Chapter 6
Begins with this same rhetorical question (rhetorical device?) which is obviously to be answered "NO!". Should we sin more so that God's grace toward us is even greater? No, because we do not honor God by dishonoring God! Or in Paul's own words:
2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? [Rom 6:2 ESV]
2021-2...this question arises because of 5:20 - 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, [Rom 5:20 ESV]. The argument from unbelievers being that we should sin all we can because the more sin there is to forgive, the more grace God can bestow. (2022 - Like He needs our help to bestow grace! Like He isn't grace itself!) I can see this being an argument for "Christian freedom" to sin with abandon, and to continue to live as before, because now, doing so just leads to more and more grace, which makes God ever more merciful toward us. Paul disagrees because...
2021 - Who would ask this question as a result of chapter 5? What "faulty logic, but logic nonetheless", arrives at this question next? Per MSB, Paul was anticipating an argument the Pharisees would make. They liked their rules, and they believed that the fewer rules you broke, the better you were. They even believed that they had never broken any rules at all, and were justified by their works. So now here is Paul saying that's all wrong, it's not "keeping all the rules" that justifies anyway, it is only faith. So the Pharisees were going to next ask, then what motivation do we have to avoid sin at all? If justification is by faith, and not by obedience to the law (works), then what we "do" makes no difference at all in the final analysis. THIS is who would ask the question.
2023 - The other fallacy here is that acting on the question - sinning more so grace will be more - is to rebel against God's clear command that we do not sin. So the assumption implicit in the question is that it is ok to be bad if it is to make God look good. That is not in the Bible. God never gives us a "good" reason to be "bad". Following the assumption to its hyperbolic end says that the "best world" to glorify God would be a world that does only evil, so that he can save even that. It gets ridiculous when you follow it on out. I need to practice the "out loud" explanation of this. It does come up now and then.
2025 - I thought of an analogy...Consider a man on trial for his third DUI before the same judge who had been lenient with him before. The man says "I did this third DUI on purpose so that you could demonstrate to every one once again the unlimited extent of your mercy and leniency in the face of unmitigated guilt. I committed this sin to make you look good, Judge."
I note also in 2021 that the MSB outline says we are starting a new section, running from 6:1 to 8:39. These two succinct definitions that I would like to remember:
The "Doctrine of Justification", which is God declaring the believing sinner righteous. Paul has just finished outlining this doctrine.
He now moves to the "Doctrine of Sanctification", which is God producing actual righteousness in the believer.
MSB sort of says Paul is going to move from intense theology to practical ramifications of salvation. I think that's what is being said.
2020 - 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? [Rom 6:3 ESV]
There is stuff about baptism here. I am not going there this morning. Too tired for that already. But this verse:
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Rom 6:5 ESV]
In baptism we died with Christ. His resurrection proves God was satisfied with payment for all sin. Christ resurrection signified a complete and final end to condemnation for sin. Likewise, our faith completes our salvation. There are no other requirements.
2023 - Dr. Rummage preached on Baptism using Romans 6 last Sunday, 9/24/23.
2021 - This little verse comes next: (How can every single phrase be so earthshakingly vital!?!?):
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? [Rom 6:3 ESV]
Rephrasing, based on the remarks above about how when God looks at us, He sees only Christ, because we are positioned "in Christ", gives this:
All who are immersed in Christ are immersed in his death. That is, we died for our sins by virtue of our position "in Christ" when/as he died for all sins. Christ rose glorified - and we are STILL in him. Glorified is transformed, renewed, qualitatively different, perfection. God sees us this way. Indeed, we ARE this way. And if glorified, sin has no more place with us. Though sins no longer accrue to our eternal harm - they drop into a bucket with no bottom - they are no longer "for" us.
