Romans 6

1. 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? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 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. For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing 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: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. 15 What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

THE rich contents of this chapter may be summed up in this single proposition: the believing Christian can not possibly be a minister of sin. The true Christian can not live in sin, because the love of sin is destroyed in his heart since he really entered into fellowship with Him who died through sin and for it, that we might live through Him. The courage to strive against sin is enkindled by the union of faith with Christ; this faith awakens love to the Lord Jesus, and it is impossible that love and sin should permanently subsist together. Nay, through this courage is procured strength to obtain the victory, since he is indissolubly united, not merely with the dead, but also with the risen Christ: the spirit of life is in the Christian; and wherever He dwells and works, he must necessarily manifest himself as a purifying fire, consuming all unrighteousness. We may go yet a step further, and maintain that the true Christian will not serve sin, just because he feels himself free and happy under the dominion of grace. Experience testifies that the stumbling of true believers is really something different from the iniquity of the wholly unregenerate; the last live in sin, the first feel with deep pain that sin yet lives in them, and the history of centuries shows that the power of sin is most thoroughly broken by living faith and free grace where these have subjugated the life. Van O.

Our bodies—our natural bodies—will die alike in all of us. This is one death; but besides this shall all die another, the death of our sins or the death of our souls. Remember that one of these two deaths, both painful, we must die, every one of us. Which shall it be then? Shall it be the death of our sin or the death of our soul? The death whose pain comes at first most, yet even then, by Christ’s grace, it is endurable; but afterward the suffering and the struggle lessen, and there comes the rest of death, and the vigor and the freshness and the glory of that divine and eternal life which the death of our sins has given birth to; or shall it be the death whose first strokes are silent and painless, which pours in its poison and we feel it not—more and more triumphant, and we more and more insensible; till behold, its work is accomplished, and then the agony is neither to be uttered nor conceived, and Christ is gone from us for ever, and life and death are become one for our destruction; a death of all good, a life of all evil. T. A.

1-23. There are two aspects in which the religion of Christ may be viewed, and we should never magnify the one at the expense of the other—as a Principle of Life and Happiness, and as a Principle of Subjection and Obedience—life that quickens obedience, obedience that manifests life—life that makes obedience delightful, obedience that makes life visible and practical. In the sixth chapter, you will find this representation a clew to the involutions of its rapid eloquence. This chapter is composed of the answers to two objections, and the objections and their respective answers (so often hastily confounded) are specially directed to special and distinct views of the gospel. The former objection speaks of life, and it is answered out of the nature and characteristics of spiritual life and death; the latter objection speaks of subjection, and it is appropriately answered by citing the characters and contrast of the sinful and the righteous service. The one asks (v. 1), Shall we abide—or “live” (v. 2) in sin, that grace may abound? and the answer is that we are dead to sin, that the old nature is crucified (v. 6), and that therefore it is unnatural, in the nature of things incompatible, that we should live to it. This death to sin is declared to be publicly solemnized in the expressive rite of baptism; and in it, as well as in the resurrection that follows it, we are declared to be copyists and partakers of Christ—“baptized into him,” into his death, his resurrection, and his eternal life (vs. 3-11). The consequence drawn from this (vs. 12-14) is that sin should not “have dominion over us,” that it should not be suffered any longer to intrude its foreign tyranny upon the purchased possession of God: and this forms the transition to the topic of the second objection, which turns upon the cardinal idea of subjection, and asks, “Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” The course of animated appeal that replies to this interrogatory (vs. 16-20) is fitted to it with exact and exclusive propriety. We are declared to be no longer “the servants of sin,” but “the servants of righteousness”; that, whereas in the bitter bondage of nature and the law men were “free from righteousness” (v. 20), they are under the dispensation of grace “free” (or rather freed)—emancipated—from sin, and formally articled to that holy servitude of godliness and love, whose “gift is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v. 23). Having thus concluded his double course of illustrative exposition, Paul passes (v. 21) to a further consideration, which results from both, and manifestly is framed to allude to both. He speaks of “the fruits,” or consequences, of the ways of nature and grace; and to each he applies the notions, before so copiously treated, of service and of life. Now, the “fruit” of bondage is properly its “wages,” the fruit of God’s service is “a gift.” And therefore it is that, binding the whole argument and all its topics—life and freedom—death and bondage, and the fruits of each—into one summary, he declares that, “being freed from sin, and servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life; for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” W. A. B.

