Dead to sin alive in Christ (Romans 6)
By
Rev.Katherine Liu Bruce
Christian
Arts Ministries :Biblical precepts & Gospel music
Scriptures
reading Romans 6: 1-
6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that
grace may increase? 6:2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any
longer? 6:3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? 6:4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, we too may live a new life. 6:5 If we have been united with him like
this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
6:6 For we know that our old self was
crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves to sin-- 6:7 because anyone who has died has been
freed from sin. 6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also
live with him. 6:9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he
cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.6:10 The death he died,
he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 6:11 In
the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 6:12
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil
desires.6:13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of
wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought
from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of
righteousness.6:14 For sin shall not be
your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
6:15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 6:16 Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey--whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?6:17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 6:18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 6:19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.6:20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.6:21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 6:22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If grace abounds in the presence of sin
then shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! Grace cannot
be exploited for evil ends! Because of our union with Christ we are dead to sin
and are alive to God (v.11). The new moral life is based on : (1) out union with
Chrsit(6:1-14);(2) our being slaves to righteousness (6:15-23); ane (3) the new
marriage union we have with Christ (7:1-6). Died to sin. Death is separation, not
extinction: (1) Physical death is the separation of body from spirit (James 2:26).
(2) Spiritual death is the separation of a person from God. (Eph.2:1). (3) The second
death is eternal separation from God (Rev.20:14). (4) Death to sin is separation
from the ruling power of sin in one’s own life. (Rom.6:14).
Baptism with the Holy Spirit joins the
believer to Christ, separating him from the old life and associating him with the
new. He is no longer “in Adam” but is “in Christ”. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin…but
rather offer yourselves to God. Baptism is
not a form or a ritual; it signifies our identification with Christ. Through
baptism we are immersed into Christ, taking Him as our realm, that we may be united
with Him as one in His death and resurrection. We were born in the sphere of Adam,
the first man (1 Cor. 15:45,47), but through baptism we have been transferred into
the sphere of Christ (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal.3:27), the second man (1 Cor.15:47).
When we are baptized into Christ, we
are baptized into His death. His death has separated us from the world and the satanic
power of darkness and has terminated our natural life, our old nature, our self,
our flesh, and even our entire history.
Our old man has been crucified with Christ
(v.6), and it has been buried with Him through baptism into death. In the natural
realm, a person first dies and then is buried; but Paul’s word indicates that in
the spiritual realm, we are first buried and then die. We do not die directly; we
enter into Christ’s death through baptism. Christ and His death are one. Apart from
Him we could never be baptized into His death, for the element of His effective
death is found only in Him, the resurrected, all-inclusive One.
After baptism we become a new person
in resurrection. Resurrection is not only a future state; it is also a present process.
To walk in newness of life means to live today in the realm of resurrection and
to reign in life. This kind of living deals with all that is of Adam in us until
we are fully transformed and conformed to the image of Christ. (Rom.8:29).
Verse 5 This denotes an organic union
in which growth takes place, so that one partakes of the life and characteristics
of the other. In the organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has
become our history. His death and resurrection are now ours because we are in Him
and are organically joined to Him. This is grafting (11:24). Such a grafting (1)
discharges all our negative elements, (2) resurrects our God-created faculties,
(3) uplifts our faculties, (4) enriches our faculties, and (5) saturates our entire
being to transform us.
This likeness of Christ’s death is the
baptism mentioned in v.4; the likeness of Christ’s resurrection is the newness of
life mentioned in v.4.
in His resurrection
This does not refer to a future, objective resurrection but to the present process
of growth. When we were baptized, we grew together with Christ in the likeness of
His death; now, through His death we are growing into His resurrection. Just as
the element of Christ’s death is found only in Him, so the element of Christ’s resurrection
is found only Christ Himself. He Himself is resurrection (John11:25). After experiencing
a proper baptism, we continue to grow in and with Christ in the likeness of His
resurrection, that is, to walk in newness of life.
Vere 6 in Greek, knowing here refers
to the outward, objective knowledge; knowing gin v.9 and know in v.16 refer to the
inward, subjective consciousness. Old man referring to the natural life in our soul.
The old man is our very bring, which was created by God but became fallen through
sin, and it is the same as the “I” in Gal.2:20. It is not the soul itself but the
life of the soul, which has been counted by God as hopeless and has been put on
the cross and crucified with Christ. Formerly, our soul acted as an independent
person, with the old man as its life and personality; now, since the old man has
been crucified, our soul should act only as an organ of Christ and should be under
the control of our spirit, having Christ as its life.
