Romans 6
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The following material is adopted from John MacArthur’s commentary on Romans and his Study guide. Additional material taken from sources listed at the end
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— Prayers ( Blue )
— Promises ( Green )
— Warnings ( Red )
— Commands ( Purple )
Dying to Live ( 6:1-10 )
— Paul anticipates the major objections of his critics
— The typical religious Jew of that day could not comprehend pleasing God apart from strict adherence to the Mosaic and rabbinic law
— To them, conformity to such law was the embodiment of godliness
— In his letter to the Galatian churches Paul gives a brief and beautiful summary of the divine principle that the transformed life possible
Gal 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
The Antagonist ( 6:1 )
( Rom 6:1 ) “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?”
— Paul knew that some readers would accuse him of teaching that the more we sin the more we bring glory to God.
— That is the perverted interpretation taught by the infamous Rasputin, religious adviser to the ruling Romanov family of Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
— He taught and exemplified the antinomian view of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and false repentance
— Rasputin declared that if you are simply an ordinary sinner, you are not giving God an opportunity to show His glory, so you need to be an extraordinary sinner
— Paul has already roundly condemned those who would teach the depraved idea of “Let us do evil that good may come” ( 3:5-8 )
— As Scripture makes plain throughout its pages, a saving relationship with God is inextricably linked to holy living, and a holy life is lived by the power of God working in and through the heart of the true believer
— True holiness is as much a gift of God as is the new birth
— It is also true that no believer will be sinless until he goes to be with the Lord, but a professed Christian who persistently disregards Christ’s lordship and His standards of righteousness by disobedience has no claim on Christ’s saviorhood
— It is exactly that cardinal gospel truth that Paul forcefully defends here in Romans 6-7.
Paul was not speaking of a believer’s occasional falling into sin, as every Christian does at times because of the weakness and imperfection of the flesh. He was speaking of intentional, willful sinning as an established pattern of life.
Before salvation, sin cannot be anything but the established way of life, because sin at best taints everything the unredeemed person does. But the believer, who has a new life and is indwelt by God’s own Spirit, has no excuse to continue habitually in sin. Can he then possibly live in the same submissive relationship to sin that he has before salvation? Put in theological terms, can justification truly exist apart from sanctification? Can a person receive a new life and continue in his old way of living? Does the divine transaction of redemption have no continuing and sustaining power in those who are redeemed? Put still another way, can a person who persists in living as a child of Satan have been truly born again as a child of God? May say yes. Paul says no, as verse 2 emphatically states
RC Sproul
Rome believes that faith is necessary and indispensable to justification. An orthodox Roman Catholic can say, “Yes, I believe that justification is by faith,” but he must choke to death on the work alone, because his communion teaches that justification is by faith plus works. The Roman Catholic formula is faith + works = justification. You have to have the works or there is no justification, because the works are part of the ground for that justification. The Reformation view, the biblical view, is justification + works = faith. The works are there, but they are on the other side of the equation. The antinomian formula is justification — works = faith, which is the heresy that Paul abhors here at the beginning of Romans 6.
The Answer ( 6:2 )
( Rom 6:2 ) “May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”
— Immediately answering his own question Paul exclaims with obvious horror, May it never be!
— (μὴ γένοιτο). mḕ génoito Lit., may it not be
— This word carries the sense of outrage that an idea of this kind could ever be thought of as true
— Christians obviously are able to commit many of the sins they committed before salvation, but they are not able to live perpetually in those sins as they did before
— “No one who is born of God practices sin,” John declares, “because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” ( 1 John 3:9 )
— When a person is saved, God not only declares him righteous, but also begins to develop Christ’s righteousness in him
— Salvation is not merely a legal transaction, but results inevitably in a miracle of transformation
— Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote, “Holiness starts where justification finishes, and if holiness does not start, we have the right to suspect that justification never started either” (Romans, vol 3 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1961], 2:12)
There is therefore simply no such thing as justification without sanctification. There is no such thing as divine life without divine living. The truly saved person lives a new and godly life in a new and godly realm. He now and forever lives in God’s realm of grace and righteousness and can never again live in Satan’s realm of self and sin. As the natural, sinful, unregenerate man cannot restrain the manifestation of what he is, neither can the regenerate man.
