_6:11 [νεκροὺς τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ] seems to require a similar rendering. Yet we must not merely bring out prominently the repulsiveness of sin to the life of Jesus, but rather the repulsiveness of His life to sin—which repulsiveness was consummated in His death. Both together constitute the absolute separation.

Once [ἐφάπαξ]. Once for all. [The one sacrifice on the cross, as the sacrifice of the infinite Son of God, has infinite value both as to extent and time, and hence excludes repetition; comp. Heb_7:27; Heb_9:12; Heb_9:26; Heb_9:28; Heb_10:10; 1Pe_3:18.—P. S.]

But in that he liveth, or, the life that he liveth [ὅ δέ ζῇ, ζῇ τῶ̣ Θ εῶ̣]. All His life, His whole glorious life, is for God. As His death consisted wholly in the ethical reaction against sin, so His life consists wholly in consecration to God, His honor, and His kingdom. [Christ’s life on earth was also a life for God, but in conflict with sin and death, over which He triumphed in the resurrection.—P. S.] Theophylact’s view is wrong: by the power of God.

Rom_6:11. Thus reckon ye also yourselves (account yourselves) dead indeed unto sin [Οὕτως καὶ ὑμεῖςλογίζεσθε έαυτοὺς νεκροὺς μὲν τῇ άμαρτί ᾳ]. A λογίζεσθαι of Christ does not stand as a parallel to λογίζεσθε (which is imperative, and not indicative, as Bengel would have it).26 It should rather be derived from the meaning of the death of Christ, according to Rom_6:10.

But alive unto God in Christ Jesus [ἐν χρ.’Ιησ.]. That is, in fellowship, or living union with Him (not merely through Him).27 It refers not simply to living to God (Rückert, De Wette [Alford]), but also to being dead to sin [Reiche, Meyer]. The λογίζεσθε requires of Christians that they should understand what they are as Christians, as members of Christ, according to the duties of common fellowship (Tholuck, Philippi); but not that they should attain to this condition by moral effort (Baur). That is, Christian life proceeds upon the believing presupposition of our completion in Christ; but this completion is not, reversely, brought to pass by a moral effort. Of course, the telic completion then meets the principial completion as the goal of effort.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See the Preliminary Remarks on chaps. 6–8, and the inscription to the present section, chap Rom_6:1-11.

2. On Rom_6:1. The false conclusion which anomianism has ever derived from the fact that sin, in its complete development, occasions a still more glorious revelation of grace, rests on the erroneous supposition that the ethical and organic relation on both sides is a purely natural relation, which justifies to an altogether passive conduct in religious and moral things. This anomianism appears in Indian heathendom, as well as in modern humanitarianism, chiefly in a pantheistic form. But in Christian religiousness it appears only sporadically in this form; yet mostly, on the other hand, in dualistic forms. This is as much as to say, that if the flesh be indulged in its sphere, the spirit will likewise maintain the ascendency in its sphere; or, grace will overcome sin, and the like. But in every form this anomianism is to the Apostle an object of religious and moral abhorrence, which he expresses by μὴ γένοιτο. He opposes this false conclusion by the truth of the relation according to which the whole of Christianity is rooted in a thoroughly religious and moral act—the death of Jesus.

3. Baptism, in its full meaning, is a dying with Christ, which is potentially grounded in the dynamic meaning of His dying for all (2Co_5:14), and is actually realized in the dynamical genesis of faith. It follows from this that it is not only a partial purification of the living sinner, but his fundamental purification by a spiritual death and burial; that, further, it not merely represents sensibly and seals the single parts and acts of the Christian life, but its whole justification, in all its parts; and therefore that it is available, operative, and obligatory once for all. It follows, finally, that baptism is not simply an ecclesiastical act performed on the individual, when the individual is passive, but an ethical covenant-transaction between Christ and the one who is baptized; wherefore even the baptism of children presupposes in the family, the parents, or the sponsors, a spirit of faith which represents and encompasses the child.

From all this it will be seen how very much baptism is obscured and desecrated by regarding it either as a mere ceremony which certifies the Christian life of the person baptized, or, on the other hand, as a onesided and magical act which is supposed to create the Christian life.

[In opposition to the low and almost rationalistic views now prevailing in a large part of Protestantism on the meaning and import of Christian baptism, it may be well to refer to the teaching of the symbols of the Reformation down to the Westminster standards, and of the older divines, which is far deeper. Take, for instance, the Westminster Confession of Faith (chap. 28): “Baptism is a sacrament of the New Testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible Church, but also to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his in grafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.” (Comp. the Larger Catechism, Qu. 165, and Shorter Catechism, Qu. 94). Calvin says: “In treating the sacraments, two things are to be considered: the sign, and the thing signified. Thus, in baptism, the sign is water; but the thing signified is the cleansing of the soul by the blood of Christ, and the mortification of the flesh. Both of these things are comprised in the institution of Christ; and whereas often the sign appears to be ineffectual and fruitless, that comes through men’s abuse, which does not annul the nature of the sacrament. Let us learn, therefore, not to tear apart the thing signified from the sign; though, at the same time, we must be on our guard against the opposite fault, such as prevails among Papists. For, failing to make the needful distinction between the thing and the sign, they stop short at the outward element, and there confidently rest their hope of salvation. The sight of the water, accordingly, withdraws their minds from Christ’s blood and the grace of the Spirit. Not reflecting that, of all the blessings there exhibited, Christ alone is the Author, they transfer to water the glory of His death, and bind the hidden energy of the Spirit to the visible sign. What, then, must be done? Let us not separate what the Lord has joined together. We ought, in baptism, to recognize a spiritual laver; we ought in it to embrace a witness to the remission of sins and a pledge of our renewal; and yet so to leave both to Christ and the Holy Spirit the honor that is theirs, as that no part of the salvation be transferred to the sign.”—Dr. John Lillie, in his excellent posthumous Lectures on the Epistles of Peter (New York, 1869, p. 252), in commenting on 1Pe_3:21, remarks: “But what, you will ask, is baptism, then, a saving ordinance? Certainly; that is just what Christ’s Apostle here affirms. Nor is this the only place, by any means, in which the New Testament speaks of baptism in a way that would now offend many good people, were it not that the perplexing phraseology is unquestionably scriptural. Recollect, for instance, Peter’s own practical application of his pentecostal sermon: ‘Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins.’ And so Ananias in Damascus to the humbled persecutor: ‘Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins.’ Paul, too, expressly calls baptism ‘the laver of the water’ by which Christ purifies His Church; and again, ‘the laver of regeneration’ by which God saves us. Frequently, also, he represents it as that by which we are united to Christ, and made partakers of His death and resurrection. Nay, Christ Himself, in sending forth His gospel among all nations, named baptism as one condition of salvation. We need not, then, hesitate to call it a saving ordinance. But how does it save? Just as any other ordinance saves—not through any inherent virtue of its outward signs and processes, but solely as it is a channel for the communication of Divine grace, and used in accordance with the Divine intention. On the one hand, while grace is ordinarily dispensed through ordinances, it is not confined to them, God being ever higher than His own appointments, and acting, when it so pleases Him, independently of them altogether. And, on the other hand, there must be on the part of man, besides the observance of formal precept, a yielding of his whole nature to the quickening and transforming influence. Take for an example that greatest ordinance, the Word of God. It ‘is able,’ says James (Rom_1:21), ‘to save your souls.’ But how? Not simply as it is preached, or heard, or read. That it may be ‘the power of God unto salvation,’ it must first be accompanied with the ‘demonstration of the Spirit,’ and then ‘received with meekness,’ and so become the ingrafted word. It is not the foolishness of preaching that saves; but ‘it pleases God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.’ Now, just so with baptism: equally with the gospel itself, it is a Divine institution, whereby God ordinarily dispenses His grace. But its whole efficacy is due to that grace of God, and to our fitting reception and use of the rite—not to its mere external administration, by whatsoever priestly or apostolic hand.”—P. S.]

4. According to the Apostle, the burial as well as the death of Christ is represented in the meaning and effect of baptism. But as the burial of Christ not only seals His death, but also brings to pass the mysterious form of His transition to new life, so is it also with the world’s renunciation of the secret inward life of the Christian, which develops from a germ in mysterious growth, and is hid with Christ in God. (For fuller information on being baptized into the death of Christ, see Tholuck, p. 280, and Philippi, p. 205.)

5. Christianity is not only a new life, but a newness of life—a life which never grows old, but has ever a more perfect and imperishable renewal. But as the resurrection of Christ rests on a deed of the glory of the Father, so is it with the new birth of the Christian. See the Exeg. Notes.

6. Although believers are so intimately connected or grown together in a living organism as to appear to be living on the same vine or the same branch, they are nevertheless not grown together in the form of natural necessity. While unchurchly and unhistorical sectarianism ignores the organic internal character and historical structure of the Christian communion, hierarchism, on the other hand, disregards its ethical and free inward character. The life of Christ is repeated and reflected, after His death and resurrection, in His image—the Church; but not in the sense that it is quantitatively a supplement or substitute for Him, but that it completely unites itself qualitatively with Him as its living head. Because the Christian suffers death in Christ, rises, and is justified, Christ, as the crucified and risen One, lives in him. (See. Rom_8:29; Eph_1:4; Col_1:22-24; Col_2:11; Col_3:1, &c.)

7. The Apostle’s doctrine of the old man, the body of sin, the body of death, the law in the members, &c., shows a divinatory anticipation of the idea of the pseudo-plasmas, which has first appeared in the modern science of medicine. The old man is not the real man, nor the natural man, but sin, which has pervaded man as the plasmatic phantom of his nature, and, as an ethical cancer, threatens to consume him. (On the various theological interpretations of the old man, see Tholuck, p. 287. For a more complete interpretation of Paul’s pseudo-plasmatic ideas, see Exeg. Notes on Rom_7:24.)

8. Those who designate the real body of man as the source of sin, abolish the real idea of sin. Even the expression, that the body is not the source, but the seat of sin, is not correct in reference to the tendency of the wicked, and is only conditionally correct in reference to the life of the pious, in whom sin, as sinfulness, as a tempting propensity in the bodily part of the being, has its seat, and will continue to have its seat, until the old form of the body is laid off.

9. On being free from the debt of sin by death, see the Exeg. Notes. Death removes guilt—a definition which may be further formularized thus: the kind of death corresponds as justification to the kind of guilt; the depth of death corresponds to the depth of guilt. Therefore the death of Christ is the potential justification of humanity, because it plunged the absolutely guiltless and holy life into the absolute depth of the death of mankind.

10. On the expression body of sin, in Rom_6:6, compare the elaborate discussion by Tholuck, p. 288 ff. Likewise the same author, on Rom_6:9, or the relation of Christ to death; p. 306.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

On the relation of sin and grace: 1. It is true that the more powerful sin is, the more powerful is grace also; but it cannot be inferred from this, 2. That we should continue in sin. But, 3. We should wish, rather, not to live in sin, to which we died (Rom_6:1-2).—To what would continuance in sin lead? 1. Not to grace, for he who sins wilfully, trifles with grace; but, 2. To the terrible looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the rebellious (Rom_6:1-2). Heb_10:26.—Of Christian baptism. 1. What is it? a. a baptism into Christ; b. a baptism into the death of Christ. 2. Of what service is baptism to us? a. We die and are buried by it in repentance; b. we are raised by it in faith (Rom_6:3-4).—By baptism we enter into a double communion with Christ: 1. Of His death; 2. Of His resurrection.—Christians are, 1. Companions in the death of Christ; but also, 2. In His resurrection (Rom_6:5).—The crucifixion of our old man: 1. The manner and form of the old man; 2. his crucifixion.—The glorious immortality of Christ: 1. Its foundation; 2. Its importance to us (Rom_6:8-10).—We should reckon ourselves dead in relation to sin, but alive in relation to God; that Isaiah , 1. We should, by faith, be ever taking our stand-point more perfectly in Christ; and, 2. First of all in His death, but also in His life (Rom_6:11).

Starke: The suffering and death of a Christian are not to destruction, but a planting to life.

Hedinger: Under the grace of God we are not permitted to sin.—Müller: Life and death cling together; the more the old dies and goes to ruin, the more gloriously does the new man arise.—Either you will slay sin, or sin will slay you.—Where faith is there is Christ, and where Christ is there is life.

Gerlach: The baptism of Christians is a baptism into Christ’s death; that is, into the complete appropriation of its roots and fruits.

Besser: Paul places the gift of baptism first, and connects with it the duty of the one baptized.

Heubner: Recollections of our former covenant of baptism: 1. What has God done for us in baptism? 2. What have we to do in consequence of baptism?—Thomasius: The power of baptism in its permeation of the whole Christian life.—Florey: We are baptized into the death of Christ. Namely: 1. Upon the confession that He died for us; 2. On the pledge that we should die with Him; 3. In the hope that we shall live by Him.—Harless: The impediments to Christian life: 1. The pleasure of life, which is terrified at evangelical preaching on death; 2. The dulness and unbelief of spiritual death, which is terrified at evangelical preaching on life; while yet, reversely, 3. The pleasure, power, and pious conduct of the Christian rests upon the death which he has died for newness of life.

[Sherlock: As the death of Christ was not barely a natural death, a separation of soul and body, but a sacrifice for sin, to destroy the dominion of it, so our dying to sin is the truest conformity to the death of Christ; and as we must consider His resurrection as His living to God and advancement into His spiritual kingdom, so our walking in newness of life is our conformity to His resurrection, and makes us true subjects of His spiritual kingdom.—Henry: As natural death brings a writ of ease to the weary, so must we be dead to all the sins of our former rebellious life. We must be as indifferent to the pleasures and delights of sin, as a man that is dying is to his former diversions. As natural death cuts off all communication with life, so must sanctification in the soul cut off all communication with sin.—Macknight: We should daily recollect our baptism, and be stirred up by it to every religious act and thought possible, for it is this that sets before us the death and resurrection of Christ.—Clarke: The sacrificial death of Christ is the soil in which believers are planted, and from which they derive their life, their fruitfulness, and their final glory.—Hodge: It is those who look to Christ not only for pardon, but for holiness, that are successful in subduing sin; the legalist remains its slave. To be in Christ is the source of the Christian’s life; to be like Christ is the sum of his excellence; to be with Christ is the fulness of his joy.—J. F. H.]

Footnotes:

[1]Rom_6:1.—[The reading of the Rec. (ἐπιμενοῦμεν) is poorly supported? A. B. C. D. F. read ἐπιμένωμεν; adopted by Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Meyer, Alford, Wordsworth. The above emendation is supported by the last two editors. א. K., and some cursives, have ἐπιμέν ο μεν.

[2]Rom_6:2.—[Μὴγένοιτο is a very forcible negative. How it should be rendered, is perhaps a matter of taste, but the God forbid expresses its forcibleness as no other English phrase can. Comp. Gal_2:17; p. 49, note.

[3]Rom_6:3.—[The E. V. is literally correct, but the reference seems to be to those baptized as a whole (Meyer); hence the emendation, which is adopted by Alford, Wordsworth, Amer. Bible Union.

[4]Rom_6:3.—[B., and a number of cursives and fathers, omit ̓Ιησοῦν. The order in almost all authorities is Χριστὸν ̓Ιησοῦν.

[5]Rom_6:5.—[Wordsworth renders σύμφυτοι γεγόναμεν: have become connate with. This is literal and exact, but connate would scarcely be proper in a popular version. Meyer, Lange: “zusammengewachsen, grown together. United (Alford, Amer. Bible Union) is adopted in lieu of a better word. The E. V.: planted together, is based on a wrong view of the etymology of σύμφυτοι.

[6]Rom_6:5.—[In of the E. V. is not found in the Greek. With, in both clauses, is borrowed from σύμφυτοι. Any further emendation must be based on exegetical views of the verse.

[7]Rom_6:6.—[Ἴνα, telic, in order that. The next clause is telic also; but as a different form is chosen in Greek, it is better to let the simple that remain. Amer. Bible Union reverses the position of in order that, that, leaving it indefinite whether the first clause is telic.

[8]Rom_6:6.—[The verb δουλεύειν means, first, to be a servant, or slave, then, to serve. The personification of sin, implied in this passage, makes the primary meaning more correct here, and slaves is preferable to servants, for obvious reasons.

[9]Rom_6:7.—[This verse has an aorist (ἀποθανών) in the first part, and a perfect (δεδικαίωτακ) in the second. Yet the rendering: He that died has been justified from sin (Amer. Bible Union) does not convey its meaning properly. The aorist refers to something antecedent to the perfect, while the perfect states what continues to be true; hence, in English, we must invert, rendering the aorist by has died, the perfect by is acquitted. The Apostle is stating a general proposition, which is not theological, but legal; hence, acquitted is preferable to justified.

[10]Rom_6:8.—[The reading συνζήσομεν, is found in א. B1. D. F., and is now generally adopted. Rec.: συζήσομεν found in B2. L. C. K., have συζήσωμεν; which Lange considers a legal correction to the hortatory. F. has συνζησόμεθα.

[11]Rom_6:10.—[The grammatical question respecting ὅ is indicated by the two renderings given in each member of this verse. The meaning is essentially the same, whichever be adopted (Meyer).

[12]Rom_6:11.—[Rec., א3. K. L., insert εἶναι after νεκροὺς μέν; א1. B. C., before; it is omitted in A. D. E. F. G., by most modern editors.

[13]Rom_6:11.—[The E. V. is unfortunate in rendering ἐν, through, since the point of the whole passage is, that we are alive in virtue of our union to Christ—i.e., in Christ Jesus. The Rec. adds τῷ κυρίω̣ ἡμῶν, on the authority of. C. K. L., some versions and fathers. The words are omitted in A. B. D. F., most versions, by many fathers, Meyer, Alford, Wordsworth.—R.]

[14][Tholuck quotes from Rungius: “Significat non modo vulgarem quandam abstinentiam a proposito peccandi, sed quandam ἀντιπάθειαν, qualis est inter mortuos et vivos.”—P. S.]

[15][All commentators of note (except Stuart and Hodge) expressly admit or take it for grunted that in this verse, especially in συνετάφημεν and ἠγέρθη, the ancient prevailing mode of baptism by immersion and emersion is implied, as giving additional force to the idea of the going down of the old and the rising up of the new man. Chrysostom on John 3., Hom. xxv. (al. xxiv., Opp., tom. viii. p. 151): Καθάπερ ἐν τινι τάφω̣, τῷ ὕδατι καταδυόντων ὴμῶν κεφαλὰς, ὁ παλλαιὸς ἂνθρωπος θάπτεται, καὶ καταδὺς κάτωκρύπτεται ὅλως καθάπαξ· εἲτα ὰνανευόντων ὴμῶν, ὁ καινὸς ἄνεισι πάλιν. He then quotes Col_2:12; Rom_6:6. Bloomfield: “There is a plain allusion to the ancient mode of baptism by immersion; on which, see Suicer’s Thes. and Bingham’s Antiquities.” Barnes: “It is altogether probable that the Apostle has allusion to the custom of baptizing by immersion.” Conybeare and Howson: “This passage cannot be understood, unless it be borne in mind that the primitive baptism was by immersion.” Webster and Wilkinson: “Doubtless there is an allusion to immersion, as the usual mode of baptism, introduced to show that baptism symbolized also our spiritual resurrection, ὧςπερἠγέρθη X.” Comp. also Bengel, Rückert, Tholuck, Meyer. The objection of Philippi (who, however, himself regards this allusion probable in Rom_6:4), that in this case the Apostle would have expressly mentioned the symbolic act, has no force in view of the daily practice of baptism. But immersionists, on the other hand, make an unwarranted use of this passage. It should be remembered, that immersion is not commanded here, but simply alluded to, and that the immersion, or κατάδυσις, is only one part of the baptismal act, symbolizing the going down of the old man of sin; and that the emersion, or ἀνάδυσις, of the new man of righteousness, is just as essential to complete the idea. Hence, irrespective of other considerations, the substitution of the onesided and secular term immersion for baptism, in a revision of the English Bible, would give a merely negative view of the meaning of the sacrament. Baptism, and the corresponding verb, which have long since become naturalized in the English language, as much so as Christ, apostle, angel, &c., are the only terms to express properly the use of water for sacred, sacramental purposes, and the idea of resurrection as well as of death and burial with Christ. Immersion is undoubtedly a more expressive form than sprinkling; yet the efficacy of the sacrament does not depend upon the quantity or quality of water, nor upon the mode of its application.—P. S.]

[16][δόξα and δύναμις are closely related; comp. the Hebrew עֹן, and τὸ κράτος τῆς δόξης, Col_1:11. Meyer explains δόξα, die glorreiche Gesammivollkommenheit Gottes.—P. S.]

[17][So also Koppe, Reiche, Stuart: “Καινότητι τῆς ζωῆς I regard as a Hebraistic form, in which the first noun supplies the place of the adjective.” Against this dilution, comp. Winer, p. 211, Meyer and Alford in loc. The abstract noun καινότης gives greater prominence to the quality of newness, which is the chief point here; comp. 2Th_2:11; 1Ti_6:17.—P. S.]

[18][σύμφυτος is not derived from φυτεύω, to plant (φυτευτός, used by Plato), but from φύω, or φύομαι, to grow. Comp. on the different meanings of σύμφυτος, Reiche, Fritzsche, and Philippi in loc.—P. S.]

[19][Grammatically, this is not impossible, since σύμφυτος is constructed with the genitive as well as with the dative; but τῆ ἀναστάσει would have been more natural in this case; hence it is better to supply σύμφυτοι τῷ ὸμοιώματι, so that τῆς ἀναστάσεως depends upon τ. ὁμοιώματι.—P. S.]

