Bible Commentaries
Romans 6

Verses 1-23

VI 1-23 A Second Effect of Justification: the Christian’s break with sin—There is no shortage of striking headings for this important chapter; e.g. the Christian sanctification of life; the new life in Christ; the Christian’s practical holiness; the Christian and sin; the Christian’s emancipation from the dominion of sin; no place for sin in the life of the justified; Christian justification implies an irretrievable rejection of sin and the beginning of a new and holy life.

Subject. Whatever heading may be preferred Paul here passes on to another immediate and major effect of Christian justification: the complete break with sin in and after obtaining justification = sanctifying grace. With us today, it is rather the forgiveness of sins that comes to our mind when the effects of justifying grace as regards sin are to be enumerated. But the forgiveness of sins is not St Paul’s subject here. All the weight of the passage is concentrated on the Christian’s break with sin. The ensuing victory over sin is discussed in 8:1-8.

Object. The connexion of ch 6 with the previous ch and the precise object of the Apostle in discussing this subject here are disputed. Was his intention to continue the enumeration of the effects of Christian justification begun in 5:1? Or was his purpose to refute lax conclusions from his doctrine, esp. from 5:20 f.? Or did he intend to insert here, as the spirit moved him, a pressing exhortation to a holy life? Each of these possibilities has been and can be defended. Those who regard Rom 6 as the description of another effect of justifying grace can quote in their favour, besides simplicity, a long exegetical tradition. It is an explanation which gives the chapter a place in the whole epistle that can easily be remembered. The second opinion which treats 1-23 as a refutation of morally lax (= antinomian) conclusions falsely drawn from St Paul’s teaching is supported by the two introductory questions, 1, 15, and by the fact that such false conclusions have actually been drawn from his doctrine. He himself refers to them in 3:7 f. (cf.Galatians 5:13), and the Nicolaitans are accused of similar ideas in Apoc 2:15; cf. the Spirituals in post-reformation days. The third opinion treating 1-23 as an exhortation can appeal to the admonitory and exhortatory tone which runs through the whole chapter, cf. 2, 3, 11, 12-14, 19. The obvious objection is that Paul clearly begins his exhortations proper with ch 12. It is difficult to choose between these possibilities. Perhaps the true solution lies in the combination of all three. The context demands doctrine; the subject matter could hardly be expressed without exhortation; and to think here of a kind of self-defence on the part of St Paul is taking account of what we know from the history of this doctrine.

Characteristic. St Paul’s way of arguing in 1-23 has often been criticized as difficult and complicated, as concealing the real issue under too many words and metaphors and as lacking clear progress of thought. That from a literary point of view these objections are not without some foundation need not be denied. But it must also be remembered that one cause of the difficulty at all events lies in the subject, the problem of sin in life. For it is self-evident that the only straightforward solution of the problem of sin in life is sinlessness. But to be henceforward without sin is not among the effects of Christian justification. Sanctifying grace is a gift but also a task. The task it sets is the sanctification of daily life; and with regard to this task Christians can fail, and do fail. That is so today and that was so in the days of St Paul. But he believed, as we believe, that the fact of justifying grace makes a great difference to the power of sin. To describe, illustrate, and engrave upon the memory, of everyone this new Christian counter-power to sin was the Apostle’s first object. In judging his style and diction we should not forget that he lacked all the refinements of later theological terminology. But leaving terminology and style alone, can we today really quote any stronger counter-force to sin than the two here singled out by St Paul: the mystical union with Christ, 1-11; and the hope of eternal reward after a life in the service of Christian holiness, 15-23?

Plan. To prove his thesis that Christian justification brings liberation from the dominion of sin St Paul employs two arguments: (1) 1-14 the Christian’s break with sin in the sacrament of baptism; (2) 15-23 the Christian’s break with sin because of the punishment of sin on the one hand, and because of the reward of holiness according to Christian doctrine on the other.

1-14 The Christian’s Break with Sin in the Sacrament of Baptism— That in baptism every Christian renounces the devil and all his works is a custom handed down from earliest times. Nevertheless Paul, arguing in 1-14 that there is no more room for sin in a Christian life, does not appeal to these baptismal vows of his readers. He goes much deeper and bases his argument on the (mystical) union with Christ which is the primary purpose of baptism. In baptism the Christian is created, as it were, by being united with Christ. Henceforward, therefore, the Christian’s attitude to sin must be the same as that of Christ himself. He must die to sin, as Christ died to sin; he must be holy as Christ was holy.

