NOTES ON ROMANS 6 – JOHN STOTT

 NOTES ON ROMANS 6 – JOHN STOTT

United to Christ and enslaved to God (6:1–23)

The apostle has been painting an idyllic picture of the people of God. Having been justified by faith, they are standing in grace and rejoicing in glory. Having formerly belonged to Adam, the author of sin and death, they now belong to Christ, the author of salvation and life. Although at one point in the history of Israel the law was added to increase sin (5:20a), yet ‘grace increased all the more’ (5:20b), so that ‘grace might reign’ (5:21). It is a splendid vision of the triumph of grace. Against the grim background of human guilt, Paul depicts grace increasing and grace reigning.

What was their criticism? It was not just that Paul’s gospel of justification by grace through faith without works seemed to make the doing of good works otiose. Worse than that, it seemed to stimulate people to sin more than ever. For if, in his understanding of Israel’s story, the law led to an increase of sin, and sin led to an increase of grace (5:20f.), then logically, in our story too, we should increase our sinning in order to give God the chance to increase his gracious forgiving. They put it in the form of a question: Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? (1). They were implying that Paul’s gospel of free grace actually encouraged lawlessness and put a premium on sin, because it promised sinners the best of both worlds: they could indulge themselves freely in this world, without any fear of forfeiting the next.

The technical term for people who argue like this is ‘antinomians’, since they set themselves against the moral law (nomos) and imagine that they can dispense with it. Antinomianism has had a long history in the church. We meet it already in the New Testament, in the false teachers Jude described as ‘godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord’. While recognizing antinomianism in others, however, we must not be allowed to conceal its ugly presence in ourselves. Have we never caught ourselves making light of our failures on the ground that God will excuse and forgive them?

Incidentally, it is highly significant both that Paul’s critics lodged the charge of antinomianism against him, and that he took time, trouble and space to answer them, without withdrawing or even modifying his message.

These two halves of Romans 6 are closely parallel to one another in at least five respects.

First, both are prompted by the same exaltation of God’s grace, verses 1–14 by the statement that ‘grace increased … so that … grace might reign’ (5:20f.), and verses 15–23 by the statement that ‘we are not under law but under grace’ (15).

Secondly, both ask the same probing question about sin in relation to grace. Verse 1: ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?’ And verse 15: ‘What then? Shall we sin because we are not law but under grace?’ In other words, does grace undermine ethical responsibility and promote reckless sinning?

Thirdly, both react to the question with the same indignant, outraged, even horrified, expostulation: ‘God forbid!’ (2, 15, av). ‘By no means!’ (rsv, niv). ‘No, no!’ (neb). ‘Certainly not!’ (reb). ‘What a ghastly thought!’ (jbp).

Fourthly, both diagnose the same reason for the antinomian question. They trace it to ignorance, especially with regard to Christian beginnings. Verse 3: ‘Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?’ Verse 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 …?’ If they had understood the meaning of their baptism and their conversion, they would never have asked their question.

Fifthly, both teach the same radical discontinuity between our old, pre-conversion, pre-baptism life and our new, post-conversion, post-baptism life, and therefore the total incongruity of sin in converted and baptized believers. Both express this by a counter-question. Verse 2: ‘We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’ Verse 16 (paraphrased): ‘We offered ourselves as slaves to obedience; how can we repudiate our commitment?’

Having noted these five similarities between the two halves of Romans 6 (1–14 and 15–23), we are ready to examine in greater detail the text of each.

a. United to Christ, or the logic of our baptism (1–14)

Paul begins with a vehement rejection of the notion that God’s grace gives us a license to sin. What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? (1). By no means! (2a). But on what grounds can he be so categorical? At first sight, logic seems to be on the side of the antinomians, since the more we sin, the more opportunity God will have to display his grace. What counter-logic does the apostle propose?

Because the first half of Romans 6 is such a tightly packed argument, it may be helpful to outline it in eight steps or stages.

1. We died to sin. This is the foundation fact of Paul’s thesis. How can we live in what we have died to (2)?

2. The way in which we have died to sin is that our baptism united us with Christ in his death (3).

3. Having shared in Christ’s death, God wants us also to share in his resurrection life (4–5).

4. Our former self was crucified with Christ in order that we might be freed from sin’s slavery (6–7).

5. Both the death and the resurrection of Jesus were decisive events: he died to sin once for all, but he lives continuously unto God (8–10).

6. We must realize that we are now what Christ is, namely ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (11).

7. Being alive from death, we must offer our bodies to God as instruments of righteousness (12–13).

8. Sin shall not be our master, because our position has radically changed from being ‘under law’ to being ‘under grace’. Grace does not encourage sin; it outlaws it (14).