[20][One of Lange’s hardest sentences: “Der alte Mensch ist die einheitliche Sündhafligkeit des Menschen, wie sie von Adam ausgehend, die alte Welt durchziehend und zur alten machend in dem concreten Menschenbilde zum pseudoplasmatischen Scheinbilde der Menschennatur und Menschengestalt geworden ist.” In like manner he explains “the body of death,” Rom_7:24, and “the law in the members,” Rom_7:23, with reference to the physiological and medical doctrine of plasma and pseudo-plasma, as if Paul had by intuition anticipated modern science.—P. S.]

[21][The παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος is the σάρξ personified, or the ἐγὼ σαρκικός, Rom_7:14; Rom_7:18—i.e., the fallen, sinful nature before regeneration, in opposition to the καινὸς, or νέος ἄνθρωπος, or the καινὴ κτίσις, the renewed, regenerated man; Col_3:9-10; Eph_4:22-24; 2Co_5:17. The term man is used because sin controls the whole personality, as, on the other hand, regeneration is a radical change of the whole man with all his faculties and dispositions. The phrase, the old man, the man of sin, is traced to rabbinical origin by Schöttgen, Bloomfield, Stuart; but the passage quoted by Schöttgen from the comparatively recent Sohar-chadash (first published in 1599) has a different meaning, according to Tholuck, p. 287. The Talmud, however, calls proselytes “new creatures,” and says of them “they became as little children;” see Schöttgen, Hor. i. p. 328, 704 f.; Wetstein and Meyer on 2Co_5:17. Meyer says: “The form of the expression (καινὴ κτίσις) is rabbinical; for the Rabbins considered a convert to Judaism as כריה חדזה.” The Christian idea of the παλιγγενεσία, of course, is far deeper.”—P. S.]

[22][Tholuck takes σῶμα in the literal sense, but viewed as the seat and organ of sin (p. 303), and enters in this connection into a full discussion of the meaning of σάρξ, and its relation to sin, p. 296 ff.; but the proper place for a biblico-psychological excursus on σάρξ, σῶμα, ψυχή, νοῦς, πνεῦμα, is chap. 7. See below.—P. S.]

[23][Meyer’s view is, that he who is physically dead is free from sin, because he is free from the body, the seat of sin. But this, as Philippi remarks, is contrary to the biblical and Pauline anthropology.—P. S.]

[24][We add the views of leading English and American commentators: Scott, Macknight, and Hodge: He who is dead with Christ is freed from the guilt and punishment of sin by justification. Stuart and Barnes: The Apostle applies a common Jewish proverb concerning physical death, to one who is spiritually dead as to sin—i.e., he must become free of its influence. Bloomfield: He whose corrupt nature has been crucified with Christ is freed from its power and slavery. Alford: As a man that is dead is released from guilt and bondage among men: so a man that has died to sin is acquitted from the guilt of sin and released of its bondage, so that sin (personified) has no more claims on him, either as a creditor or as a master, cannot detain him for debt, nor sue him for service. Forbes combines the view of legal freedom from the guilt of sin (Fraser, Haldane) with the interpretation of spiritual freedom from the power and dominion of sin. “It is to sin as a whole, to its power as well as to its guilt, that the believer has virtually died in Christ as his representative and substitute.” All is already objectively accomplished in Christ, yet remains to be realized subjectively in the believer’s individual experience, which will not be completed till after the literal death of the body.—P. S.]

[25][The dative of reference or relation; in point of fact, in the case of ἀμαρτίᾳ it is the Dativus incommodi, or detrimenti; while in the next clause τῷ θεῷ is the Dat. commodi.—P. S.]

[26][The indicative would rather require: οὕτω καὶ ἡμεῖς λογιζόμεθα, instead of the second person. Alford is quite mistaken, when he says: “Meyer only holds it to be indicative.” Meyer, on the contrary, takes λογίζεσθε to be the imperative, in harmony with the hortative character of what follows.—P. S.]

[27][Meyer: ἐν X., I. is not per Christum (Grotius, Fritzsche, al.), but denotes the element in which the being dead and being alive holds. Comp. Winer, Gramm., p. 364.—P. S.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

sin Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").

grace Grace (imparted). Rom 5:1; Rom 5:14; Rom 5:15; Rom 12:3; Rom 12:6; Rom 6:1-15. (See Scofield "2Pe 3:18").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CHAPTER 6

1. Dead with Christ to Sin. (Rom 6:1-7.)

2. Risen with Christ and Alive to God. (Rom 6:8-11.)

3. Sin shall Not Have Dominion. (Rom 6:12-14.)

4. Servants to Righteousness. (Rom 6:15-23.)

Rom 6:1-7

We have learned from the previous chapter that the justified believer is in Christ and fully identified with Him. God sees the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, no longer in Adam, but in Christ, the head of a new creation. “So if any one be in Christ, it is a new creation the old things have passed away, behold all things have become new” (2Co 5:17). Judicially the believer therefore is dead to sin, the old man was crucified, put completely to death in the death Of Christ, and the believer is alive to God in Him. But this wonderful part of the Gospel must become a reality in the life and experience of the believer. God beholds us as dead to sin in Christ and alive in Himself, this must be lived out. This is the solemn responsibility of the justified believer. And we are not to do this in our own strength, but in the power of the indwelling Spirit, who is also given to the believer. All this is unfolded in this chapter.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Inasmuch as we have died to sin in the death of Christ, the practical deliverance of sin and its dominion must be manifested in our lives. As we find later the old nature, the flesh is still in the justified believer, but he has also another nature, another life and he is therefore enabled in the power of that new life and his identification with Christ, to continue no longer in sin. It is a most positive fact “dead to sin” and this is true of all believers positionally in Christ, and therefore the Holy Spirit tells us that we should no longer live therein. And this truth is illustrated in Christian baptism; it is into Christ’s death and illustrates the truth of death and burial in Christ. Baptism therefore does not save. It has no power to put a sinner in Christ, nor can it convey forgiveness of sins and impart the new life. Faith alone is needed for that, and when the sinner believes, the grace of God saves and accomplishes identification with Christ. And furthermore we are more than dead and buried with Christ “as Christ was raised up by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” We share in His resurrection. What the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ did to Him, raising Him from the dead, He does to all who believe on Him. “He hath raised us up together” (Eph 2:6). We possess His life, the risen life and therefore we should also walk in the power of this life. Our old man (what we are in Adam), was crucified with Christ. When He died we also died. Our old man was crucified with Christ “that the body of sin might be annulled, so that we should be slaves to sin no longer.” Many have been misled by the mistranslation which states “that the body of sin might be destroyed” and teach that the old nature is completely eradicated. But it does not say destroyed, but annulled, or cancelled. The body of sin is our mortal body with the law of sin in its members. And as long as we have this mortal body, the law of sin is in its members. But the operation of that law is annulled for the believer, who in faith, as we shall see later, reckons himself to be dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus. And therefore the believer is enabled to be no longer a slave to sin, as the natural man is. A dead man is justified or discharged from sin; the tyrant’s power is at an end when the subject over which he domineers is dead. And so we being crucified with Christ escape the tyrant’s power, and ultimately when the Lord comes this mortal body will be changed and sin itself will be forever gone.

Rom 6:8-11

Inasmuch as we have died with Christ we shall also live with Him. Death hath no more dominion over Him; He liveth unto God. And all this is true of the believer. Then comes the most important answer to the question raised, in the beginning of the chapter. “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” “In the same manner reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” This is an exhortation to take hold of this great and deep truth, the identification of the believer with Christ in death and resurrection. Reckon is an act of faith. It means to believe all this and to appropriate in faith what God has put on our side in Christ Jesus. We must reckon that we are dead and in possession of the life which empowers us to live unto God. “We reckon this is so, not feel it to be so. It is an entire mistake, and fraught with important consequences, to imagine this being dead to sin to be a feeling or an experience. We cannot feel Christ’s death on the cross, and it was there He died to sin, and we because He died. If it were experience, it would be an absolute perfect one, no evil thought, feeling, or desire, ever in the heart; and this not true of some of the more advanced, but of all Christians and that always. But this is contrary to the experience of all. The attempt to produce such a condition in ourself ends either in the misery of utter failure, or, still worse, in self-satisfaction, indeed, the well-nigh incredible delusion for a Christian, that he is as impassive to sin as Christ Himself! The words do not express such an experience. (As claimed by Perfectionists and Holiness sects.) In every way, it is plain that it is not an experience of which the apostle is speaking here. We could not be told to reckon what we experience. What we reckon is a fact for faith, the fruit of the work done for us, not of that done in us. Because Christ died unto sin once for all, and in that He liveth, liveth unto God, thus also do we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” (Numerical Bible.)

Rom 6:12-14

The exhortation which follows in Rom 6:12, addressed not to the world but to justified believers, proves that sin is still in the mortal body of the believer. It is not destroyed. But while sin is in our mortal body, it has no more right to reign there. However it will reign, if we yield to the desires of the old nature. If a believer obeys the old nature in its lusts, he walks not in the Spirit but in the flesh. Whenever temptation comes, the believer must take refuge in prayer, in self-judgment and self-surrender and yield (or present) his members afresh as instruments of righteousness unto God. As long as the believer is in the mortal body there is the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit (Gal 5:17). And if we walk in the Spirit we shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh; this necessitates that we make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof (Rom 13:14). Furthermore, the promise is given to the believer in Christ that sin shall not have dominion over him because he is not under the law, but under grace. The grace which has saved the believing sinner and made Him nigh unto God, teaches also to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age (Tit 2:12). And more than that; grace supplies the power to live godly. Therefore sin shall not have dominion over a believer because he is under grace. But this promise must be appropriated in faith.

Rom 6:15-23

Another question is asked. “What then, shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?” Another, “God forbid”--perish the very thought of it--is the answer. Whoever yields to sin falls under the mastery of sin. Then follows a word of praise. He thanks God that the believers to whom he writes, once servants of sin, but having obeyed from the heart (and true faith is obedience), they were made free from sin and became servants of righteousness. “Free from sin” does not mean, as often taught, free from the old nature, but free from the domineering power of indwelling sin. Then there is the contrast between the former state in sin and the place of deliverance into which grace has brought the believer. In the former life as unsaved, slaves of sin, there was an awful fruit and the end of it is death. But now as servants of God, freed from sin’s awful slavery, there is another fruit, the fruit of holiness and the end eternal life. How this fruit of the justified believer is to be produced we shall learn in the next chapter. Sin’s wages is death; that is what man receives in payment for sin. Eternal life, the great and inestimable gift of God is bestowed through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 6:1-5

Free Grace and Sin.

In this passage, under cover of a reply to a plausible objection to the doctrine of justification, we really enter upon the discussion of the bearing of gospel faith on moral character.

I. To the objection, the plausible but hateful objection, "What then? Are we to persist in our sin just in order that (as you say) the grace of God may abound in its forgiveness?" St. Paul’s reply is a very blunt and staggering one. It amounts to this: such an abuse of free grace is in the nature of things impossible. It is practically unthinkable and out of the question. "For," says he, "persons who like us died to sin—how shall we any longer live in it?" Christians, then, are people who in the mere fact of becoming Christians died to sin; severed their old connection with it, that is, or passed through an experience which put a virtual end to their sinful life. This is what faith in Christ has done for everybody who has ever really believed in Him. After an experience like that it is, by the laws of human nature, impossible—if it were possible, it would be morally shameful—for the man any longer to live wilfully in his old sins.

II. One thing is sufficiently manifest. Christian faith is very far from a superficial or inoperative or merely intellectual act, such as a man can do without his moral character being affected by it. It is very much the opposite of that. It is connected with the deep roots of our moral and religious nature. It launches us on a totally fresh stream of vital influences. It is like a death and a birth in one; like a burial and a resurrection. Those who have been baptized into Christ and say they trust in His death as the ground of their peace with God are bound to satisfy themselves that their faith is of a sort to kill sin.

J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 143.

References: Rom 6:2.—J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 90. Rom 6:2-8.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 253. Rom 6:3.—Homilist, 3rd series, vol. ii., p. 55. Rom 6:3, Rom 6:4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1627; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 15. Rom 6:3-5.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 247. Rom 6:3-8.—Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 129.

Rom 6:4

Easter Even.

I. We know what an impression is made by the sight of a dead body, especially if it is that of one who has been near and dear to us. And every one who has felt this lesson has been for a time, for the moment it may be, or hour, or day, if not longer, a different man. The world has lost its power either to distress or please him, and appears in its true colours; and he sees what sin is before God. Yes; the one great truth of all truths is to know what sin is before God. Now this is the wisdom of the grave, yet of itself it is but a cold and lifeless wisdom; but combined with the death and burial of Christ, and the contemplation of it, this wisdom is quickened by love: love is able to overcome the power of death, not by avoiding it, but by wrestling with it.

II. There was an old heathen philosophy that taught deadness to the world: the thorough laying aside it required of all human feeling and passions; but what it inculcated partook of that awful and dead calm which nature itself derives from the grave of man; it had nothing of that peace which the Christian learns by the tomb of Christ, wherein there is release from sin by dying with His death, and in those fruits of righteousness wherein God still works, while He gives rest. Thus Christ, being dead, yet speaketh, while by His Spirit He quickeneth our mortal bodies. The world invites us to live to it; philosophy bids us to be dead to the world; but Christianity adds, in order that we may live to God, we are not only to be dead with Christ, but to learn of Him and live with Him, if we would find His rest for the soul.

III. Though the Christian be dead to the world, and so really unharmed by it, yet the world will not be dead towards him. Though unwilling, it bears testimony; and from a kind of uneasiness and fear which lies deep within it is urged to deeds of ill-will and enmity, and this is a trial to the love and faith of good but over-conscious disciples, because it seems to dishonour their Lord. But our blessed Saviour seems from the sepulchre to say: "Stand still, and see the salvation of God."

Isaac Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. i., p. 386.

Rom 6:4

There are three characteristics of the risen life of our Lord which especially challenge attention.

I. Of these the first is its reality. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a real resurrection of a dead body. Men have thought to effect a compromise between their own unbelief or half belief and the language of the apostles, by saying that Christ rose in the hearts of His disciples—that their idea of the spirit and character and work of their Master was too bright, too glorious a thing to be buried in His grave, and that when the first agony of grief was passed the Crucified One presented Himself again vividly to their loving imaginations in even more than His ancient beauty. But, supposing a process of imagination such as this to have taken place in the case of one or two or three minds, is it reasonable to suppose that it can have taken place simultaneously in a great many minds? The nearer men came to the risen Jesus the more satisfied they were that He had risen indeed. The first lesson which the risen Christ teaches the Christian is reality, genuineness.

II. A second characteristic of Christ’s risen life—it lasts. Jesus did not rise that, like Lazarus, He might die again. So, too, should it be with the Christian. His, too, should be a resurrection once for all.

III. A last note of Christ’s risen life. Much of it, most of it, was hidden from the eyes of men. They saw quite enough to be satisfied of its reality, but of the eleven recorded appearances five took place on a single day, and there is, accordingly, no record of any appearance on thirty-three days out of the forty which preceded the Ascension. And who can fail to see here a lesson and a law for the true Christian life? Of every such life much, and the most important side, must be hidden from the eyes of men. Alas for those who know so little of the true source of our moral force as to see in secret communion with God only the indulgence of unpractical sentiment, as to fail to connect these precious hours of silence with the beauty and strength of many of the noblest and most productive lives that have been seen in Christendom.

H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 429.

Rom 6:4

I. The death and burial of our Lord were but the fulfilment of His purpose when He took our flesh in the womb of the Virgin. He was in that grave before He appeared in the world. He appeared in this world that He might descend into the grave again. Every hour that He dwelt here He was giving up His body and soul, confessing that there was no life of their own in them. The glory of the Father had gone with Him through every hour of His earthly pilgrimage, raising up His body and soul, and enabling them to fulfil the work which had been given Him to do. The glory of the Father went with Him into the grave, and it brought Him back in that human soul and body, unhurt by death, unweakened by His conflict with the powers of darkness, to show forth the might of His heavenly life and to be the means through which it should be bestowed upon those for whom He died.

II. Christ’s baptism was a burial: it was giving up His soul and body to death and the grave; it was "declaring life is not in them, but in Thee." Our baptism is a burial; it is a giving up of our body and soul, and declaring life is not in them, but in Him. As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we have His glory with us to raise us from our grave, to enable us to think what of ourselves we cannot think, to do what of ourselves we cannot do. This life is given to us. It is not dependent upon the weakness of our bodies or of our souls. It is assured to us by a promise which cannot be broken. It is stored up for us in One who cannot die.

F. D. Maurice, Christmas Day and Other Sermons, p. 236.

Rom 6:4

Consider the New Life of the Believer.

I. First, in this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires—to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up. When He appears in the heavens, by a necessary, irresistible, attractive force, our bodies will be raised from the grave, and we shall be "for ever with the Lord." So that the Divine life in a man’s soul does not take place till there is first a death and a burial and a resurrection within him; and all that is the result of a certain union with the Lord Jesus Christ; so that Christ’s death and Christ’s burial and Christ’s resurrection are, to that man, not only facts done for him, but things done in him, and things actually taking place at this moment, real, felt, producing direct visible results. And when we trace the secret inworkings, in a Christian’s soul, of such strange, unprecedented things as these, surely to such deep and wondrous mysteries we can only justly apply the Apostle’s words, and say, "It is newness of life."

II. But as the formation of it is new, so it is in its own constitution. God’s way of making a new thing is not man’s way. God uses up the old materials, but by His using and moulding them makes them new. What is the new element thrown in to make a new man? Love—simply love. The man receives what he feels to be an inestimable gift, and his heart goes forth after the Giver—that Giver who bought that gift for him by the purchase of His own blood.

III. Once more, the Christian life is new by reason of that ceaseless variety and never-ending progression, that constant newness which it has in it. He who has set himself to be a Christian has to do with the infinities of God. He has a field in which he can expatiate for ever, and yet never retreat one pace. He is always enlarging his sphere, and with augmented capabilities taking in extended services; he experiences the charm of a sanctified novelty; and every hour he finds a literalness in the expression in this world, as he will find it for ever and ever, "newness of life."

J. Vaughan, Sermons, 1865, No. 491.

Rom 6:4

Freshness of Being.

In everything which is really of God there is a singular freshness; it is always like that tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; there is a continual novelty. And yet some people speak of the sameness of a religious life!

I. What is newness? It is not the creation of new matter. Creations in that sense are things of the far past. It is better than creation. The old goes to make the new. The old passions, the old bias, the old elements of the natural man, go to make the strength, the elevation, of the new creation,—the same, yet not the same. Take an instance. Self is the ruling principle of every man whom the grace of God has not changed. Self is his god. Now, how is it in the Christian? He has union with Christ; therefore in him self and Christ are one. By a blessed reaction his God is now himself—his new self, his real self; his life is the life of God in his soul; his happiness is God’s glory; therefore still he studies self, but self is Christ.

II. Let us trace where the newness lies. First, there is set in the believer a new motive, a new spring welling up. "I am forgiven—God loves me. How shall I repay Him?" A new current flows in the man’s life-blood, he feels the springs of his immortality, he carries in him his own eternity. And he goes forth, that man, into the old world; its scenes are just the same, but a new sunshine lies upon everything—it is the medium of his new-born peace, it is a smile of God. Christ reveals Himself to him with ever-increasing clearness. And all the while he carries a happy conviction that it is inexhaustible, that his progress is to be perpetuated for ever and ever; and by faith he shall be learning more, feeling more, enjoying more, doing more, glorifying more—that for ever and ever he shall walk in newness of life.

J. Vaughan, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 141.

References: Rom 6:4.—E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation, vol. ii., p. 253; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ix., p. 1; Sermons on the Catechism, p. 219; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 7th series, p. 9; H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vol. ii., p. 19.

Rom 6:4-8

Christ’s Resurrection an Image of our New Life.

Our new life is like that of our risen Saviour—

I. In the manner of His resurrection. In order to appear to His disciples in that glorified form, which already bore in it the indications of the eternal and immortal glory, it was necessary that the Saviour should pass through the pains of death. It was not an easy transformation; it was necessary for Him, though not to see corruption, yet to have the shadow of death pass over Him; and friends and enemies vied with each other in trying to retain Him in the power of the grave: the friends rolling a stone before it, to keep the beloved corpse in safety, the enemies setting a watch lest it should be taken away. But when the hour came which the Father had reserved in His own power, the angel of the Lord appeared and rolled away the stone from the tomb and the watch fled, and at the summons of omnipotence life came back to the dead form. Thus we know what is the new life that is to be like the resurrection life of the Lord. A previous life must die; the Apostle calls it the body of sin, the law of sin in our members, and this needs no lengthened discussion. We all know and feel that this life, which Scripture calls a being dead in sins, pleasant and splendid as may be the form it often assumes, is yet nothing but what the mortal body of the Saviour also was, an expression and evidence of the power of death, because even the fairest and strongest presentation of this kind lacks the element of being imperishable. Thus with the mortal body of the Saviour, and thus also with the natural life of man, which is as yet not a life from God.

II. And, secondly, this new life resembles its type and ideal, the resurrection life of Christ, not only in being risen from death, but also in its whole nature, way, and manner. (1) In this respect, that although a new life, it is nevertheless the life of the same man, and in the closest connection with his former life. (2) And as the Saviour was the same person in the days of His resurrection, so His life was also again of course a vigorous and active life; indeed we might almost say it bore the traces of humanity, without which it could be no image of our new life, even in this, that it gradually grew stronger and acquired new powers. (3) But along with all this activity and strength, the life of the risen Saviour was yet, in another sense, a secluded and hidden life. And so it is with the new life in which we walk, even if it is as it ought to be strong and vigorous, and ever at work for the kingdom of God; yet it is at the same time an unknown and hidden life, unrecognised by and hidden from the world, whose eyes are holden.

