Are you ignorant that we, as many as have been baptised unto Christ Jesus, have been baptised unto his death?
Paul has just said that grace overflows where sin abounded. Someone is bound to twist that into a licence to keep sinning. His reply is not a warning but a reminder. He points the Roman Christians back to their own baptism, and to what that act said about them.
The question in verse 3 is not new information. It points to something every believer has had since the day they confessed Christ.
The apostle answers from the starting point of every person who confesses Christ. Not only did He die for our sins, laying us under an infinite obligation, but we died to sin: how then shall we go on living in it? This is the meaning of our baptism. Are you ignorant of so plain a truth? It is not a special blessing that only a few Christians enjoy; it is the common property of all the baptized.
Here the commentators part company with many modern versions. Several argue the Greek preposition should read "to" or "unto" rather than "into." The difference matters, because it guards against the idea that the act itself does the work.
The Greek preposition means "to" or "unto" as often as "into." Which one it is depends on the context, or on the nature of the case. It is impossible to think that the Israelites in 1 Corinthians 10:2 were baptized into Moses; there the word must be "unto."… Baptism is the symbol of profession. Reality depends on faith, and faith might or might not be true of the person baptized… To say "into" therefore goes beyond God's word. It claims for the act a life-giving power that Scripture does not grant and does not allow… Not everyone has faith, and baptism will no more save an unbeliever than a dead faith will.
Baptism pictures a funeral, and a funeral has two obvious effects on the person concerned.
In the figure of baptism we were identified with the death of Christ. This was so that we might share, here and now, in the position His death gives us in relation to sin and the world. Baptism is a figure of death and burial. It is clear that a dead man has finished with the life of self-will he once lived. And a buried man has passed out of the sight of the world he once lived in.
Baptism points to a particular Christ, and that is why it carries this meaning at all.
They were baptized to a Christ who had died to sin, and we are buried with Him by baptism to death. John baptized to a living Messiah on earth; Christian baptism is to a Christ who has died and risen again. This is why the disciples of John in Acts 19 had to be baptized again in the name of the Lord Jesus. He had died and risen, and God had made Him Lord and Christ.
If the meaning is burial, then the effect is a clean break with everything on this side of the grave.
Now baptism is, in one word, dissociation. It is only an outward ordinance, yet it has a meaning, and that is its meaning. It is based on the death and resurrection of Christ, for we are baptized to His death, and so we are "buried with Him." Nothing cuts our links with the world, and separates us from the present order of things, more effectively than death and burial.
That break is easy to admire and hard to accept, which is why the argument turns into a searching question for anyone who has been baptized.
Every passage of Scripture that speaks of baptism sets out death, not life. Baptism marks a definite separation from the whole world-system. From now on we count its aims, its pleasures, its politics, its honours and rewards among the "things that lie behind." But are we really prepared for such a clean sweep as this? This is what our baptism means — but do we mean it? It is easy to boast about a correct mode, while in the heart refusing all that baptism stands for.
Death is not the end of the argument. Baptism commits a Christian to a Christ who is alive, and that life has one direction.
The one baptism is Christian baptism. It commits us to all that is bound up in the truth of Christ Jesus. It announces our identification with the death of our Lord Jesus Christ in all its bearings, and implies our obligation to walk in newness of life. The water we pass under is a picture of death. Understanding our identification with Christ dead and risen again teaches us that we are no longer free to be under sin's dominion, no longer available for sin's control. He — Christ — lives to God. Every pulse, every movement of His risen manhood is Godward, to accomplish God's will and pleasure.
- Death answers the question. Grace does more than give a Christian better motives against sin. It ends the old life, and no one lives in what he has died to.
- Death is what baptism pictures. Not new life, but burial — burial with Christ, the One who died and rose.
- Death separates. A buried man is out of the world's sight, so baptism cuts the links with its aims, pleasures and rewards.
- Death professed must be death meant. Baptism goes no further than profession. Reality rests on faith, and the right form without the heart is empty.
- Death opens onto life. Christ raised lives wholly to God, and baptism commits us to walk in newness of life.
We have been buried therefore with him by baptism unto death, in order that, even as Christ has been raised up from among [the] dead by the glory of the Father, so *we* also should walk in newness of life.
Romans 6 opens with a question: does grace leave us free to keep sinning? Paul answers with a fact, not a rule. The believer has died with Christ, and baptism pictures that burial. This verse then looks past the grave, to a resurrection by the Father's glory and a new way of living that matches it.
The verse answers an objection raised at the start of the chapter.