We need now to consider these eight steps in greater detail.

We died to sin (2)

Paul lays down this fundamental truth as being in itself a sufficient answer to the antinomians. They say that believers may persist in sin; he says that they have died to it. So how can we live in it any longer? (2). The Greek verb is in the simple future tense (zēsomen). So the sentence could be translated: ‘We died to sin [in the past]; how then shall we live in it [in the future]?’ It is not the literal impossibility of sin in believers which Paul is declaring, but the moral incongruity of it. J. B. Phillips catches the point in his rendering: ‘We, who have died to sin—how could we live in sin any longer?’

What is true of Christ is equally true of Christians who are united to Christ. We too have ‘died to sin’, in the sense that through union with Christ we may be said to have borne its penalty. Some may object that we surely cannot speak of our bearing the penalty of our sins, even in Christ, since we cannot die for our own sins; he alone has done that. Is not the suggestion that we could do so a veiled form of justification by works? But no, it is nothing of the kind. Of course Christ’s sin-bearing sacrifice was altogether unique, and we cannot share in its offering. But we can and do share in its benefits by being united to Christ. So the New Testament tells us not only that Christ died instead of us, as our substitute, so that we will never need to die for our sins, but also that he died for us, as our representative, so that we may be said to have died in and through him. As Paul wrote elsewhere, for example, ‘we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died’. That is, by being united to him, his death became their death.

Among the commentators only Robert Haldane appears to understand Paul in this way. ‘To explain the expression “dead to sin” as meaning dead to the influence and love of sin’, he writes, ‘is entirely erroneous.’ Paul is referring not to a death to the power of sin, but to a death to its guilt, that is to our justification.

Paul’s next step is to explain how we may be said to have died to sin, namely through our baptism by which we were united to Christ in his death.

We were baptized into Christ’s death (3)

Or don’t you know, the apostle asks incredulously, that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?? (3). Those who ask whether Christian people are free to sin betray their complete ignorance of what their baptism meant. In order to grasp Paul’s argument, three clarifications need to be made about baptism.

First, baptism means water baptism unless in the context it is stated to the contrary. It is true that the New Testament speaks of other kinds of baptism, for example a baptism ‘with fire’ and a baptism ‘with the Spirit’. Some commentators have suggested that Paul here is referring to baptism with the Spirit as uniting us with Christ, and have quoted 1 Corinthians 12:13 as a parallel. But it is safe to say that whenever the terms ‘baptism’ and ‘being baptized’ occur, without mention of the element in which the baptism takes place, the reference is to water baptism. Whenever water baptism is not meant, however, the alternative baptismal element is mentioned; for instance, ‘with the Spirit’. The reason some have been hesitant to understand Romans 6 as referring to water baptism is usually plain. They fear that Paul will then be held to teach ‘baptismal regeneration’, namely that the mere administration of water in the name of the Trinity automatically bestows salvation. But the apostle neither believed nor taught this.

Secondly, baptism signifies our union with Christ, especially with Christ crucified and risen. It has other meanings, including cleansing from sin and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but its essential significance is that it unites us with Christ. Hence the use of the preposition eis, ‘into’. True, at its institution, baptism was said to be into the single name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Elsewhere, however, it is ‘into the name of the Lord Jesus’ or simply ‘into Christ’. And to be baptized into Christ means to enter into relationship with him, much as the Israelites were ‘baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea’, that is, into allegiance to him as their leader.

Thirdly, baptism does not by itself secure what it signifies. To be sure, the New Testament speaks of baptism in terms of our washing away our sins, our clothing ourselves with Christ, and even of our being saved by it, but these are examples of dynamic language which attributes to the visible sign the blessing of the reality signified. It is inconceivable that the apostle Paul, having spent three chapters arguing that justification is by faith alone, should now shift his ground, contradict himself, and declare that after all salvation is by baptism. No, we must give the apostle credit for consistency of thought. ‘The baptized’s faith is, of course, taken for granted … not forgotten, nor denied.’ So union with Christ by faith, which is invisibly effected by the Holy Spirit, is visibly signified and sealed by baptism. The essential point Paul is making is that being a Christian involves a personal, vital identification with Jesus Christ, and that this union with him is dramatically set forth in our baptism. That is step two.

God intends us to share also in Christ’s resurrection (4–5)

Verses 3–5 contain references to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, and to our participation with him in all three events. For the basic theme of the first half of Romans 6 is that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are not only historical facts and significant doctrines, but also personal experiences, since through faith-baptism we have come to share in them ourselves. So we read that we were baptized into his death (3b) and that we were therefore buried with him through baptism into death (4a), in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, that is, through a glorious display of his mighty power, we too may live a new life (4b), in fact ‘the new resurrection life’ of Christ, which begins now and will be completed on the day of resurrection.