— It is not that we are totally without sin, but from the moment that we are saved we are totally separated from the controlling power of sin
We are baptized into Christ ( 6:3a )
( Rom 6:3a ) “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
— In 1 Cor. Paul speaks of Isreal being baptized into Moses ( 1 Cor 10:2 ), symbolizing the people’s identity with Moses as God’s spokesman and placing themselves under his authority
— The faithful Israelite was, as it were, fused ith Moses, who was fused to God
— In a similar but infinitely more profound and permanent way, all of us, that is, all Christians, have been baptized into Christ Jesus
— Elsewhere Paul speaks of water baptism in obedience to the Lord’s command ( see 1 Co. 1:13-17, Eph 4:5) but here he is speaking of the spiritual immersion of believers into Christ through the Holy Spirit
—This is our intimate oneness with the Lord
— It is in light of this incomprehensible truth that Paul so strongly rebukes sexual immorality ( 1 Cor. 6:15 )
The believer’s righteousness in Christ is an earthly as well as a heavenly reality, or else it is not a reality at all. His new life is a divine life. That is why it is impossible for a true believer to continue to live in the same sinful way in which he lived before being saved.
We are identified in Christ’s Death and Resurrection ( 6:3b-5 )
( Rom 6:3b-5 ) “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,”
— Christ’s resurrection was a certain consequence of his death as the sacrifice for our sin
— The believer’s holy life in Christ is the certain consequence of his (our) death to sin in Christ
— Newness refers to newness in quality and character not to newness as a point in time.
— Just as sin characterized our old life, so righteousness now characterizes our new life
— We receive a new heart ( Ezek. 36:26 )
— A new spirit ( Ezek. 18:31 )
— A new song ( Ps 40:3 )
— A new name ( Rev 2:17 )
— We are called a new creation ( 2 Cor. 5:17 )
— A new creature ( Gal 6:15 )
— A new self ( Eph 4:24 )
Our body of sin has been destroyed ( 6:6-7 )
( Rom 6:6-7 ) “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.”
— Paul says, knowing this - “You should be well aware that in Christ you are not the same people you were before salvation.”
— The next principle that Paul stresses is that our old sinful self has been killed
— Over the years some have taught that we have two natures
— This unbiblical teaching has lead to the perception that our evil old man cannot be controlled and it doesn’t matter what we do
— Paul teaches that our old self was crucified with Him
— The old self of every believer was crucified with the Lord ( cf. Eph 4:20-24 )
— The phrase no longer be slaves to sin carries the meaning that we can no longer be salves to sin
— Paul is not saying that we are not capable of sinning but that we are not under the compulsion and tyranny of sin; slavery to sin no longer exists.
The one death of Christ was death to sin ( 6:8-10 )
( Rom 6:8-10 ) “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”
— Having lived a perfect life, Christ obviously never had the same relationship to sin as we do
— He was never mastered by sin and never committed a sin
— How did he die to sin?
— First, He died to the penalty of sin by taking upon Himself the sins of the whole world
— He met sin’s legal demand for all mankind who would trust in Him
— Second, Christ died to the power of sin, forever breaking its power over those who belong to God through faith in His Son
In addition to being actually identified with Christ in the ways Paul mentions in this passage - namely, His death and resurrection, the destruction of the body of sin, and the death of sin — believers are also analogically likened to the Lord in His virgin birth, in that both He in His physical birth and they (Christians) in their spiritual births have been conceived by the Holy Spirit. He identified with our humanity in His incarnation; then through His circumcision He placed Himself temporarily under the authority of the Mosaic law in order to redeem those under the law ( Col 2:11 ). We also relate to our Lord in His sufferings, as we, like Paul, bear the marks of suffering for Him. In so many ways, believers are so completely and inextricably identified with the Lord Jesus Christ that He is not ashamed to call them brothers ( Heb 2:11 )
R.C. Sproul
Death no longer is master over Him (v. 9). Death did not have dominion over Christ for very long. He was vulnerable to death only because of the imputation of sin, but after He paid the price for our sin, death became powerless. The dominion of death was gone. People say that the resurrection of Christ impossible because they determine possibilities on the basis of probabilities on what they observe. We have never seen anybody come out of the grave. People die and stay dead, so people come to the conclusion that the resurrection could not have happened, but that is not the way the Bible looks at it. The Bible says that death could not maintain dominion over Christ. For God, raising His Son from the dead was easy.
