Romans 6:1-14 ‘Dead to sin’ through union with Christ

6:1-14 'Dead to sin' through union with Christ. The immediate occasion for Paul's discussion of the Christian and sin is his assertion in 5:20b: 'But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.' Paul himself poses the question that he had undoubtedly had to answer many times as a result of his insistence on the power of God's grace: Shall we [Christians] go on sinning, so that grace may increase? (1) Paul emphatically rejects any such inference—By no means! —explaining why he does so with the key idea of the chapter: We died to sin (2). What Paul means by this becomes clear as he unfolds the concept in the rest of the chapter: we are no longer slaves to sin (6, 17-18, 22); sin is no longer our master (14a). To be 'dead to sin', thus, does not mean to be insensible to its enticements, for Paul makes clear that sin remains for the Christian an attraction to be battled with every day (see v 13). Rather it means to be delivered from the absolute tyranny of sin, from the state in which sin holds unchallenged sway, the state in which we all lived before conversion (see 3:9). As a result of this death to sin, we can no longer live in it (2b)—for habitual sinning reveals sin's tyranny, a tyranny from which the believer has been freed.

Vs 3-5 reveal the means by which we have 'died to sin': through union with Jesus Christ in his death. The Christian rite of initiation, water baptism, puts us into relationship with Jesus Christ and, specifically, with the death of Christ (3). This 'union' with Christ is no mystical merging of our own persons with that of Christ, but a 'forensic' relationship, in which God views us in association with his Son and thereby applies to us the benefits won by his Son. It can be said, thus, that we were buried with him through baptism into [his] death. What Paul means by this is not that our baptism simply symbolizes, in submergence under the water, Christ's death and burial, for Paul makes clear that we were buried 'with' him, not just 'like' him. He is saying, rather, that our faith, symbolized by baptism, puts us into relationship with Christ's own burial. Why this reference to Christ's burial? Paul elsewhere includes Christ's burial as a key element in the gospel he preaches: 'I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor. 15:3-4; cf. also Col. 2:12). Here in ch. 6, Paul asserts that believers have been joined with Christ in such a way that they experience each of these events themselves: we have 'died with Christ' (8; cf. vs 3-6); we have been 'buried with Christ' (4); we shall 'live with him' (8; cf. vs 4-5). It is this actual union with these key redemptive events that gives to the Christian a new relationship to sin's power. The basic thrust of Paul's argument is clear: since Christ's death itself was a 'death to sin' (10), our participation in his death (3-6) means that we, too, have 'died to sin' (3).

Baptism, as v 4 makes clear, is the means (the Greek word is dia) by which we are put into relationship with these events. Some interpreters think that Paul may be referring to 'spirit' baptism, but this is unlikely. It is better to understand Paul to be using water baptism as 'shorthand' for the Christian's initial conversion [p. 1135] experience. The NT consistently portrays water baptism as a fundamental component of conversion (see, e.g. Acts 2:38; 1 Pet. 3:21). This does not mean that baptism in and of itself has the power to convert or to bring us into relationship with Christ. It is only as it is joined with genuine faith that it possesses any meaning, and what Paul has written in chs. 1-5 makes clear that it is ultimately this faith that is the crucial element in the process. (On baptism in the NT and in this passage, see especially G. R. Beasley–Murray, Baptism in the New Testament [Eerdmans, 1962].)

Our union with Christ in death and burial means that we may live a new life (4b). Not only have we been delivered from sin's tyranny, but we have also been given new power of obedience through our participation in the power of Christ's resurrection. This is the point that Paul makes in v 5: participation in Christ's death means also participation in his resurrection. Some think that, as in Eph. 2:6 and Col. 2:12, 3:1, Paul here presents our resurrection with Christ as a past experience. But the future tenses both in v 5 (will... be united) and in v 8 (we will... live) render it more likely that Paul speaks here of our actual resurrection with Christ as future, while it is presently the power of Christ's resurrection that is working within us (cf. v 11: alive to God).

Vs 6-7 and 8-10 elaborate, respectively, the 'death' and 'life' aspects of our union with Christ. Our old self (6) picks up the imagery of corporate identity from ch. 5. It alludes to our identification with 'the old man', Adam, and denotes 'not a part of me called my old nature, but the whole of me as I was before I was converted' (John Stott, Men Made New (IVP, 1966), p. 45). As a result of our crucifixion with Christ, this body of sin, the whole person dominated by sin's power, has been 'rendered powerless' (the NIV marginal rendering is preferable to the done away with in the text). As a result, we need no longer be slaves to sin. As further support for this conclusion, Paul cites a popular rabbinic maxim to the effect that death severs the hold of sin on a person. Vs 8-10 reinforce the connection between dying with Christ and living with him asserted in v 5 and provide a crucial link in Paul's argument by describing Christ's death as a death 'to sin'. Though sinless himself, Christ nevertheless was subject to sin's power by virtue of his incarnation, and his death removed him for ever from that power.

The paragraph concludes with a summary and application. Our identification with Christ in his death must be seized and acted upon if it is to become effective in subduing the power of sin in our lives. Thus Paul exhorts us to recognize who we now are in Christ (11) and to put that new identity into effect by dethroning sin in our daily behaviour (12-13). This victory over sin is possible, Paul reminds us in a summary of vs 1-10, because sin shall not be your master (the future tense is used to stress that at no time will sin ever have domination over us again). For we are no longer under law —that is, under the regime of the Mosiac law in which sin 'increased' (5:20) and brought wrath (4:15)—but under grace — the new regime inaugurated by Christ in which 'grace reigns through righteousness to bring eternal life' (see Jn. 1:17 for a similar contrast between 'law' and 'grace').