Verse 5 seems to endorse this emphasis on our sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection, for if we have been united with him like this in his death, more literally ‘with him in the likeness of his death’, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection or probably ‘with him in the likeness of his resurrection’. Exactly what the ‘likeness’ (homoiōma) of Christ’s death and resurrection is has puzzled all commentators. It seems to refer either to baptism as representing death and resurrection, or to the fact that our death and resurrection with Christ are very similar to his, though not identical with them. Or it may be better to translate the verse in more general terms: ‘For if (in baptism) we have become conformed to his death, we shall certainly also … be conformed (in our moral life) to his resurrection.’

These verses seem to allude to the pictorial symbolism of baptism, although its significance stands firm (our sharing in Christ’s death, burial and resurrection), even if the symbolism should not be pressed. Sanday and Headlam put it graphically: ‘That plunge beneath the running waters was like a death; the moment’s pause while they swept on overhead was like a burial; the standing erect once more in air and sunlight was a species of resurrection.’ It is far from certain whether the first baptisms were by total immersion, for some early pictures of, for example, Jesus’ baptism portrayed him wading in the river up to his waist, while John poured water over him. But the symbolic truth of dying to the old life and rising to the new remains, whatever mode of baptism is used. ‘In other words,’ wrote C. J. Vaughan, ‘our baptism was a sort of funeral.’ A funeral, yes, and a resurrection from the grave as well. For by faith inwardly and baptism outwardly we have been united with Christ in his death and resurrection, and have thus come to share in their blessings. What these are Paul now enlarges on, elaborating the significance of his death in verses 6–7 and of his resurrection in verses 8–9, bringing them together in verse 10.

We know that our old self was crucified with Christ (6–7)

Verse 6 contains three closely related clauses. We are told that something happened, in order that something else might happen, in order that a third thing might happen. We know that our old self was crucified with him (sc. Christ), so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin (6). Perhaps the best way to grasp Paul’s logic is to take these three stages in the opposite order. God’s end-purpose, he tells us, is our freedom from sin’s tyranny: that we should no longer be slaves to sin. That is plain.

But before our rescue is possible, the body of sin must be done away with. This conquest must precede our deliverance. What is it? The ‘body of sin’ should certainly not be rendered ‘the sinful body’ (rsv), implying that the human body itself is contaminated or corrupt. That was a gnostic notion. The biblical doctrines of creation, incarnation and resurrection all give us a high view of our body as the God-intended vehicle through which we express ourselves. Perhaps then the body of sin means ‘our sin-dominated body’ or ‘the body as conditioned and controlled by sin’, because sin uses our body for its own evil purposes, perverting our natural instincts, degrading sleepiness into sloth, hunger into greed, and sexual desire into lust. Others suggest that ‘the body of sin’ means ‘the sinful self’ (reb), our fallen, self-centered nature, sōma (body) being used here as a synonym for sarx (flesh). This seems to suit the context best.

Now God’s purpose is that this sinful self should be ‘destroyed’ (rsv) or better done away with (niv). The verb katargeō has a wide range of meanings from ‘nullify’ to ‘abolish’. Since it is used in this verse of our sinful nature, and in Hebrews 2:14 of the devil, and since both are alive and active, it cannot here mean ‘eliminate’ or ‘eradicate’. It must mean rather that our selfish nature has been defeated, disabled and deprived of power.

To understand how this has happened we come to the first clause of verse 6, which says that our old self (av ‘our old man’) was crucified with him (sc. Christ). This cannot refer to our sinful self or old nature, if that is what the body of sin means. The two expressions cannot mean the same thing, or the sentence makes nonsense. No, our old self denotes not our lower self but our former self, ‘the man we once were’ (neb), ‘our old humanity’ (reb), the person we used to be in Adam. So what was crucified with Christ was not a part of us called our old nature, but the whole of us as we were in our pre-conversion state. This should be clear because the phrase our old self was crucified (6) is equivalent to we died to sin (2).

One of the causes of confusion in understanding verse 6 is Paul’s use of the verb crucified. For many people associate it with Galatians 5:24, where ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus’ are said to ‘have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires’. A mental link between these two verses would naturally suggest that here too in verse 6 Paul is alluding to the crucifixion of our old nature. But the two verses are entirely different, since Romans 6:6 describes something which has happened to us (our old self was crucified with him), whereas Galatians 5:24 refers to something which we ourselves have done (we ‘have crucified the sinful nature’). There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place without the first.

