Dead to sin, alive to God (Rom. 6:1-14)

Paul has told us that God’s kindness has dwarfed the whole sorry business that started with Adam sinning.

And now, in the light of this abundant grace, he shows how we may live to his glory.

In fact, Paul must respond to some who doubt, or scorn, the good news he has announced because they cannot believe or do not want to rely on God’s amazing grace. And he does so by answering two questions.

Here’s the first of them. Shall we just let loose and do as we please, given that God is so kind (vv. 1-14)?

I’ve included references in the following text to make it easier to locate where Paul makes each point.

We’ve heard that Jesus dies for our sins and rises for our justification. This continues to be the starting point for all that we think and do. But we also need to know the goal God has in this. There are three purpose statements in this passage. First, God’s kindness to us is not so we can go on sinning (v. 1). Second, it’s so we can live a new life (v. 4). And third, it’s so our old life can be disabled (v. 6).

But first, everything here depends on what happens to Jesus.

Far from merely looking at Christ as a spectacle, or perhaps appreciating him as a benefactor, we have been included in his dying and rising, and in what those events have accomplished. When we say we believe in Christ, usually expressed in baptism, we’re accepting that our new life doesn’t start with us. It arises from what happens to him—and happens to us who are in him.

But Paul is now telling us how this death and resurrection with Christ impacts on our daily living. Jesus doesn’t just die for our sins. He dies to sin (v. 10). We need to know what this means.

Obviously, Jesus doesn’t die to sinning because he never sinned. But when he dies, he so fully exhausts what sin and condemnation and death can do to sinners, that he’s died to anything more it can do to him.

This is important for us because we’ve been united with Christ in ‘a death like his’ (v. 5). Sin can’t do anything more to him. So, it follows that it can’t do anything more to us either! But how can this be? Sin—as we see what it offers, and feel its tug, still seems to have plenty of influence on us.

It certainly doesn’t mean we have no temptations, no inner tendencies to do wrong, no failures. But God’s purpose is to disable our propensity to sinning (v. 6). Paul calls it ‘our body of sin…being brought to nothing’. We’ve been joined to Christ’s crucifixion specifically to bring this slavery to an end[i].

This almost seems to be too ambitious! But Paul explains how this happens. Someone who’s died is ‘set free from sin’.[ii] This should actually read ‘is justified’ from sin’.[iii] The freedom comes because God calls us righteous. We are clean. We are not being condemned anymore. This is the freedom Paul speaks about.

It helps if we think about the opposite of this. Consider the effect that personal failures have on our will to please God. Satan accuses us continually. He knows the effectiveness of guilt to keep us from doing good. Think of the sapping of energy when our conscience tells us we are compromised and contaminated. What can we do to lift our game?

But then, if Christ has stood, or hung, where we compromised and soiled sinners belong, and been raised from the dead, he can rightly call us righteous. And if we, united with him, have been through death and resurrection, we, with him, can live with a clear conscience.[iv]  And someone who has been cleansed like this wants to stay that way and please his wonderful Benefactor. We don’t work towards getting a clear conscience. We start with one.

And so, with King David, we may have felt God’s heavy hand on us as sinners,[v] and longed to know the joy of his salvation. But God forgives our sin, and upholds us with a willing spirit.[vi] Or, like Isaiah, we can say, ‘Here am I Lord. Send me!’[vii] Or, like Peter, we can say, ‘You know that I love you’.[viii]

Paul also says that we are united with Christ in his resurrection (v. 4). He now has a human life (not his eternal relationship to the Father) that is renewed—after bearing our sins.

He rises to live to God. Of course, he has always lived to God, but we couldn’t share in that—as though we could merely copy his example. He’s living to God now after bearing our sins. He’s been where we were before God—condemned. And now he is alive to God. Death has lost its power over him.

And we’ve been raised up too. We can act and choose and think in the Father’s presence, as Jesus did in his life among us, and particularly, as he does now. We’ve been equipped to live as the righteous people he created us to be!

And we can be sure that if we are included in what he has done by dying for us, we will most certainly will share in being physically raised from the dead as he was (v. 5).

So much for death being in charge of history! Sin, and condemnation, and the threat of death crippled our living (as Paul has shown in his previous section[ix]). But not now! We are ready to live.

Paul tells us to do three things so that we don’t waste these privileges. They belong together and help us live in the blessing we’ve just considered. Here they are.

We must regard our life the way God is regarding it. We must breathe this new air deeply. We should notice what is controlling our thinking. We should give up our introspection, or living by our own piety, and start with ourselves where God has placed us—in Christ.

We must say no—over and over again— to temptations we used to give way to. Problems don’t go away by meditating, or just knowing things. Sometimes we just have to say ‘No!’ We should tell sin that it’s not in charge. There’s no negotiation here. No hesitation. We might be surprised how powerful our ‘No’ is!

We must say ‘Yes’ to God and his will—over and over again—to exercise the new freedom we’ve received. We’re no meant to be overfed consumers. This new life is built for action. We used to be the living dead! But we’re alive to God now.

And just in case we’ve forgotten, we’re not under law’s condemnation, or congratulations! Everything is under the reign of God’s grace. Our humble beginnings are a delight to our heavenly Father. A sceptics question has yielded a rich feast. Next time, we’ll look at a second objection people have raised about the reign of God’s grace. And learn how to live as God’s joyful slaves!

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[i] Jesus has said that whoever sins becomes a slave of his sin (John 8:34).

[ii] V. 7

[iii] Every other time Paul uses this word, this is what he means.

[iv] Heb. 9:14

[v] Psa. 32:4

[vi] Psa. 51:12

[vii] Isa. 6:7-8

[viii] John 21:17

[ix] Rom. 5:17, 21