2024 - Not sure I can tackle this one, but here goes: ON BAPTISM
The word baptized is used twice in vs. 3. In both cases it is the aorist passive indicative. Both aorist and indicative are telling us that no specific "second" of baptism is in view. It may have been last week, last year, last century. I may not have happened yet but will at some point. So any explanation of this that depends for its support on the "time" of the baptism is on very shaky ground. My opinion of course, I am not a Greek scholar. So how are we to understand this baptism? If we can interpret the Bible WITH the Bible, we might be drawn to these verses, that talk about people baptized "into John": 2 And he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." 3 And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John's baptism." 4 And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus." 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. [Act 19:2-5 ESV]. The word translated "in" is the Greek word eis, a very common word, interpreted with many different English words. That same word eis is translated "into" instead of just "in" back in Acts 19:3. "Into" what then... If we translate eis the same way in each case, then in vs. 5 we get "they were baptized into the name". So the baptism is less about change and more about identification. This baptism did not save these men, it is clear from the conversation that they were already saved. It also had not resulted in the Holy Spirit filling them. This very unusual immersion ritual (unusual at the time) just identified them as disciples of John the Baptist. But John had told them about another. He told them to expect another, he told them the one to come would have a better baptism. And so they are baptized again to acknowledge that they have been promoted from disciples of John to disciples of Jesus. And note that they STILL DID NOT RECEIVE the Holy Spirit. They only got that when Paul laid his hands on them AFTER the baptism. So a long side note from Acts to bring us back now to Romans and what vs 3 means. I think it means that the public acknowledgement of our choice to follow Jesus as his disciples is to connect ourselves to all aspects of his life and death. We love movies where the leader steps up and say "I take responsibility" and then everyone who "follows" that leader also steps up and says "I take responsibility". And so all are punished as if they themselves were singly responsible. To be baptized INTO Christ is to say all that he did, I did also. He put down the Pharisees and was an outcast for it. Cast me out also. He died for my sins. God counts that as my own death for sin. He rose from the dead in victory. I too will rise from the dead in victory. This is the meaning of and the reason for baptism. It is to go beyond John's call for earthly repentance and instead join ourselves to something better, to the Living God come to earth in human form, in terms of responsibility, blame, hatred from the world, and ultimately victorious resurrection. When we are baptized, we become "him" into whose name we are baptized. We put on the uniform, and they shoot at us as they shot at him. If he did it, then we did it. He died in his body and rose in a "new" form. A perfect, ageless body immune to all that the world might bring against it. We too, when baptized, indicate that we DIED WITH HIM, and WE ROSE WITH HIM in a NEW AND QUALITATIVELY different body, that now CAN refuse to sin, CAN resist any temptation, and immune to harm from the world. They can kill us, but they cannot harm our new body - our saved souls - no matter what. The power against us ends at death, after which we are resurrected in imperishable form.
2025 - Vs 5 is a very key verse for the position that baptism does not save. Vs 5 clarifies vs 3. Here they both are:
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ...
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Rom 6:3, 5 ESV].
One might argue from 3 that it is at the moment of baptism that we move from outside Christ to "in" Christ. To be in Christ is certainly to be saved. We can say further, based on 3 that at baptism, we die for our sins - in Christ's death for our sins, and it goes on to say that in Christ, we are resurrected from that death for our sins...all vicarious, all because of our position in Christ. So we can argue here that baptism DOES SOMETHING.
But then we get to vs 5. In 5, it is clear that baptism is "like" death and resurrection. Baptism is not something unto itself, not something efficacious, but is a visual and physical representation that is LIKE Christ's death and resurrection. Baptism is not ACTUALLY dieing for our sins, and it is not ACTUALLY rising as a new person. It is a symbol of the salvation that came before it. The actual burial and resurrection of Christ came BEFORE baptism, and our salvation IN HIM also comes before baptism.
2023 - A little word study from this verse: 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. [Rom 6:5 ESV]. I wondered whether the word "like" is as strong as the word for type that we saw yesterday. The word yesterday was typos, Strong's 5179. The word Paul chooses here is "homoioma", Strongs G3667. Here is the BLB definition of that word:
that which has been made after the likeness of something
a figure, image, likeness, representation
likeness i.e. resemblance, such as amounts almost to equality or identity
At the very least, we see here that Paul knows both words, and that he uses them differently. It seems to me that "like" here is still a significantly profound comparison going back to Chapter 5. This is no small thing we're talking about. We had a "death like his", but Paul does not say that Jesus death is a TYPE for dying to sin. From this, I would make the point that things in the OT are "types" only when the NT says they are.
This verse:
7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. [Rom 6:7 ESV]
There is a translation note in the TCR that says instead of "been set free" in Greek it reads "has been justified". You cannot kill the condemned man a second time. Death pays the price, once and for all. Christ died once for all. As believers, we died "in Christ". We cannot die again any more than Jesus can. If we lost our salvation, it could only be regained by dying again. We can't do that. We can only die that once, as Jesus only died once. There will be a verse about that later on (vs 9 in this same chapter in fact). Having died, Jesus never dies again! Perseverance of the saints.
And this one, so meaningful to me:
9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. [Rom 6:9 ESV] Sin can never "win" again. We can indulge, succumb, and choose to continue doing it. But if we want to stop it, we most certainly can. Any sinful addiction can be beaten! Vs 11 bears that out. It starts with "so", but could as easily start with "Therefore":
11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. [Rom 6:11 ESV]
Vss 12-14 urge the Christians - the believers - in the Roman church to not let sin reign. It is still possible to sin after salvation. It is still possible to sin routinely after salvation. If it were not, Paul would have no need to say this.