But how has the fact that our former self was crucified with Christ resulted in the disabling of our sinful self and so in our rescue from sin’s slavery? Verse 7 supplies the answer. It is because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. At least that is the av, rsv and niv rendering. It seems to lack adequate warrant, however, since freed translates dedikaiōtai which means ‘has been justified’. True, there is some slight evidence from early Jewish literature that dikaioō could mean to ‘make free or pure’ (BAGD). But there is a perfectly good word in Greek for to ‘set free’, namely eleutheroō, which in fact Paul uses in verses 18 and 22, whereas dikaioō comes fifteen times in Romans, and twenty-five times in the New Testament, in all of which occurrences the natural meaning is to ‘justify’. So surely the verse should be translated ‘he who has died has been justified from his sin’. But exactly how are our death and consequent justification (7) the basis of our liberation from sin (6)?

The only way to be justified from sin is that the wages of sin be paid, either by the sinner or by the God-appointed substitute. There is no way of escape but that the penalty be borne. How can a man be justified who has been convicted of a crime and sentenced to a term of imprisonment? Only by going to prison and paying the penalty of his crime. Once he has served his term, he can leave prison justified. He need have no more fear of police or magistrates, for the demands of the law have been satisfied. He has been justified from his sin.

The same principle holds good if the penalty is death. There is no way of justification except by paying the penalty. You may respond that in this case to pay the penalty is no way of escape. And you would be right if we were talking about capital punishment on earth. Once a murderer has been executed (in countries where the death penalty survives), his life on earth is finished. He cannot live again on earth justified, as can a person who has served a prison sentence. But the wonderful thing about our Christian justification is that our death is followed by a resurrection, in which we can live the life of a justified person, having paid the death penalty (in and through Christ) for our sin.

For us, then, it is like this. We deserved to die for our sins. And in fact we did die, though not in our own person, but in the person of Jesus Christ our substitute, who died in our place, and with whom we have been united by faith and baptism. And by union with the same Christ we have risen again. So the old life of sin is finished, because we died to it, and the new life of justified sinners has begun. Our death and resurrection with Christ render it inconceivable that we should go back. It is in this sense that our sinful self has been deprived of power and we have been set free.

We believe that we will also live with Christ (8–10)

Verses 6–7 elaborated the implication of Christ’s death in relation to us, namely that our former self was crucified with him. Now verses 8–9 elaborate the implication of his resurrection, again in relation to us, namely that we will also live with him. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him (8). Commentators are divided as to whether the verb will live is logical (future in relation to the death which preceded it), or chronological (future in relation to the present moment). If the former, the reference will be to our sharing Christ’s life now; if the latter, to our sharing his resurrection on the last day. It is doubtful, however, whether Paul would have conceived of either without the other.er. He will write later that, in consequence of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling, ‘your spirit is alive’ and ‘he … will also give life to your mortal bodies’ (8:10f.). Life is resurrection anticipated; resurrection is life consummated.

The guarantee of the continuing nature of our new life, beginning now and lasting for ever, is to be found in Christ’s resurrection. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again (9a). This is because he was not resuscitated, brought back to this life, in which case like Lazarus he would have had to die again. Instead he was resurrected, raised to an altogether new plane of living, from which there will never be any question of return. Death no longer has mastery over him (9b). Having been delivered from its tyranny, he has passed beyond its jurisdiction for ever. As the glorified Lord himself declares: ‘I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever!’

Next Paul summarizes in a neat epigram the death and resurrection of Jesus about which he has been writing. As he does so, although he implies that they belong together and must never be separated, he also indicates that there are radical differences between them. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God (10). There is a difference of time (the past event of death, the present experience of life), of nature (he died to sin, bearing its penalty, but lives to God, seeking his glory), and of quality (the death ‘once for all’, the resurrection life continuous). These differences are of importance for our understanding not only of the work of Christ but also of our Christian discipleship, which, by our union with Christ, begins with a once-for-all death to sin and continues with an unending life of service to God.

A homely illustration may help. Imagine an elderly believer called John Jones, who is looking back over his long life. It is divided by his conversion into two halves, the old self (John Jones before his conversion) and the new self (John Jones after his conversion). These are not his two natures, but his two consecutive lives. By faith and baptism John Jones was united to Christ. His old self died with Christ to sin, its penalty borne and finished. At the same time John Jones rose again with Christ, a new man, to live a new life unto God. John Jones is every believer. We are John Jones if we are one with Christ. We died with Christ (6–7); we have risen with Christ (8–9). Our old life terminated with the judicial death it deserved; our new life began with a resurrection.