Is this the conclusion to draw from the gospel of God? May we continue in sin, so that His grace may be displayed more richly? Away with such a thought. The apostle answers this wicked inference, not by showing how evil it is in itself, but by showing that it flatly contradicts Christianity in its first principles. He replies from the starting point of every believer in Christ. Christ did not merely die for our sins, laying us under an infinite obligation; we died to sin. How then shall we go on living in it? This is the meaning of our baptism. It is not some special blessing that only a few Christians have. It is the common property of all the baptized.
Notice how the apostle frames his answer.
He rejects the thought outright and puts it away with another question: "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" Asking it as a question shows how unanswerable he thinks it is. And unanswerable it is, if the premise is taken rightly. If we are dead to sin, then we cannot live in it. That consequence cannot be denied.
One writer stresses what baptism points to, and what it does not do.
Notice, then, that deliverance from sin is not the improvement of self, or of an evil nature — the flesh. Instead, "We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death." We are not baptised to the work of the Spirit in us. We are baptised to His death, who died for us and rose again. So the death that delivers from sin is not a death to sin that we reach by ourselves. It is the death of Christ on the cross, and our identification with it — "buried with him." And notice, there is no thought that baptism gives life. Baptism is to death, and life in the risen Christ is beyond it.
The meaning of this burial is for daily life.
A buried man has died to the scene where he once lived. Now suppose a man goes to his own funeral by his own choice. This is exactly what happens to the believer, and he surely believes he will gain by it. What a loss the believer suffers when he leaves the inner meaning of his baptism out of his daily life!
The verse traces the resurrection to the Father's glory. One writer explains why glory is named.
In relation to God, every attribute of His has been perfectly glorified by the atoning death of our blessed Lord. So the resurrection is said to be "by the glory of the Father." It is as though that glory, which the Son had vindicated and displayed so perfectly, waited for the very first moment at the tomb on the first day of the week. It waited to call the perfect obedient One out from death.
The verse ends by describing how the Christian now lives.
Let us notice the closing words of verse 4, "newness of life," for they give a brief answer to the question the chapter opened with. Instead of continuing in sin, which is in effect continuing to live the old life, we are to walk in a life which is new.
One writer draws out what this new walk aims at.
This suggests to me that there is a realm where everything matches the glory of the Father. That is the realm Christ is in. He has been raised from among the dead by the glory of the Father... It suggests to me that if I am walking in newness of life, the goal before me is the glory of the Father.
Romans speaks of burial with Christ, but not of rising with Him. One writer marks the difference.
He does not say we are risen with Him. That would in itself assume full redemption, with life, and a place and condition before God. Here it is practical — a new character of life. We are to walk in newness of life.
- Died — A fact answers the objection, not a warning: those who died to sin cannot go on living in it.
- Buried — Baptism points to Christ's death. It does not point to self-improvement, and it does not give life. Life lies beyond it, in the risen Christ.
- Raised — Christ came out of the tomb by the Father's glory, because His atoning death had glorified every attribute of God.
- Walking — The new life is practical and present. The glory that raised Christ is now the goal the believer walks towards.
- Not yet risen — Romans stays with burial and a new walk. To say we are risen with Christ would assume more: full redemption and a settled place before God.
For if we are become identified with [him] in the likeness of his death, so also we shall be of [his] resurrection;
Paul has just asked how people who died to sin can keep on living in it, and here is his answer: whoever shares Christ's death shares His resurrection. Older translations say "planted together in the likeness of His death," and writers ask what that joining means and when the resurrection comes.
The verse looks back to baptism. One writer asks what that ceremony means.
What then does baptism mean? It means identification with Christ in His death. It means that we are buried with Him, and that we are put under obligation to walk in newness of life, just as He was raised into a new order of things. This is its meaning and this the obligation it lays on us, and we lose much if we do not know it.
Translators have handled the word behind that older phrase in different ways.
"Identified" seems a loose translation. The word means, as a note on it says, "grown together," and the Revised Version's "united," which most commentators follow, seems better. There is no "Him" in the original, but it is clearly implied. Read that way, the passage argues this: if what baptism stands for is real in the soul, and in it — "the likeness of His death" — they were truly united with Him and not united in profession only, then the result would show in the practical "likeness of His resurrection," that "walk in newness of life" he had spoken of just before.
The logic rests on where Christ Himself stands.
Where the head of the race stands in relation to sin is where everyone under that head stands. Christ has died to sin. Christians, therefore, have died to it. So we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, and now wait for the likeness of His resurrection.
Commentators differ over the timing. Some read the second half as pointing on to the day when God raises the believer's body.
