Romans 6:1b-11 Commentary

There are enormous stakes involved in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson. It, after all, deals with matters of life and death. But not just life and death in the conventional sense. Paul also speaks of life and death at their deepest levels. He names and describes the life that leads to death, as well as the death that leads to life.

The apostle, in fact, fills Romans 6 with references to life and death. He uses some form of the words we often use to describe some kind of death at least twelve times. What’s more, Paul uses some form of the words we often use to describe life at least five times in the course of eleven verses.

Yet while the apostle speaks about life and death, he doesn’t always do so in ways citizens of the 21^st century have come to expect. When our contemporaries talk about matters of life and death, we often think of issues surrounding the taking of life and end-of-life decisions.

Our friends and neighbors, after all, tend to think of life and death almost entirely biologically. As long as our hearts beat and brains function, we assume we’re living. When our hearts no longer beat and brains no longer function, we assume we’re dead.

That’s a reason why preachers who talk about the ways Paul discusses life and death in Romans 6 would be wise to define the terms. In it, after all, the apostle sometimes refers to a kind of biological life and death. But more often, he’s speaking of life and death at what we might call a “spiritual” level. We might go so far as to say for the apostle there are living people who are dead as well as dead people who are alive.

Yet by introducing this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson with the question, “What shall we say, then?” Paul links this passage to what he has previously written. The Message paraphrases him as writing in Romans 5:20-21, “When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into … a life that goes on and on.”

We might deduce, then, that because God responds to our sin with even more grace, we should sin even more. Paul frames the question this way: “Shall we go on sinning [epimenomen hamartia*] so that grace may increase [pleonase]?”

He answers even more vigorously: “By no means [me genoito]!” To use a modern cliché, it’s as if he says, “No way!” The apostle spends the rest of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson carefully explaining why Jesus’ friends don’t just continue to deliberately sin.

We are, he notes in verse 2, people “who have died [apethanomen] to sin [hamartia].” In verse 11 Paul goes on to summon God’s dearly beloved people to “Count yourselves dead [nekrous] to sin but alive [zontas] to God in Christ Jesus.”

The concept of being “dead to sin” is somewhat mysterious to some of God’s people. While there’s a lot preachers might say about dying to sin, we may need to say little more than it reflects how the Spirit has wrested Jesus’ friends away from sin’s control over us. We are, by God’s amazing grace, people who no longer need to sin because sin is no longer our lives’ boss. While sin sometimes remains attractive to us, it is no longer our master.

Paul explains part of what that means when he notes that when Jesus’ followers were baptized in the name of the Triune God, we were “baptized [ebaptisthemen] into [eis] [Christ’s] death [thanaton].” In verse 5 the apostle goes on to profess, “we have been united [symphytoi] with [Christ] in a death like [homoiomati] his.” In verse 8 the apostle continues quite simply: “we died with Christ.”

These verses’ theology is thick, and their meaning is at least somewhat mysterious. But they at least suggest a close link between Christ’s physical death and his followers’ “spiritual” death. When the Church baptizes people in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Spirit somehow joins us to Christ’s death. When we are baptized, in other words, we experience a kind of death. God graciously executes that part of our old selves that sin ruled.

Paul professes when the authorities put Christ to death, “our old [palaias] self” (6), that part of us sin controls, was also crucified. As a result, Jesus’ followers are “no longer … slaves [douleuein] to sin – because anyone who has died has been set free [dedeikiotai] from sin” (6b-7). This is a kind of emancipation proclamation. For Jesus’ sake the Spirit has set us free from slavery to sin. Sin no longer calls the shots in God’s adopted children’s lives.

What’s more, the apostle adds in verse 4, “we were buried [synetaphemen] with [Christ] [auto] into death [thanaton].” It’s as if God didn’t just crucify sin’s power over us. Paul asserts God also, for good measure, graciously buried sin’s power “six feet under.” God ensures sin’s power no longer has the power to rise back up and somehow resume control over Christians for whom Christ lived, died and rose again from the dead.

Yet Paul also professes God hasn’t just put to death sin’s control over God’s dearly beloved people. God has also implanted deep within us the Spirit’s control over us. That indwelling Spirit has graciously raised to life in us the life for which God created God’s image-bearers.

At the heart of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is Paul’s profession, “Just as [hosper] Christ was raised [egerthe] from the dead [nekron] through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life [kainoteti zoes]” (4).

In other words, when the Father raised the Son from death, God also raised all of God’s adopted sons and daughters. When Christ arose to a resurrection life, Christ’s adopted siblings also arose to a resurrection life. It’s a new life that’s lived not to try to please Satan and our sinful selves but is lived to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves.

Preachers can admit elements of verses 5 and following are somewhat mysterious. Part of that stems from Paul’s extensive use of the future tense to describe Jesus’ followers’ resurrection life. In verse 5, for example, he writes, “We will certainly also be united [symphytoi] with him in a resurrection like his.” In verse 8 the apostle adds, “We believe that we will also live with [syzesomen] [Christ].”

These assertions may echo Paul’s earlier assertions about the new life God has given us through Jesus Christ. In union with Christ, the Spirit has freed us to live in ways that show God has raised us from spiritual death to life. Jesus’ followers already in a very real sense live “with” Christ as the Spirit more and more fully transforms us into Christ’s likeness.

But in Romans 6:5 ff. Paul likely especially has in mind Christians’ coming resurrection from the dead at Christ’s return. Someday very soon the risen and ascended Christ will return to raise the bodies of those who have died in relationship with him as well as transform the bodies of Christians who are still alive. Someday very soon Christ will graciously usher our resurrected persons into his glorious presence in the new earth and heaven.

In the meantime, Paul ends this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson, we live already resurrected lives. Among other things, that means Jesus’ friends “count [our]selves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” We no longer offer excuses for caving in to the temptation to sin. Christians, after all, have no good excuse for sinning. Christ has broken sin’s stranglehold on us.

God’s adopted children are, what’s more, equipped by the Holy Spirit to live in loving service to God and our neighbor. When we do so, we are in perhaps the fullest sense of life on this side of the new creation, alive to God in Christ.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the italicized Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In her novel, Going, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck imagines how in the 1920’s the French Communist Eugen Levy spoke for the last time before the court of law that condemned him to death by firing squad. He described his colleagues and him as “dead men on holiday.”

Might preachers see this as a metaphor for those who live under sin’s control? Aren’t all people naturally “dead people on holiday”? After all, outside of God’s amazing grace, even if we’re not actively dying yet, we’re already spiritually dead.