We must count ourselves dead to sin but alive to God (11)

We could put it in this way. If Christ’s death was a death to sin (which it was), and if his resurrection was a resurrection to God (which it was), and if by faith-baptism we have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection (which we have been), then we ourselves have died to sin and risen to God. We must therefore ‘reckon’ (av), ‘consider’ (rsv), ‘regard’ (neb), ‘look upon’ (jbp) or count (niv) ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in, or by reason of our union with, Christ Jesus (11).

This ‘reckoning’ is not make-believe. It is not screwing up our faith to believe what we do not believe. We are not to pretend that our old nature has died, when we know perfectly well it has not. Instead we are to realize and remember that our former self did die with Christ, thus putting an end to its career. We are to consider what in fact we are, namely dead to sin and alive to God (11), like Christ (10). Once we grasp this, that our old life has ended, with the score settled, the debt paid and the law satisfied, we shall want to have nothing more to do with it.

Let me revert to John Jones. We saw that his life was divided into two halves, his biography into two volumes. Volume 1 ended with the judicial death of his former self; volume 2 opened with his resurrection. He must remember these facts about himself. It is not to pretense that Paul calls him, but to reflection and recollection. He has to keep reminding himself: ‘Volume 1 is long since closed. I am now living in volume 2. It is inconceivable that I should reopen volume 1, as if my death and resurrection with Christ had never taken place.’

Can a married woman live as though she were still single? Well, yes, I suppose she could. It is not impossible. But let her remember who she is. Let her feel her wedding ring, the symbol of her new life of union with her husband, and she will want to live accordingly. Can born-again Christians live as though they were still in their sins? Well, yes, I suppose they could, at least for a while. It is not impossible. But let them remember who they are. Let them recall their baptism, the symbol of their new life of union-with Christ, and they will want to live accordingly.

So the major secret of holy living is in the mind. It is in knowing (6) that our former self was crucified with Christ, in knowing (3) that baptism into Christ is baptism into his death and resurrection, and in considering (11, rsv) that through Christ we are dead to sin and alive to God. We are to recall, to ponder, to grasp, to register these truths until they are so integral to our mindset that a return to the old life is unthinkable. Regenerate Christians should no more contemplate a return to unregenerate living than adults to their childhood, married people to their singleness or discharged prisoners to their prison cell. For our union with Jesus Christ has severed us from the old life and committed us to the new. Our baptism stands between the two like a door between two rooms, closing on the one and opening into the other. We have died, and we have risen. How can we possibly live again in what we have died to?

We must therefore offer ourselves to God (12, 13)

The word therefore introduces the conclusion of Paul’s argument. Because Christ died to sin and lives to God, and because through union with Christ we are ourselves ‘dead to sin but alive to God’, and must ‘count’ or consider ourselves so, therefore our whole attitude to sin and to God must change. Do not offer yourselves to sin (13a), because you have died to it; but offer yourselves to God (13b), because you have risen to live for his glory. This is the emphasis of these verses.

Paul’s exhortation has negative and positive aspects, which complement one another. The negative comes first. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires (12). Paul’s use of the adjective ‘mortal’ shows that it is our physical body to which he is referring. Not all its desires are evil, as we saw when considering the meaning of ‘the body of sin’ (6), but sin can use our body as a bridgehead through which to govern us. So Paul calls us to rise up in rebellion against sin. ‘Precisely because we are “free from sin”, we have to fight against it.’ The Roman Christians ‘must revolt in the name of their rightful ruler, God, against sin’s usurping rule.’ A second negative exhortation follows: Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness (13a). Since the body seems again to be our material frame, its parts (melē) are likely to be our various limbs or organs (eyes and ears, hands and feet), although probably including our human faculties or capacities, which can be used by sin as instruments of wickedness. Hopla is a general word for tools, implements or instruments of any kind, though some think sin is here personified as a military commander to whom it would be possible to offer our organs and faculties as ‘weapons’.

Instead of giving in to sin, letting it rule over our bodies and surrendering them to its service, Paul now exhorts us to the positive alternative: rather offer yourselves to God (13b). Whereas the command not to offer ourselves to sin was in the present tense, indicating that we must not go on doing it, the exhortation to offer ourselves to God is an aorist, which is clearly significant. Although it may not be a call for a once-for-all surrender, it at least suggests ‘deliberate and decisive commitment’. As with the negative prohibitions, so with the positive commands, Paul looks beyond a general self-offering to the presentation of the parts (again both members and faculties) of our bodies to God, this time as instruments (or weapons) of righteousness (13c).

