Friday DIVE – September 19, 2025 – Romans 6:1-14

Let’s dive in ...

CONTEXT

Romans 5:10-11  ¹⁰ For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to Godthrough the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.  ¹¹ And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.  

Romans 6:1

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?   

Why those 2 questions?

• Because of something Paul had said earlier …
• Romans 5:15,20    ¹⁵ But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man’s offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many …²⁰ Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, ²¹ so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.   

It seems Paul was wondering if someone might take his understanding of God’s grace to imply that it doesn’t matter if a Christian lives a life of sin, because God will always overcome greater sin with greater grace.

Romans 6:2

² Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?  

• According to Barclay …

As he has so often done in this letter, Paul is once again carrying on an argument against a kind of imaginary opponent. The argument springs from the great saying at the end of the last chapter: “Where sin abounded, grace superabounded.” It runs something like this.

The Objector: You have just said that God’s grace is great enough to find forgiveness for every sin.

Paul: That is so.

The Objector: You are, in fact, saying that God’s grace is the most wonderful thing in all this world.

Paul: That is so.

The Objector: Well, if that is so, let us go on sinning.  The more we sin, the more grace will abound. Sin does not matter, for God will forgive anyway.  In fact we can go further than that and say that sin is an excellent thing, because it gives the grace of God a chance to operate.  The conclusion of your argument is that sin produces grace; therefore sin is bound to be a good thing if it produces the greatest thing in the world.

Paul’s first reaction is to recoil from that argument in sheer horror. “Do you suggest,” he demands, “that we should go on sinning in order to give grace more chance to operate?  God forbid that we should pursue so incredible a course as that.”

Then, having recoiled like that, he goes on to something else.

Note Romans 5:2 again.

What does Paul mean by “died to sin”?

• Two ways that is explained …

1. 1.   As Google’s AI Overview puts it:  “Died to sin” means to no longer be controlled by the power, penalty, and guilt of sin, as a result of a spiritual transformation through Christ. It is a state where one chooses to live a new, transformed life focused on God, rather than an old life of sinful nature and desires. This concept, found in the Bible, signifies a decisive break from the old sinful self to embrace a new identity in Christ. 
   2.   To contrast being “dead to sin” with being “dead in sin” (Ephesians 2:1).  To be “dead IN sin” is to be under the death penalty because of sin … To be “dead TO sin” is to be free from the death penalty that resulted from sin.

• I prefer the second explanation.

Romans 6:3-4

³ Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized  into Christ Jesus  were baptized into His death?   ⁴ Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.  

• According to Barclay …

“Have you never thought,” he demands, “what happened to you when you were baptized?” Now, when we try to understand what Paul goes on to say, we must remember that baptism in his time was different from what it commonly is today.

(a) It was adult baptism. That is not to say that the New Testament is opposed to infant baptism, but infant baptism is the result of the Christian family, and the Christian family could hardly be said to have come into being as early as the time of Paul. A man came to Christ as an individual in the early Church, often leaving his family behind.

(b) Baptism in the early Church was intimately connected with confession of faith.  A man was baptized when he entered the Church; and he was entering the Church direct from paganism. In baptism, a man came to a decision which cut his life in two, a decision which often meant that he had to tear himself up by the roots, a decision which was so definite that it often meant nothing less than beginning life all over again.

(c) Commonly, baptism was by total immersion and that practice lent itself to a symbolism to which sprinkling does not so readily lend itself.  When a man descended into the water and the water closed over his head, it was like being buried.  When he emerged from the water, it was like rising from the grave.  Baptism was symbolically like dying and rising again.  The man died to one kind of life and rose to another; he died to the old life of sin and rose to the new life of grace.

Again, if we are fully to understand this, we must remember that Paul was using language and pictures that almost anyone of his day and generation would understand, It may seem strange to us, but it was not at all strange to his contemporaries.

The Jews would understand it.  When a man entered the Jewish religion from heathenism, it involved three things — sacrifice, circumcision  and baptism.

The Gentile entered the Jewish faith by baptism.  The ritual was as follows.  The person to be baptized cut his nails and hair; he undressed completely; the baptismal bath must contain at least forty seahs, that is two hogsheads, of water; every part of his body must be touched by the water.  As he was in the water, he made confession of his faith before three fathers of baptism and certain exhortations and benedictions were addressed to him.  The effect of this baptism was held to be complete regeneration; he was called a little child just born, the child of one day.  All his sins were remitted because God could not punish sins committed before he was born.  The completeness of the change was seen in the fact that certain Rabbis held that a man’s child born after baptism was his first-born, even if he had older children.  Theoretically it was held — although the belief was never put into practice — that a man was so completely new that he might marry his own sister or his own mother.  He was not only a changed man, he was a different man.  Any Jew would fully understand Paul’s words about the necessity of a baptized man being completely new.

The Greek would understand.  At this time the only real Greek religion was found in the mystery religions.  They were wonderful things.  They offered men release from the cares and sorrows and fears of this earth; and the release was by union with some god.  All the mysteries were passion plays.  They were based on the story of some god who suffered and died and rose again.  The story was played out as a drama.