2021-2, Jesus was not raised from the dead so that he could sin with abandon. And he most certainly did not sin with abandon after his resurrection. For this to all hold up in court, we (the saved) had to be "in him" when he died. If we were in him then, we were also in him when he rose. Like him, who did not sin after resurrection, we are not to sin after salvation. We are to be sanctified - improved, made into something better - after salvation, because we "died" and paid our debt for sin, and it no longer has the power to draw us into it as it did before. Sin was a part of the old nature, but NOT of the resurrected/saved nature. It owned us before. It is of no consequence now. We have been freed from it.
2023 - In light of 1Jn 5:18 We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. [1Jo 5:18 ESV], where the words "keep on" are added, and the word translated sinning, as a participle, is NOT a participle at all in Greek, I think this section of Romans helps us in translating what John means. In the NASB95, the verse starts this way, more clearly translating what the text says: 18 We know that no one who is born of God sins; but He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. [1Jo 5:18 NASB95]. How do we explain this?
When we are saved, we are baptized by the Spirit. We are immersed, by the Spirit, into Christ. So we who are in Christ we in him when he died. In like manner, when Christ rose, we who are in him by virtue of our salvation also rose from the dead. Now after Christ rose, did he sin? NO!!! And we who are saved are now IN HIM so far as God sees us? Yes, of course. Then being IN CHRIST, we NO LONGER SIN. Not that in 1Jn 5:18 the verb for "born" is in perfect tense, meaning something done in the past with continuing results which need never be repeated. John goes to some trouble with verb tense here to make sure we understand that he isn't talking about people who CLAIM to be saved, but about those who ACTUALLY ARE. And such people, truly saved, according to Romans 6, are IN CHRIST, who does not sin, and therefore the saved DO NOT SIN! This is how John means it. This whole paragraph came up the morning after a Wednesday night when the speaker talked on this verse in 1John, using the NIV, which interprets the Greed as "those born of God will not continuously sin". But continuously is not in the Greek and not implied by the verb tense. I argued in the discussion after that we ought not read it with "continuously" in there, but look deeper to understand why John said the way he ACTUALLY SAID IT! And I think in Romans 6 this morning, I can now explain why he said it that way. John was telling those he was writing to that neither men, nor angels, nor things above...and so on....can separate us from God, because there is never ANY BASIS on which to accuse us. Because the saved do not sin! Once saved, always saved!
Vs 15 is another of those rhetorical questions: 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! [Rom 6:15 ESV] In vs 1, it was "Do we sin as much as we can so that we receive as much grace as we can?" Now it is "Do we sin purposely - without regret or caution - because grace is going to cover it anyway?" This is so much like the stuff....Oh my!!!!....This is like the things that were going on in the Corinthian church - which is where Paul is when he is writing this letter!!! They were even committing incest, because hey, why not, we are under grace!!! So even though this letter is to a doctrinally sound church, Paul is likely being preemptive as to false teachings that are likely to show up in Rome, just as they have shown up in Corinth. He want's the Romans prepared to answer these heresies - this Hellenistic dualism as applied to grace - before they can get a foothold in that church and threaten to destroy it as has happened here in Corinth. Wow. I never saw this before. This is also the answer to the question of how Paul is able to tackle this in-depth doctrinal treatise about the higher things of God while he is "living" in the muddy pig sty of misinterpreted Christian freedom that is Corinth. He writes it BECAUSE of where he is, not in spite of it!
Paul's answer to this vs 15 question is quite simple and straightforward. Finally! The one who's bidding you do is your master. If you sin, you are the slave of sin. Not that it sends the saved person to hell, but still it is antagonistic to our new nature. We have a new master, yet still serve the old master. This makes no sense. The new master is righteousness. Serve righteousness and (back to the doctrine of sanctification) now that you are in Christ, you can actually accomplish some righteousness. Some of your works may actually be to your gain! (Ezekiel again, saying that if you begin to served God, all the good you ever did - even that from before you served him - is counted in your favor. But if you were serving and stop, then none of the good you did comes with you. It no longer counts at all. This seems to be saying the same thing).
2021-2, So if you're a professional football player, and you play for a certain team, and you get traded, then which team will have your loyalty? The old team has nothing else for you. All that you have to gain, all that now "helps" you advance, is loyalty to that new team. Any loyalty to the old must be purged, because it will diminish your commitment to the new team. If you play against the old team, would you purposely fumble the ball over to them, because you still favor them?
Possible FB post, using some verse from Romans 6. There are several that would work. (Have I done this one before?