And the ground on which these exhortations are based is that we have been brought from death to life (13b). The logic is clear. Since we have died to sin, it is inconceivable that we should let sin reign in us or offer ourselves to it. Since we are alive to God, it is only appropriate that we should offer ourselves and our faculties to him. This theme of life and death, or rather death and life, runs right through this section. Christ died and rose. We have died and risen with him. We must therefore regard ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God. And, as those who are alive from death, we must offer ourselves to his service.

Sin will not be our master (14)

The apostle now supplies a further reason for offering ourselves not to sin but to God. It is that sin shall not (he is expressing an assurance, even a promise, not a command) be your master. Why not? Because you are not under law, but under grace (14). This is the ultimate secret of freedom from sin. Law and grace are the opposing principles of the old and the new orders, of Adam and of Christ. To be under law is to accept the obligation to keep it and so to come under its curse or condemnation. To be under grace is to acknowledge our dependence on the work of Christ for salvation, and so to be justified rather than condemned, and thus set free. For ‘those who know themselves freed from condemnation are free to resist sin’s usurped power with new strength and boldness’.

Thus the first half of Romans 6 is wedged between two notable references to sin and grace. In the first verse the question is asked whether grace encourages sin; in the last verse (14) the answer is given that, on the contrary, grace discourages and even outlaws sin. It is law which provokes and increases sin (5:20); grace opposes it. Grace lays upon us the responsibility of holiness. This was William Tyndale’s thought concluding his Prologue on … Romans (1526):

Now go to, reader … Remember that Christ made not this atonement, that thou shouldest anger God again; neither died he for thy sins, that thou shouldest live still in them; neither cleansed he thee, that thou shouldest return (as a swine) unto thine old puddle again; but that thou shouldest be a new creature and live a new life after the will of God and not of the flesh.

Enslaved to God, or the logic of our conversion (15–23)

Verse 15 (Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?) is clearly parallel to verse 1 (‘Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?’). True, there are differences between sinning and persisting in sin, and between sinning so that grace may increase and sinning because we are under grace. But these are minor. Substantially the same question is being asked in both verses, namely whether grace sanctions sin, and even encourages it. And in both cases it calls forth from the apostle the same vehement protest: By no means! (2, 15).

We might say that Paul has rewound the tape, and will now replay it, although with two significant shifts of emphasis. First, although he develops the same argument that freedom to sin is fundamentally incompatible with our Christian reality, he describes this in terms of our being united to Christ in verses 3–14 and of our being enslaved to God in verses 16–23. It is not only the figure of speech which is different, however, namely ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (11) and ‘free from sin and … slaves to God’ (22). It is also and secondly how these radical changes came about. The emphasis of the former is on what was done to us (we were united to Christ), while the emphasis of the latter is on what we did (we offered ourselves to God to obey him). The passive statement alludes to our baptism (we were baptized), whereas the active is properly called conversion (we turned from sin to God), although of course only grace enabled us to do it.

What Paul does in the second half of Romans 6 is to draw out the logic of our conversion, as in the first half he has drawn out the logic of our baptism. In both cases his argument begins with the same astonished question, ‘Don’t you know?’ (3, 16), and continues by probing our understanding of our Christian beginnings. Since through baptism we were united to Christ, and in consequence are dead to sin and alive to God, how can we possibly live in sin? Since through conversion we offered ourselves to God to be his slaves, and in consequence are committed to obedience, how can we possibly claim freedom to sin?

The principle: self-surrender leads to slavery (16)

The apostle’s basic question to his readers is this: 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? (16a). The concept may surprise us because we tend to think of Roman slaves as having been either captured in war or bought in the marketplace, not as having offered themselves. But there was such a thing as voluntary slavery. ‘People in dire poverty could offer themselves as slaves to someone simply in order to be fed and housed.’ Paul’s point is that those who thus offered themselves invariably had their offer accepted. They could not expect to give themselves to a slave-master and simultaneously retain their freedom. It is the same with spiritual slavery. Self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery, whether we thus become slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness (16b). The notion of slavery to sin is readily intelligible (not least because Jesus spoke of it), and so is the fact that it leads to death (separation from God both here and hereafter), since at the end of the chapter Paul will refer to death as the ‘wages’ which sin pays (23). It is less easy, however, to understand his apparently inexact parallels. As the alternative to being ‘slaves to sin’ one might have expected ‘slaves to Christ’ rather than ‘slaves to obedience’, and as the alternative to ‘death’ the expectation would be ‘life’ rather than ‘righteousness’. Yet the idea of being ‘obedient to obedience’ is a dramatic way of emphasizing that obedience is the very essence of slavery, and ‘righteousness’ in the sense of justification is almost a synonym of life (cf. 5:18). At least Paul’s general meaning is beyond doubt. Conversion is an act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery; and slavery demands a total, radical, exclusive obedience. For no-one can be the slave of two masters, as Jesus said. So, once we have offered ourselves to him as his slaves, we are permanently and unconditionally at his disposal. There is no possibility of going back on this. Having chosen our master, we have no further choice but to obey him.