III. We cannot feel all these comforting and glorious things in which our new life resembles the resurrection life of our Lord, without being at the same time, on another side, moved to sorrow by this resemblance. For if we put together all that the evangelists and the apostles of the Lord have preserved for us about His resurrection life, we still cannot out of it all form an entirely consecutive history. Not that in Himself there was anything of a broken or uncertain life, but as to our view of it it is and cannot but be so. Well, and is it not, to our sorrow, the same with the new life that is like Christ’s resurrection life? We are by no means conscious of this new life as an entirely continuous state; on the contrary, each of us loses sight of it only too often, not only among friends, among disturbances and cares, but amidst the commendable occupations of this world. Therefore we must go back to Him who is the only fountain of this spiritual life and find it in Him.

F. Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons, p. 266.

Rom 6:5-6

Assimilation through Faith.

I. Among the elements of human character we have really no deeper or more powerful agent for working a great change than faith, if we understand it fairly. The word covers the most entire devotion of heart and will which a man can repose in any person whom he justly regards as wiser, nobler, stronger, and more trustworthy than himself. It means, if you will, what among men is called hero-worship; and there is no force known to the student of human nature or of history which has proved itself capable of altering the lives of men so profoundly as this. It combines the strongest motives and the most sustaining elements in character, such as confidence, loyalty, affection, reverence, authority, and moral attractiveness. Take a single element, not at all the noblest, in this complex relationship which we term "faith." Take the mere persuasion of one man that another is able and willing to aid him in his enterprises. What is there such a dependant will not do at the instance of his patron? What change will he not make in his plans rather than forfeit substantial assistance from that quarter on which all his hopes are built? This is faith of a sort, surely, which works powerfully. Add to such a selfish expectation of help the far deeper bond of personal reverence or of proud, admiring love. The Christian owes to Jesus obedience for the service He has rendered, and for the right He possesses to command. Does it seem any longer a thing futile or unreasonable to say, that through such faith as that a man may come to grow together into one with the Divine object of his devotion, until the man’s life is penetrated with Christ’s Spirit and conformed in everything to His matchless likeness?

II. Such a change as this, being not a change merely in a man’s conduct, or in the mode in which his character manifests itself, but one deep enough to reverse the springs of character and form anew the spiritual attachments of the person himself, is reasonably enough ascribed to a special Divine agency. Such faith and such attachment come of the operation of God. When the old man dies and a new man lives in a human being there is an evident re-birth; and for that we must postulate an immediate operation of the Divine Giver of Life.

J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 155.

References: Rom 6:5, Rom 6:6.—Homilist, vol. vi., p. 124. Rom 6:5-7.—Ibid., new series, vol. iv. p. 208. Rom 6:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 882; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 151.

Rom 6:7

I. "For he that hath died," as it should be rendered, "is justified from sin." The moment the Spirit of God works within the human soul a conviction of sin, there springs up an intense longing to obtain rest. With a burning desire no language can portray, far less exaggerate, the soul cries out for peace. Conviction of sin burns within the breast like live coals. There is no peace, no happiness, no comfort in this life to the convinced sinner. He must have peace, or he feels that reason itself can hardly bear the dire strain. Only an intelligent view of how God saves a sinner can ever give a man a truly solid peace. Where many err, and therefore do not enter into real solid peace, is that they do not know the difference between forgiveness and justification. And yet there is a very great difference between the two. If the punishment due from the law to any sin be endured, the offender that moment becomes as if he had never committed the sin. As Paul says, "He that is dead"—that is, he that has had the penalty for sin and endured it—"i justified from sin." Every one who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has the benefit of His death, and therefore it is just as if he had received his punishment. God cannot wink at sin. He never did and never will. But though He cannot excuse one sin, He can justly forgive a million.

II. The death of Christ settles the whole account. He has paid the last penny—cleared the score right off—and there is nothing left for you or me to pay. We can say of Christ, He is our Resurrection and our Life; in Him we died, and in His resurrection we rose again and rose to an immortal life, for we shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck us out of His hand.

A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No. 1053.

Reference: Rom 6:7.—J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons, 7th series, p. 303.

Rom 6:7-10

Christ’s Death to Sin.

When we ask what is meant by affirming of Christ, "The death that He died, He died unto sin," two questions emerge.

(1) What connection had Jesus with sin before His death?

(2) How came His dying to sever that connection?

I. As to the former. The connection of the Lord Jesus with sin so long as He lived an earthly life was the most complete which it is possible for a sinless person to have. Who will venture to say that St. Paul’s terrible phrase "made a curse" is too strong to express the hold which sin’s penalty laid upon our victim, or that the whole of our Lord’s stainless humanity was not wrapt around and penetrated through and through by the tremendous retributive force of sin? Connection with sin! He was all sin’s own; its prey, surrendered for some Divine necessity to the devourer; the choicest portion ever seized upon to be borne down to the keeping of sin’s child, death, within sin’s home, the grave.

II. The whole of this connection with sin is said to have terminated at death. It has not been so with any other man. Other men spend their earthly existence under the same penal conditions as I have described in His case; but what room have we to suppose that the act of dying has proved to be in any other case the end of sin, unless it were through their connection with Him? The death of Jesus closed His connection with sin, for the simple reason that in His case alone that connection had been outward, not inward; a guiltless submission to sin’s penalty, not a guilty surrender to sin’s power. From first to last the sin which is in our race remained to Him a foreign foe, that could gain no entrance into the citadel of His will to corrupt or master His spiritual nature; and the connection which He sustained with it was merely that of a sufferer who owes a death to justice for imputed sins of other men. Once that death was paid, and all the suffering endured which filled up the cup put into His hand to be drunk, His connection with imputed sin was of necessity dissolved. "The death which He died was a death unto sin—once for all."

J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 164.

Rom 6:8

I. As a tree cannot live and grow, cannot bear flowers and fruit, and expand itself towards heaven, unless it be first rooted and buried in the ground, so neither can the love of God in the soul, unless that which is earthly be dead and buried with Christ in His death. It is therefore at baptism that this love is by the Holy Spirit planted within us; it is then that we are buried with Christ, in order that we may live with Him that life which is in God, in holy affections now and in fulness of joy hereafter. Such, therefore, is the subject of the Epistle for today (Sixth Sunday after Trinity). The Christian dwells in continual contemplation on the Cross and death of Christ; it is there his heart and affections are fixed; it is there he finds a remedy against sin and strength against temptation. And as we naturally become like that which we contemplate, it is to him an inexpressible satisfaction to reflect that by his very baptism and new birth he is himself there, dead with Christ and buried, in order that he might find in Him a better life; that the very strength and life of his baptism consists in his being thus made conformable to Christ’s death. "Out of the strong comes forth sweetness," out of death life; and to resign earthly hopes, pleasures, and advantages does require that the heart hath found something better, the treasure of new affections which it values more.

II. Dead we are with Christ by baptism, by His power and grace, and dead we must also be in the habits of our new life, in order that such Divine life may be continued in Him; and all this from the most intimate reference to Him. The frequent mention of Christ in the inculcating of Christian precept and doctrine implies in our lives also, and in the fulfilling of all Christian precept and doctrine, the frequent recurrence to Him as that source of life. Love is ever thinking of the object beloved; delights in acting with a view to it; to be likened to it; to cling to it; to become more and more one with it. But this love, as being contrary to our corrupted nature, must be forcibly sustained by doing violence to ourselves, and by all outward means; by frequent communion with Him in prayer and meditation, by giving of alms and active charities, and more especially by a frequent participation of His body and blood.

J. Williams, The Epistles and Gospels, vol. ii., p. 82.

Love of Religion—a New Nature.

I. To be dead with Christ is to hate and turn from sin, and to live with Him is to have our hearts and minds turned towards God and heaven. To be dead to sin is to feel a disgust at it. We know what is meant by disgust. Take, for instance, the case of a sick man, when food of a certain kind is presented to him, and there is no doubt what is meant by disgust. On the other hand, consider how pleasant a meal is to the hungry, or some enlivening odour to the faint; how refreshing the air is to the languid, or the brook to the weary and thirsty; and you will understand the sort of feeling which is implied in being alive with Christ, alive to religion, alive to the thought of heaven. Our animal powers cannot exist in all atmospheres; certain airs are poisonous, others life-giving. So is it with spirits and souls: an unrenewed spirit could not live in heaven, he would die; an angel could not live in hell. To be dead to sin is to be so minded that the atmosphere of sin oppresses, distresses, and stifles us,—that it is painful and unnatural for us to remain in it. To be alive with Christ is to be so minded that the atmosphere of heaven refreshes, enlivens, stimulates, invigorates us. To be alive is not merely to bear the thought of religion, to assent to the truth of religion, to wish to be religious, but to be drawn towards it, to love it, to delight in it, to obey it. Now, I suppose most persons called Christians do not go further than this—to wish to be religious, and to think it right to be religious, and to feel a respect for religious men; they do not get so far as to have any sort of love for religion.

II. A holy man is by nature subject to sin equally with others; but he is holy because he subdues, tramples on, chains up, imprisons, puts out of the way this law of sin, and is ruled by religious and spiritual motives. Even those who in the end turn out to be saints and attain to life eternal, yet are not born saints, but have, with God’s regenerating and renewing grace, to make themselves saints. It is nothing but the Cross of Christ without us and within us, which changes any one of us from being (as I may say) a devil, into an angel. Even to the end the holiest men have remains and stains of sin which they would fain get rid of if they could, and which keep this life from being to them, in all God’s grace, a heaven upon earth. No, the Christian life is but a shadow of heaven. Its festal and holy days are but shadows of eternity. But hereafter it will be otherwise. In heaven sin will be utterly destroyed in every elect soul. We shall have no earthly wishes, no tendencies to disobedience or irreligion, no love of the world or the flesh, to draw us off from supreme devotion to God. We shall have our Saviour’s holiness fulfilled in us, and be able to love God without drawback or infirmity.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. vii., p. 179.

Reference: Rom 6:8.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 87.

Rom 6:8-11

I. The basis of the Apostle’s sentiment here is the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the fact. Christ died for our sins. Calvary, its associations, its wonderful mystery and blessedness, were present to the Apostle’s mind; and, however progressive spiritually his view might be, he never lost sight of what took place in Jerusalem—never lost sight of the Lord in His crucifixion and resurrection. In Christ’s death he might be said to die to sin as well as for it, for he had done with sin.

II. In the second place, with this basis of history, we find that there is also a basis of prophecy,—it is implied here, at least respecting Christ and His people. Paul saw a grand future for Christ and the Church. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him." In the eighth chapter of this Epistle we have the outburst of the music, but in the sixth chapter we have the undertone in the same strain; for he says, "If we be dead in Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him," and the eighth chapter is but the expansion and development of that sublime idea. There is therefore a basis of prophecy as well as of history.

III. Note the use which the Apostle makes of the past and the future in reference to his spiritual life. He fixes upon the historical fact that Christ died, and died for our sins, and he will not let that for an instant go. But he spiritualises it, and shows its relation to his daily experience. He teaches that between us and Christ there comes an identification and sympathy, through which we feel like Him, and act like Him, and become one with Him, imitating His example, and becoming conformed to His image and His type of life, from a moral power which flows from His death into our life. There is a dying unto sin in the case of all true believers, through their union by faith with Christ, who died so many years ago. So, too, St. Paul makes the resurrection of Christ a moral power in us, so that we rise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.

J. Stoughton, Penny Pulpit, No. 637, new series.

References: Rom 6:8-11.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. ix., No. 503; G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends, p. 120; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 83.

Rom 6:9

Christ Risen, Dieth no More.

I. The resurrection brings joy to the human soul because it asserts that which is by no means written legibly for all men on the face of nature and of life—the truth that the spiritual is higher than the material; the truth that, in this universe, spirit counts for something more than matter. There are, no doubt, abstract arguments which might go to show that this is the case; but the resurrection is a palpable fact which means this, if it means anything at all,—that the ordinary laws of animal existence are visibly, upon sufficient occasion, set aside in obedience to a higher spiritual force. It was, we all of us know, no natural force, like that of growth, which raised Jesus Christ our Lord from His grave. "Christ being raised from the dead." The resurrection is not merely an article of the Creed; it is a fact in the history of mankind. That our Lord Jesus Christ was "begotten of the Father before all worlds" is also an article of the Christian faith; but then it has nothing to do with human history, and so it cannot be shown to have taken place, like any event, say, in the life of Julius Cæsar, by the reported testimony of eye-witnesses. It belongs to another sphere. It is believed simply on account of the proved trustworthiness of Him who has taught us this truth on His own authority about His eternal person. But that Christ rose from the dead is a fact which depends on the same sort of testimony as any event in the life of Cæsar, with this difference, that no one ever thought it worth his while, so far as I know, to risk his life in order to maintain that Cæsar defeated Vercingetorix or Pompey. The resurrection of Christ breaks the iron wall of uniformity which goes so far to shut out God. It tells us that matter is not the governing principle of the universe. It assures us that matter is controlled by mind, that there is a Being, that there is a will, to which matter can offer no effective resistance, that He is not bound by the laws of the universe, that He in fact controls them.

II. Christ’s risen life is to us a fact of undying significance. The resurrection was not an isolated miracle, done and then over, leaving things much as they had been before. The risen Christ is not, like Lazarus, marked off from every other man as one who had visited the realms of death, but knowing that he must ere many years pass be a tenant of the grave. "Christ, being risen from the dead, dieth no more." His risen body is made up of flesh, bone, and all things pertaining to the perfection of man’s nature; but then it has superadded qualities. It is so spiritual that it can pass through closed doors without collision or disturbance. It is beyond the reach of those causes which, slowly or swiftly, bring down our bodies to the dust. Throned in the heavens, now, as during the forty days on earth, it is endowed with the beauty, with the glory, of an eternal youth. Being raised from the dead, it dies no more. The perpetuity of the life of the risen Jesus is the guarantee of the perpetuity of His Church. Alone, among all forms of society which bind men together, the Church of Christ is insured against complete dissolution. When our Lord was born the civilised world was almost entirely comprised within the Roman empire, a vast social power which may well have appeared, as it did appear to the men of that age, destined to last for ever. Since then the Roman empire has as completely disappeared from the earth as if it had never been. And other kingdoms and dynasties have risen up and have in turn gone their way. Nor is there any warrant or probability that any one of the states or forms of civil government which exist at the present time will always last. And there are men who tell us that the kingdom of Christ is or will be no exception to the rule—that it too has seen its best days and is passing. We Christians know that they are wrong, that whatever else may happen one thing is impossible—the complete effacement of the Church of Jesus Christ. And what is our reason for this confidence? It is because we know that Christ’s Church, although having likeness to other societies of men in her outward form and mien, is unlike them inwardly and really. She strikes her roots far and deep into the invisible; she draws strength from sources which cannot be tested by our political or social experience. Like her Master, she has meat to eat that men know not of. "God is in the midst of her, and therefore shall she not be removed; God shall help her, and that right early."

III. Christ, risen from death, dying no more, is the model of our new life in grace. I do not mean that absolute sinlessness is attainable by any Christian here. But at least faithfulness in our intentions, avoidance of known sources of danger, escape from presumptuous sins, innocence, as the Psalmist puts it, of the great offence—these things are possible, and indeed are necessary. Those lives which are made up of alternating recovery and relapse—recovery, perhaps, during Lent, followed by relapse after Easter, and even lives lived, as it were, with one foot in the grave, without anything like a strong vitality, with their feeble prayers, with their half-indulged inclinations, with their weaknesses which may be physical, but which a really regenerate will should at once away with—men risen from the dead, yet without any seeming promise of endurance in life—what would St. Paul say to these? "Christ," he would say, "being risen from the dead, dieth no more." Just as He left His tomb once for all, so should the soul, once risen, be dead indeed unto sin. There must be no hovering about the sepulchre, no treasuring the grave-clothes, no secret hankering after the scent and atmosphere of the guilty past. Cling to the risen Saviour. Cling to Him by entreaties which twine themselves round His sacred person. Cling to Him by sacraments, the revealed points of contact with His strengthening manhood. Cling to Him by obedience and by works of mercy, through which, He tells us Himself, we abide in His love. And then, not in your own strength but in His, "likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord."

H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vol. i., p. 208.

Reference: Rom 6:9.—C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 42.

Rom 6:9-11

I. The death to sin must be a death to its service as well as to its penalty, if the soul has come under that wretched bondage. There is hardly anything more emphatically and clearly laid down throughout St. Paul’s epistles than this of the new life which is expected of Christian men, nor any doctrine with which the saintly life is more closely connected and on which it is as it were based, than the death and burial and resurrection of our Saviour Christ. And we must not put it away from us. Better a thousand times to be truthful witnesses and to abhor ourselves. Better a thousand times to hate the memory of that formal service which rests its confidence in continual acts of repentance for continual acts of wilful sin. The life of sin the Apostle supposes dead.

II. How marvellously persistent is the Apostle, is the Holy Spirit, in finding a plain living duty in the sublimest doctrines of religion; in drawing a precept which shall supply occupation for the whole human life, and exercise every faculty of the human heart, from events the most mysterious and Divine.

III. We must be ashamed when we examine ourselves to see how miserably short we fall of the Divine standard and requirements. Let us review our miserably imperfect practice, and seek to begin a higher, a purer, a better life.

J. W. Burgon, Ninety-one Short Sermons, No. 41.

References: Rom 6:9-11.—E. H. Gifford, The Glory of God in Man, p. 1. Rom 6:10, Rom 6:11.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. vii., p. 20; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times," vol. vii., p. 111. Rom 6:11.—H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 53; Homilist, new series, vol. iii., p. 314; W. Cunningham, Sermons, p. 251; G. Bainton, Christian World Pulpit, vol. x., p. 169; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes, p. 380; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons, 1st series, p. 306.

Rom 6:11-14

On Realising the Ideal.

I. What is the theory of the Christian’s condition? As just explained by the Apostle, it is this: The Christian is a man who, like his Master, is already dead to all sin and alive only towards God. He has ceased, in other words, to have anything further to do with sin. With God he has everything further to do. This has resulted, as a matter of course, from the close union, or, as it were, incorporation, which his faith has effected betwixt him and Jesus Christ. In theory, the believer has just as little to do with sin as Jesus has in heaven; which lets us see a little how St. Paul can elsewhere employ such amazing language about mortal man as this—"Risen with Christ," "Sitting with Christ in heaven," their life hid with Him in God. Such is Christian life in its conception. Such it must aim at becoming in fact.

II. It is obviously with a practical design that the writer bids the Christian cherish such a conception of his proper character. All life strives to fulfil itself. It makes for that which it was made to be. In the moral training of character, there is no better way of attaining an ideal than to be persuaded that it is the true ideal for us. Put the matter in this form: You are a man supposed to be in idea dead to all sin. Yet in a given instance an evil desire has mastered you. Is there not betwixt these two facts an incongruity, not simply painful, but intolerable? They cannot possibly hang together. A contradiction in fact between your theoretical position and your actual conduct is not a state of matters in which you can rest. Either your ideal must be abandoned, or an effort must be made to shape your behaviour in compliance with it. But your ideal is what you dare not abandon, for that would be to abandon Christ. The conclusion becomes irresistible: let not this wrong desire lord it any longer in this fashion over you—a man dead to all sin. Let the believer then think what he is, that he may become what he ought to be. Broken off from sin, let there be no feeble or furtive concession to it at any point. Live solely for the work of God. Let us spend ourselves wholly in His pure and beneficent service.

J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 172.

Rom 6:12

The Dual Life of Man.

I. There are in every one of us opposing elements, there live within us an Adam and a Christ; the angel has us by the hand or the serpent by the heart. Plato describes human nature as consisting of a threefold being bound into one, a many-headed monster, a lion, and a man. The monster represents all the lowest and the basest and most animal impulses of our nature; the lion represents the passionate irascible side of our nature, in itself noble, but liable to be dangerously uncontrolled; the man represents the reason and the conscience, the ruling power within us. Plato says we can never attain the true nature of our being except when the man and the lion are at one, the man having supreme power, and both together holding the monster of the baser passions under absolute control.

II. Three warnings arise out of this subject. (1) We are accountable to God for ourselves—for our whole selves. We cannot disintegrate our individuality, we cannot claim to be good while yet we habitually do evil, we cannot be in a state of sin and yet claim to be in a state of grace. Yet this is the self-deception into which men constantly fall. When they go out, like Judas, to sell their Lord, it is not in the daytime; it is in the night of their own self-deception. We have all need of the daily prayer, "God harden me against myself." (2) We cannot be too careful what we make ourselves. Even the feelings which might be honourable and harmless may be betrayed by excess or by neglect. Our passions are like the waves of the sea, and without the aid of Him who made the human breast we cannot say to its tide, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." (3) As we feel our evil passions and their mastery over us, so by the grace of God can we get rid of our worse selves altogether. It is not possible by our own unaided strength, but Christ died that it might be more than possible to all that trust in Him. They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts; they are renewed in the image of God. In them the old self is conquered indeed, the body of sin is destroyed, so that they are no longer the slaves of sin; they walk in newness of life.

F. W. Farrar, Family Churchman, March 31st, 1886.

References: Rom 6:13.—Good Words, vol. iii., pp. 762, 763; R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 251. Rom 6:14.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xv., No. 901; vol. xxiv., No. 1410; T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. i., p. 103. Rom 6:14, Rom 6:15.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxix., No. 1735.

Rom 6:15-23

Bondmen of Righteousness.

I. St. Paul’s manner of thinking is frequently hard to follow. One peculiarity which contributes to make it a difficult exercise to track his reasoning is this: on the threshold of a fresh train of ideas, when the subject which fills his mind has been no more than started, it is not uncommon to find him suddenly break off in order to interject some side thought which has just occurred to him. Of this habit we have an instance before us. The objection springs up suddenly. If a Christian is no longer under the law of Moses, but under the free, that is, the unmerited, favour of God as the source of His salvation, is not this a distinct licence to him to sin? To that recurring difficulty there never has been, nor ever can be, any valid reply save one: this, namely, that the very change which is involved in a man’s becoming a believer in God’s free grace through Christ renders his continuance in sin a practical impossibility. Christians were slaves to sin once, no doubt; but conversion has broken that service in order that they should enter another. They are now "servants unto righteousness."