Christ’s resurrection from the dead is no greater in power and scope than was our conception as a human soul in the womb of our mother. Both occurred by the power of God and only by the power of God.
Alive to God ( 6:11-14 )
( Rom 6:11-14 ) “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
— After Lazarus had been dead for four days, Jesus called him forth from the grave
— When he came out he was still wrapped from head to foot in his grave clothes, and Jesus instructed those standing nearby to “unbind him, and let him go” ( Jn 11:44 ).
— That story is a vivid picture of a believer’s condition at the time of his conversion
— He becomes fully alive spiritually when he trusts in Christ as Savior and Lord, but he is still bound, as it were, in some of the grave clothes of the his sinful life
— The difference, of course, is that all of a believer’s sinful clothes do not come off immediately, as did those of Lazarus
— It is the continuing battle with sin and Satan that Paul recognizes in Romans 6:11-14
Know ( 6:11a )
( Rom 6:11a ) “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
— The first key word is “know” and is implied by the phrase even so
— The idea is, “You must fully know and fully believe what I have just said, or else what I am about to say will make no sense. The truth that you are spiritually dead to sin, and the reality that you are spiritually alive to Christ are not abstract concepts for your finite minds to attempt to verify. They are divinely-revealed, foundational axioms behind Christian living, apart from which you can never hope to live the holy lives your new Lord demands.”
— For a Christian to live out the fullness of his new life in Christ, for him to truly live as the new creation that he is, he must know and believe that he is not what he used to be
— He must understand that he is not a remodeled sinner but a remade saint
— He must understand that, despite his present conflict with sin, he is no longer under sin’s tyranny and will never be again
Q: Why do people find it hard to believe that we are no longer under sin’s tyranny?
Consider ( 6:11b-12 )
( Rom 6:11b-12 ) “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,”
Reason #1: The change will happen when we are with the Lord
— Some have been taught that salvation only bring transactional or forensic holiness
— God now regards as a holy but that our basic relationship to sin is the same as it always was
— We will not be changed until we go to be with Christ
— This view of salvation often includes the idea that, although trust in Christ brings the believer a new nature, the old nature remains fully operative
— The Christian life is essentially a battle between his two natures
Reason #2: Satan doesn’t want you to believe your are changed
— Satan does not want to us to believe it
— He is the accuser of the brethren
— If we feel hopeless it weakens our resolve to live holy and righteous lives
Reason #3: The spiritual birth is unlike our physical birth
— Our spiritual birth is not observable or verifiable
— We aren’t walking around with a halo or a mark that announces that we are saved
— Redemption is a divine and spiritual transaction that may or may not be accompanied by physical or emotional experiences
Reason #4: We are not free from sin
— As long as we live on earth we continue to fight and battle sin
— If we are no longer under the tyranny of sin, why are we still so strongly tempted?
— And why do we so often succumb?
We should remember these truths when we consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus
Truth #1: We can have confidence when tempted
— Because sin’s tyranny was broken we can also resist every temptation
1 Cor 10:13 “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.”
Truth #2: We cannot sin our way out of grace
— Just as we have been saved by God’s power, we are kept by His power
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.
“My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.