This is the substance of the ar’gument in 1-11 and St Paul could well have left it at that. But to drive his point home, he proceeds to demonstrate or prove the existence and the nature of this union with Christ from the two baptismal ceremonies of immersion and emersion. According to St Paul’s own exposition the former of these two ceremonies represents the Christian’s death and burial with Christ, the latter his resurrection with Christ. When in baptism the catechumen is immersed beneath the water, he is thereby, as it were, buried with Christ, sharing his being dead to sin; and when the Christian emerges from beneath the water he thereby rises, as it were, with Christ from the tomb, sharing the new life of the Risen Lord. The theological principles underlying this way of arguing in 1-14 are three: (1) the symbolical meaning of the ceremonies used at baptism; (2) the sacramental efficacy of baptism; (3) a real (mystical) union, incorporation, identification of the Christian.with Christ as an effect of the sacrament of baptism.

What makes the argument somewhat complicated is the fact that two lines of thought are constantly crossing each other: (1) baptism as dying to sin; (2) baptism as the beginning of a new life. In a systematic treatment the two aspects would be kept separate and discussed as the negative and the positive effects of baptism. The real difficulty of St Paul’s argument, however, is the character of the new life instilled in baptism. For in reality this new life remains far behind its ideal; the life of the risen Christ. With this difficulty St Paul wrestles in 5-9. On the one hand he insists on the fact of this new life being instilled in baptism; otherwise his whole argument would fall to the ground. On the other hand, he changes from the past to the future tense in describing the transformation worked in the Christian by the infusion of this new life in baptism: we shall also be in likeness of his resurrection’, 5; we shall also live with him’, 8. Contrast Colossians 2:12; Ephesians 2:5. The result is that this new life is represented as a life which begins in baptism, 4, but is to be completed in the future, reaching its fullness after death in heaven, 5, 8. This way of presenting the case which is undoubtedly the true one ma be compared with ’prophetical compenetration’. But a satisfactory grammatical explanation of these future tenses does not seem to exist.

Plan. There are two clearly marked paragraphs: 1-11 doctrine; 12-14 corresponding exhortation.

1. Paul introduces his new point, the banishment of sin from Christian life, with an objection suggested by what he had said on sin and grace in the previous sentence 5:20 f., or by the false conclusions which he knew hag been drawn from his doctrine; cf. 3:8; Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 2:16; Jas passim. If in the past man’s sin provided the opportunity for God’s grace, why not continue in sin to provide further opportunities for God’s grace? The same objection is repeated in 15.

2. ’We who have died to sin’: is a metaphor for complete separation from sin. In a more detailed explanation account must be taken of the application of the same metaphor to our Lord in 10. In either case there is agreement that ’to sin’ is dative and not ablative. The dative is then explained as a ’dative of reference’, so that one could paraphrase Paul’s thought as follows: as far as sin is concerned we have died; we have done with sin, we have finished with sin. The comparison with death in this metaphor would seem to lie in the complete change and absolute separation from all that was before.

3a. ’We who were baptized into Christ Jesus’: introduces the sacrament of baptism into the discussion, and thereby the Apostle’s first proof for his thesis that there is no longer any room for sin in the life of a Christian, 2. But how far can baptism be said to have this effect? This is briefly explained in 4-5 and then further developed in 6-10. As these explanations show, Paul speaking of baptism into Christ Jesus was here thinking not of the formula of baptism—whether it should be Christological or Trinitarian—but of baptism as ’immersion’ into Christ. To combine the idea of baptism and immersion is strange to us, but was natural to Paul and his readers for two reasons: (a) the Greek verb ßaptí?e?? means to immerse into, to dip into, to plunge into; (b) in the early Christians this idea was kept alive through the ceremony of immersion in their baptism. 3b. ’We were baptized into his death’: if baptism is immersion into Christ, 3a, it must include immersion into his death as much as into any other work of his redemption, e.g. resurrection, ascension, etc. Why then does St Paul here single out the death of Christ; and which is the particular aspect of Christ’s death that he has in mind? The answer is given in 10: Christ’s death was his final settlement with all that concerned sin, and baptism is meant to be the same for every Christian.