Before a man could see the drama he had to be initiated.  He had to undergo a long course of instruction on the inner meaning of the drama.  He had to undergo a course of ascetic discipline.  He was carefully prepared.  The drama was played out with all the resources of music and lighting, and incense and mystery.  As it was played out, the man underwent an emotional experience of identification with the god.  Before he entered on this he was initiated.  Initiation was always regarded as a death followed by a new birth, by which the man was renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity.  One who went through the initiation tells us that he underwent “a voluntary death.”  We know that in one of the mysteries the man to be initiated was called moriturus, the one who is to die, and that he was buried up to the head in a trench.  When he had been initiated, he was addressed as a little child and fed with milk, as one newly born.  In another of the mysteries the person to be initiated prayed: “Enter thou into my spirit, my thought, my whole life; for thou art I and I am thou.”  Any Greek who had been through this would have no difficulty in understanding what Paul meant by dying and rising again in baptism, and, in so doing, becoming one with Christ.

We are not for one moment saying that Paul borrowed either his ideas or his words from such Jewish or pagan practices; what we do say is that he was using words and pictures that both Jew and Gentile would recognize and understand.

Romans 6:5-7

⁵ For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away^{[rendered inoperative]} with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.   ⁷ For he who has died has been freed^[cleared] from sin.   

Romans 6:8-11

⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,  ⁹ knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.  Death no longer has dominion over Him.   ¹⁰ For the death that He died,  He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.   ¹¹ Likewise you also, reckon^[consider] yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.   

• According to Barclay …

In this passage lie three great permanent truths.

(i) It is a terrible thing to seek to trade on the mercy of God and to make it an excuse for sinning.  Think of it in human terms.  How despicable it would be for a son to consider himself free to sin, because he knew that his father would forgive.  That would be taking advantage of love to break love’s heart.

(ii) The man who enters upon the Christian way is committed to a different kind of life.  He has died to one kind of life and been born to another.  In modern times, we may have tended to stress the fact that acceptance of the Christian way need not make so very much difference in a man’s life.  Paul would have said that it ought to make all the difference in the world.

(iii) But there is more than a mere ethical change in a man’s life when he accepts Christ.  There is a real identification with Christ.  It is, in fact, the simple truth that the ethical change is not possible without that union.  A man is in Christ.  A great scholar has suggested this analogy for that phrase.  We cannot live our physical life unless we are in the air and the air is in us; unless we are in Christ, and Christ is in us, we cannot live the life of God.

Romans 6:12-14

¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.  ¹³ And do not present your members as  instruments^[weapons] of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.   ¹⁴ For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law  but under grace.

According to Barclay …

There is no more typical transition in Paul than that between this passage and the preceding one.  The passage which went before was the writing of a mystic.  It spoke of the mystical union between the Christian and Christ which came in baptism.  It spoke of the way in which a Christian should live so close to Christ that all his life can be said to be lived in Him.

And now, after the mystical experience, comes the practical demand. Christianity is not an emotional experience; it is a way of life.  The Christian is not meant to luxuriate in an experience however wonderful; he is meant to go out and live a certain kind of life in the teeth of the world’s attacks and problems.  It is common in the world of religious life to sit in church and feel a wave of feeling sweep over us.  It is a not uncommon experience, when we sit alone, to feel Christ very near.  But the Christianity which has stopped there, has stopped half-way.  That emotion must be translated into action.  Christianity can never be only an experience of the inner being; it must be a life in the marketplace.

When a man goes out into the world, he is confronted with an awesome situation.  As Paul thinks of it, both God and sin are looking for weapons to use.  God cannot work without men.  If he wants a word spoken, he has to get a man to speak it.  If he wants a deed done, he has to get a man to do it.  If he wants a person encouraged, he has to get a man to do the lifting up.  It is the same with sin; every man has to be given the push into it.  Sin is looking for men who will by their words or example seduce others into sinning.  It is as if Paul was saying: “In this world there is an eternal battle between sin and God; choose your side.”  We are faced with the tremendous alternative of making ourselves weapons in the hand of God or weapons in the hand of sin.

A man may well say: “Such a choice is too much for me.  I am bound to fail.”  Paul’s answer is: “Don’t be discouraged and don’t be despairing; sin will not lord it over you.”  Why?  Because we are no longer under law but under grace.  Why should that make all the difference?  Because we are no longer trying to satisfy the demands of law but are trying to be worthy of the gifts of love.  We are no longer regarding God as the stern judge; we are regarding him as the lover of the souls of men.  There is no inspiration in all the world like love. Who ever went out from the presence of his loved one without the burning desire to be a better person?

The Christian life is no longer a burden to be borne; it is a privilege to be lived up to.  As Denney put it: “It is not restraint but inspiration which liberates from sin; not Mount Sinai but Mount Calvary which makes saints.”  Many a man has been saved from sin, not because of the regulations of the law, but because he could not bear to hurt or grieve or disappoint someone whom he loved and someone who, he knew, loved him.  At best, the law restrains a man through fear; but love redeems him by inspiring him to be better than his best.  The inspiration of the Christian comes, not from the fear of what God will do to him, but from the inspiration of what God has done for him.