3. His argument is briefly this: The abounding of grace in the free pardon of sin by Jesus Christ neither encourages nor tolerates sin, because, in accepting by faith that covenant of grace which is sealed in baptism, we come under the most solemn obligations to abstain from all sin; while at the same time, if we are not hypocrites, we have that inward principle of the new life which the Spirit quickens in us through the truth, and which ultimately works the utter death of all sin in our natures. So far, therefore, as his language in the third verse is concerned, there is no need of seeking for anything more, or for anything else, than the idea intimated in the paraphrase, that “as many as are baptized in the name of Jesus Christ are baptized with a profession of that inward renewing which makes us dead unto sin, even as Christ once died for sin.” J. S. S.—Christians are here said to be baptized, as in another Epistle they are said to be circumcised, by their union to Christ (Col. 2: 11). As the one expression describes a state of mind, represented by an outward act, but never produced by it, so does the other. Both ceremonies were useful, as other means of religious instruction, and other ways of religious profession; but that they had any peculiar power to change the spiritual condition of men, is nowhere taught in the Bible. This is now universally admitted of circumcision, and it is equally true of water-baptism.

4. Buried. The resemblance of the Christian to his Lord, which is here described, must be moral and spiritual, and not corporeal. As the death referred to is a state of mind, and the crucifixion which precedes death, and the life which follows, so must the burial be. It is nothing outward and formal. The mention of burial connects the death with the resurrection spoken of; and it shows more fully the separation of the Christian from the world. He is crucified, he dies, and he is buried. These are figurative representations of the spiritual state of all who have faith in Christ, and follow him. The same figure is repeated by the apostle in another Epistle, where they who have the circumcision of Christ are said to be buried with him in this baptism (Col. 2: 11). The interchange of these terms shows that both denote simply a spiritual purification and consecration. J. H. G.—The Spirit is not tied to baptism, but he may act out of the sacraments as well as in them. Understand this of the bare want of baptism, not of the contempt or willful neglect of it. How did the thief upon the cross enter into Paradise which Christ promised him? Without baptism. So that one may enter into heaven without baptism by water, though not without the baptism of the Spirit. Charnock.

Walk in newness of life. Not by merely trying not to sin, but by entering farther and farther into the new life, in which, when it is completed, sin becomes impossible; not by merely weeding out wickedness, but by a new and supernatural cultivation of holiness, does the saint of the New Testament walk on the ever-ascending pathway of growing Christliness, and come at last perfectly to Christ. This is the true difference between law and grace; and the New Testament is the book of grace. Oh, that the richest, and livest, and most personal word in all the language did not sound so meager, dead, and formal! In its fundamental character the New Testament is a book not of prohibitions but of eager inspirations. P. B.

5. Literally, have become partakers by a vital union [as that of a graft with the tree into which it is grafted] of the representation of his death [in baptism]. The meaning appears to be, if we have shared the reality of his death, whereof we have undergone the likeness. C.—6. In our inward renewal, professed and sealed in baptism, our old man is crucified with Christ for the very purpose that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7. For he who has thus died to sin is Christ’s free man, and no longer a slave to sin.

8,9. The sense of the passage is as follows: “If, as we profess at baptism, we be really ‘dead with Christ,’ really penitent for sin, thoroughly determined to renounce it, and inwardly deadened to its power, ‘we believe we shall also live with him’; shall continue to cherish and cultivate and enjoy the spiritual life which our repentance and faith imply; and not only so, but shall ultimately rise, like Christ, from the dead, and live with him for evermore. ‘As death hath no more dominion over him,’ so shall it have no more over us, either in the tyranny of sin in this life, or in the abiding power of the grave over us, when this life shall have ended.” It is probable that, at baptism, the early converts to Christ professed their faith in the great doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, based on the FACT of the resurrection of Christ. J. S. S.

Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour, that it makes the soul like him, assimilates and conforms it to his death, as the apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true, in a spiritual sense, of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer. It takes the very print of his death, by beholding him, and dies to sin; and then takes that of his rising again, and lives to righteousness; as it applies it to justify, so to mortify, drawing virtue from it. Thus said one, “Christ aimed at this in all those sufferings that, with so much love, he went through; and shall I disappoint him, and not serve his end?”