II. The expression "enslaved to righteousness" is indeed an unusually strong one, even for St. Paul; so strong that he deems it well to apologise for it (ver. 19). For while the practice of sin is really a moral slavery, as our Lord Himself taught, seeing that it involves the subjugation of what is noblest in a man beneath some base or petty desire of which in his heart he feels ashamed, there is no true bondage in obeying God. On the contrary, the law of righteousness is the law of man’s original, proper nature,—his native law, so to speak. To follow it is to act freely. Accordingly, when the Apostle spoke about being a slave of righteousness, he employed language which he felt to be harsh, because, in any strict sense of it, both inaccurate and unworthy. Nevertheless, St. Paul endeavours to say what he means in more precise and less metaphorical language. What it amounts to is this. That as a man previous to his conversion to Christ yielded up his faculties to execute lawless desires, and thus did the work of lawlessness as a slave serves his master, so, after conversion has put an end to that, he must, in a similar way, give himself up to perform the lawful or righteous will of God.

J. Oswald Dykes, The Gospel according to St. Paul, p. 182.

References: Rom 6:15-23.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1482; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 18; H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 61; Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 653; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 125; R. Molyneux, Ibid., vol. v., p. 189. Rom 6:16-19.—E. de Pressensé, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 93. Rom 6:17.—Bishop Westcott, The Historic Faith, p. 17.

Rom 6:18

The Strictness of the Law of Christ.

I. Religion is a necessary service; of course it is a privilege too, but it becomes more and more of a privilege the more we exercise ourselves in it. The perfect Christian state is that in which our duty and our pleasure are the same, when what is right and true is natural to us, and in which God’s service is perfect freedom. And this is the state towards which all true Christians are tending: it is the state in which the angels stand; entire subjection to God in thought and deed is their happiness; an utter and absolute captivity of their will to His will is their fulness of joy and everlasting life. But it is not so with the best of us, except in part. We have a work, a conflict all through life.

II. I may seem to have been saying what every one will at once confess. And yet, after all, nothing perhaps is so rare among those who profess to be Christians, as an assent in practice to the doctrine that they are under a law: nothing so rare as strict obedience, unreserved submission to God’s will, uniform conscientiousness in doing their duty. Most Christians will allow in general terms that they are under a law, but then they admit it with a reserve; they claim for themselves some dispensing power in their observance of the law. Whether men view the law of conscience as high or low, as broad or narrow, few indeed there are who make it a rule to themselves.

III. Let us not deceive ourselves: what God demands of us is to fulfil His law, or at least to aim at fulfilling it; to be content with nothing short of perfect obedience,—to attempt everything,—to avail ourselves of the aids given us, and throw ourselves, not first but afterwards, on God’s aid for our shortcomings. We Christians are indeed under the law as other men, but it is the new law, the law of the Spirit of Christ. We are under grace. That law which to nature is a grievous bondage, is to those who live under the power of God’s presence, what it was meant to be, a rejoicing. Let us go to Him for grace. Let us seek His face. "They that wait upon the Lord," says the Prophet, "shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons, vol. iv., p. 1.

References: Rom 6:18.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxv., No. 1482. Rom 6:19.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. i., p. 18. Rom 6:20.—H. J. Wilmot Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. ii., p. 61. Rom 6:21.—Prothero, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 161. Rom 6:22.—Homilist, new series, vol. iv., p. 653; 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 39; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vi., p. 21; Church of England Pulpit, vol. xxi., p. 125; R. Molyneux, Ibid., vol. v., p. 189.

Rom 6:23

The Choice of Life.

I. St. Paul is setting before us in a figure the choice of two lives—the life of a Christian, life in Christ, and the life of one who is not a Christian, who has not the Christian’s aim nor the Christian’s hope. He is setting this before us in a figure; and it is, on the whole, the figure which is so familiar to us in our own baptismal service and catechism. Both, he tells us, involve service. In some of the expressions he is thinking of the service of a servant, in others (as in this word wages—ὀψώνια the soldier’s allowance) of military service. We can choose our master, our leader; but serve some one, do some one’s work, fight in some one’s cause, we must. We may serve God or we may serve sin. He has been striving in the last verses to bring out the contrasts of the two services. They differ in their objects, their aim, their methods, their issue. The text is the last word in the comparison. It contrasts their rewards. But in doing so St. Paul breaks away, as it were, from the similitude; says, as he so often does, "Remember that it is a figure, not the whole truth; no figure can comprehend that." Life is a service; all fight in some ranks. The figure holds in many points, but not in all, not absolutely in one particular point. Service supposes wages, some return for the service, earned and to be paid. And the service of sin has its wages, something that answers to that figure in at least one regard. They are wages earned, the pay of a soldier’s toilsome and dangerous service,—though they are not the wages looked for, nor such as make up the campaign. "The wages of sin, the hard-earned wages, is death." It would have followed, it might seem, to say, "The wages, the earned reward, of righteousness is life"; but St. Paul does not say so. There the figure fails. The true soldier and servant of goodness and God knows only too well that he earns no reward; the enemy whom he is to fight is not without him only, but within, in his own half-traitorous heart. No; it is not the wages of goodness, but "the gift of God" given to the unworthy through Jesus Christ our Lord.

II. The wages of sin is death. That will be the end of living for pleasure, living for self, living only for this world. The end of living for pleasure is death. You must sacrifice to it things infinitely more precious, and then the pleasures die. They last but a moment; and presently the faculty of pleasure dies. At first we fail to see that this is happening, because there is a change and succession of pleasures. Life has some small variety of pleasures, and they are so disposed that to our inexperienced eye they look endless; but we soon exhaust them. They become but repetitions, and then they cease to please. And so is all self-seeking. We cannot live for self without starving the more generous instincts and forfeiting the higher blessings of life. And self cannot satisfy. All purely selfish success turns to vanity and vexation of spirit. And this world itself passes. The things that are seen are temporal. "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord"—life ever deepening, widening; self-conquest, freedom, the conscience growing more sensitive and more completely mistress of the life, all instincts and perceptions of moral beauty growing keener, all lofty and generous emotions strengthening the sense of God’s nearness, the trust in His goodness, the sympathy with His purposes, for ever increasing, brightening to the perfect day.

E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons, p. 125.

References: Rom 6:23.—E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 15; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1459; C. G. Finney, Sermons on Gospel Themes, p. 37; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 29; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxi., No. 1868; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines, p. 186; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; Ibid., vol. vii., p. 22; Church of England Pulpit, vol. v., p. 125; J. Burbidge, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 33; J. Vaughan, Sermons, 6th series, p. 29; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes, p. 37. Rom 6:23.—E. Cooper, Practical Sermons, vol. i., p. 15.

The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Subdivision 2. (Rom 6:1-23.)

Dead with Christ to sin, no more to be in bondage to it.

We come now at once to that deliverance, which is detailed for us in two parts, which are taken up in perfect order, -first from sin, and then from law; the first positional, the second, practical deliverance. Necessarily deliverance from sin comes first, in order that deliverance from law may not mean lawlessness, but freedom to serve in newness of spirit. And yet deliverance from law must be, in order that there may be practical deliverance from sin. The positional is judicial clearing, as the use of the word "justified" (ver. 7) -"he that hath died is justified from sin" -sufficiently shows. This is not the same as from "sins," let us note, but goes beyond it. We are in Christ, who has died once and for all to that which He took upon Him, so that no question as to it can be ever raised again. We too, therefore, as in Him are once for all cleared, because He, our Representative, is. We have a place in absolute perfection before God unchangingly. And this by and by we shall find to be the "law of the Spirit," even that "life in Christ Jesus," by which we are practically "delivered from the law of sin and death" (Rom 8:2). It is the delivering principle which the Spirit uses; but the question of law must be settled also, that it may practically avail us.

Questions at once assail us here, and these the apostle deals with, as we shall see, continuously. To be freed at once from all possible charge of sin, and with this from law also, would seem in the eyes of more than natural men unholy from first to last, while sin is nevertheless admittedly within us still, and the devil and the world are both around to incite and allure us. But grace really reigns; and "sin," says the apostle, "shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace" (ver. 14). It is strange, yet true, that even the Christian is slow to recognize in all the length and breadth of it, the truth of such an assertion; yet it is the thesis which Paul sets himself to maintain all through, and against all who may gainsay it. Let us watch his argument as having that personal interest in it which indeed we have.

1. He starts at once with the argument of an objector, of course, founded on his previous declaration that "where sin abounded grace did overabound." "What then?" he asks; "shall we continue in sin, then, that grace may abound?" Spite of the answer given to it here, that question is substantially raised today, as if there had been none; as if in fact, it were really unanswerable. But it is true that the apostle’s answer is very little understood; and even by those who are quite satisfied with it. Rejecting utterly the thought, he puts it away with another question. "We who have died to sin," he asks, "how shall we still live in it?" The putting that as a question shows how unanswerable he deems it; and unanswerable it clearly is, if only the premise is rightly taken. If we are dead to sin, then it is an undeniable consequence that we cannot live in it.

But the difficulty is with the assertion itself, that we are dead to sin. Most Christians are content to say, that they ought to be dead to sin, but wince as they look into the book of their experience, and are ready to declare that there never was more than One on earth, who could truly affirm this of himself.

Yet it is as plain as possible that, whether from his experience or in some other way, this is just what the apostle does affirm; and that not only of himself, or of some people of special attainment, but of Christians as a class -of all Christians. It is true as to all Christians that where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and that is the ground of the objection taken, and of course, of Paul’s answer too.

This at once settles it against the so-called perfectionists, that he is not affirming as to any one’s experience, that he is dead to sin: for Paul is certainly speaking of all Christians, and it is not the universal experience, and is not claimed that I am aware, that it is that, that all are in this sense "dead." And we shall see in a little while that this is not given as an experience of any, but as a faith. His words later on are, "Reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin;" and the reckoning is from this that "Christ died unto sin once." This therefore is a reckoning of faith, as is clear, and not an experience. It is plain, without need of looking further, that in this being dead to sin, however little as yet we may grasp the full meaning of it, we have another example of our identification with our Representative Head. It is necessarily true therefore of every one of us, however great the need also of having it believingly realized, as the apostle urges.

He goes on to press the truth as conveyed in baptism, which as that which brings into the ranks of Christian discipleship, has been given as a picture-lesson of what discipleship implies. "Or know ye not," he asks, "that so many of us as were baptized unto Christ, were baptized unto His death? We were buried therefore with Him through baptism unto death, that as Christ was raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life."

We need to go slowly here, so many things being in question. It is a sad sign of the confusion of the day that thus in the very rite of initiation into what is our common profession, we should yet be so little able to agree as to what is meant by it. Happily, neither mode nor subjects are before us here, though doubtless we may find what will have its implication in both these directions. But we are in company with one of those who could say, "He that is of God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not;" and we must surrender ourselves to his guidance absolutely.

"Baptized unto Christ Jesus" is certainly correct, instead of "into," though the Greek words, as words merely, might mean either. But the parallel "baptized unto Moses" is absolutely decisive. The Israelites were set apart to Moses in the cloud and in the sea, -to be Moses, disciples; where we plainly could not say, "into." The phrase is thus freed from all suspicion of such a ritualistic force as in very opposite interests it has been made to bear, -as if the wondrous place in Christ were conferred in baptism. "So many of us" again does not imply a smaller out of a larger number, but is on the contrary an emphatic way of saying "every one;" or as if one said, "If we were baptized to Christ at all, we were baptized to His death."

To see the force of it clearly, we have but to go back in our minds to John’s preparatory baptism in Jordan, the river of death, in which men took their place as confessing their sins, and owning their rightful condemnation. Thus he baptized unto death; but it was not Christian baptism -it was not "to Christ’s death," which is the distinctive feature of the present time, but simply to the acknowledgment of its being worthily their own.

Nevertheless it was for remission -"the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins": not present yet, so that it could be a testimony of sins actually remitted, but in view of the One coming whose forerunner John was. Nor did John close without the fuller witness that, in fact, He had come. Come! and to the very place of that which these penitents acknowledged as their due! The Lord’s baptism in Jordan was for Him no baptism of repentance, but the solemn pledge to what He afterwards called "the baptism that He was to be baptized with" (Luk 12:50). Thus alone could deliverance be achieved for men who were under death, and the virtue of that death abides; so that now convicted sinners such as these in John’s day, brought to own their place in death before God, find all changed for them; they learn that He has been in death for them, and find a new life for them where death was. Thus Christian baptism is still to death but to His death, a death which is life to all that come to Him; and here we have the key to that which baptism expresses.

Baptism has in itself no reference to life: it is burial, and burial has to do with death, not life, -it is the dead who must be buried. Now comes the necessary question: in what sense are we dead, to be so buried? Notice that in the idea which baptism presents, we are baptized to Christ, not with Him. We are not baptized because we have touched Him, but, so to speak, we touch Him in it -as to what is intended. In other words, baptism is a gospel picture acted out. As we have seen in the words of Ananias to Saul (Act 22:16) it is itself in some sense, the washing away of sins: we are not baptized because they have been washed away, but we wash them away in it. And this agrees perfectly with Peter’s words in his first epistle (1Pe 3:21) that in a figure baptism saves; not marks out the saved, as so many put it, but saves. And this again agrees with what John’s baptism speaks of, and which the thought of baptism as burial confirms. It is as sinners we come to it, not saints; and in it we find remission of sins and salvation. These are things, as we know, upon which ritualism builds; and they are facts, but of no use to ritualism. Its followers might as well try to support life upon a picture of food, or to take names for things and prove to us there is no difference between them.

There is an illustration from the Old Testament which may more vividly present to us the truth that we have here: "Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet" (2Ki 13:20-21).

Elisha, in the miracles done by him, answered to his name, which means "My God is salvation." We have in this one a beautiful illustration of baptism, just because it is a vivid and beautiful picture of salvation through the gospel. The man is dead, and so they bury him: burying is but putting the dead into the place of death. He is let down into the grave of one who had died before: he is buried with Elisha. So buried, he touches the one who had preceded him in death, and is quickened out of it: he stands upon his feet a living man.

Here we have two deaths brought together, and the one the cure of the other. The man that you bury must be dead; and this, of course, must apply to baptism; but in what sense then dead? dead with Christ, since it is burial with Christ? That is the contention of some, and is plausible at first sight, but only at first sight; for, as we have seen, it is only the one already alive in Christ that can be dead with Christ, and the man buried in baptism is buried to touch the dead Christ and to live. Dead with Christ means dead to sin, as we have heard already, and as is to be more fully shown us; but none can be dead to sin who is not spiritually alive, -who has not already touched Christ so as to live. Buried with Christ does not then imply dead with Christ, as might be thought.

Buried because dead in sins, then? That is nearer to, but is not yet the truth. The death that we see pictured in John’s baptism is the death which is the due of sin, and not the inward condition, which is but the inveteracy of the sinful state itself. The death here is that into which Christ came; but He did not come into any sinful condition, but under its penalty. Hence burial with Christ is the owning of the penalty, which the conscience anticipates before it comes, Christ having also anticipated that place for us, that we may live. Baptism, as before said, is but a typical or acted out gospel; with a significant protest against ritualism also: for the baptism is, as the word itself shows, and the argument also but immersion -burial, Christ alone as the quickening Spirit giving the life. It does not go on, as Colossians in our common version teaches, to resurrection.* It is the confession of death, for which we are put into Christ’s sepulchre, that we may live. What is contemplated here is power for the new walk; it cannot itself give this: it is a baptism to death, and not to life.

{*Col 2:12 should be read, "buried with Him in baptism, in whom also ye were raised together."}

This corresponds exactly also with the true rendering of 1Pe 3:21, which really speaks of baptism, not as the answer of a good conscience, which from all that we have seen it could not be, but rather "the demand* of a good conscience," not the declaration that we have found it. The baptism, not as an ordinance, but in the idea that it conveys, ends with effecting this. It is but the introduction of the soul to Christ, with whom all satisfaction of the conscience lies. The doctrine of Scripture is as to this consistent throughout, as it must always be.

{*The R.V. has "interrogation," or "inquiry."}

Christ, then, was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. That for which He had come into the world demanded for Him deliverance from death, into which He came for this. But such acceptance of His work for sinners means necessarily their deliverance from the power as well as penalty of sin. Thus the practical effect for those who are His is a "walk in newness of life." The old man, as we shall presently see, is not to revive out of this burial. The "newness" as the word implies, is a newness of kind (kainotees), another sort of life. The river of death has swept over the old one.

2. The apostle goes on to show how the cross of Christ as the crucifixion of the old man becomes in the wisdom of God a means to the sin still in us being overcome. But we have to ask ourselves the question in the first place, what the expression "our old man" means. The common thought is, perhaps, that it is the sin in us personified; thus what is called afterwards the flesh: a term which we may note has not yet been used in Romans, in this sense, and the proper place to examine which will be in the next chapter. But there is one thing which is important to take into account, as to the old man, the significance of which, if not the fact, is largely overlooked, that it is never spoken of as existing in the Christian, but always as crucified or put off. It is so even in Eph 4:22, where the common version is at least ambiguous, but where instead of "that ye put off" should be read "that ye did put off." Thus it refers to what for us is past, not present, and this is so far against the thought of its being the sin in us, while the fact of there being as to the Christian a "new man," which he has put on, replacing the old one, really demonstrates this from the other side. Always the putting off is connected with the putting on, and the two men are not co-existent but exclusive of one another.

{Rom 6:5. "Grown together": "planted together" is not correct, and "identified," which some give, seems too free; while it indicates the effect rather than the production of this. See notes. There being no "him," some would say "united with the likeness of His death," but this creates needless difficulty. That it is with Christ is shown clearly by the context.}

The necessary conclusion is that the new man is characteristic of the Christian; and conversely the old man is the man before his Christian course began. There is no personification in either case: it is the person that was and the person that is, each characterized morally; while, of course, the same individual persists all through. But in this way "our old man" is surely as easily read as it is significant. It is the person that was, with evident allusion to the first fallen man, the repetition of whom in all his natural descendants may account for the plural with the singular ("our old man"), the self-same man with each and all of us! For this "the one" and "the many" of the last chapter has prepared us; it is evident that the transmitted image of the first man in the many must for those to whom Christ is Head and Saviour be met and cancelled; while the new man is just the man in Christ, a new creation.

Let us now go back to the beginning of what is here. "For if," says the apostle, continuing his reference to the truth in baptism, "we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in that of His resurrection." The likeness of His death is, of course, baptism itself, and the being united* to Him in His death, is that which we have seen baptism to represent. If therefore that which baptism represents is fulfilled in us, then on the other hand, we shall be in the likeness of His resurrection. This may, no doubt, go on to complete realization in physical resurrection, yet surely is intended to have a present practical application, according to the whole tenor of the thought here. "We shall be" is only necessarily future from the standpoint of union with Him in His death, and its argumentative force for the present is blunted by an exclusive physical reference. The contrast between "become" and "be" favors also the present application: "if we have become united, then we shall as the result be (now) in this likeness." For as Christ was not left in the grave, so for us also the power of His resurrection must approve itself. It is contended indeed that resurrection with Christ is not found in Romans in this way. It is true that it is not dwelt upon, as in Ephesians and Colossians; yet there are references to it which can hardly be mistaken: what, for instance, does "yield yourselves unto God, as those alive from among the dead" mean? And how could the thought be absent from the "newness of life" in which we are to walk? Does not the being by the Spirit united to Christ, as in the next chapter, necessitate it? or may we have the full thought of alive in Christ, and even as a means of deliverance from the law of sin and death (Rom 8:2) apart from this? The truth will be developed more and more as we go on with it; nevertheless the germ of all that relates to our position individually is already here.

{*We must distinguish between being united to Him in His death, and union by the Spirit with Him as risen from the dead, to which we come only in the next chapter.}

And in connection with this it is that the crucifixion of the old man, of which the apostle goes on to speak, comes to be delivered from all ascetic mournfulness, and attains its proper character as that which annuls (or brings practically to nothing) the body of sin. It is sin as dwelling in us, acting through the body in the lusts and passions which reflect themselves in it, which in its entirety needs to be annulled. Similarly, in the next chapter, the man who has come to despair of self-mastery groans aloud for deliverance from the "body of this death;" while in Col 2:11 we have the parallel term, the "body of the flesh." By and by we shall be warned that the "body is dead because of sin" (Rom 8:10), and that we are to "mortify the deeds of the body" (ver. 13). All this it is not yet the place to enter into, yet it enables us to realize sufficiently what is meant here.

The crucifixion of the old man is the inflicting penal sentence upon it; and in this we must remember that it is not man’s part in the Cross that is before us, but that the lifting up from the earth was that which in the law of Moses indicates the awful sentence of God upon sin: "he that hangeth upon a tree is accursed of God" (Deu 21:23). Thus the cross was God’s judgment upon fallen man, with whom each one of us had his place naturally. The sentence is here, not merely upon our sins but upon ourselves, and here is a meaning of the Cross most important for us to realize and take to heart. The thoughts of man’s heart, his wisdom and his will, received in it their condemnation; thank God, they were put away from before Him by our glorious Substitute; so that we have our deliverance judicially and practically at the same time. How immense a gain to have learned God’s estimate of ourselves in nature, so as to have learned the renunciation of our wisdom and our wills; while finding the complete ruling aside of all from before God as in a dead man they are necessarily set aside: for you can charge nothing against a dead man; whatever he may have been, as now dead, "he that hath died is justified from sin." It is plain in the way the apostle is speaking, crucifixion in this case does not come short of death, as many would argue: it gives character to it as divine condemnation, and this is for the breaking of our thraldom to sin and the annulling it in its totality. Divine righteousness has branded it, -divine love has removed its burden from me, so that I should be its slave no more.

