"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" (verse 1). Paul raises this question because it seemed to have been the question of the antinomians (the 'against the law' opponents). Their reasoning was - since God is glorified by His grace, we should perform for Him the service of sinning more, thus to give Him a greater opportunity to demonstrate His even greater grace. But does sin in the life of the Christian glorify God? This is certainly a distorted view! Those who are truly regenerated dread sin and recoil from it; we hasten to repent after it is committed. There is a Christian perfection to which we should strive but not sinless perfection. Sinless perfection cannot be attained in this life. Christian perfection is a definite obligation for all believers.
"God forbid, How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer in it?" (verse 2). The literal translation of the first two Greek words in this verse is 'may it not be so.' Willful sinning should never enter the thoughts of the Christian. Paul expresses an abhorrence to such a thought. The child of God is liberated from sin, and he should strive to be through with sin. Just as a physically dead man does not respond to physical stimuli, so the person who is dead to sin should not respond to temptations to sin. Because Christ Jesus lives in the heart of the repentant sinner, the desire to willfully sin against Christ has been taken away. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me..." (Galatians 2:20). Since Christ lives in the Christian's heart, he has no desire to sin. The unregenerate sinner is dead in sin, but the regenerated believer is dead to sin. Sin has no more dominion over him. 'Living in sin' is best taken as describing a life-style of sin; that is, an habitual practice of sin. A person who 'lives in sin' and enjoys it has never been saved.
"Know ye not that, as many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" (verse 3). Since the saved person is immersed (totally involved) in Christ, he is involved in all of His experience. Death is included, and the resurrection is included. We are creatures of time and space; not so with God. Our heavenly Father sees the repentant sinner saved, sanctified, and glorified, although our sanctification is a process and our glorification will take place when Jesus comes. So complete is the believer's identification with the family of God and Christ, as the result of Holy Spirit baptism (I Corinthians 12:13) that his identification includes, in addition to Jesus' death and burial, His resurrection as well as ours. Christ's death alone is the ground of our justification, and when we make that our own by faith we are united with Christ - united with Him in His death, united with Him in His burial, united with Him in His rising again, and united with Him in life.
Could Paul have meant 'water baptism' here? Just as salvation is spoken of as being born again (John 3:1-7), and being resurrected to new life (Ephesians 2:11), and being created anew (II Corinthians 5:17), so here is it called being baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit (I Corinthians 12:12, 13). Furthermore, Galatians 3:26, 27 says, "For ye are all the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, for as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ."
"Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death, that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (verse 4). Since our faith is in Christ Jesus, the saved not only shared in His death, but we also shared His tomb (burial). This was accomplished so that we might walk about in the world, powered by the resurrection power that provides us with a new lifestyle. Yeager says, "To read water baptism into (this passage) is to destroy Paul's argument against the antinomians. The believer is a living member of the body of Christ and, as such, enjoys total identification with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection...It is not our emergence from the waters of immersion that gives us newness of life. It is the fact that we came up, just as Christ did, out of death" (Vol. XI, pp. 452, 453). The life which Jesus lived after his death and resurrection was of a different quality of life than that He lived before his death. He entered into a life in which death had no more power. The newness of life (a new quality of life) supposes newness of heart as its cause. This 'newness of life' involves sanctification as well as justification. The same Source that brings justification brings sanctification; both rest on the same foundation - union with Christ (II Corinthians 5:15; Galatians 2:20).
"For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (verses 5, 6). "Planted together" in the KJV and "organically connected with" means to be grown with, congenitally connected with, or identified with (illustration: Siamese twins or like a branch grafted into a tree). No term could more adequately convey the intimacy of the union involved. The word, only found in this passage, indicates total identification of the believer with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. This complete union with Christ carries the believer beyond the cross, the tomb, the resurrection, and beyond that to a new life in Christ Jesus and finally glorification in heaven. Glorification is as certain in the future as the cross, tomb, and resurrection has taken place in history. So far as God is concerned, the Christian is already on the resurrection side of the grave, and it but remains for us to realize this truth and appropriate it, and victory is assured.