10. He that is one with Christ by believing is one throughout in death and life. As Christ rose, so he that is dead to sin with him, through the power of his death, rises to that new life with him, through the power of his resurrection. And these two are our sanctification, which whosoever do partake of Christ and are found in him do certainly draw from him. All they that do really come to Jesus Christ come to him as their Saviour, to be clothed with him and made righteous by him; they come likewise to him as their Sanctifier, to be made new and holy by him, to die and live with him.

11. No sinner will be content to die to sin, if that were all; but if it be passing to a mere excellent life, then he gaineth, and it were a folly not to seek this death. It was a strange power of Plato’s “Discourse of the Soul’s Immortality,” that moved a young man, upon reading it, to throw himself into the sea, that he might leap through it to that immortality. Were this life of God, this life to righteousness, and the excellency and delight of it, known, it would gain many minds to this death, whereby we step into it. L.

12,13. The real seat of sin is in the will, alienated from God, and set upon the gratification of self. The motives to sin, and its agents also, are the passions and desires of our lower nature—the flesh as acted upon by the enticements of the world. The senses and members of the body become the occasions and the instruments of unrighteousness. But, through yielding to these, the will itself becomes their slave; and the man who should rule the body and have dominion over the world by his spiritual nature, which is the image of God, subjects that nature to the body, and is ruled by the world, the flesh, and the devil. J. P. T.—The divine laws are the rule of duty to the entire man, and not to the soul only. And they are obeyed or violated by the soul and body in conjunction. The soul designs, the body executes; the senses are the open ports to admit temptations. Carnal affections deprave the soul, corrupt the mind and mislead it. The love of sin is founded in sensible pleasures: “And the members are the servants of iniquity.” The heart is the fountain of profaneness, and the tongue expresses it. And the body is obsequious to the holy soul in doing or suffering for God, and denies its sensual appetites and satisfactions in compliance with reason and grace. The “members are the instruments of righteousness.” Bates.

Yield yourselves. The gospel binds us to the service of a God of truth and purity, and only in this way can its blessings be enjoyed. When we accept the gospel, we not only receive something from God, we give something to him. In the language of the apostle, “we yield ourselves unto God.” Where this is forgotten altogether, where service is passed by, it is what the apostle terms “receiving the grace of God in vain,” and where it is put into the background, it produces a weak, sinewless Christianity, which seeks a comfortable home for itself, and does small work for the cause of either God or man. Ker.

14. The believer is not still struggling, trying sorrowfully to get faith enough, any more than works enough, to be saved by. He is up on the heights of spiritual liberty, no longer under law, but in grace. He knows whom he has believed, and is assured that he is “saved already” in that he does believe—“passed from death unto life.” And thus, being emancipated from the hindrance of self-interest, he obeys from love, brings his body more and more under, for the pure Master’s sake, goes from grace to grace, and has “peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” F. D. H.

15. Where, in the New Testament, can we find a single word that should lead us to suppose ourselves less debtors to the law, because Christ became our ransom? He pardons the criminal, he has paid the debt, but he does not abrogate the law. Nay, how he “magnified” it, by himself becoming a perfect example of obedience! R. Hill.

16. The living belief which has really been implanted in the soil of thought and feeling can not but bear its proper flower and fruit in the moral and intellectual life of a thoughtful and earnest man. H. P. L.—In all the articles comprised in the Creed, my belief is unclouded by doubt. Would to God that my faith, which works on the whole man, confirming and conforming, were but in just proportion to my belief—to the full acquiescence of my intellect, and the deep consent of my conscience! S. T. C.—Remember that so many waking hours as we have in every day, so many hours have we of sin or of holiness: every hour delivers in and must deliver its record; and everything so recorded is placed either on one side of the fatal line or on the other; it is charged to our great account of good or of evil. Yes, all that countless multitude of unremembered thoughts and words and deeds take their places distinctly, and swell the sum for condemnation or for glory. In themselves, like ciphers, there is a little figure to be placed before them which gives to them an infinite value; there is faith on the one hand to give them all a virtue for good, there is carelessness on the other hand to make them all count for evil. For whatsoever is not of faith is sin; but whatever is sanctified by a holy and careful general intention, is done, even though it be so common a thing as eating and drinking—is done to the glory of God, and therefore to our own salvation through Christ Jesus. T. A.