The body indwelt, occupied, corrupted,
possessed, utilized, and enslaved by sin, so that it does sinful things. This body
of sin is very active and full of strength to commit sins; it differs from “the
body of this death” mentioned in 7:24, which is weak and powerless in the things
of God. The body of sin is not the sinning person, but the sinning instrument utilized
by the old man to express himself by committing sins, thereby causing the body of
sin to become the flesh. Hence, the body of sin in this verse and the flesh of sin
in 8:3 refer to the same thing.
Verse 11 or consider. Reckoning is not
a technique but a spontaneous believing, a spontaneous considering, produced by
seeing the facts that are revealed in this Chapter. We must see and believe the
facts, recognize them and according to them, reckon ourselves dead to sin and living
to God.
Reckoning, however, is not the cause
of death and cannot by itself execute the death of Christ within us. Only by the
enjoyment of the Spirit who is revealed in Ch.8 will we experience Christ’s all-inclusive an defective death and His resurrection and its power, which are revealed
here in this chapter. This chapter shows the objective facts accomplished by Christ
for us; these need our believing and reckoning. Chapter 8 shows the subjective work
of the Spirit in making the facts accomplished by Christ real in our practical experience;
this needs our fellowship with and enjoyment of Him. The facts spoken of in this
chapter can become our experience only in the Spirit revealed in Ch.8.
Verse 13 presenting ourselves and our
members to God is the result of seeing the facts of our having been crucified and
resurrected with Christ and of reckoning ourselves dead and living according to
these facts. Our members are not merely instruments but are weapons of righteousness
to fight the battle in the war between righteousness and unrighteousness.
Verse 14 Sin here personified, lords
it over us through the lusts of our body. That we are not under the law but under
grace is the reason sin cannot lord it over us. This gives us the position to reject
sin. Sin no longer has any right to make claims upon us, but we have the full right
to rejects sin and its power. By rejecting sin and taking sides with the resurrected
Christ, we present ourselves and our members as slaves to righteousness that the
divine life may work within us to sanctify us, not only positionally but also dispositional,
with the holy nature of God. This does not make us lawless, as some were during
the time of the church’s degradation (Jude4). The law referred to in this verse
is the law given by Moses, which has been replaced by the inward laws in the new
covenant (Heb.10:16). Just as Chapter 5 and 6 explain that we are now under grace,
chapter 7 and 8 explain how it can be that we are not under the law.
Verse 19 Righteousness ushers us into
sanctification. If we present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and our members
as weapons of righteousness, Christ as the eternal life within us will have the
ground to work in us and saturate our inward parts with Himself. Thus, we will be
sanctified spontaneously; we will be made holy spontaneously in our inward parts
by Christ’s saturating. Sanctification involves not only a change in position, that
is, a separation from a common, worldly position to a position for GOD, as illustrated in Matt.23:17,19 and in
1 Tim.4:3-5; it involves also a transformation in disposition, that is, a transformation
from the natural disposition to a spiritual one by Christ as the life-giving Spirit
saturating all the inward parts of our being with God’s nature of holiness, as mentioned
in 12:2 and 2 Cor.3:18.
Verse 23 Wages are a payment
according to righteousness, based on the work that a person performs. In the eyes
of God, all man’s behavior apart from God is sin and is man’s work and the wages
it earns is death. Death comes from sin and is its result. The death mentioned here,
however, is not only physical death and eternal death, but the death in which man
is entangled daily. Eternal life is the very life of the Triune God Himself. This life has been imparted into us on the basis
of our having been justified by God, and it is now spreading throughout our being
through sanctification and transformation. This will result in our being conformed
to the Lord’s image and our being brought into the Lord’s glory, that we may be
made suitable to have a part in the manifestation of His glory.
Bibliography,
Friberg,
Timothy, Barbara Friberg, and Neva F. Miller et al., eds. Analytical
Lexicon of the Greek New Testament.1st ed. Victoria BC:
Trafford Publishing, 2005.
King James, The Holy Bible, Cleveland, OH: The
world publishing company
Lee, Witness. The
New Testament (R.V.) Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1985.
Ryrie, Charles
C. The Ryrie study Bible (NIV). Chicago, IL: The Moody Bible
Institute, 1986.
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