3. But if we do not stand any more as identified with what we were in nature, or under the doom of sin, -if it is with Christ that we have died, this means for faith that we shall also live with Him. Touching Him in faith, we are henceforth identified with Him. As we have seen, He is the living Head and Representative of His people, and in Him our life is. Thus we have the assurance which He has given to His own, "Because I live, ye shall live also" (Joh 14:19). The future tense in both passages simply affirms, of course, the perpetuity of what has already begun, and that is founded on what is a matter of Christian consciousness, that "Christ being raised from the dead, dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once for all; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God." Thus that which was the burden upon Him has been for ever rolled away, and that, burden was our burden. It is not partly removed, but wholly; there is no such thing as partial removal for any of His own. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin as He is; and alive to God for ever in Him who is eternally alive to God, His glorious work achieved.

We reckon this so, not feel it to be so. It is an entire mistake, and fraught with important consequences, to imagine this being dead to sin to be feeling or experience. We cannot feel Christ’s death on the cross, and it was there He died to sin, and we because He died. If it were experience, it would be an absolutely perfect one, no evil thought, feeling, or desire, ever in the heart; and this not true of some of the more advanced, but of all Christians always; but this is contrary to the experience of all. The attempt to produce such a condition in oneself ends in the misery of utter failure, or, still worse, in self-satisfaction, indeed, the well-nigh incredible delusion for a Christian man, that he is as impassive to sin as Christ Himself! The words do not, as already said, express such an experience; as indeed, in any such sense as this, Christ never died to sin: what for us might be the expression of perfection would be the denial of such perfection as was His. In every way, then, in which we look at it, it is plain that it is not an experience of which the apostle is speaking here. We could not be told to reckon that we experience: what we reckon is a fact for faith, the fruit of the work done for us, not of that done in us: because Christ died unto sin once for all, and in that He liveth, liveth unto God, thus also do we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

These last words carry us back, as there can be no right question, to those which we have heard front the Lord’s own lips in the Gospel of John. Thus, looking forward to the present time, the time of His absence from His own, as gone back to Him from whom He had come, He says, "In that day ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in Me, and I in you" (Joh 14:20). He has prefaced this with the assurance, "Because I live, ye shall live also." His parable of the Vine and its branches, which shortly follows, gives us the fundamental thought in these expressions so often repeated, "we in Him and He in us," and we see it to be life in Him that is all through at the root of them. The epistle of John afterwards gives it more precise doctrinal statement, that "God hath given unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son" (1Jn 5:11). It is a life which, all through the Gospel, we are shown that He communicates to us, and which we have abiding in us. Thus we are "in the Son;" and because the life is divine life, we can be said, not only to be in the Son, but in the Father also (Joh 17:21; 1Th 1:1; 2Th 1:1; 1Jn 2:24). But this at once distinguishes the doctrine of Romans here from that of John. John speaks of life and nature only -what we have as children of God and born of Him; it is condition and not position, as is plain, for the thought of "in the Father," and "in the Son" alike exclude position. But Paul, as we have seen, while his doctrine is based upon a life which we have received, a life eternal, in no wise different in this way from what is revealed to us in John, yet develops in another manner this truth, and shows us other implications of it. For him the life is in Christ, the new Adam of a new creation, which rises out of the fallen one, to stand in the perfection of its Head before God, and in the value of the glorious work which has much more than redeemed us from the sin and ruin in which we were involved. and made us partakers in an infinite wealth of blessing. Thus it is "in Christ" that we live, -in Him who is before God, not simply in the right, which was always His, of the Only begotten of the Father, but as Christ, in the place He had taken for men, and as having accomplished the work by which they are brought to God; and the pentecostal anointing of the gathered disciples was but the overflow of that upon the priestly Head, which was thus flowing down to the skirts of His garments (Psa 133:2). So was He now in the fullest sense the Christ -the Anointed. Life was now in One who was the Representative Head of His people, and "alive unto God in Christ Jesus" puts together condition and position. If "in Christ" brings in the thought of new creation, as the apostle declares (2Co 5:17), the new creation stands in the New Man to whom it has been committed -the Antitypical Adam of the race to whom He has become a "quickening Spirit." All this must faith reckon in, to have the fulness of the blessing here.

4. Now then the apostle can exhort to a walk suited to such a place. We see at once that he has no thought of sin having been done with in such sort that there shall be no danger from it any more. The believer is, indeed, set free from subjection to it, but therefore in a place in which the full responsibility is his of manifesting that freedom. He is not beyond the need of the warning, "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, to obey its lusts." These bodies, though with the sign of the fall still upon them in their evident mortality, can yet be yielded* up now to God by those who are now alive from the dead, and their members as instruments of righteousness to God. And it is to this that grace enables and constrains. No need of weakening the sense of it, then, or qualifying it with some other and therefore opposite principle! Nay, "sin shall not have dominion over you, because ye are not under law, but under grace." Shall the delivered soul call in again its jailer to make good its deliverance. Nay, it is grace alone in which there is any help whatever, or ray of hope. And, thank God, it is all-sufficient also. Sin shall not have dominion over the subjects of divine grace, is the apostle’s assurance: grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life.

{*The reader will observe, as has often been noticed, that in speaking of yielding to sin and to God the apostle uses different tenses of the verb, which while difficult to render in English give distinct shades of meaning in Greek. He uses the present tense of the imperative in speaking of yielding to sin. It is never, at any time or during any period to be obeyed. In speaking of obedience to God, it is the Aorist imperative that is used. It is a definite act, once for all, as marking the beginning of the walk in newness of life. -S.R.}

5. Everything here will be questioned, however, by the soul ignorant of itself and of God; and such questions, because of their importance, must have careful answer. Again therefore we have the objection of the mere moralist taken up to be indignantly set aside: "What then? Are we to sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? Far be the thought." Yet the heart of man is in fact capable of such abuse of divine goodness; yes, but what would such an argument mean? A soul set free willingly yielding itself to that from which God has delivered it? Is this deliverance when the heart is still deliberately seeking that from which it assumes to be delivered? Well, says the apostle, if I am addressing any in such a condition, let me remind them that here the whole nature of God is in question. Does not then the way of sin deliberately pursued, end in death? Does the gospel change this relation of sin to death? does it not manifest God, and in all His attributes? His holiness being more shown indeed in the agony of the Cross, than even the uttermost punishment of the sinner could have shown it. Thus then, if one freely yields himself to obey a master, he cannot but be reckoned as belonging to the master he has chosen, whether on the one hand to sin with its terrible wages, or of obedience to God for righteousness. In all this there rules a fundamental necessity, which the gospel could not subvert and be still a gospel.

It was necessary, therefore, to give this the clearest expression; but, while the apostle does so, he has a joyful conviction with regard to those whom he is addressing, that their own experience well interprets that which he is saying. With them he is assured, their bondage to sin is indeed past, and with heartfelt appreciation of the glorious change, they have entered upon the new service to righteousness. Melted and subdued by the power of the Word, they have been as ductile metal run into the mould, and taking form in the pattern of their present life by the doctrine to which they are surrendered, so as, being set free from sin, to become bondservants to righteousness. Strange phrases these might seem still to use in connection with the redeemed and enfranchised children of God. The apostle in some sort apologizes for them; yet that divine love has had to conquer us for itself, we surely know; and having conquered, that it has made us bondservants to it for ever, -bound by the grace that has enfranchised us more fully and securely than any slave as such could be. Yet, alas, of this bond we need to be reminded, strangely as we are often in contradiction to ourselves: we are not beyond the exhortation to yield our members bondservants to righteousness for sanctification, -righteousness which has in it the apprehension of God’s peculiar and double rights in us, -redemption more than doubling His creative claim. From the opposite side, as bondservants to sin, we were indeed free in regard to righteousness. Can we not vividly remember those shameful, barren days as to good? and the end of those things is death! How great the contrast now! "But now being freed from sin, and being made bondservants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This is the summing up in contrast of the two sides already set before us. The end on the one side is what man has earned; the end on the other is the full realization -the entering into -of that which is, not simply at the end, but now also, God’s gracious gift to us. This has been shown us abundantly; but notice how again here "our Lord" -"in Christ Jesus our Lord" -closes this subject with the glad witness of what brings all the life into that harmonious order which is the result of the deliverance from sin. The Christ whom we have known in His lowliness as Jesus, now in the place of exaltation which has given us a "gospel of glory," has bowed our hearts in obedient homage to Himself. As the unwilling prophet testified of a people of other days, "the shout of a King is among" us, the pledge of victory over every foe, -"higher than Agag" with all his rebellious rout. There can be no deliverance where Christ is not enthroned; there can be nothing else, where He has His due place and acknowledgment. Put Him only in His place, and He cannot but manifest His power; and that will be more and more simple as we proceed with what is before us now.

F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 14

JUSTIFICATION AND HOLINESS

Rom_6:1-13

IN a certain sense, St. Paul has done now with the exposition of Justification. He has brought us on, from his denunciation of human sin, and his detection of the futility of mere privilege, to propitiation, to faith, to acceptance, to love, to joy, and hope, and finally to our mysterious but real connection in all this blessing with Him who won our peace. From this point onwards we shall find many mentions of our acceptance, and of its Cause; we shall come to some memorable mentions very soon. But we shall not hear the holy subject itself any more treated and expounded. It will underlie the following discussions everywhere; it will as it were surround them, as with a sanctuary wall. But we shall now think less directly of the foundations than of the superstructure, for which the foundation was laid. We shall be less occupied with the fortifications of our holy city than with the resources they contain, and with the life which is to be lived, on those resources, within the walls.

Everything will cohere. But the transition will be marked, and will call for our deepest, and let us add, our most reverent and supplicating thought.

"We need not, then, be holy, if such is your programme of acceptance." Such was the objection, bewildered or deliberate, which St. Paul heard in his soul at this pause in his dictation; he had doubtless often heard it with his ears. Here was a wonderful provision for the free and full acceptance of "the ungodly" by the eternal Judge. It was explained and stated so as to leave no room for human virtue as a commendatory merit. Faith itself was no commendatory virtue. It was not "a work," but the antithesis to "works." Its power was not in itself but in its Object. It was itself only the void which received "the obedience of the One" as the sole meriting cause of peace with God. Then-may we not live on in sin, and yet be in His favour now, and in His heaven hereafter?

Let us recollect, as we pass on, one important lesson of these recorded objections to the great first message of St. Paul. They tell us incidentally how explicit and unreserved his delivery of the message had been, and how Justification by Faith, by faith only, meant what was said, when it was said by him. Christian thinkers, of more schools than one, and at many periods, have hesitated not a little over that point. The mediaeval theologian mingled his thoughts of Justification with those of Regeneration, and taught our acceptance accordingly on lines impossible to lay true along those of St. Paul. In later days, the meaning of faith has been sometimes beclouded, till it has seemed through the haze, to be only an indistinct summary word for Christian consistency, for exemplary conduct, for good works. Now supposing either of these lines of teaching, or anything like them, to be the message of St. Paul, "his Gospel," as he preached it; one result may be reasonably inferred-that we should not have had Rom_6:1 worded as it is. Whatever objections were encountered by a Gospel of acceptance expounded on such lines, (and no doubt it would have encountered many, if it called sinful men to holiness,) it would not have encountered this objection, that it seemed to allow men to be unholy. What such a Gospel would seem to do would be to accentuate in all its parts the urgency of obedience in order to acceptance; the vital importance on the one hand of an internal change in our nature (through sacramental operation, according to many); and then on the other hand the practice of Christian virtues, with the hope, in consequence, of acceptance, more or less complete, in heaven. Whether the objector, the enquirer, was dull, or whether he was subtle, it could not have occurred to him to say, "You are preaching a Gospel of license; I may, if you are right, live as I please, only drawing a little deeper on the fund of gratuitous acceptance as I go on." But just this was the animus, and such were very nearly the words, of those who either hated St. Pauls message as unorthodox, or wanted an excuse for the sin they loved, and found it in quotations from St. Paul. Then St. Paul must have meant by faith what faith ought to mean, simple trust. And he must have meant by justification without works, what those words ought to mean, acceptance irrespective of our recommendatory conduct. Such a Gospel was no doubt liable to be mistaken and misrepresented, and in just the way we are now observing. But it was also, and it is so still, the only Gospel which is the power of God unto salvation-to the fully awakened conscience, to the soul that sees itself, and asks for God indeed.

This undesigned witness to the meaning of the Pauline doctrine of Justification by Faith only will appear still more strongly when we come to the Apostles answer to his questioners, He meets them not at all by modifications of his assertions. He has not a word to say about additional and corrective conditions precedent to our peace with God. He makes no impossible hint that Justification means the making of us good, or that Faith is a "short title" for Christian practice. No; there is no reason for such assertions either in the nature of words, or in the whole cast of the argument through which he has led us. What does he do? He takes this great truth of our acceptance in Christ our Merit, and puts it unreserved, unrelieved, unspoiled, in contact with other truth, of coordinate, nay, of superior greatness, for it is the truth to which Justification leads us, as way to end. He places our acceptance through Christ Atoning in organic connection with our life in Christ Risen. He indicates, as a truth evident to the conscience, that as the thought of our share in the Lords Merit is inseparable from union with the meriting Person, so the thought of this union is inseparable from that of a spiritual harmony, a common life, in which the accepted sinner finds both a direction and a power in his Head. Justification has indeed set him free from the condemning chain of sin, from guilt. He is as if he had died the Death of sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction; as if he had passed through the Lama Sabachthani, and had "poured out his soul" for sin. So he is "dead to sin," in the sense in which his Lord and Representative "died to" it; the atoning death has killed sins claim on him for judgment. As having so died, in Christ, he is "justified from sin." But then, because he thus died "in Christ," he is "in Christ" still, in respect also of resurrection. He is justified, not that he may go away, but that in His Justifier he may live, with the powers of that holy and eternal life with which the Justifier rose again.

The two truths are concentrated as it were into one, by their equal relation to the same Person, the Lord. The previous argument has made us intensely conscious that Justification, while a definite transaction in law, is not a mere transaction; it lives and glows with the truth of connection with a Person. That Person is the Bearer for us of all Merit. But He is also, and equally, the Bearer for us of new Life; in which the sharers of His Merit share, for they are in Him. So that, while the Way of Justification can be isolated for study, as it has been in this Epistle, the justified man cannot be isolated from Christ, who is his life. And thus he can never ultimately be considered apart from his possession in Christ, of a new possibility, a new power, a new and glorious call to living holiness.

In the simplest and most practical terms the Apostle sets it before us that our justification is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. We are accepted that we may be possessed, and possessed after the manner not of a mechanical "article," but of an organic limb. We have "received the reconciliation" that we may now walk, not away from God, as if released from a prison, but with God, as His children in His Son. Because we are justified, we are to be holy, separated from sin, separated to God; not as a mere indication that our faith is real, and that therefore we are legally safe, but because we were justified for this very purpose, that we might be holy.

To return to a simile we have employed already, the grapes upon a vine are not merely a living token that the tree is a vine, and is alive; they are the product for which the vine exists. It is a thing not to be thought of that the sinner should accept justification-and live to himself. It is a moral contradiction of the very deepest kind, and cannot be entertained without betraying an initial error in the mans whole spiritual creed.

And further, there is not only this profound connection of purpose between acceptance and holiness. There is a connection of endowment and capacity. Justification has done for the justified a twofold work, both limbs of which are all important for the man who asks, How can I walk and please God? First, it has, decisively broken the claim of sin upon him as guilt. He stands clear of that exhausting and enfeebling load. The pilgrims burthen has fallen from his back, at the foot of the Lords Cross, into the Lords Grave. He has peace with God, not in emotion, but in covenant, through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has an unreserved "introduction" into a Fathers loving and welcoming presence, every day and hour, in the Merit of his Head. But then also Justification has been to him as it were the signal of his union with Christ in new life; this we have noted already. Not only therefore does it give him, as indeed it does, an eternal occasion for a gratitude which, as he feels it, "makes duty joy, and labour rest." It gives him "a new power" with which to live the grateful life; a power residing not in Justification itself, but in what it opens up. It is the gate through which he passes to the fountain, the roof which shields him as he drinks. The fountain is his justifying Lords exalted Life, His risen Life, poured into the mans being by the Spirit who makes Head and member one. And it is as justified that he has access to the fountain, and drinks as deep as he will of its life, its power, its purity. In the contemporary passage, 1Co_6:17, St. Paul had already written (in a connection unspeakably practical), "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit." It is a sentence which might stand as a heading to the passage we now come to render.

What shall we say then? Shall we cling to the sin that the grace may multiply, the grace of the acceptance of the guilty? Away with the thought! We, the very men who died to that sin, -when our Representative, in whom we have believed, died for us to it, died to meet and break its claim-how shall we any longer live, have congenial being and action, in it, asin an air we like to breathe? It is a moral impossibility that the man so freed from this things tyrannic claim to slay him should wish for anything else than severance from it in all respects. Or do you not know that we all, when baptised into Jesus Christ, when the sacred water sealed to us our faith received contact with Him and interest in Him, were baptised into His Death, baptised as coming into union with Him as, above all, the Crucified, the Atoning? Do you forget that your covenant-Head, of whose covenant of peace your baptism was the divine physical token, is nothing to you if not your Saviour "who died," and who died because of this very sin with which your thought now parleys; died because only so could He break its legal bond upon you, in order to break its moral bond? We were entombed therefore with Him by means of our baptism, as it symbolised and sealed the work of faith, into His Death; it certified our interest in that vicarious death, even to its climax in the grave which, as it were, swallowed up the Victim; that just as Christ rose from the dead by means of the glory of the Father, as that death issued for Him in a new and endless life, not by accident, but because the Character of God, the splendour of His love, truth, and power, secured the issue, so we too should begin to Walk (περιπατησωμεν) in newness of life, should step forth in a power altogether new, in our union still with Him. All possible emphasis lies upon those words, "newness of life." They bring out what has been indicated already (Rom_6:17-18), the truth that the Lord has won us not only remission of a death penalty, not only even an extension of existence under happier circumstances, and in a more grateful and hopeful spirit-but a new and wonderful life power. The sinner has fled to the Crucified, that he may not die. He is now not only amnestied but accepted. He is not only accepted but incorporated into his Lord, as one with Him in interest. He is not only incorporated as to interest, but, because his Lord, being Crucified, is also Risen, he is incorporated into Him as Life. The Last Adam, like the First, transmits not only legal but vital effects to His member. In Christ the man has, in a sense as perfectly practical as it is inscrutable, new life, new power, as the Holy Ghost applies to his inmost being the presence and virtues of his Head. "In Him he lives, by Him he moves."

To men innumerable the discovery of this ancient truth, or the fuller apprehension of it, has been indeed like a beginning of new life. They have been long and painfully aware, perhaps, that their strife with evil was a serious failure on the whole, and their deliverance from its power lamentably partial. And they could not always command as they would the emotional energies of gratitude, the warm consciousness of affection. Then it was seen, or seen more fully, that the Scriptures set forth this great mystery, this powerful fact; our union with our Head, by the Spirit, for life, for victory and deliverance, for dominion over sin, for willing service. And the hands are lifted up, and the knees confirmed, as the man uses the now open secret-Christ in him, and he in Christ-for the real walk of life. But let us listen to St. Paul again.

For if we became vitally connected, He with us and we with Him, by the likeness of His Death, by the baptismal plunge, symbol and seal of our faith union with the Buried Sacrifice, why, we shall be vitally connected with Him by the likeness also of His Resurrection, by the baptismal emergence, symbol and seal of our faith union with the Risen Lord, and so with His risen power. This knowing, that our old man, our old state, as out of Christ and under Adams headship, under guilt and in moral bondage, was crucified with Christ, was as it were nailed to His atoning Cross, where He represented us. In other words, He on the Cross, our Head and Sacrifice, so dealt with our fallen state for us, that the body of sin, this our body viewed as sins stronghold, medium, vehicle, might be cancelled, might be in abeyance, put down, deposed, so as to be no more the fatal door to admit temptation to a powerless soul within.

"Cancelled" is a strong word. Let us lay hold upon its strength, and remember that it gives us not a dream, but a fact, to be found true in Christ. Let us not turn its fact into fallacy, by forgetting that, whatever "cancel" means, it does not mean that grace lifts us out of the body; that we are no longer to "keep under the body, and bring it into subjection," in the name of Jesus. Alas for us, if any promise, any truth, is allowed to "cancel" the call to watch and pray, and to think that in no sense is there still a foe within. But all the rather let us grasp, and use, the glorious positive in its place and time, which is everywhere and every day. Let us recollect, let us confess our faith, that thus it is with us, through Him who loved us. He died for us for this very end, that our "body of sin" might be wonderfully "in abeyance," as to the power of temptation upon the soul. Yes, as St. Paul proceeds, that henceforth we should not do bondservice to sin; that from now onwards, from our acceptance in Him, from our realisation of our union with Him, we should say to temptation a "no" that carries with it the power of the inward presence of the Risen Lord. Yes, for He has won that power for us in our Justification through His Death. He died for us, and we in Him, as to sins claim, as to our guilt; and He thus died, as we have seen, on purpose that we might be not only legally accepted, but vitally united to Him. Such is the connection of the following clause, strangely rendered in the English Version, and often therefore misapplied, but whose literal wording is, For he who died, he who has died, has been justified from his (της) sin, stands justified from it, stands free from its guilt. The thought is of the atoning Death, in which the believer is interested as if it were his own. And the implied thought is that, as that death is "fact accomplished," as "our old man" was so effectually "crucified with Christ," therefore we may, we must, claim the spiritual freedom and power in the Risen One which the Slain One secured for us when He bore our guilt.

