Romans 6

Paul has just said that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. It is a true statement. But it can be twisted. If grace is limitless and forgives all sin, why not sin freely? Why not test the limits of grace? Paul's answer is swift and fierce: God forbid. The Greek word is mē genoito - literally, "may it not happen," "let it never be." This is not a debate. It is a scandal too terrible to entertain.

But Paul does not stop there. He asks a more troubling question: “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” He is not saying you ought to stop sinning because grace is an abuse or because God has rules. He is saying something more radical: You are already dead. Sinning is not a temptation to a free person; it is a contradiction to one who has died.

Baptism is not a shower or a sprinkling to mark membership. It is a burial¹. The waters close over you as the grave closed over Christ. You do not rise from that water unchanged. You rise transformed. The Greek word Paul uses is baptizō - to immerse, to plunge under, to submerge completely. You go down dead and come up alive. And the life you come up to is not merely your life renewed; it is Christ's resurrection life made yours.

Paul uses the image of a seed planted in the ground - a metaphor drawing on burial imagery. If you are planted in the likeness of Christ's death, you cannot help but grow into the likeness of His resurrection. The death and the rising are inseparable. You cannot have one without the other. To be a Christian is to have been planted with Christ in His grave and to be growing, now, into His risen life.

The “old man” is not a part of you that needs improvement. It is not your personality or your memories. It is the “you” that was enslaved to sin - the self that thought sin was master, that believed death was the end, that had no hope. That self is crucified. Not improved, not reformed: crucified. It is dead. Paul is not calling you to kill it; he is announcing what is already true. Your old self is dead. The body of sin is destroyed.

Death breaks all bonds. A person in bondage to sin is a slave. But a dead person is free from that slave-master. The master has no more claim on a corpse. Paul is saying: You are no longer enslaved to sin because you are dead. You have been acquitted by the only court that matters - death itself.

Death is not the end of the story. It is the doorway. You die with Christ. You do not stay dead. You rise with Him. And the life you rise to is not a return to your old life, patched up and forgiven. It is His life - resurrection life, eternal life, life that death will never touch again.

Christ died to sin - once, completely, finally. He does not die again. He does not pay the price again. He lives. And His life is lived unto God - in total allegiance, in perfect obedience, in unbroken communion. That is the life you now share. You are not living to yourself anymore. You are alive to God.

Paul now issues a command: Reckon. Consider. Count it as true. Calculate. The Greek word is logizomai - to think, to reason, to regard as true. Your feelings may tell you otherwise. Sin may still have a grip on your body. Temptation may still rise. But you are not to reckon sin as your master anymore. You are to reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God - and then live from that reckoning.

Sin is still present in your mortal, dying body. But it should not reign. It should not be king anymore. It should not issue orders that you feel obligated to obey. Paul is not being naive. He knows sin will tempt. But he is saying sin has lost its authority. You do not have to obey the desires of the flesh anymore. You are not enslaved. You have a new king.

Do not offer yourself to sin as a tool. Your body, your hands, your mouth, your mind - these are not tools for sin to use. Instead, yield them to God. Offer them. Present them. The verb is paristēmi in Greek - to present, to place beside, to put at the disposal of. You are handing yourself over. And you are doing it as someone who has already been raised from the dead.

This does not mean anything goes. It means sin is not your king anymore. The law of God is still true. Righteousness is still the goal. But you are not enslaved to a law that can only condemn you. You are under grace - the unearned favor of God that gives you power to obey, not just commands to obey. Grace does not make sin permissible. Grace makes righteousness possible.

The same objection resurfaces: If we are under grace, not law, can we not sin freely? And again, Paul says God forbid. Then he makes a stark observation: You are always a servant. Always. Every person obeys someone. The question is not whether you will serve but whom. There is no neutral ground. You either serve sin unto death, or you serve obedience unto righteousness.

Paul pauses to give thanks. You were servants of sin. But you have obeyed - not out of compulsion, but from the heart. The gospel you received has seized you. You chose it. You embraced it. And now you are free. Not to do nothing. You are free to serve righteousness. This is the paradox: true freedom is slavery to something worthy. You are now the slave of righteousness, and that slavery is where your freedom actually lives.

Paul apologizes for using the language of slavery at all. He is aware it is a crude metaphor for spiritual reality. But he uses it because of the infirmity of your flesh - because you are human, embodied, struggling. You understand servitude. So he uses it to make a point: Just as you once yielded your body to uncleanness and it led further into iniquity, so now yield your body to righteousness, and it will lead into holiness.

Sin has a harvest. You serve sin, you reap death - a slow death, perhaps, but real. Spiritual death, relational death, eventually physical death. It is the law of the universe: you reap what you sow. But now you serve God. Your harvest has changed. You now bear fruit unto holiness - a life set apart, consecrated, transformed. And the harvest's end is eternal life.

A wage is earned. It is what you receive for work done. Sin is work. A lifetime of yielding to appetite, to fear, to rebellion. And the wage for that work is death. Not metaphorical death. Real death. The consequence is proportionate and inevitable. But - the greatest but in Scripture - eternal life is not a wage. It is a gift. A gift is not earned. It cannot be bought or worked for. It is given freely, by grace, to the undeserving.

But the gift comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not that God simply wipes sin away. It is that Christ bore the wages. Christ died the death. Christ paid the price. And now He stands in the gap and offers you what He received - eternal life, resurrection life, life that death cannot touch. All of it flows through Him.