Truth #3 Don’t let the battle of sin diminish your hope
— When we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ, we have confidence at the end of our lives
John 11:25-26 “Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”” (cf. Heb 2:14 )
Truth #4 All things work together for good
— No matter how disastrous thing may be, God will use it for His glory and for your blessing
Rom 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
Yield ( 6:12-14 )
( Rom 6:12-14 ) “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
— Sin is personified by Paul as a dethroned but still powerful monarch who is determined to reign in the believer’s life just as he did before salvation
— The moment you are saved, you become citizens of God’s kingdom of righteousness, and thereby aliens and strangers to Satan’s realm of sin and death ( 1 Pet 2:9, 11 )
— Our immortal soul is beyond sin’s reach
— Our mortal physical body is the last beachhead of sin and it is still subject to corruption and death
— Our mortal bodies still have lusts and Satan uses those lusts to lure God’s people back into sin in whatever ways he can
— It is obvious that sin can reign in our mortal bodies but it is equally obvious that sin does not have to reign there, or the warning would be worthless
— Our bodies can either be instruments of unrighteousness when we yield to sin or of righteousness when we are obedient
RC Sproul
do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness;
The work of the Christian life is synergistic, not monergistic. Our regeneration, our rebirth, was the work of one Person, God. It was not a joint venture; but from the moment we take our first breath of regenerated spiritual life, it becomes a joint effort. That is why the apostle elsewhere says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” ( Phil 2:12b-13 ). God is working, and we have to work.
Paul is speaking here to a free people, to those whom God has regenerated, but still we are tempted and have weaknesses. We bring a lot of baggage into the Christian life, sinful patterns of behavior, and they do not disappear overnight. What disappears is the bondage. Now we have the responsibility to cooperate with the grace that God makes available to us. We are to make diligent use of the means of grace and make sure our souls are being fed regularly by the Word of God. We have responsibility to be on our faces before God earnestly on a regular basis and never to miss the corporate worship of the people of God unless we are absolutely indisposed.
Free from Sin ( 6:15-23 )
— Sin is the most devastating, debilitating, degenerating power that ever entered the human stream
— It’s evil, in fact, corrupted the entire creation, which “groans and suffers pains of childbirth together until now” ( Rom 8:22 )
— Scripture characterizes sin and its effects in many ways. Consider:
— Sin is called “an impure thing” ( Isa 30:22 )
— It is compared to “the venom of serpents, and the deadly poison of cobras” ( Deut 32:33 )
— Even things that men consider to be righteous, our best efforts or a minor failures are to God “a filthy garment” ( lit. menstrual cloth”) ( Isa 64:6; cf. Zech 3:3-4 )
— Paul refers to sin as “defilement of flesh and spirit” ( 2 Cor 7:1 )
— It dominates the mind ( Rom 1:21 ), the affections ( Jn 3:19-21 ), and the will ( Jer 44:15-17 )
— Sin brings satanic control, because every sin serves the purposes of “the prince of the power of the air” ( Eph 2:2 )
— Every unredeemed sinner is a spiritual child of the devil ( John 8:44 )
— Although sin promises satisfaction, it instead brings misery, frustration, and hopelessness. Job lamented that “man is born for trouble, as sparks fly upward” ( Job 5:7 )
— In fact, because of sin, all “creation was subjected to futility” ( Rom 8:20 )
— Worse of all, sin damns the unredeemed soul to hell
And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
The Antagonist ( 6:15a )
( Rom 6:15a ) “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!”
— With the simple words What then? Paul anticipates another objection
— He addresses the false conclusion that we are under no moral restraints because we are under grace
—Paul has already addressed the issue but because this misunderstanding was so common and the issue so critical he provides another perspective
The Answer ( 6:15b )
( Rom 6:15b ) “May it never be!”
— The idea is, “No, no, a thousand times no!”
— The doctrine of salvation by God’s grace, working through the our faith and apart from works, is the furthest things from a license to sin
The Axiom ( 6:16 )
( Rom 6:16 ) “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?”
— An axiom is something that is so self-evident that no proof is required
— What could be more obvious that the fact that that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?
