Romans 6:1-14--Dead to Sin, Alive to God

Romans 6:1-14
English Standard Version

Dead to Sin, Alive to God
6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

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. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

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I believe I hinted at this question last time.  Grace is not a license to continue in sin.  God's work of salvation is supposed to change us so that our "old nature" is crucified with Christ and we raised to walk in newness of life as we are conformed into the image of the Son of God.  This passage sounds similar to something we've already studied in the epistle to the Galatians (in fact there is much in common between the book of Galatians and the book of Romans just the book of Romans seems to be the "long form" of the arguments where as the book of Galatians seems to be the "Reader's Digest" or "Cliff's Notes" version).


Galatians 2:15-21
English Standard Version

Justified by Faith​
15 We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; 16 yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.

17 But if, in our endeavor to be justified in Christ, we too were found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin? Certainly not! 18 For if I rebuild what I tore down, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

The phrase "buried in the likeness of His death; raised to walk in newness of life" is something you will hear used at many baptism services where someone is baptized by immersion.  Paul uses that imagery here in verses 3-4.  If you every wondered where that came from, now you know.  Baptism is meant to be more than just getting dunked in some water--it is meant to be a visual representation of death to your old identity, having your sin washed away, and becoming a new person by the power of the Resurrection (and there's also imagery there of hope for the resurrection of the dead that one day those of us that are buried will be raised up to new life as part of the new creation).  Much of what we believe is tied up in that imagery and that is why we are commanded to go and make disciples of all nations and the first thing we're told to do in that process is "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."  This even comes before "teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."  That doesn't mean that's the chronological order in which it happens, but it does seem to be the order of importance in The Great Commission as in Greek the most important things were usually said first.  So then the order of importance according to the original Greek seems to read more like "Make disciples as you are going, baptizing, preaching and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."

 Paul says there is certainty that if we are united with Christ in His death that we will be united with Him in His resurrection from the dead.  This is something we experience spiritually now, but will experience physically one day when Christ returns for the Church.  These bodies of flesh that are slaves to sin will die so that our spirits can be free from the power and presence of sin.  But we will not be noncorporeal beings in the New Heaven and the New Earth.  We will one day receive new bodies just like Jesus' body that He had after His resurrection.  He was still able to let people touch Him and He could eat breakfast with His disciples, but His body was not limited by the laws of time and space that we are used to as He was able to appear in rooms where the door had been secured and He could disappear and appear somewhere else many miles away in an instant.  We will have real bodies, but those bodies will be uncorrupted by sin and will be even better than the bodies we have now.  Paul makes these same arguments in even more detail in 1 Corinthians 15.  I'd encourage you to read all of it along with this passage to have a better understanding of what Paul is trying to say.

So then if we are dead to sin and alive to Christ, we should no longer let sin rule in our bodies and let it be master over us.  We have but one master now and that is Christ Jesus the Lord.  This last part reminds me of much of 1 Corinthians because the Corinthian church had trouble with continuing and sin and Christian liberties and abusing the grace of God.  Specifically though, it reminds me of the part in 1 Corinthians 6 where Paul talks about their bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit and they are to "honor God with their bodies."  See 1 Corinthians 6:9-20.

Once more I will go back to the idea of, "Are you a caterpillar or a butterfly?."  There should be a change in nature and identity that happens at salvation.  Not all things are made new instantaneously as there is a process of sanctification where the Spirit changes us more and more into the likeness of Jesus, the Son of God.  We've talked much about this already in the other epistles and it will play some part in the rest of the book of Romans as we see how we are to live out our faith with other believers and in front of the unbelieving world.  If you say you are a butterfly, but continue to live like a caterpillar and have never been changed, then heave you really experienced salvation?  Just like a caterpillar that goes into its cocoon, it dies to its old self and there is a metamorphosis so that what emerges looks and acts nothing like that which entered.  So it is with us and what baptism should symbolize for us that the part of us that was "in Adam" and looks and acts like him is dead and there is now a new nature that has been put within us so that we are no in Christ and we now look and act like Him (one day perfectly so when we receive our new bodies that are fit for the New Heaven and the New Earth).