The fifth verse looks on to the future. For, as surely as Christ Himself is raised, we shall be raised in fact, and fully delivered then, even as to our bodies.
One writer uses that certainty against the idea that only some believers will share it. He sums up the verse: "so also we (not some only) shall be of His resurrection" (William Kelly).
Others read the future tense as marking result, not date. The chapter argues about how we live now.
The likeness of His death is baptism itself, and being united to Him in His death is what baptism represents. So if what baptism represents is fulfilled in us, then we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection. This may well go on to full realization in physical resurrection, yet it is surely meant to have a present, practical application as well, in keeping with the whole drift of the thought here. "We shall be" has to be future only when we look at it from the point of union with Him in His death, and its force as an argument for the present is weakened if we limit it to the body.
Another writer puts it in one line. The "shall" of this verse "is not future but consequence" (The Bible Treasury).
One writer points out what Paul does not say here.
He does not go into the truth taught in Ephesians, but we find here what exactly fits the subject he is treating. He does not speak of being made alive together with Christ, or of being raised up and seated in Him in the heavenly places. Instead he says, "If we are planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection."
On this reading the verse points to resurrection life at work in the believer now. The same writer puts it plainly: "if planted in the likeness of His death, we shall be of His resurrection; that is, the power of His life will show itself in us" (J. N. Darby).
- Union. "Planted together" means grown together. It is a real joining with Christ, not one in profession only.
- Death first. Baptism pictures burial with Christ. The verse starts there, and that identification brings an obligation: walk in newness of life.
- Head and members. Christ's condition as to sin settles the condition of all who stand under Him: He died to it, so they have died to it.
- Resurrection follows. The two halves hold together. Commentators differ on "we shall be": some point to the body raised at Christ's coming, some to the result seen now, and several allow both.
- Life shown. Romans holds back the language of being raised and seated with Christ. It presses instead the power of His life at work in the believer's daily walk.
knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with [him], that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin.
This verse tells believers something they are to know. At the cross the person we once were was put to death with Christ, and sin lost its grip as our master.
The phrase does not name a nature living inside us. It pictures a whole person: everything we were as children of Adam, gathered into one figure.
It is not always easy to grasp the thought behind "our old man." One way to explain it is this: the Apostle is personifying all that we are as the natural children of Adam. Imagine a person whose character held every ugly feature ever shown by anyone in Adam's race. That person could be described as "our old man."
The difference between a person and a nature decides where responsibility lies.
Between person and nature there is a real and important difference. If we take the inspired words as a perfect guide — and we should — then "the old man" is person, not nature. This matters, because responsibility belongs to the person and not to the nature. The person is the one who acts.
The verse opens with knowing. So the question is when this crucifixion happened, and whether it waits on our progress.
There is no thought here of this being a state that belongs to some Christians and not to others. It is the very truth of our Christian position. Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified. When? In our experience? That is not the thought here, but "has been crucified with him." Surely that was on the cross. Not only did He, in infinite love, bear our sins on the cross, but our old man was fully judged there too.
Feeling follows the fact; it does not create it.
This verse says nothing about our feeling it. But when faith learns the fact from God, it shapes our moral life, and we know its blessed power.
Crucifixion is a sentence, not a treatment. God did not repair the old man; He condemned and ended him.
To convince us of the hopeless character of this man, God has fully tested the "old man" under every possible test. He has been tried without law, under law, under priesthood, under royalty, and finally by the presence of Christ in grace. Under every test man has broken down. This proves that the old man is completely evil, and that all hope of improving or reforming the "old man" is useless... Sins can be forgiven. But there can be no forgiveness for an evil nature. It can only be condemned and ended.
The manner of the death carries its own verdict, and it was God who assigned it.
There are many forms of death. Crucifixion carries shame and disgrace, and under the law of Moses, a curse. The "old man," because of its evil tendencies, was worthy — in the language of the text — not only of death but of the death of the cross. Man's injustice and malice assigned the Son of Man to death by crucifixion. But it was the justice and grace of God that sentenced our "old man" to be crucified with Christ.
Older translations read "destroyed," but writers call that too strong. The sense is that a power is cancelled, as in "brought to nothing".
The "body of sin" is the whole of sin in its dominating energy. But "our old man is crucified with Him" (Christ) "that the body of sin" (that dominating energy) "might be annulled." "Destroyed" is a wholly incorrect translation. The end in view is "that we should not serve sin."
That cancelling covers sin as a whole, not just the one sin we most want relief from.
We tend to link sin with some particular failing we are prone to — the one where sin's rule over us is felt most. We might be quite content to be free from sin's rule in that one form. But God would have us free from sin's rule as a whole, not just in part... Sin, indeed, still exists, but can have no power over a corpse.