— By definition all slaves ], particularly voluntary ones, are bound to total obedience to their master
— A person who is not so bound is not a slave
— A person’s general pattern of living demonstrates who his true master is
— Paul is not here teaching that a Christian ought to be a slave of righteousness but that every Christian, by divine creation, is made a slave of righteousness and cannot be anything else
The Argument — Explaining two Slaveries ( 6:17-22 )
— Paul will explain the principle that he just stated
— A person is a slave to sin and Satan or to the righteousness of God
Their Position ( 6:17-18 )
( Rom 6:17-18 ) “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
— We were slaves to sin but no more
— In other words, the unregenerate person is under the continual, unbroken slavery of sin
— No matter how outwardly moral, upright, or benevolent an unsaved person’s life may be, all that he thinks, says and does emanates from a proud, sinful, ungodly heart ( cf. Rom 3:10-12 )
— It is clear that Paul is not speaking merely about outward righteousness from his statement you became obedient from the heart
— God works His salvation in a person’s innermost being
— A person whose heart has not been changed has not been saved
— Righteous living that issues from an obedient … heart is habitual
— And just as God’s grace operates only through a trusting heart, His righteousness operates only through an obedient heart
Their Practice ( 6:19 )
( Rom 6:19 ) “I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.”
— Paul here changes the focus from position to practice, admonishing believers to make their living correspond to their new natures
— Before our salvation we were like the rest of mankind, having no other desire or ability but to follow their natural bent to impurity and to lawlessness
— These two terms refer, respectively, to inward and outward sin
— The unregenerate person is both inwardly and outwardly sinful and as he lives his life it leads to further lawlessness
— Like a cancer it eventually takes over the entire body until the who person is destroyed
After the brilliant writer Oscar Wilde’s homosexuality and other deviant behavior was made public, he wrote, “I forgot that what a man is in secret he will one day shout aloud from the housetop.” Another famous writer, Sinclair Lewis, was the toast of the literary world and recieved the Nobel Prize in literature in 1930. To mock what he considered the hypocrisy of Christianity, he wrote Elmer Gantry, a fictitious story of a Bible-pounding evangelist who was secretly an alcoholic, a fornicator, and a thief. Few people know, however, that Lewis himself died an alcoholic in a third-rate clinic outside Rome, a devastated victim of his own sinful life-style.
— No one stands still morally and spiritually
— Just as unbelievers progress from sinfulness to greater sinfulness, a believer who is not growing in righteousness, though never falling back altogether out of righteousness, will slip further and further back into sin
God’s purpose in redeeming men from sin is not to give them freedom to do as they please but freedom to do as He pleases, which is to live righteously. When God commanded Pharaoh to let His people go, He also made clear His purpose for their deliverance: “that they may serve Me in the wilderness” ( Ex 7:16 ). God delivers men from enslavement to sin fro the sole purpose of their becoming enslaved to Him and to His righteousness.
Their Promise ( 6:20-22 )
( Rom 6:20-22 ) “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.”
— An unsaved person is a slave to sin and free in regard to righteousness
—In a sense they have no responsibility to righteousness because they are powerless to meet its standards or demands
— That is why it is foolish to preach reformation to sinners
— They cannot reform their living until God transforms their lives
The Absolute ( 6:23 )
( Rom 6:23 ) “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
— When our Lord gave the parables of the pearl and the treasure in the field ( Matt 13:44-46 ), in both cases, the man sold all that he had to make the purchase
— Jesus Christ is not looking for people who want to add Him to their sin as “fire insurance”
— He is not looking for people who want to apply His high moral principles to their unregenerate lives
— He is not looking for people who want a makeover by improving their old nature
— He calls to Himself those who are willing to be inwardly transformed by Him, who desire an entirely new nature that is created in His own holy likeness
— He calls to Himself those who are willing to exchange their sinfulness for His holiness
— He calls to Himself those who are wiling to die with Him in order to be raised with Him
— Those willing to relinquish slavery to sin for slavery to His righteousness
— And when men come to Him on His terms, He changes their destiny from eternal death to eternal life
R.C. Sproul
“For the wages of sin is death
The wages of sin - what does it earn? What is the basic wage? The more we sin, the more we earn, and what we earn is death. There is always a payoff. Remember what God said: “ ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” ( Rom 12:19 ). If we are slaves to sin we earn demerits; we earn wrath. If God did not pay what we earn, He would be unjust. “The wages of sin is death.”
Additional Resources
MacArthur, Romans. Romans 1-8. Moody Press, 1987.
MacArthur, Romans. Romans 9-16. Moody Press, 1991.
MacArthur, John. New Testament Commentary. Moody, 1985.
William Hendriksen. Exposition of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995.