The application: conversion involves an exchange of slaveries (17–18)

Having laid down the principle that surrender leads to slavery, Paul applies it to his Roman readers, reminding them that their conversion involved an exchange of slaveries. Indeed, so complete is the change which has taken place in their lives that he breaks out into a spontaneous doxology: Thanks be to God! He then sums up their experience in four stages, which concern what they used to be (slaves to sin), what they did (wholeheartedly obeyed), what happened to them (set free from sin) and what they had become (slaves to righteousness).

First, you used to be slaves to sin (17a). Paul does not mince his words. All human beings are slaves, and there are only two slaveries, to sin and to God. Conversion is a transfer from the one to the other. Secondly, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted (17b). This is a most unusual description of conversion. That they had ‘obeyed’ is understandable, since the proper response to the gospel is ‘the obedience of faith’ (1:5, rsv). But here it is not God or Christ whom they are said to have obeyed, but a certain form (rsv ‘standard’) of teaching. This must have been a ‘pattern of sound teaching, or structure of apostolic instruction, which probably included both elementary gospel doctrine and elementary personal ethics. Paul evidently sees conversion not only as trusting in Christ but as believing and acknowledging the truth. Moreover, Paul writes not that this teaching was committed to them, but that they were committed (entrusted) to it. The verb he uses is paradidōmi, which is the regular word for passing on a tradition. ‘One expects the doctrine to be handed over to the hearers,’ writes C. K. Barrett, ‘not the hearers to the doctrine. But Christians are not (like the Rabbis) masters of a tradition; they are themselves created by the word of God, and remain in subjection to it.’

Thirdly, the Romans have been set free from sin (18a), emancipated from its slavery. Not that they have become perfect, for they are still capable of sinning (e.g. 12–13), but rather that they have been decisively rescued out of the lordship of sin into the lordship of God, out of the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of Christ. In consequence, fourthly, they have become slaves to righteousness (18b). So decisive is this transfer by the grace and power of God from the slavery of sin to the slavery of righteousness that Paul cannot restrain himself from thanksgiving.

The analogy: both slaveries develop (19)

Verse 19 begins with a kind of apology by Paul for the human terms in which he has been describing conversion. For slavery is not an altogether accurate or appropriate metaphor of the Christian life. It indicates well the exclusivity of our allegiance to the Lord Christ, but neither the easy fit of his yoke, nor the gentleness of the hand that lays it on us, nor indeed the liberating nature of his service. Why then did the apostle use it? He gives his reason: because you are weak in your natural selves (sarx, ‘flesh’), or ‘because of your natural limitations’ (19a, rsv). Their natural ‘weakness’ or ‘limitations’ must be a reference to their fallenness, either in their minds, so that they are dull of perception, or in their characters, so that they are vulnerable to temptation and need to be reminded of the obedience to which they have committed themselves.

In spite of his apologetic explanation, Paul continues to compare and contrast the two slaveries. But this time he draws an analogy between them (Just as … so now) in the way they both develop. Neither slavery is static. Both are dynamic, the one steadily deteriorating, the other steadily progressing. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness (literally ‘and of lawlessness unto lawlessness’, or ‘making for moral anarchy’, neb, reb), so now offer them (which you have done already, but will be wise to do again) in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness (19b; hagiasmos, the process of sanctification, that is, of being changed into the likeness of Christ). Thus despite the antithesis between them, an analogy is also drawn between the grim process of moral deterioration and the glorious process of moral transformation.

(iv) The paradox: slavery is freedom and freedom is slavery (20–22)

Still the comparison and contrast between the two slaveries continue. This time the apostle points out that each slavery is also a kind of freedom, although the one is authentic and the other spurious. Similarly, each freedom is a kind of slavery, although the one is degrading and the other ennobling. On the one hand, he writes, When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness (20), although that sort of freedom is better called license. On the other hand, he writes: But now … you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God (22a), although that sort of slavery is better called liberty. Moreover, the way to assess the rival claims of these two slaveries or freedoms is by evaluating their benefit, literally their ‘fruit’. The negative benefits of slavery to sin and freedom from righteousness are remorse in the present (a sense of guilt over the things you are now ashamed of, or ‘blush to remember’, jbp), and in the end death (21), here surely meaning the eternal death of separation from God in hell, which is called in the final chapters of the book of Revelation ‘the second death’. But now, Paul goes on, the positive benefits of freedom from sin and slavery to God are holiness in the present and in the end eternal life (22b), surely here meaning fellowship with God in heaven. Thus there is a freedom which spells death, and a bondage which spells life.