The closing clause shows what problem the chapter solves.
Sin is a master, a slave-owner, and we had fallen under its power. The point discussed in the chapter is not the presence of sin in us but the power of sin over us. We have got our discharge from sin.
- Who. "Our old man" is the whole person we were as children of Adam, personified as one man, not a nature.
- Sentence. God tested that man in every way and found him past mending. Death was the only remedy, and crucifixion was the verdict He assigned.
- Fact. It happened at the cross, not in our experience. Faith knows it because God says so, and feeling follows the fact instead of producing it.
- Effect. Sin's dominating energy is annulled. Sin is cancelled as a power, not removed as a presence, and it has no hold on a corpse.
- Aim. The verse ends in freedom of service. The issue is not sin's presence in us but sin's power over us, and that mastery is broken.
For he that has died is justified from sin.
Paul has just spoken of the old self crucified with Christ, so that sin would no longer be our master. Now he adds a short legal rule, and its force turns on one word: older translations read "justified from sin" here — but which sin does he mean?
Other translations word the end of the verse differently, and that wording carries the true sense of "freed".
So we have this rather abstract statement: "For he that has died is justified from sin" (New Translation). That is the real meaning of the word "freed".
The end of verse 6 sets the picture of sin that runs through the chapter.
Take note of the closing words of verse 6. They show us clearly how this chapter views sin. Sin is a master, a slave-owner, and we had fallen under its power. The point discussed in the chapter is not the presence of sin in us but the power of sin over us. We have got our discharge from sin. We are justified from it, as verse 7 states.
Earlier in Romans the subject was our sins and the blood of Jesus that answers for them. Here God settles a second thing.
We have seen how God justifies His people from their sins by the blood of Jesus. Now we see how He justifies them from sin, the root, or nature. "For he that is dead is justified from sin" (margin). Sins are forgiven, and now sin cannot be charged to him who is dead; he is justified from sin.
Salvation covers both, and each one has its own verse:
Indeed we have a full salvation not only from sins but from sin, justified from the bad fruit (Rom. 5:1), justified from the bad tree (Rom. 6:7).
The argument rests on a fact everyone knows. Death ends every claim an owner had.
God counts us as having died with Christ, and that death has won us complete freedom from slavery to sin. The picture of death settles the matter, and it should silence every doubt about our deliverance. All a person's obligations stop binding him at his death. A purchased slave dies, and his owner can demand no more service from him. Death frees the slave from bondage.
The word "justified" here surprises some readers. They expect the teaching from earlier in the letter. But watch the pronouns.
Up to now Paul has said "we" and "our", and in verse 8 he returns to "we". But verse 7 says "he". That shows he is making a general statement. A dead man's condition is a complete answer to any charge of sin brought against him after his death. So let Christians who have died to sin live and walk as freed from its bondage. The justification here comes from the person's state — he is dead. So do not confuse it with the justification of ungodly people, which has such a prominent place in the Gospel of God. His state as dead blocks every charge of sin after his death. Of course, it says nothing about how he lived before he died. This justification is true of everyone who has died. The justification of Romans 3 is true only of believers.
The obvious objection is that we are still alive, and sin is still in us. The answer points to whose death this is.
Anyone who has done with sin must be dead to it. When a man is dead you cannot charge him with anything; his life has ceased to exist, he is out of the scene. You may say, "How can I be free from sin when I still find it in me?" The thing sin was attached to is gone. We are not told to die, for we are dead... You may ask, "How can that be, when I find I am not dead?" The answer is that you died in Christ. Christ took your place... The freedom we have is holy freedom from sin, not freedom to sin.
That is why the following verses tell us to reckon rather than to feel.
How can I realise that I am dead to sin? All my own experience, my own feelings, my own inner sense of myself seem to contradict this truth flatly. I cannot realise that I am dead; but God tells me I am... If I were sinless, if I had no sin in me, I should never be told to reckon myself dead to sin.
- Discharge. "Set free" renders the word "justified" — a release from every charge, not a change we feel.
- Root. Earlier chapters justify us from sins, the bad fruit; this verse justifies us from sin, the bad tree.
- Death. A dead slave owes his owner nothing; death ends every claim the old master had.
- Distinct. This justification rests on a state — being dead. It differs from the justification of ungodly people in Romans 3, which belongs to believers only.
- Reckon. We died in Christ, not in our feelings. So we count ourselves dead because God says so — free from sin, never free to sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him,
Paul has just spoken of our old self crucified with Christ, and now he draws his conclusion. Death with Christ opens the door into life with Him — but is the "if" a doubt or a fact, and is living with Him ours now or still ahead?