This possession is also a glorious prospect, for it is permanent with the eternity of His Life. It not only is, but shall be. Now if we died with Christ, we believe, we rest upon His word and work for it, that we shall also live with Him, that we shall share not only now but for all the future the powers of His risen life. For He lives forever-and we are in Him! Knowing that Christ, risen from the dead, no longer dies, no death is in His future now; death over Him has no more dominion, its claim on Him is forever gone. For as to His dying, it was as to our sin He died; it was to deal with our sins claim; and He has dealt with it indeed, so that His death is "once," εφαπαξ, once forever; but as to His living, it is as to God He lives; it is in relation to His Fathers acceptance, it is as welcome to His Fathers throne for us, as the Slain One Risen. Even so must you too reckon yourselves, with the sure "calculation" that His work for you, His life for you, is infinitely valid, to be dead indeed to your sin, dead in His atoning death, dead to the guilt exhausted by that death, but living to your God, in Christ Jesus; welcomed by your eternal Father, in your union with His Son, and in that union filled with a new and blessed life from your Head, to be spent in the Fathers smile, on the Fathers service.

Let us too, like the Apostle and the Roman Christians, "reckon" this wonderful reckoning; counting upon these bright mysteries as upon imperishable facts. All is bound up not with the tides or waves of our emotions, but with the living rock of our union with our Lord. "In Christ Jesus":-that great phrase, here first explicitly used in the connection, includes all else in its embrace. Union with the slain and risen Christ, in faith, by the Spirit-here is our inexhaustible secret, for peace with God, for life to God, now and in the eternal day.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, mortal, because not yet fully emancipated, though your Lord has "cancelled" for you its character as "the body of sin," the seat and vehicle of conquering temptation. Do not let sin reign there, so that you should obey the lusts of it, of the body. Observe the implied instruction. The body "cancelled" as "the body of sin," still has its "lusts," its desires; or rather desires are still occasioned by it to the man, desires which potentially, if not actually, are desires away from God. And the man, justified through the Lords death and united to the Lords life, is not therefore to mistake a laissez-faire for faith. He is to use his divine possessions, with a real energy of will. It is "for him," in a sense most practical, to see that his wealth is put to use, that his wonderful freedom is realised in act and habit. "Cancelled" does not mean annihilated. The body exists, and sin exists, and "desires" exist. It is for you, O man in Christ, to say to the enemy, defeated yet present, "Thou shalt not reign; I veto thee in the name of my King."

And do not present your limbs, your bodies in the detail of their faculties, as implements of unrighteousness, to sin, to sin regarded as the holder and employer of the implements. But present yourselves, your whole being, centre and circle, to God, as men living after death, in His Sons risen life, and your limbs, hand, foot, and head, with all their faculties, as implements of righteousness for God.

"O blissful self-surrender!" The idea of it, sometimes cloudy, sometimes radiant, has floated before the human soul in every age of history. The spiritual fact that the creature, as such, can never find its true centre in itself, but only in the Creator, has expressed itself in many various forms of aspiration and endeavour, now nearly touching the glorious truth of the matter, now wandering into cravings after a blank loss of personality, or an eternal coma of absorption into an Infinite practically impersonal; or again, affecting a submission which terminates in itself, an islam, a self-surrender into whose void no blessing falls from the God who receives it. Far different is the "self-presentation" of the Gospel. It is done in the fulness of personal consciousness and choice. It is done with revealed reasons of infinite truth and beauty to warrant its rightness. And it is a placing of the surrendered self into Hands which will both foster its true development as only its Maker can, as He fills it with His presence, and will use it, in the bliss of an eternal serviceableness, for His beloved will.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

6:1 Well then: Because Paul has just proclaimed that God multiplies grace where sin increases (5:20), he knows that people will wonder whether this means that sin does not matter in the Christian life.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rom 6:1. Ἐπιμενοῦμεν; shall we continue?) Hitherto he treated of the past and the present: now he proceeds to treat of the future; and the forms of expression are suited to those, which immediately precede, whilst he speaks respecting the ‘abounding’ of grace. In this passage the continuing in sin is set before us; in the 15th verse, the going back to sin, which had been overcome. The man, who has obtained grace, may turn himself hither or thither. Paul in this discussion turns his back on sin.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_6:1. Οὖν] In consequence of what is contained in Rom_5:20-21.

With ἐπιμένωμεν κ.τ.λ[1377] Paul proposes to himself, as a possible inference from what he had just said de pleonasmo gratiae (Bengel), the problem, whose solution in the negative was now to be his further themea theme in itself of so decisive an importance, that it does not require the assumption of a Jewish-Christian church (Mangold) to make it intelligible. On the introduction in interrogative form by τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν, comp Dissen, a[1379] Dem. de cor. p. 346 (ΤΊ ΟὖΝ ΦΗΜῚ ΔΕῖΝ;). As however the what shall we say then? inquires after a maxim in some sort of way to be inferred, the deliberative shall we continue, etc?. could at once follow directly, without any need for supplying before it a repeated ἐροῦμεν, or ΜῊ ἘΡΟῦΜΕΝ ὍΤΙ, and for taking ἘΠΙΜΈΝΩΜΕΝ in a hortatory sense (van Hengel, Hofmann).

ἐπιμένειν τῇ ἁμαρτ., to continue in sin, not to cease from it. Comp Rom_11:22 f.; Col_1:23; 1Ti_4:16; Act_13:43; Xen. Hell. iii. 4, 6; Oec. 14, 7 : ἐπιμένειν τῷ μὴ ἀδικεῖν.

[1377] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[1379] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 6:1-14 . In the fifth chapter, Paul has concluded his exposition of the “righteousness of God” which is revealed in the Gospel. But the exposition leaves something to be desired something hinted at in Rom 3:8 (“Let us do evil that good may come”) and recalled in Rom 5:20 f. (“Where sin abounded, grace did superabound”). It seems, after all, as if the gospel did “make void the law” (Rom 3:31 ) in a bad sense; and Paul has now to demonstrate that it does not. It is giving an unreal precision to his words to say with Lipsius that he has now to justify his gospel to the moral consciousness of the Jewish Christian; it is not Jewish Christians, obviously, who are addressed in Rom 6:19 ff., and it is not the Jewish-Christian moral consciousness, but the moral consciousness of all men, which raises the questions to which he here addresses himself. He has to show that those who have “received the reconciliation” (Rom 5:11 ), who “receive the abundance of the grace and of the gift of righteousness” (Rom 5:17 ), are the very persons in whom “the righteous requirement of the law” is fulfilled (Rom 8:4 ). The libertine argument is rather Gentile than Jewish, though when Paul speaks of the new religion as establishing Law, it is naturally the Mosaic law of which he thinks. It was the one definite embodiment of the concept. The justification, to the moral consciousness, of the Gospel in which a Divine righteousness is freely held out in Jesus Christ to the sinner’s faith, fills the next three chapters. In chap. 6 it is shown that the Christian, in baptism, dies to sin; in chap. 7, that by death he is freed from the law, which in point of fact, owing to the corruption of his nature, perpetually stimulates sin; in chap. 8, that the Spirit imparted to believers breaks the power of the flesh, and enables them to live to God.

Rom 6:1 . Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν ; What inference then shall we draw, i.e. , from the relations of sin and grace expounded in Rom 5:20 f.? Are we to continue in sin ( cf. Rom 11:22 f.) that grace may abound? Lightfoot suggests “ the sin” and “ the grace” just referred to. The question was one sure to be asked by some one; Paul recognises it as a natural question in view of his doctrine, and asks it himself. But he answers it with an indignant negative.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 6:1 to Rom 7:6. The ethical bearing and standard of the new life in Christ.

(1) Are we to conclude that the state of sin is to continue, as a provocative, so to speak, of the graciousness of GOD; the more sin the greater grace? (2) It is a monstrous thought; the fundamental characteristic of our Christian position is that when we became Christians we died to sin and our sinful life, (3) it is elementary that in baptism into Christ we shared His death, (4) His burial, and His resurrection by the manifest act of the Father; now we are in a new life and our conduct must be correspondingly new. (5) For baptism involved union of our nature to Christ’s both in His death and His resurrection; (6) His death implies the destruction of the old nature, the abolition of the rule of sin; His resurrection, shared by us—a freeing from death and sin, a living to GOD—implies that we are dead to sin and in Him living to GOD (so that sin is in the highest degree unnatural to this new creature). (12) Therefore both the use and the obedience of even your mortal body must be rendered no longer to sin for unrighteous work, but to GOD for righteousness; the authority of sin being broken because you are not under law but under grace. (15) Not under law, but not therefore free to sin, for that were a return to the old slavery; but under grace, you are under a new slavery (to use human language), willingly adopted; (19) your very members must be turned from the old slavery to the new. (20) For that was a state of slavery and freedom—freedom as against the claims of righteousness, slavery to the claims of sin and its result in death: (21) from that slavery you are freed and brought into a new slavery to GOD; with its proper result, sanctification, leading to its end, eternal life. (23) For all that is earned from sin is death: but GOD gives, of His free grace, eternal life by communion with Christ Jesus our Lord.

The section deals with the response natural in those who are under GOD’s grace. It is, incidentally, a repudiation of the charge made against S. Paul that, by denying the obligation of law, he was destroying the support and the obligation of a holy life. It gives consequently the true basis for a Christian ethics: and the fundamental point is the new life in union with and dependence on Christ.

1. τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν; as always, introduces a question putting a case which might occur to the reader.

ἐπιμένωμεν. So far the emphasis has been chiefly upon the free grace of GOD as justifying; this might suggest that human effort is not required: and S. Paul meets this by pointing out that as GOD justifies in Christ alone, communion with Christ is necessary for the individual actualisation of justification, and this involves a characteristic life.

ἡ χάρις that the generosity and marvel of GOD’s free favour may be multiplied by increasing the demand upon it.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chap.

6:1-14.] No encouragement given hereby (see ch. 5:20) to a life in sin: for the baptized are dead to sin, and walk in a new (vv. 1-7) life, and one (vv. 8-11) dedicated to God.

1.] What then shall we say?—the introduction of a difficulty or objection arising out of the preceding argument, and referring to ch. 5:20. See ch. 3:5.

ἐπιμένωμεν, ‘must we think that we may persist,’—the deliberative subjunctive. So εἴπωμεν ἢ σιγῶμεν, Eur. Ion 758: παρέλθω δόμους, Med. 1275. See Kühner, Gramm. § 464, and note on ch. 5:1. [Are we to continue (‘Must we think that we may persist,” in other words] “May we persist”) in (our natural state and commission of) sin, that (God’s) grace may be multiplied (ch. 5:20)?

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE MYSTICAL UNION OF THE CHRISTIAN WITH CHRIST

6:1-14. If more sin only means more grace, shall we go on sinning? Impossible. The baptized Christian cannot sin. Sin is a direct contradiction of the state of things which baptism assumes. Baptism has a double function. (1) It brings the Christian into personal contact with Christ, so close that it may be fitly described as union with Him. (2) It expresses symbolically a series of acts corresponding to the redeeming acts of Christ.

Immersion = Death.

Submersion = Burial (the ratification of Death).

Emergence = Resurrection.

All these the Christian has to undergo in a moral and spiritual sense, and by means of his union with Christ. As Christ by His death on the Cross ceased from all contact with sin, so the Christian, united with Christ in his baptism, has done once for all with sin, and lives henceforth a reformed life dedicated to God. [This at least is the ideal, whatever may be the reality.] (vv. 1-11.) Act then as men who have thrown off the dominion of Sin. Dedicate all your powers to God. Be not afraid; Law, Sin’s ally, is superseded in its hold over you by Grace (vv. 12-14).

1 Objector. Is not this dangerous doctrine? If more sin means more grace, are we not encouraged to go on sinning?

2 St. Paul. A horrible thought! When we took the decisive step and became Christians we may be said to have died to sin, in such a way as would make it flat contradiction to live any longer in it.

3 Surely you do not need reminding that all of us who were immersed or baptized, as our Christian phrase runs, ‘into Christ,’ i. e. into the closest allegiance and adhesion to Him, were so immersed or baptized into a special relation to His Death. I mean that the Christian, at his baptism, not only professes obedience to Christ but enters into a relation to Him so intimate that it may be described as actual union. Now this union, taken in connexion with the peculiar symbolism of Baptism, implies a great deal more. That symbolism recalls to us with great vividness the redeeming acts of Christ—His Death, Burial, and Resurrection. And our union with Christ involves that we shall repeat those acts, in such sense as we may, i. e. in a moral and spiritual sense, in our own persons.

4 When we descended into the baptismal water, that meant that we died with Christ—to sin. When the water closed over our heads, that meant that we lay buried with Him, in proof that our death to sin, like His death, was real. But this carries with it the third step in the process. As Christ was raised from among the dead by a majestic exercise of Divine power, so we also must from henceforth conduct ourselves as men in whom has been implanted a new principle of life.

5 For it is not to be supposed that we can join with Christ in one thing and not join with Him in another. If, in undergoing a death like His, we are become one with Christ as the graft becomes one with the tree into which it grows, we must also be one with Him by undergoing a resurrection like His, i. e. at once a moral, spiritual, and physical resurrection. 6 For it is matter of experience that our Old Self—what we were before we became Christians—was nailed to the Cross with Christ in our baptism: it was killed by a process so like the Death of Christ and so wrought in conjunction with Him that it too may share in the name and associations of His Crucifixion. And the object of this crucifixion of our Old Self was that the bodily sensual part of us, prolific home and haunt of sin, might be so paralyzed and disabled as henceforth to set us free from the service of Sin. 7 For just as no legal claim can be made upon the dead, so one who is (ethically) dead is certified ‘Not Guilty’ and exempt from all the claims that Sin could make upon him.

8 But is this all? Are we to stop at the death to sin? No; there is another side to the process. If, when we became Christians, we died with Christ (morally and spiritually), we believe that we shall also live with Him (physically, as well as ethically and spiritually): 9 because we know for a fact that Christ Himself, now that He has been once raised from the dead, will not have the process of death to undergo again. Death has lost its hold over Him for ever. 10 For He has done with Death, now that He has done once for all with Sin, by bringing to an end that earthly state which alone brought Him in contact with it. Henceforth He lives in uninterrupted communion with God.

11 In like manner do you Christians regard yourselves as dead, inert and motionless as a corpse, in all that relates to sin, but instinct with life and responding in every nerve to those Divine claims and Divine influences under which you have been brought by your union with Jesus Messiah.

12 I exhort you therefore not to let Sin exercise its tyranny over this frail body of yours by giving way to its evil passions. 13 Do not, as you are wont, place hand, eye, and tongue, as weapons stained with unrighteousness, at the service of Sin; but dedicate yourselves once for all, like men who have left the ranks of the dead and breathe a new spiritual life, to God; let hand, eye, and tongue be weapons of righteous temper for Him to wield. 14 You may rest assured that in so doing Sin will have no claims or power over you, for you have left the régime of Law (which, as we shall shortly see, is a stronghold of Sin) for that of Grace.

1. The fact that he has just been insisting on the function of sin to act as a provocative of Divine grace recalls to the mind of the Apostle the accusation brought against himself of saying ‘Let us do evil, that good may come’ (3:8). He is conscious that his own teaching, if pressed to its logical conclusion, is open to this charge; and he states it in terms which are not exactly those which would be used by his adversaries but such as might seem to express the one-sided development of his own thought. Of course he does not allow the consequence for a moment; he repudiates it however not by proving a non sequitur, but by showing how this train of thought is crossed by another, even more fundamental. He is thus led to bring up the second of his great pivot-doctrines, the Mystical Union of the Christian with Christ dating from his Baptism. Here we have another of those great elemental forces in the Christian Life which effectually prevents any antinomian conclusion such as might seem to be drawn from different premises. St. Paul now proceeds to explain the nature of this force and the way in which the Christian is related to it.

The various readings in this chapter are unimportant. There can be no question that we should read ἐπιμένωμεν for ἐπιμενοῦμεν in ver. 1; ζήσομεν and not ζήσωμεν in ver. 2; and that τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν should be omitted at the end of ver. 11. In that verse the true position of εἶναι is after ἑαυτούς (א * B C, Cyr.-Alex. Jo.-Damasc.): some inferior authorities place it after νεκροὺς μέν: the Western text (A D E F G, Tert.; cf. also Pesh. Boh. Arm. Aeth.) omits it altogether.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Thirteenth Passage (6:1-14). Sanctification in Christ dead and risen.

The apostle introduces this subject by an objection which he makes to his own teaching, Rom 6:1; he gives it a summary answer, Rom 6:2, and justifies this answer by appealing to a known and tangible fact, namely baptism, Rom 6:3-4. Then he gives a complete and didactic exposition of the contents of his answer, Rom 6:5-11. Finally he applies it to the practical life of his readers, Rom 6:12-14.

First Section (6:1-7:6). The Principle of Sanctification Contained in Justification by Faith.

This entire section is intended to lay the foundations of Christian sanctification. It includes three portions.

The first (Rom 6:1-14) unfolds the new principle of sanctification in the very object of justifying faith.

The second (Rom 6:15-23) exhibits the intrinsic power possessed by this principle, both to free the believer from sin, and to subject him to righteousness.

In the third (Rom 7:1-6), Paul infers from this double fact the right henceforth possessed by the believer to renounce the use of the former means, the law. The new morality is thus solidly established.

Vv. 1. “What shall we say then? Should we continue in sin, that grace may abound?”

The meaning of this question: What shall we say then? can only be this: What consequence shall we draw from the preceding? Only the apostle’s object is not to draw a true consequence from the previous teaching, but merely to reject a false conclusion which might be deduced by a man still a stranger to the experience of justifying faith. It need not therefore be concluded from this then that the apostle is now passing from the principle to its consequences. In that case he would have said directly: “Shall we then continue”...?

This question is usually connected with the declaration,Rom 5:20 : “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” But this saying referred solely to the part played by the law in the midst of the Jewish people, while the question here put is of universal application. We should rather be inclined to hold that Paul was alluding to the saying,Rom 5:16. There, he had pointed to all the offences committed by the many sinners, terminating through the act of grace in a sentence of universal justification; and he may well, consequently, ask himself, in the name of those who do not believe in such a divine act, whether believers will not abuse it in the line of the question proposed. But even this connection would still be too narrow. If account is taken of the meaning of the whole previous part, and of the calumnious accusation already expressed Rom 3:8, it will rather be concluded that the question bears on the whole doctrine of justification by grace, chaps. 1-5. As to believers justified in the way described above, it is evident that they will never put this alternative: Shall I sin or shall I not sin? For the seal of holiness has already been impressed on their inner and outer life by the manner of their justification. This is what the apostle proceeds to show while answering the objection suggested.

The reading of the T. R., ἐπιμενοῦμεν, shall we continue? has no critical authority; it probably arises from the preceding ἐροῦμεν. The reading of the Sinait. and of two Byz., ἐπιμένομεν, let us continue! or we continue, expressing either an exhortation or a resolution, would make believers hold a language far too improbable. That of the Alex. and of the Greco-Lats., ἐπιμένωμεν, that we should continue! or should we continue? is the only admissible one. Hofmann takes it in the first of these two senses as a mutual exhortation, and with this view supplies a new: Shall we say? understood before the second question. But this invitation to sin, which believers would thus be made to address to one another, is too improbable a supposition; and the ellipsis of the verb: Shall we say? is arbitrary and superfluous. The second of the two meanings of ἐπιμένωμεν, should we continue? (the deliberative conjugation), is the only natural one: Should we take the resolution of continuing in our old state of sin? The following conjunction: that, corresponds well with this deliberative meaning. It is a calculation: the more sins committed, the more material will grace find on which to display itself.—᾿Επιμένειν, to continue, persevere, in a state to which a decisive circumstance ought to have put an end.

The reply is forcible and summary. A fact has taken place which renders this calculation absolutely impossible.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter VI

Contents

As the gospel reveals the only effectual method of justification, so also it alone can secure the sanctification of men. To exhibit this truth is the object of this and the following chapter. The sixth is partly argumentative and partly exhortatorty. In Rom_6:1-11, the apostle shows how unfounded is the objection, that gratuitous justification leads to the indulgence of sin. In Rom_6:12-23, he exhorts christians to live agreeably to the nature and design of the gospel; and presents various considerations adapted to secure their obedience to this exhortation.

Rom_6:1-11

Analysis

The most common, the most plausible, and yet the most unfounded objection to the doctrine of justification by faith, is, that it allows men to live in sin that grace may abound. This objection arises from ignorance of the doctrine in question, and of the nature and means of sanctification. It is so preposterous in the eyes of an enlightened believer, that Paul deals with it rather by exclamations at its absurdity, than with logical arguments. The main idea of this section is, that such is the nature of the believers union with Christ, that his living in sin is not merely an inconsistency, but a contradiction in terms, as much so as to speak of a live dead man, or a good bad one. Union with Christ, being the only source of holiness, cannot be the source of sin. In Rom_6:1, the apostle presents the objection. In Rom_6:2, he declares it to be unfounded, and exclaims at its absurdity. In Rom_6:3, Rom_6:4, he exhibits the true nature and design of Christianity, as adapted and intended to produce newness of life. In Rom_6:5-7, he shows that such is the nature of union with Christ, that it is impossible for any one to share the benefits of his death, without being conformed to his life. Such being the case, he shows, Rom_6:8-11, that as Christs death on account of sin was for once, never to be repeated, and his life, a life devoted to God; So our separation from sin is final, and our life a life consecrated to God.

Commentary

Rom_6:1

What shall we say then? What inference is to be drawn from the doctrine of the gratuitous acceptance of sinners, or justification without works, by faith in the righteousness of Christ?

Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? i.e., be more conspicuously displayed. The form in which the objection to the apostles doctrine is here presented, is evidently borrowed from the close of the preceding chapter. Paul had there spoken of the grace of the gospel being the more conspicuous and abundant, in proportion to the evils which it removes. It is no fair inference from the fact that God has brought so much good out of the fall and sinfulness of men, that they may continue in sin. Neither can it be inferred from the fact that he accepts of sinners on the ground of the merit of Christ, instead of their own, (which is one way in which grace abounds,) that they may sin without restraint.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

In that corruption: for though the guiltiness of sin be not imputed to us, yet the corruption remaineth still in us: the which Sanctification that followeth Justification killeth by little and little.

He passeth now to another benefit of Christ, which is called sanctification or regeneration.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

CHAPTER VI.

We must not abuse the boundless goodness of God by continuing

in sin, under the wicked persuasion that the more we sin the

more the grace of God will abound, 1.

For, having been baptized into Christ, we have professed thereby

to be dead to sin, 2-4.

And to be planted in the likeness of his resurrection, 5.

For we profess to be crucified with him, to die and rise again

from the dead, 6-11.

We should not, therefore, let sin reign in our bodies, but live

to the glory of God, 12-14.

The Gospel makes no provision for living in sin, any more than

the law did; and those who commit sin are the slaves of sin,

15-19.

The degrading and afflictive service of sin, and its wages

eternal death; the blessed effects of the grace of God in the

heart, of which eternal life is the fruit, 20-23.

NOTES ON CHAP. VI.

The apostle, having proved that salvation, both to Jew and Gentile, must come through the Messiah, and be received by faith only, proceeds in this chapter to show the obligations under which both were laid to live a holy life, and the means and advantages they enjoyed for that purpose. This he does, not only as a thing highly and indispensably necessary in itself-for without holiness none can see the Lord-but to confute a calumny which appears to have been gaining considerable ground even at that time, viz. that the doctrine of justification by faith alone, through the grace of Christ Jesus, rendered obedience to the moral law useless; and that the more evil a man did, the more the grace of God would abound to him, in his redemption from that evil. That this calumny was then propagated we learn from Ro 3:8; and the apostle defends himself against it in the 31st verse of the same, Ro 3:31 by asserting, that his doctrine, far from making void the law, served to establish it. But in this and the two following chapters he takes up the subject in a regular, formal manner; and shows both Jews and Gentiles that the principles of the Christian religion absolutely require a holy heart and a holy life, and make the amplest provisions for both.

Verse 1. Shall we continue in sin] It is very likely that these were the words of a believing Gentile, who-having as yet received but little instruction, for he is but just brought out of his heathen state to believe in Christ Jesus-might imagine, from the manner in which God had magnified his mercy, in blotting out his sin on his simply believing on Christ, that, supposing he even gave way to the evil propensities of his own heart, his transgressions could do him no hurt now that he was in the favour of God. And we need not wonder that a Gentile, just emerging from the deepest darkness, might entertain such thoughts as these; when we find that eighteen centuries after this, persons have appeared in the most Christian countries of Europe, not merely asking such a question, but defending the doctrine with all their might; and asserting in the most unqualified manner, "that believers were under no obligation to keep the moral law of God; that Christ had kept it for them; that his keeping it was imputed to them; and that God, who had exacted it from Him, who was their surety and representative, would not exact it from them, forasmuch as it would be injustice to require two payments for one debt." These are the Antinomians who once flourished in this land, and whose race is not yet utterly extinct.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. What then shall we say? Throughout this chapter the Apostle proves, that they who imagine that gratuitous righteousness is given us by him, apart from newness of life, shamefully rend Christ asunder: nay, he goes further, and refers to this objection, — that there seems in this case to be an opportunity for the display of grace, if men continued fixed in sin. We indeed know that nothing is more natural than that the flesh should indulge itself under any excuse, and also that Satan should invent all kinds of slander, in order to discredit the doctrine of grace; which to him is by no means difficult. For since everything that is announced concerning Christ seems very paradoxical to human judgment, it ought not to be deemed a new thing, that the flesh, hearing of justification by faith, should so often strike, as it were, against so many stumbling-stones. Let us, however, go on in our course; nor let Christ be suppressed, because he is to many a stone of offense, and a rock of stumbling; for as he is for ruin to the ungodly, so he is to the godly for a resurrection. We ought, at the same time, ever to obviate unreasonable questions, lest the Christian faith should appear to contain anything absurd.

The Apostle now takes notice of that most common objection against the preaching of divine grace, which is this, — “That if it be true, that the more bountifully and abundantly will the grace of God aid us, the more completely we are overwhelmed with the mass of sin; then nothing is better for us than to be sunk into the depth of sin, and often to provoke God’s wrath with new offenses; for then at length we shall find more abounding grace; than which nothing better can be desired.” The refutation of this we shall here after meet with.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(1) Shall we continue in sin?—Again the Apostle is drawn into one of those subtle casuistical questions that had such a great attraction for him. But he soon returns to the root-ideas of his own system. In previous chapters he had dealt with one of the two great root-ideas, justification by faith; he now passes to the second, union with Christ. The one might be described as the juridical, the other as the mystical, theory of salvation. The connecting-link which unites them is faith. Faith in Christ, and especially in the death of Christ, is the instrument of justification. Carried a degree further. it involves an actual identification with the Redeemer Himself. This, no doubt, is mystical language. When strictly compared with the facts of the religious consciousness, it must be admitted that all such terms as union, oneness, fellowship, identification, pass into the domain of metaphor. They are taken to express the highest conceivable degree of attachment and devotion. In this sense they are now consecrated by the use of centuries, and any other phrases substituted for them, though gaining perhaps somewhat in precision, would only seem poor and cold. (See Excursus G: On the Doctrine of Union with Christ.)

VI.

(1-5) These considerations might seem to lead to an Antinomian conclusion. If the increase of sin has only led to a larger measure of forgiveness it might be thought well to continue in sin, and so to enhance the measure and glory of forgiving grace. But to the Christian this is impossible. In regard to sin he is, in theory and principle, dead. When he was converted from heathenism and received Christian baptism he gave himself up unreservedly to Christ; he professed adhesion to Christ, and especially to His death; he pledged himself to adopt that death as his own; he entered into fellowship with it in order that he might also enjoy the fellowship of the resurrection of Christ. This fellowship or participation is both physical and ethical.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

What shall we say then?.... The apostle here obviates an objection he saw would be made against the doctrine he had advanced, concerning the aboundings of the grace of God in such persons and places, where sin had abounded; which if true, might some persons say, then it will be most fit and proper to continue in a sinful course of life, to give up ourselves to all manner of iniquity, since this is the way to make the grace of God abound yet more and more: now says the apostle, what shall we say to this? how shall we answer such an objection? shall we join with the objectors, and say as they do? and

shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? that is, shall we persist in a vicious way of living with this view, that the grace of God may be magnified hereby? is it right to commit sin on such an account? or is this a fair inference, a just consequence, drawn from the doctrine of grace? To be sure it was not, the objection is without any ground and foundation; sin is not "per se", the cause of the glorifying God's grace, but "per accidens": sin of itself is the cause of wrath, and not of grace; but God has been pleased to take an occasion of magnifying his grace, in the forgiveness of sin: for it is not by the commission of sin, but by the pardon of it, that the grace of God is glorified, or made to abound. Moreover, grace in conversion is glorified by putting a stop to the reign of sin, and not by increasing its power, which would be done by continuing in it; grace teaches men not to live in sin, but to abstain from it; add to this, that it is owing to the want of grace, and not to the aboundings of it, that men at any time abuse, or make an ill use of the doctrines of grace; wherefore the apostle's answer is,

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

Ver. 1. Shall we continue] Quasi dicat, that were most unreasonable, and to an ingenuous nature, impossible. To argue from mercy to liberty, is the devil’s logic. Should we not after deliverance yield obedience? said holy Ezra, Ezr 9:13-14. A man may as truly say, the sea burns, or fire cools, as that certainty of salvation breeds security and looseness.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

What shall we say then? - This is a mode of presenting an objection. The objection refers to what the apostle had said in Rom 5:20. What shall we say to such a sentiment as that where sin abounded grace did much more abound?

Shall we continue in sin? ... - If sin has been the occasion of grace and favor, ought we not to continue in it, and commit as much as possible, in order that grace might abound? This objection the apostle proceeds to answer. He shows that the consequence does not follow; and proves that the doctrine of justification does not lead to it.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He puts and rejects the same objection as before. (Chap. iii. ver. 7.) And having set forth in the last chapter the grace and advantage by Christ’s coming, he now exhorts them to avoid sinning, and live in the grace of God. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Another anticipation; this Epistle abounds therewith. The apostle here prevents an objection, which might be occasioned, either by the foregoing doctrine in general, concerning justification by the free grace of God, and by a righteousness imputed to us; or by what he said more particularly in the close of the foregoing chapter, that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Some might hence infer, that there was no need then of inherent righteousness, that persons might abide and abound in sin, that so grace might be the more exalted in the forgiveness thereof. The apostle Jude speaks, Jud 1:4, of some that made this ill improvement of the grace of God. Those that draw such inferences from the premises, they put a false construction upon the apostle’s doctrine, and a paralogism or fallacy upon themselves. They make the apostle’s words more general than he meant or intended them: for the abounding of sin is not the occasion of the abounding of grace in all, but only in some, even in those who confess and forsake their sins. And they apply that to the time to come which the apostle only uttered of the time past. The abounding of sin in men before their conversion and calling, doth commend and exalt the abundant grace of God, in the forgiveness thereof; but not so if sin abound in them after they are converted and called. He propounds this objection by way of interrogation, partly to show his dislike that his doctrine should be so perverted, and partly to show the peace of his own conscience, that he was far from such a thought.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

1. What… say—This question simply introduces the argument like the opening questions of chapters 3 and 4.

Continue in sin—Sin as either an internal mental state, or an external habit or course of action.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Ver. Rom_1:17) set forth as available for all mankind, (Rom_3:21-31) shown to be in accordance with the teaching of the Old Testament, (Rom_4:1-25) viewed with regard to the feelings and hopes of believers fell (Rom_5:1-11) and to the position of the human race before God, (Rom_5:12-21) the necessary moral results of a true apprehension of the doctrine are treated in this section of the Epistle. And first is shown from various points of view

Ver. Rom_7:1-16) It will be seen, when we come to it, that the third of these illustrations is a carrying out of the same idea, though it is there law, and not sin, that we are said to be emancipated from.

What shall we say then? So St. Paul introduces a difficulty or objection arising out of the preceding argument. (cf. Rom_3:5) Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? Referring to the whole preceding argument, and especially to the concluding verses. (Rom_5:20, Rom_5:21)

Vers. 1-11. The meaning of Christ"s resurrection.

The prominent position occupied by the resurrection of our Lord in the apostolic writings and preaching need occasion no surprise; an event in itself so wonderful, and in its consequences so momentous, could not but be constantly in the minds and upon the lips of those to whom it was the supreme revelation of God. It may be well to gather up in a few sentences the import and significance of this central fact of Christianity.

I AS A FACT, THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST HAS A GENERAL AND WORLD-WIDE INTEREST. The historian of humanity, the philosopher reflecting upon the most important factors in human life, is constrained to acknowledge the central and universal interest of our Lord"s rising from the dead.

1. It was a fulfilment of predictions, and a realization of hopes sometimes dim and sometimes bright.

2. It was the starting-point of the Christian religion. The existence of the Church of Christ is only to be explained by remembering how firmly the first promulgators of the new faith held the belief that their Lord had risen from the dead.

3. It was, in the view of the Christian community, the pledge of the general resurrection of all men to another life; it gave definiteness and power to the belief in personal immortality.

II AS A DOCTRINE, THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST HAS A SPECIAL CHRISTIAN INTEREST.

1. It is the chief external evidence of the Messiahship and Divinity of Jesus of Nazareth. It was in fulfilment of his own express declarations that, after enduring a death of violence, he rose victorious from the grave. His resurrection is in harmony with his claim to a nature and character altogether unique.

2. It is the seal of the efficacy of his mediatorial sufferings. However the humiliation and sacrifice of the Redeemer were related to the forgiveness and justification of men, it is certain that Christ"s rising from the dead was the completion of his redemptive undertaking on man"s behalf.

III AS A POWER, THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST HAS A PERSONAL AND SPIRITUAL INTEREST. This is the aspect of this great fact which is insisted upon most strenuously in this passage, and its practical importance to every individual Christian is manifest. The true believer in Christ shares in his Lord"s resurrection.

1. Our sins were crucified in Christ"s death upon the cross, and in his resurrection we were delivered from their power.

2. Our past sinful life became dead to us as Christ died; and our newness of life began in his rising from the tomb. We have the sign of this, the apostle teaches us, in baptism, with its teaching regarding renewal and consecration.

3. By our faith in the resurrection of our Saviour, we are raised above trial, doubt, temptation, darkness, and fear. The cross tells us that it may consist with the wisdom and the goodness of God that for a season we should endure trouble, disappointment, and seeming failure. But the empty tomb assures us that for every good man and for every good work there is a resurrection appointed. Death is for a season; God"s people cannot be "holden of it." The corn of wheat dies, but it dies to live, and to bring forth much fruit.

4. In Christ"s resurrection the Christian is begotten to a living hope of an immortal inheritance, His people are appointed to share his triumph and his glory.

HOMILIES BY C.H. IRWIN. Vers. 1-14. The practical power of the Resurrection.

Here the apostle enlarges still more fully upon the truth that the Christian"s faith leads not merely to the pardon of sin, but also to deliverance from its power. Because grace has abounded over sin, and our unrighteousness has commended the righteousness of God, it does not therefore follow that we are to continue in sin. If we have a real union with Christ, we have been baptized into his death. We are buried with him by baptism into death; "that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (ver. 4).

I THE FACT OF THE RESURRECTION. That the resurrection of Christ is surrounded with mystery, no one will deny. But the evidence by which the great central fact itself is established is so strong, so clear, so decisive, that even scepticism has sometimes to admit itself convinced. The effect of the most able and adverse criticism has only been to establish more and more certainly the fact of the Resurrection, and thus to confirm more strongly the Christian"s faith. It is remarkable that two of the greatest rationalists of the present century, who doubted almost every fact of the New Testament history, admitted that the Resurrection was a fact which they could not doubt. Ewald, who deals destructively with most of the gospel incidents, "regarding some as mythical, some as admitting of a rationalistic interpretation, and some as combining the elements of both," is unable to destroy or explain away the Resurrection. "Rejecting all attempts to explain it, he accepts the great fact of the Resurrection on the evidence of history, and declares that nothing can be more historical." The testimony of De Wette is even more remarkable. He was more sceptical than Ewald; so much so that he was called "The Universal Doubter." Nevertheless, such is the force of the evidence, that this great rationalistic critic, in his last work, published in 1848, said that the fact of the Resurrection, although a darkness which cannot be dissipated rests on the way and manner of it, cannot itself be called in question any more than the historical certainty of the assassination of Julius Caesar.

1. The fact of the Resurrection is attested by the four evangelists. The four Gospels were written by men widely separated both in time and place. Their very variations are a proof of their substantial truth. They give varying accounts of the Resurrection, as would naturally be expected from men whom so great an event impressed in different ways, but they all agree in testifying that the event occurred.

2. The narrative of the Resurrection was accepted by the early Christians who lived at the time when the event took place. It is spoken of constantly in the Epistles to the various Churches as an event with which they were all familiar, and about which there was not the slightest doubt. When Peter is proposing the appointment of a successor to Judas, he speaks of the Resurrection as one of the great subjects of apostolic preaching. Indeed, it would appear that he regarded the preaching of the Resurrection as the great subject for which the apostle should be chosen. His words were, "Wherefore of these men who have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out amongst us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection.

3. The conversion of St. Paul, and his subsequent advocacy of the doctrine of the Resurrection, are perhaps the strongest proofs of its truth. Paul was a persecutor and a bigoted Pharisee. He suddenly became a member of the sect that was so hated and despised. The explanation that he himself gave of this change was that Jesus Christ had appeared unto him. It was not likely that Paul, a clear-headed man, accustomed to weigh evidence, would be deceived as to Christ"s appearance. He could not be lightly led to take a step of such immense importance to his whole life. Something more than a mere dream or hallucination must be found to account for his whole subsequent career. He was not likely to undertake those missionary journeys through Asia Minor, through Macedonia, and through Greece, and to persevere in them, in the face of much opposition, ridicule, persecution, and many hardships and dangers, for the sake of a mere fancy. He was not a mere visionary or fanatic. His Epistles show him to have been a man of robust mind, great reasoning power, and soberness of judgment. And yet, in every instance in which a public speech of his is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles; in his address at Antioch in Pisidia, in his address at Athens, in his address to the multitude when he was taken prisoner at Jerusalem; whether he is in the presence of the high priest, of Felix, or of Festus and Agrippa, he most distinctly proclaims the fact of the resurrection of Christ.

4. As the life of the Apostle Paul was changed, so the lives of all the apostles were changed from the moment that the risen Christ appeared to them. Before that they were timid and frightened. The boldest of them became so cowardly as to deny that he knew Christ at all. They had all forsaken him and fled when the time of crucifixion drew near. After the crucifixion they became disheartened and depressed. We can easily see what would have become of Christianity had there been no resurrection, as we study the conduct and words of the disciples when they knew that their Master was so soon to be taken from them, and when they thought he was still in the grave. But the Resurrection altered everything. The change that occurred can only be explained by the actual reappearance of Christ to them. The timid became brave again. They cannot but speak the things which they have seen and heard. They endure persecution and suffering and martyrdom now, for the grave is no longer dark, and the crown of life is beyond the struggle and the pain.

II THE DOCTRINES WHICH IT TEACHES.

1. That there shall be a general resurrection of the dead. "Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead". (Act_17:31)

2. That those who believe on the Lord Jesus shall live with him for ever. "I am the Resurrection, and the Life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live". (Joh_11:25) And here the apostle says, "Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him" (ver. 8). Christ has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. He has satisfied the yearning of the human heart for a life beyond the present a yearning so strong that one of the greatest thinkers of our own time, though the logical conclusion of his system is universal death, nevertheless tries to avoid or overcome this dreary prospect by the suggestion that out of this death another life may spring. Our poet-laureate has expressed that yearning thus. Speaking of love, he says"He seeks at last Upon the last and sharpest height Before the spirits fade away, Some landing-place, to clasp and say, "Farewell! We lose ourselves in light!

Yes, it is when the grave is near, it is when our loved ones are suddenly taken from us by death, that we learn what a precious truth the resurrection of Jesus is to rest on.

III THE PRACTICAL LESSONS WHICH IT CONVEYS. "That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (ver. 4); "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof" (ver. 12). Elsewhere the apostle expresses the same truth. "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God". (Col_3:1) This is the practical power of the fact and doctrine of the Resurrection. If we have in our hearts the hope of being with Christ, what a transforming influence that hope should exercise upon our lives! We should yield ourselves unto Cod, as those that are alive from the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (ver. 13). Thus the risen life of Christ enters into and becomes part of the present life of his people. Thus their life enters into and becomes part of his. "Our life is hid with Christ in God. C.H.I.

HOMILIES BY T.F. LOCKYER Vers. 1-11. Buried and risen with Christ.

Attaching to almost all privileges and blessings there are dangerous possibilities of abuse. So with the blessed doctrine of justification by faith, which has been so largely dwelt on hitherto. So especially with that aspect of it just referred to. (Rom_5:20) How readily the question might spring to the lip, "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" But how readily, from every Christian heart, would spring the response, "God forbid! How shall we?" This answer amplified in the following verses: The relation of the believer, through the death and resurrection of Christ, to sin and holiness.

I THE DEATH.

1. The relation of the death of Christ to sin. Two elements entering into the atoning work of Christ, each of which, in its bearings, must be distinguished from the other the Divine, and the human.

(1) As to guilt. The guilt of the race an accomplished fact; the stain ineffaceable; the white purity of the infinite Law blotted. What are the bearings of Christ"s atonement, divinely and humanly, on this guilt of the past?

(a) Divinely: condemnation for ever;

(b) humanly: expiation for ever.

(2) As to sin. An existent, a persistent fact; a possibility always; a strong power of evil. What are the bearings of Christ"s atonement on this sin of the present?

(a) Divinely: stamp of condemnation; the thing which has brought guilt that must be expiated by death, is by that very death a branded thing;

(b) humanly: renunciation and conflict; the thing which is branded, in the atonement, on the part of God, is forsworn on the part of man.

2. Our relation through the death of Christ to sin. A natural identification of Christ with us, as federal Head of the race; and a spiritual this latter of voluntary, sympathetic oneness. So a corresponding identification of ourselves with Christ: natural and spiritual. This latter, by faith; the spiritual analogue corresponding with the historical fact, or, in other words, our voluntary spiritual sympathy with Christ"s own work.

(1) As to guilt.

(a) Acquiescence in the condemnation: every mouth stopped;

(b) acquiescence in the. expiation: for me!

(2) As to sin.

(a) A thing condemned of God: so we regard it henceforth, as bearing a stigma of evil;

(b) a thing forsworn by us: so we regard it henceforth; perpetual war.

Therefore our faith in Christ not merely gives us pardon and peace with God, but commits us too a stern and uncompromising battle with all that is opposed to God. "Ye see your calling, brethren!" Your very baptism is your pledge to wage such warfare.

II THE LIFE.

1. The relation of the life of Christ to God. Two elements entering into the resurrection-life of Christ: raised by God, raised as Man.

(1) As to favour with God.

(a) Divinely: the accepted sacrifice; "through the glory of the Father;

(b) humanly: from darkness into light; "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?". (Luk_24:26)

(2) As to devotion to God.

(a) Divinely: God could not suffer his Holy One to see corruption; "having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost"; (Act_2:33)

(b) humanly: "he liveth unto God;" for us.