The conclusion: the ultimate antithesis (23)

In this final verse of the chapter Paul continues his stark antithesis between sin (personified) and God, whom he has characterized throughout as the alternative slave-masters, to one or other of whom all human beings are in bondage. Those who are in Adam serve sin, while those who are in Christ serve God. He also repeats the warning that these two slaveries are so diametrically opposed to each other that the ultimate destinies to which they lead are either death or eternal life. What is new is the third contrast, which concerns the terms of service on which the two slave-owners operate. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (23). Thus sin pays wages (you get what you deserve), but God gives a free gift (you are given what you do not deserve). Opsōnia normally refers to ‘ration [money] paid to a soldier’ (BAGD), but in this context perhaps to ‘the pocket money allowed to slaves’. Charisma, on the other hand, is a gift of God’s grace. If, then, we are determined to get what we deserve, it can only be death; by contrast, eternal life is God’s gift, wholly free and utterly undeserved. The only ground on which this gift is bestowed is the atoning death of Christ, and the only condition of receiving it is that we are in Christ Jesus our Lord, that is, personally united to him by faith.

Here, then, are two lives which are totally opposed to each other. Jesus portrayed them as the broad road which leads to destruction and the narrow road which leads to life. Paul calls them two slaveries. By birth we are in Adam, the slaves of sin; by grace and faith we are in Christ, the slaves of God. Bondage to sin yields no return except shame and ongoing moral deterioration, culminating in the death we deserve. Bondage to God, however, yields the precious fruit of progressive holiness, culminating in the free gift of life.

Looking back over Romans 6, we recall that both its halves begin with an almost identical question: ‘Shall we go on sinning?’ (1) and ‘Shall we sin?’ (15). This question was posed by Paul’s detractors, who intended by it to discredit his gospel; it has been asked ever since by the enemies of the gospel; and it is often whispered in our ears today by that most venomous of all the gospel’s enemies, the devil himself. As in the Garden of Eden he asked Eve, ‘Did God really say, “You must not …”?’ so he insinuates into our minds the thought, ‘Why not continue in sin? Go on! Feel free! You are under grace. God will forgive you.’

Our first response must be the outraged negative, ‘God forbid!’ ‘By no means!’ But then we need to go further and confirm this negative with a reason. For there is a reason (solid, logical, irrefutable) with which to rebut the devil’s devious arguments and with which at the same time Paul brings his high theology down to the level of practical everyday experience. It is the necessity of remembering who we are, on account of our conversion (inwardly) and our baptism (outwardly). We are one with Christ (1–14), and we are slaves of God (15–23). We became united to Christ by baptism and enslaved to God by the self-surrender of conversion. But whether we emphasize baptism or faith, the point is the same. Being united to Christ, we are ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (11), and being enslaved to God we are ipso facto committed to obedience (16), pledged to ‘the total belongingness, the total obligation, the total commitment and the total accountability which characterize the life under grace’. It is inconceivable that we should go back on this by willfully persisting in sin and presuming on grace. The very thought is intolerable, and a complete contradiction in terms.

So, in practice, we should constantly be reminding ourselves who we are. We need to learn to talk to ourselves, and ask ourselves questions: ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you know the meaning of your conversion and baptism? Don’t you know that you have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection? Don’t you know that you have been enslaved to God and have committed yourself to his obedience? Don’t you know these things? Don’t you know who you are?’ We must go on pressing ourselves with such questions, until we reply to ourselves: ‘Yes, I do know who I am, a new person in Christ, and by the grace of God I shall live accordingly.’

On 28 May 1972 the Duke of Windsor, the uncrowned King Edward VIII, died in Paris. The same evening a television program rehearsed the main events of his life. Extracts from earlier films were shown, in which he answered questions about his upbringing, brief reign and abdication. Recalling his boyhood as Prince of Wales, he said: ‘My father [King George V] was a strict disciplinarian. Sometimes when I had done something wrong, he would admonish me saying, “My dear boy, you must always remember who you are.” ’ It is my conviction that our heavenly Father says the same to us every day: ‘My dear child, you must always remember who you are.’

 

Stott, J. R. W. (2001). The message of Romans: God’s good news for the world (pp. 166–188). InterVarsity Press.