The 'old' man means old ego, the sinful nature; it has been rendered powerless, neutralized, and made inactive in the practice of evil. The 'old man' is no longer supreme. The 'body of sin,' as conditioned and controlled by sin, referred to here will be destroyed and transfigured into a body of glory; it will no longer be conditioned and controlled by sin. "(Jesus Christ) shall change our lowly body, that it may be fashioned like his glorious body, according to the working by which he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Philippians 3:21).
"For he that is dead is freed from sin" (verse 7). Sin has no more dominion over the child of God. He is a dead man so far as sin and sin's penalty are concerned. Once the penalty has been paid, and it was paid by our Savior, the redeemed soul is free. The future remains for us an opportunity to glorify God and promote the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. When a slave dies he is quit to his master; when we died in Christ, we were acquitted from our old master, sin. Sin has no claim on the justified person, just as the law has none on the one who has died. The person who has died with Christ entered into Christ's atonement and is justified from his sin.
"Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him" (verses 8, 9). Just as verse seven establishes that the Christian who died with Christ on the cross is immune to the eternal reign of sin and death, so verse eight adds that the Christian who lives with Christ is invincible. He belongs to God, and God is the master of his life. We can hold our heads up high knowing that we are on the winning side. We have eternal life, and at the rapture or the resurrection we are assured of victory. Until the rapture or the resurrection our daily life is composed of fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin (I John 1:7,9).
Our Savior died once and for all time; He was once resurrected never to die again. Death once dominated the Savior, but He willingly permitted it so that He could die for a world of lost sinners. Through Christ's death He could "destroy him that had the power of death, that is the devil" (Hebrews 2:14). In assuring the Corinthian Christians of the power of the resurrection and victory over death, Paul wrote, "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive; but every man in his own order; Christ the first fruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming...The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death'' (I Corinthians 15:22, 23, 26). Our Lord's victory over death is gloriously conclusive; there will be no successful counterattack. Jesus said of Himself in Revelation 1:18, "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen, and have the keys of hades and of death."
"For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God" (verse 10). The writer uses the word, "once for all," which also means "only one time ever." Our Savior's death on the cross was necessary, but He needed to die only one time; He paid the sin debt once and for all time. His death and His resurrection robbed sin of its sting and death of its grave (I Corinthians 15:55,56). The writer of Hebrews contrasted the death of animal sacrifices to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God (7:27; 9:12; 10:10). Animal sacrifices were offered over and over again, but the 'once-for-all-time' death of the Lamb of God was sufficient to defuse death, and sin's dominion was overcome. Furthermore, once sin had been atoned for, Christ now lives to God. In His high-priestly prayer, Jesus prayed, "I have glorified thee on earth; I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was" (John 17:4,5).
"Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord" (verse 11). The Christian can apply the same reasoning to himself as is applied to Christ Jesus our Lord. "So also" or "in the same way also" that which applied to Christ Jesus applied to us. Paul adopts the mystic idea from our Lord's own idea as expressed in His high priestly prayer, "that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us..." (John 17:21). Paul uses the word 'reckon,' also translated consider, account, impute, or suppose, in the sense of entering upon the books as an asset or a liability. The Christian is to consider himself dead to sin just as God imputes Christ's righteousness to the account of the believer. The believer is dead with reference to sin, but alive in association with God. Just what does being made alive unto God mean? It means (1) we have been reconciled to God, (2) we have become new creatures in Christ, (3) we are freed from sin's bondage, (4) we are pressing forward to a sure destiny and new goals, and (5) we can no longer be satisfied with this world and its offerings (Boice, pp. 678, 679).
"Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in its lusts" (verse 12). "Mortal body" means the body that is subject to death and dying. The Christian is not to let that mortal part of us be the king of our lives. Even though the body is still mortal and liable to sin, disease, and physical death, Paul admonished the Romans (and us) not to obey the body's intense passions, lusts, or evil desires. In Galatians 5:19 - 21, Paul enumerates the works of the flesh as follows: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath, factions, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, (and) revelings..." David is a prime example of permitting sin to bear sway in his mortal body. Unquestionably David was a child of God; indeed, "a man after God's own heart" (I Samuel 13:14). One thing that David did not do was to be on guard against the great dangers of surrendering to evil passions, passions which are often associated with the body and its functions, a body which, in man's fallen state, tends toward sin and death.
"Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (verse 13). Just as the believer is not to submit meekly to the demands of the flesh (verse 12), we are not to actively cooperate with the flesh. The word "yield" in the KJV can also be translated "to make available," "to stand alongside," or "to employ." Nothing that belongs to the believer - physical, mental, financial, or technical - should be made available to the flesh as tools for ungodliness. We are not to permit our eyes to look with lust, our ears to listen to gossip, our tongues to employ vileness and untruth. On the contrary every resource should be made available to God for His kingdom work. Whenever the Christian permits his members to be used for Satan and for evil, he is robbing God of the service that is due unto Him. In this same chapter and verse 16 Paul writes, "...to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey..."
"For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace" (verse 14). The word "dominate" here comes from the word meaning "lordship." The Christian should not let sin exercise lordship over him or dictate his actions. Then Paul adds, "we are not under the law;" the law is able to do many things. The law can command and demand; it can pronounce approval and blessing upon conformity to its demands. The law can expose and convict of sin; it can excite and incite sin to more aggravated transgression. But the law can do nothing to justify the person who has violated it. The law can do nothing to relieve the bondage of sin; it accentuates and confirms that bondage. The law cannot save. Only grace can do that.
"What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid" (verse 15). Paul's "what then?" refers back to the preceding verses. In other words, how should the Christian conduct himself since we are dead to sin, since we are baptized into Christ, and since we are raised up with Him to live a victorious life. Then he asks the question which he proceeds to answer. Since we are saved by grace and we are not under the law, should the Christian go on sinning? Paul adds his 'God forbid,' or 'certainly not', or 'perish the thought,' or 'no, no, a thousand times no.' The Christian should grieve if he sins even once after he has been saved by God's marvelous grace (that is the meaning of the aorist tense, active voice, and the subjunctive mood). Just because we are not under the law does not mean that we are free of all moral restraint, we are not perfectly free to do as we please.
The question and answer here (verse 15) are somewhat different from verse one. In verse one Paul asks the question, "Shall we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?" Here in verse 15 he asks, "Are we to practice sin because grace does abound?" The former deals with the permanent state while the latter deals with the isolated fact. The Apostle has already shown that the justified believer will not be able to continue the life of sin which he formerly led. He has now to show that he will not even commit a single act of sin, if he realizes what it means to be 'under grace.'
"Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" (verse 16). Two principles are placed in juxtaposition - sin and death; obedience and righteousness. If one willfully places himself alongside sin with the idea of obeying sin's dictates, he makes himself the slave of sin. If one willfully abhors sin and obeys the Holy Spirit within, he makes himself a slave to Jesus Christ. Loyalty to Christ will not permit occasional crossing over to the side of sin and Satan without conviction. Jesus said, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew 6:24). Furthermore, John wrote, "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin (practice sin); for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin (practice sin), because he is born of God" (I John 3:9).
Sin had a tendency to enslave. The first time an individual lies, he may be horrified; the second time, only somewhat shaken; the third time lying seems far more natural and easy. At last the sin of telling untruths has him in its grasp. The opposite to enslavement to sin is obedience to God.
"But God be thanked, that whereas ye were the servants of sin, ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which we delivered you" (verse 17). Paul thanks God that the Roman Christians are no longer slaves to sin. He expects better things from them than the antinomians who have not had a supernatural change of heart. They received from Paul that heart-changing message with zeal and have been regenerated. Moreover, the gospel shapes the character of the recipient as well as delivering him from the power of sin. The doctrine of Christianity is like a mold into which the Christian character is shaped. That system of doctrine which Paul uses here is the gospel message, the same message he preached to the Corinthians and referred to in I Corinthians 15:3,4 "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures."
"Being, then, made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness" (verse 18). The Roman Christians had been saved, thus trading their enslavement to sin for the slavery to righteousness. This is the liberty that Paul refers to in Romans 8:21, "...the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God." This liberty is not a license to do as the Christian pleases; it is freedom to do what pleases God. The Christian has believed the gospel truth and this truth has set him free from the bondage of sin. Of course the truth incarnated was the Lord Jesus Christ (John 8:32, 32, 14:6). Hendriksen translates the last three words here "you have entered the service of righteousness" ( 205). The Christian now has the opportunity for rendering service. Those who have entered the service of righteousness enjoy liberty; that is, freedom from sin. Sin is no longer their master. Paul must have had this concept in mind when he wrote, "For he that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's freeman; likewise also he that is called, being free, is Christ's servant" (I Corinthians 7:22).