4. ’As Christ was raised from the dead . . . so we also should walk in newness of life’: so far Paul has insisted on the negative aspect of our ’dying to sin’ symbolically represented in the baptismal ceremony of immersion reminiscent of Christ’s death and burial; now he turns from the negative to the positive aspect, the beginning of a new life, symbolically represented by the baptismal ceremony of emersion, which is reminiscent of Christ’s rising from the tomb. The new Christian life, therefore, should be a life concerned only with heavenly things, like the life of the Risen Christ; cf.Colossians 3:2; Philippians 3:20.10. ’The death he died he died to sin once and for all’: that Christ died to atone for men’s sins is the general Christian doctrine of the Cross. But this aspect of the death of Christ does not fit into St Paul’s argument here, where Christ’s dying to sin is quoted as the model of our dying to sin. If the meaning of the metaphor ’dying to sin’ from v 3 is to be kept then Paul must here be thinking of the Cross as Christ’s final settlement with regard to all that concerned sin in his life. On Calvary sin’s claims were settled once and for all; henceforward God’s claim alone was of practical importance to him. Death to sin on Calvary is followed by a life for God alone beginning with the resurrection. The application to the Christian life is easy. As Christ settled his account with sin on Calvary so does the Christian in baptism

. 11. That Christ’s account with sin was of a very different character from ours does not affect the argument.

12-14. Paul passes from doctrine to exhortation.

15-23 The Christian’s Break with Sin once more— The Apostle returns to the question of sin in the life of a Christian raised in 6:1 and shows once more that there is no longer any room for sin in a Christian life. The subject is no doubt important enough to bear such a repetition. The content of the passage can be summarized as follows: the Christian is bound to avoid sin and pursue holiness in his life in view of their respective wages according to Christian doctrine, death being the wages in the service of sin, eternal life the wages in the service of holiness. The connexion with 1-14 is disputed. Some would connect it with ch 7 which discusses the liberation from the Mosaic Law and regard it as a third effect of Christian justification; cf. SH. The wording of the introductory question in 15 can rightly be quoted in favour of this view, but the trend of the argument speaks against it.

16-22 develops the parable that man is a servant = slave either under the rule of sin or under the rule of holiness. 16b. ’Servants . . . of obedience unto justness’: what one expects in the antithesis is: servants of justness (or of the Gospel, or of God) unto life. This conclusion actually follows in 22 f. From the strictly logical point of view therefore 16b-21 forms a digression. Its object is to impress the necessity of obedience = of being a servant or slave. The simplest proof is the vocabulary: obedience, 16 (twice); to obey, 16, 17; slave, 16, 17, 20; to be enslaved, 18, 22. It is, however, possible that in 16b obedience is but a synonym for Gospel, cf. 1:5; 15:18. 17. ’The form of teaching unto which you were handed over’: the normal phrase would be, the form of teaching that has been delivered unto you. In any case it is clear that the phrase presupposes a set of dogmas in early Christianity. On the question what these principal doctrines were, cf. Prat II 28-35. 19. ’I speak in human terms’ WV = I express myself in terms which you are certain to understand, cf.Galatians 3:15; Romans 3:5. Paul apologizes for using the obedience of a servant or slave to illustrate the Christian’s obedience in the service of God. For in other respects to be a Christian is to have found true freedom, cf.Galatians 5:1, Galatians 5:13; 1 Corinthians 9:19; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Romans 8:15, Romans 8:21. But see also Matthew 11:29; 1 Corinthians 7:22; Romans 1:1; Romans 7:25; Romans 14:18; Ephesians 6:6; Philippians 1:1; Philippians 2:22.20-22. The life of ’the servant of sin’ (= slave to sin) and of ’the servant of God’ (= slave of God) are compared once more. 20b. ’You were free as regards justness’, WV = you were without it. 21. The interpunctuation is uncertain. Many commentators translate: ’What fruit did you reap then? Such as you are now ashamed of . . . death’. 22. ’Now . . . you have your fruit unto sanctification’; a difficult phrase because the common meaning of ???asµó? = sanctification, does not fit easily into the context. If this meaning is kept, the Apostle’s thought is: now you have your fruit in such things (virtues, cf.Galatians 5:22 f.) as lead immediately to sanctification and thereby finally to life everlasting. But does the structure of the sentence bear such an interpretation? Many commentators prefer to translate: ’now you have your fruit in justness’. And this is what one expects in the context: now you have your fruit (= reward) in the possession of justness (= sanctifying grace) for the present, and in the hope of eternal life for the future. 23. ’The wages of sin is death, the gift of God eternal life’: sums up the whole passage 15-23. Both the death and the life of which Paul speaks are eternal, cf.Matthew 10:28; Galatians 6:7 f.; 2 Corinthians 5:10; Apoc 20:14; but it would be a mistake to think that therefore they do not begin till after the grave, cf. 6:4; Colossians 2:12; Ephesians 2:5; John 17:3.