17-19. “But God be thanked that you, who were once the slaves of sin, have obeyed from your hearts the teaching whereby you were molded anew; and when you were freed from the slavery of sin you became the bondmen of righteousness. I speak the language of common life, to show the weakness of your fleshly nature (which must be in bondage either to the one or to the other).” C.

18. Sin itself is an element of discipline; and as for the affections enthralled by its despotism, they are sinful, not in themselves as affections, but in their depravation; they are meant to be, not the bond-slaves of evil, but the liberated “servants of righteousness”; they are born for eternity and for God! W. A. B.

19. The body has changed its master. It always serves, but instead of serving the mind it serves the flesh. Yes, the body serves the flesh, for the flesh and the body are not the same thing. They are often distinguished from each other in the gospel; and here Paul shows us the partisans of a fictitious holiness, treating the body with harshness for fear of flattering the flesh. The body or the members, which we ought, according to Paul’s expression, to make the servants of righteousness and holiness, are, under the orders of the flesh or animal principle, the servants of impurity and unrighteousness. The body, then, is a servant to be restored to its true master, who is the Spirit; but the true enemy of the Spirit is the flesh; and, accordingly, in the gospel it is not the body but the flesh which is condemned; for, as Paul says, it is with the flesh, not with the body, that we serve the law of sin (Rom. 7: 25). Jesus Christ, clothed mysteriously with this thoroughly and universally tainted flesh, has condemned sin in the flesh. A. V.

20. Much discourse and much ink hath been spilt upon the debate of free will, but truly all the liberty it hath, till the Son and his Spirit free it, is that miserable freedom the apostle speaks of here: While ye were servants to sin, ye were free from righteousness. And as we are naturally subject to the drudgery of sin, so we are condemned to the proper wages of sin, which the apostle tells us is death, according to the just sentence of the law. But our Lord Christ was anointed for this purpose, to set us free himself, both to work and to publish liberty, to proclaim liberty to captives, and the opening of the prison-doors to them that are bound. Having paid our complete ransom, he sends his word as the message and his Spirit to perform it, effectually to set us free, to let us know it, and to bring us out of prison. L.

21. God has not intrusted these sensitive souls to us to be experimented upon by a vain curiosity or a headstrong self-confidence. They are to be guarded at every point from all that blights and all that defiles. They are to be surrounded with blameless associations, with companions that act and speak no guile. Every hour while contamination is postponed, and corruption kept away, is so much saved for virtue. The powers of right in the soul are strengthening. Good habits are getting formed and confirmed. The currents of desire, of thought, and of emotion, are learning to run in fixed and lawful channels. F. D. H.

The end is death. Not the dissolution of the body, not extinction of being, but that final separation from all that is holy and blessed; that hopeless abandonment to all that is evil and tormenting; that unutterable anguish of a mind in perpetual conflict with itself and with God, which constitute most truly the death of the soul; a death to be endured, not for a few years, not for a single century, not for thousands of ages, but for eternity. And shall not he, who beholds the sinner slumbering on the verge of perdition, warn him of his danger? Shall he be censured for preaching terror, and for attempting unduly to move the passions of his hearers, who tells them, in the language of inspiration, the end of these things is death, they shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever? Tappan.—

23. The wages that sin bargains with the sinner are life, pleasure, and profit; but the wages it pays him are death, torment, and destruction. He that would understand the falsehood and deceit of sin must compare the promises and the payment together. R. S.

Eternal life through Jesus Christ. Oh that we might feel our dear obligations to him who has “delivered us from the wrath to come,” and purchased for us a felicity perfect, and without end! How engaging is the love of Christ, who raised us to the bosom of God, the seat of happiness! Bates.—Undeterred by anticipated sorrows, undismayed by evils from which every other being in the universe would have shrunk, he gave himself to win the prize of life eternal for you—will he, think you, withhold, or be reluctant to bestow, that prize upon you now that his pains and toils are ended, now that he has only to speak the word, and it is yours? The salvation of your soul was an end so glorious, that he was willing to reach it though the way to it led through blood and darkness and death—can you entertain any doubt that he is willing to secure it now when nothing intervenes, when every difficulty has been overcome, when he has but to stretch out the hand of mercy, and the consummation of all his sufferings is attained? No, it can not be. It is impossible to exaggerate the certainty and freeness of that salvation that is in Christ for all who will but lay hold of it. It is impossible that anything in the universe can lie between you and eternal life, if you but accept it as “the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Caird.