"I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh; for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness, unto holiness" (verse 19). Paul's use of the phrase "I speak after the manner of men" (KJV), or "I am speaking in human terms" (RSV) or "I am speaking as people do in daily life" simply means that he is speaking according with the human, fleshly nature. Often-times it is difficult to put divine principles and truths into terms that finite human minds can comprehend. Paul meant that the analogy of masters and slaves was used as an accommodation to his reader's humanness. The writer draws the analogy to slaves and slavish obedience to a master, this was familiar to the Romans. Once 'just as' they had concentrated on sin, 'so now' they are admonished to concentrate on holiness. He describes the condition of unbelievers as slavery to sin, and he also describes the state of believers as bondservice to righteousness. Formerly the bondservice was directed to 'iniquity' now it is to be directed unto 'sanctification;' see verse 13. Just as the Romans had given themselves wholeheartedly to sin; let them now give themselves equally wholeheartedly to righteousness.
"For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness" (verse 20). In the former days of their unregeneracy the Roman Christians were slaves to sin; they gave themselves in slavish obedience to every evil impulse. They were totally dedicated to sin (slaves to Satan and his will), but now they should be slaves to God's righteousness and never become slaves to sin and Satan again. To be slaves to sin means to be enemies of righteousness; to be enemies of sin means to be friends of righteousness. The true Christian cannot be devoted to both sin and righteousness at the same time. If a person thinks he is not a bondslave to sin, then let him try to quit sinning without the help of God. He will find the prophet Jeremiah was correct when he wrote, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil" (13:23). Can a man change the color of his skin by an act of his own will? If he could then a sinner could quit sinning by his own desire and design. It cannot be done. Only Jesus can set the sinner free from the penalty and power of sin.
"What fruit had ye then in those things of which ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death" (verse 21). The unrepentant sinner looked upon sin as his lord and served it as a slave. But now the repentant sinner is ashamed of his former lord and master who paid him daily in terms of poverty, hangovers, disease, sleepless nights, and social disgrace. Of course, the final payment, had it not been for the grace of God, would have been eternal death or eternal separation from God and all that is good. It is no wonder that the saved individual is ashamed of the deeds of his former life in sin; in fact, he is embarrassed and ashamed of his former life style. The unrepentant sinner may brag about his life in sin; he may laugh about his drunkenness, his immorality, or his unfair business dealings. He may brag about his sufficiency without God. When that person is saved, however, he does not find joy in past sins, nor does he want to even think about, much less talk about them. If the repentant sinner thinks about his past life, it is with regret; if anything, he has a desire to serve God more faithfully in the time that he has left here on the earth.
"But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life" (verse 22). The apostle contrasts the fruit of sin (verse 21) and the fruit of righteousness (verse 22). Death was the only thing the sinner had to look forward to, but now the believer had found the grace of God and that grace brings holiness and everlasting life. The allegiance has been shifted from sin to righteousness, from eternal death to eternal life, from a slave of Satan to a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a contrast! Hendriksen puts it this way - formerly bondage, now freedom; formerly slaves of sin, now servants of God; formerly vice, now holiness; formerly shame, now peace of mind; formerly death, now life, even life everlasting (207, 208).
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our
Lord" (verse 23). Death in all of its forms - physical, spiritual, everlasting - is the pay (wages)
of sin. But (note the contrast again) eternal life is a gift from God through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Spiritual death is earned just as a soldier earns his wages. It is the just and rightful
compensation for a life that is characterized by sin. God does not send anyone to hell; the
unrepentant sinner goes there of his own will and volition. Lest someone thinks the salvation
with God gives is cheap, it cost God His precious Son, it cost the Lord Jesus Christ his physical
life. The old master shamed us and paid us the wages of death. The new Master makes us holy
and gives us life forevermore. Death is earned, it is the inevitable consequence of sin; eternal
life is purely gratuitous, from the bountiful hand of God. Oh, the magnitude of this free grace!!