2. Our relation through the life of Christ to God. Identification as before potential for all, actual through faith.

(1) As to favour with God.

(a) Acquiescence in the approval: gratitude;

(b) acquiescence in the joy: for me!

(2) As to devotion to God.

(a) A life claimed by God: henceforth we bear these "marks;

(b) a life yielded to God: "the likeness of his resurrection.

So our faith in Christ has regard, not only negatively to sin, but positively to God. We are his; freemen in Christ; risen ones!

"Reckon ye" this! The potential fact will but aggravate our condemnation and our woe, if it be not actualized through faith. Enter into spiritual sympathy with the work of the Redeemer; be dead to the past, be alive to all the glorious future of an immortality in God. T.F.L.

HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Vers. 1-11. Justification securing sanctification.

St. Paul has been speaking in the previous paragraph of "grace abounding," and a very natural insinuation might be made that continuance, permanent abiding, in sin would be the condition of the most abounding grace. If, therefore, our pardon and acceptance are secured through Christ"s obedience unto death, what motive can the justified have in warring with sin? Why not sin up to our bent, that grace may abound? It is this immoral insinuation that the apostle combats, and combats successfully, in the present section. He does so by bringing out the full significance of Christ"s death to the believer. Now, the peculiar beauty of our Lord"s history lies in this, that, as Pascal long ago pointed out, it may have, and is intended to have, its reproduction in the experience of the soul. The salient facts of Christ"s history for example, his death, burial, and resurrection get copied into the experience of the regenerated soul. The apostle had experienced this himself. At Damascus he had experienced

(1) a burial of the past;

(2) a resurrection into a new life;

(3) a walking in newness of life.

This he believes to be the normal experience of the believer in Jesus. Let us see how these facts of Christ"s history, death, burial, and resurrection, get duplicated in our experience.

I OUR BAPTISM INTO CHRIST IMPLIES A BAPTISM INTO HIS DEATH. The apostle speaks to the baptized Roman Christians in these terms: "Are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death" (Revised Version). What we have got first to determine here is the exact meaning of being baptized in or into the name of a Person. In a remarkable essay on " Baptism and the Third Commandment," a thoughtful writer says, "There is an evident connection between these two. We are baptized in the Name of the Lord our God. And that is the Name which we are commanded not to take in vain It is to tell that we are the Lord"s, claimed by him for his service, called to be followers of him "as dear children". (Eph_5:1) This is the real meaning of a phrase, much used but little reflected on a Christian name. Such are the names, John, James, Thomas, among men; Jane, Mary, Elizabeth, among women. They tell that the bearers belong to Christ. We have two names. The latter of these, our surname, distinguishes us as the children of our earthly father; the former avouches us as the children of a Father in heaven. And let us mark well what comes out of this solemn verity. If we have upon us the name of the God of gentleness while we ourselves are men of strife, or the name of the God of purity while our own lives are impure, or the name of the God of truth while we are given to lying, we are taking that name in vain." Following out this clue, let us notice that baptism into Christ implies a baptism into his death. For Jesus "died unto sin once;" "he died for the ungodly;" "he died for us;" that is, he passed through the experience of crucifixion to save the lost. Now, the counterpart of this death for sin is found in us if we believe upon him. We realize that we have died in him unto or for sin. "If One died for all, then all died". (2Co_5:14) Accordingly, we are to "reckon ourselves to be dead" in Jesus Christ "unto sin." Coleridge has rightly remarked, in his "Literary Remains," that "in the imagination of man exist the seeds of all moral and scientific improvement;" and it is by placing ourselves imaginatively on the cross with Christ, and realizing in his atoning sacrifice our death for sin, that we come to appreciate our individual justification before God. We are thus baptized into his death.

II OUR BAPTISM INTO DEATH IMPLIES A BURIAL WITH JESUS. For our blessed Lord not only died upon the cross; he was also buried in the tomb. Friends begged the body, took it down tenderly from the accursed tree, wrapped it in spices, and laid it in Joseph"s well-known sepulchre. Now, in burial one thought overpowers all others; it is the putting of the dead out of sight, out of all relation to the struggling world around. As long as a man"s body remains in the tomb "He has no share in all that"s done Beneath the circuit of the sun.

Such a separation took place through burial between the once-living Christ and the bustling world. The throngs might seethe around the temple court and settle down to selfishness again, but the Master-spirit who had been among them is now withdrawn, and sleeping for a season in his tomb. Now, the apostle implies in this passage that a similar sharp separation is experienced by the truly Christian soul from the world. In casting in his lot with Christ, he is buried out of sight, so to speak, and becomes a stranger in the world. His reception by baptism into the Christian community implies his withdrawal from the previous worldly relations in which he stood to other men. And here it is only right to guard against the superficial use made of the burial reference, as if it implied a mode in baptism. "This word (sunetafhmen), "we were entombed," contrary to the opinion of many commentators," says Dr. Shedd, "has no reference to the rite of baptism, because the burial spoken of is not in water, but in a sepulchre Burial and baptism are totally diverse ideas, and have nothing in common. In order to baptism, the element of water must come into contact with the body baptized; but in a burial, the surrounding element of earth comes into no contact at all with the body buried. The corpse is carefully protected from the earth in which it is laid. Entombment, consequently, is not the emblem of baptism, but of death." Consequently, the idea of the apostle is that we are spiritually separated from the world by our reception into the Christian community by baptism, just as Jesus was physically separated through his burial in the tomb. Godet, in a note to his comment upon this passage, gives a beautiful illustration of the truth from what a Bechuana convert said to the missionary Casalis some years ago. The convert was a shepherd, and thus expressed himself: "Very soon I shall be dead, and they will bury me in my field. My sheep will come and pasture above me. But I shall no more attend to them, nor go out of my tomb to seize them and carry them back with me into the sepulchre. They will be strange to me and I to them. Behold the image of my life in the midst of the world, from the time that I have believed in Christ." The idea, therefore, is that by our baptism, i.e. by our union with the Christian Church, we are buried out of the world. The Church proves, so to speak, the cemetery where, in holy peace and blissful fellowship, God"s people rest. And so, as we manfully throw in our lot with Christ, we pass into the grave-like peace of the Christian Church, and enjoy therein fellowship with Christ and his peaceful people. It is to this burial out of the world and into the kingdom of God we are called.

III ALONG WITH THIS DEATH AND BURIAL WITH CHRIST THERE IS EXPERIENCED A CRUCIFIXION OF OUR OLD NATURE. Historically the crucifixion precedes the death, but experimentally we shall find that, as the apostle here puts it, it succeeds it (ver. 6). It is when we have realized our death in Jesus for sin, and our burial with Jesus out of the world, that the crucifixion and mortification of our old nature begin. A counterpart of the crucifixion is realized within us. The "body of sin," elsewhere called "the flesh" (sarx), must be destroyed, and we nail it to the cross, so to speak, with as much alacrity as the Roman soldiers crucified Christ. We "crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts;" we "mortify our members which are upon the earth". (Gal_5:24 Col_3:5) We feel that "our old man" is incapable of amendment; that the only way in which to improve him is to improve him off the face of the earth and out of existence. This is, consequently, the steady effort of the regenerate soul to kill, by patient crucifixion, the old nature within. As the Saviour was several hours on the cross, as crucifixion, though in his case comparatively speedy, is yet a tardy ordeal, not a momentary execution; so the death of our old nature takes time for its accomplishment, and must be patiently passed through. We must be crucified with Christ, as well as feel that we have died in Christ for sin. (Gal_2:20)

IV OUR BURIAL WITH JESUS IS WITH A VIEW TO OUR RESURRECTION WITH HIM INTO NEWNESS OF LIFE. After death and burial there came to Jesus, as the Father"s glorious gift, resurrection to a new life. Let us consider what resurrection as an experience brought to Jesus. From the cradle to the cross Christ had been the "Man of sorrows." The weary weight of all this sinful, sorrow-stricken world lay on him; the Father had laid on his strong and willing shoulders the iniquity of us all. It was not wonderful, then, that his life was one long burden, taking end only on the cross. But the first glimpse we get of the risen Saviour conveys the notion of sturdy, stalwart strength, for the Magdalene mistakes him for the gardener. And all that we can gather from subsequent interviews with his disciples goes to show that life has ceased to be the burden it was once, and is now free, joyous, triumphant. All sense of sin-bearing is gone like a dream of the night; he is out in the glad morning of the resurrection with everlasting joy upon his head. Now, such a joyful experience should be the possession of every regenerate soul. We should feel not only that guilt is cancelled through the death of Jesus for us, and that we are "accepted in the Beloved," but also that a new life is ours a life of fellowship with God. For just as Jesus during "the great forty days" was more in the unseen with the Father than in the seen with the disciples, so in our new life we shall largely cultivate fellowship with the Father.

V THE NEW LIFE WE LEAD WILL BE LIKE OUR LORD"S, ONE OF ENTIRE CONSECRATION TO GOD. Now, of the risen Saviour it may well be said that he lived unto God. All his faculties and powers were instruments of righteousness unto God. So it is in the Christian life. It is one of entire consecration. In this way it will be seen that justification leads necessarily to sanctification. The leading facts of our Lord"s history get duplicated in our experience, and death, burial, resurrection, and consecration become ours. R.M.E.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The apostle here sets himself more fully to vindicate his doctrine from the consequence above suggested, chap. iii, 7, 8. He had then only in strong terms denied and renounced it: here he removes the very foundation thereof.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Sanctification as a Fruit of Justification.

Justification does not lead to indulgence of sin:

v. 1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

v. 2. God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

The apostle has concluded his exposition of the doctrine of justification, bringing out, throughout the argument, that salvation is full and free. He now feels constrained to meet the most common, the most plausible, and yet the most unfounded objection to the doctrine of justification by faith, namely, that it permits men to live in sin, to continue doing evil, in order that grace might abound. What shall we then say? What inference shall we draw from the doctrine of grace? Shall we remain with sin, in sin, in order that grace may abound? This conclusion has ever been advanced by the enemies of Christ, from the early period of the Church down to the most recent times; the argument that the doctrine of justification by grace through faith furthered sin and undermined true morality. But Paul rejects the very insinuation with horror: By no means! Only one that knows nothing whatever of grace will speak and argue thus. Any one that has the faintest idea of the glory and beauty of grace will always hate and abhor sin and will bring out his appreciation of God’s mercy in his entire life. How should we, how could we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Because the believers have tasted the richness of God’s mercy, because they have died unto sin, have given up all communion with sin, therefore they can no longer live in sin. Death and life are opposites, they exclude each other. We turned our backs definitely upon sin when we received Christ as our Savior. It is therefore a contradiction in terms to say that free justification is a license to sin. The very fact that we died to sin, and are therefore free from sin, no longer under its dominion and in its power, must result in our hating sin, in shunning every transgression of the holy will of God. God delivered us from the bondage of sin, and this fact is the foundation of Christian sanctification. The state of a Christian is a state of freedom from sin.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The apostle begins this chapter with an objection, which some licentious person might be ready to make against what he had delivered in the close of the foregoing chapter; namely, that where sin abounded, pardoning grace and mercy did much more abound. If, say they, the riches of grace be thus manifested in the pardon of sin, let us then take the more liberty to sin, because grace so exceedingly abounds in the pardon of it. The apostle rejects such an inference with the greatest detestation and abhorrence, saying, God forbid, &c.. As if he had said, "Oh vile abuse of the most excellent thing in the world! What! did Christ shed his blood to expiate our guilt? and shall we make that a plea to extenuate our guilt? God forbid! surely there is forgiveness with God, that he may be feared, not that he may be the more abused."

In the words, observe, 1. An objection supposed, as if the doctrine of the gospel did countenance licentiousness, and encourage any sin, or to continue in sin.

2. Observe with what abhorrency and indignation such a doctrine and proposition is rejected by our apostle.

What! shall we continue in sin, because pardoning mercy doth abound?

God forbid, that such a direct blasphemy against the holy doctrine of our Saviour should be maintined by any professor.

Observe, 3. The confutation which he gives of this bold and impudent assertion; How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

Dead to sin, that is, by our baptismal engagement, vow, and obligation; every Christian, at his first entrance upon the profession of Christianity doth take upon himself a vow of solemn obligation to die to sin, and to live no longer therein.

From the whole, learn, That to take any encouragement to live in sin from the consideration of God’s rich mercy and free grace towards sinners, is an absurd, abominable, and blasphemous impiety, contrary to all ingenuity, gratitude, and love, both to God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ his Son.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1. “Then what shall we say? Must we abide in sin in order that grace may abound?” Here Paul takes by the throat this hell-hatched, hackneyed argument of the carnal preachers, i. e., that God is glorified by inbred sin abiding in us to keep us humble and magnify the grace of God by forgiving us when we are overcome by the tempter and yield and sin. He literally eradicates and annihilates this silly Satanic argument, setting out with a flat denial.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Romans Chapter 6

The character of this new life, into which the resurrection of Christ has brought us, is presented here in a striking way. Christ had perfectly glorified God in dying; also even in dying was He the Son of the living God. It is not all, therefore, that He could not be holden of it, true as that is because of His Person; His resurrection was also a necessity of the glory of God the Father. All that was in God was compelled to do it by His glory itself (even as Christ had glorified all), His justice. His love, His truth, His power; His glory, in that He could not low death to have the victory over the One who was faithful; His relationship as Father, who ought not, could not, leave His Son in bondage to the fruit of sin and to the power of the enemy. It was due to Christ on the part of God, due to His own glory as God and Father, necessary also, in order to shew the reflex of His own glory, to manifest it according to His counsels, and that in man. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. All that the Father is came into it, engaged to give Jesus the triumph of resurrection, of victory over death, and to give resurrection the brightness of His own glory. Having entered, as the fruit of the operation of His glory, into this new position, this is the model-the character-of that life in which we live before God. [28] Without this manifestation in Christ, God, although acting and giving testimonies of His power and of His goodness, remained veiled and hidden. In Christ glorified, the centre of all the counsels of God, we see the glory of the Lord with unveiled face, and every mouth confesses Him Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Our life ought to be the practical reflection of this glory of the Lord in heaven. The power that brings us into association with Him in this place, and still works in us, is shewn at the end of the first chapter of the Ephesians[29]. But there it is to introduce our resurrection with Christ. Here it is Christ’s own resurrection, the doctrine, or the thing in itself, and its consequences and moral import with regard to the individual living here below, in view of his relationship with God as a responsible man. It is an altogether new life. We are alive unto God through Him.

Identified thus with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall also enter into that of His resurrection. We see here that resurrection is a consequence which he deduces as a fact, not a mystical participation in the thing; knowing this first (as the great foundation of everything), that our old man-that in us which pleads for sin as the fruit of the perfect grace of God-is crucified with Christ, in order that the whole body of sin should be destroyed so that we should no more serve sin. He takes the totality and the system of sin in a man, as a body which is nullified by death; its will is judged and no longer masters us. For he who is dead is justified [30] from sin. Sin can no longer be laid to his charge as a thing that exists in a living and responsible man. Therefore, being thus dead with Christ-professedly by baptism, really by having Him for our life who died-we believe that we shall live with Him; we belong to that other world where He lives in resurrection. The energy of the life in which He lives is our portion: we believe this, knowing that Christ, being raised from among the dead, dieth no more. His victory over death is complete and final; death has no more dominion over Him. Therefore it is that we are sure of resurrection, namely, on account of this complete victory over death, into which He entered for us in grace. By faith we have entered into it with Him, having our part in it according to His therein. It is the power of the life of love that brought Him there. Dying, He died unto sin. He went down even to death rather than fail in maintaining the glory of God. Until death, and even in death, He had to do with sin, though there were none in Him, and with temptation; but there He has done with all for ever. We die unto sin by participating in His death. The consequence-by the glory of the Father-is resurrection. Now, therefore, “in that he died, he died unto sin once for all; in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.”

Thus He has nothing more to do with sin. He lives, only perfectly, without reference in His life to anything else, unto God. In that He lives, His life is in relationship to God only. [31] We also then ought to reckon-for it is by faith-that we are dead to sin and alive to God, having no other object of life than God, in Christ Jesus. I ought to consider myself dead, I have a right to do so, because Christ has died for me; and being alive now for ever unto God, I ought to consider myself as come out, by the life which I live through Him, from the sin to which I died. For this is the Christ I know; not a Christ living on the earth in connection with me according to the nature in which I live here below. In that nature I am proved to be a sinner, and incapable of true relationship with Him. He has died for me as living of that life, and entered, through resurrection, into a new state of life outside the former. It is there that as a believer I know Him. I have part in death, and in life through Him who is risen. I have righteousness by faith, but righteousness as having part with Christ dead and raised again, as being therefore by faith dead unto sin.

And this is the essential difference of this part of the epistle. It is not that Christ has shed His blood for our sins, but that we have died with Him. There is an end for faith to our state and standing in flesh. The Christ who is become our life did die, and, as alive through Him, what He has done is mine; and I have to say I died. I reckon myself dead. [32] The apostle deduces the evident consequence: “Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body.” Do not yield your members as instruments to the sin to which you are dead by Christ; but as alive, as awakened up from amongst the dead, yield your members as instruments of righteousness to God unto whom you live. The body is now the mere instrument of divine life; and we are free to use it for God as such. For in fact sin shall not have dominion over us, because we are not under the law but under grace. Here it is not the principle but the power that is spoken of. In principle we are dead to sin, according to faith; in practice it has no power over us. Observe that the source of practical power to conquer sin is not in the law, but in grace.

Now it is true that, not being under the law, the rule under which we are placed is not that of imputation but of non-imputation. Is this a reason why we should sin? No! there is a reality in these things. We are slaves to that which we obey. Sin leads to death; obedience to practical righteousness. We are upon the wider principle of a new nature and grace; not the application of an external rule to a nature which was not, and could not be subject to it. And, in truth, having been in the former case, the disciples in Rome had given proof of the justice of the apostle’s argument by walking in the truth. Set free from the slavery of sin, they had become (to use human language) the slaves of righteousness, and this did not end in itself; practical righteousness developed itself by the setting apart of the whole being for God with ever-growing intelligence. They were obedient in such-and-such things; but the fruit was sanctification, a spiritual capacity, in that they were separated from evil, unto a deeper knowledge of God. [33] Sin produced no fruit, it ended in death; but set free from sin and become servants to God-the true righteousness of obedience, like that of Christ Himself-they had their fruit already in holiness, and the end should be eternal life. For the wages of sin was death, the gift of God was eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now this life was living unto God, and this is not sin; nevertheless it is grace. Here the apostle, whose subject is judicial righteousness before God, approximates to John, and connects his doctrine with that of the First Epistle of John, who there, on the other hand, enters upon the doctrine of propitiation and acceptance when speaking of the impartation of life. The appeal is very beautiful to a man in true liberty-the liberty of grace, being dead to sin. He is set wholly free by death. To whom is he now going to yield himself? For now he is free; is he going to give himself up to sin? It is a noble appeal.[34]

Footnotes for Romans Chapter 6

28: Indeed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were all engaged in the resurrection of Christ. He raised the temple of His body in three days, was quickened by the Spirit, and raised by the glory of the Father.

29: To which we may add in full effect the end of the third. Details are found elsewhere.

30: The word is “justified.” And here we see distinctly the important difference between sin and sins: you cannot charge a dead man with sin. He has no perverse will, no evil lusts. He may have committed many sins while alive, he may or may not be justified from them. But you cannot accuse him of sin. And, as we have seen, from chapter 5: 12, we are treating of sin-of man’s state-not of sins.

31: This is a wonderful expression. As to faithfulness His life was spent for God, He lived to God. But now His life knows nothing but God.

32: Note here, the Epistle to the Romans does not go on to say we are risen with Christ. That leads on necessarily to union, and is Ephesian ground. Only we must remark that death and resurrection never go on to the heavenly state; they are the subjective experimental state. In Ephesians, when dead in sins, we are taken, quickened, and put into Christ, as Christ was raised and put into glory above the heavens: simply God’s work. Here it is individual: we are alive in Him. We shall have part in His resurrection, walking in newness of life. It is personal and practical: man, as we have seen, alive on earth.

33: Compare Exo 33:13.

34: It is not, note, an appeal to sinners as sometimes used, but to those already set free.

John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1, 2. Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? In the last chapter the apostle has shown that the existence of sin called out the grace of God in forgiveness. Now the objection is raised. If that is so, why not continue in sin so that God's grace would more abound?

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Under grace, Paul tells those who believe in Jesus to live a new life as though dead to sin and alive to God.

What then will we say? Should we continue in sin so that grace may abound?

Paul asks these rhetorical questions to get the attention of his readers. AT: "So, what should we say about all of this? We certainly should not keep on sinning so that God will give us more and more grace! (See: Rhetorical Question)

we say

The pronoun "we" refers to Paul, his readers, and other people. (See: Inclusive "We")

We who died to sin, how can we still live in it?

Here "died to sin" means that those who follow Jesus are now like dead people who cannot be affected by sin. Paul uses this rhetorical question to add emphasis. AT: "We are now like dead people on whom sin has no effect! So we certainly should not keep on sinning!" (See: Metaphor and Rhetorical Question)

Do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Paul uses this question to add emphasis. AT: "Remember, when someone baptized us to show that we have a relationship with Christ, this also shows that we died with Christ on the cross! (See: Rhetorical Question)

translationWords

sin

grace

die

baptize

Jesus

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

What shall we say then? "A transition - expression and a debater's phrase" (Morison). The use of this phrase points to Paul 's training in the Rabbinical schools, where questions were propounded and the students encouraged to debate, objections being suddenly interposed and answered. Shall we continue [επιμενωμεν] . The verb means primarily to remain or abide at or with, as 1Co 16:8; Phi 1:24; and secondarily, to persevere, as Rom 11:23; Col 1:23. So better here, persist.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.