The opening word does not put the believer's death in question. It marks off what is real from what is merely outward, and then reasons forward from it.
Having "died with Christ" is true only of real believers. It is not true of people who have only been baptized into His death and so are identified with Him on the outside. It is the reality of identification with Christ in His death, as also in verse 5. The argument moves from the form to the reality of being identified with His death. From there it moves to being identified with Him in His lasting life in resurrection. If our identification with His death is real — if we have indeed died with Him — faith gives us the assurance that we shall live with Him. It is faith about the future, certainly, but a principle of faith to be put into practice now.
This also settles how we died. It was not an achievement of ours, not even of our renewed will:
He argues that "the one who has died has been justified from sin" — so the Greek [the ESV reads "set free from sin"] — and that "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him." So he is speaking of atonement and what it does for us, not of any work in us... Our dying with Christ is not something accomplished by the energy of our own wills — even of our renewed wills... no one can pretend that Scripture anywhere tells us to die with Christ.
The whole movement of the passage turns here.
Death for the believer is the way into life. So, from speaking of death, the Apostle now passes on to speak of life... Looking into the future the Apostle sets before us the full and glorious result of having died with Christ... Who can grasp the blessedness that lies behind these words, "live with Him"? We know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He became poor and lived with us, full of grace and truth. That, however, was only a means to an end; the glorious end being that we should live with Him.
Commentators are careful about the tense here. The verse names what faith looks for, not what we already hold.
Verse 8 repeats the conclusion as to the future which follows from the death and resurrection of Christ... Our condition when we are risen is once more looked forward to and set out.
Some writers see this verse as the far edge of what Romans says about resurrection. From here the theme passes on to other letters:
In Romans the believer is dead with Christ to sin, dead to the law, but not risen. Romans 6 does not go so far as being risen with Christ... The nearest approach to it is the statement of Romans 6:8... and this verse leads us on towards Colossians. It presents this as a result of the doctrine unfolded there, forming the link with that letter.
Notice where the certainty comes from. It is not found by looking inward.
Verses 8-10 make one thing very clear. The Spirit of God sets aside the natural ideas and guesses of the mind. In their place He gives the view from outside ourselves: what Christ has been and is — both His past sufferings and His eternal condition as the now re-established heir of liberty in resurrection. "We believe that we shall live with Him, knowing that He dies no more," and so on. The whole ground of confidence moves from self to Christ.
Why give up what this world offers and walk a different path? The answer lies outside this world.
These two things are worth weighing. Resurrection and living with Him are both in view, and both look on to the future. What would be the use of giving up life in this world and walking in this path? None, if we did not know that the newness of life we have now really belongs to another sphere — the sphere we are going into at the appearing of Christ.
- Died. The "if" tests what is real, not what is likely. Every true believer has already died with Christ. Baptism without faith is only the outward form.
- Given. That death happened in His atonement, not by the energy of our own wills. Scripture never tells us to die with Christ.
- Believed. The Spirit sets our own ideas and guesses aside. Confidence moves off self and onto Christ, who dies no more.
- Ahead. "We shall live with Him" is future — Romans stops short of saying we are risen with Christ, and points on to that hope.
- Now. The coming sphere gives the present path its point: newness of life here belongs to the world we are going to.
knowing that Christ having been raised up from among [the] dead dies no more death has dominion over him no more.
Paul has just said that we died with Christ and will live with Him. Verse 9 rests that hope on one fact: the risen Christ stands outside death's reach forever, and our position hangs on His.
The verse opens with what we know. One writer separates two kinds of knowing in this chapter.
We know that our old self has been crucified with Christ only because we are taught it, as a truth outside us. Many would like to make this a matter of inner experience, but it is not. That would flatter the flesh in its religious moods and longings, instead of honouring the grace of God in the death of Christ. On the other hand, we have an inward, conscious knowledge that Christ, being raised, will never die again: death no longer has dominion over Him. This is not just an outward fact we are told. We feel in our soul that it is so, and must be so. Sin never had dominion over Him, but death did — so that God would be glorified, sin judged, Satan's power destroyed, and we set free.
The words "no longer" imply that death once did hold Him. But it never held Him against His will.
So death had no dominion over Him except as He submitted to it. Having done so, He is finished with that responsible order of life which death applied to — the order that sin attached to in you and me. The Father raised Him from the dead by His glory, and He has left forever the condition that death's dominion belonged to — a condition He had once entered by His own choice.
Others in Scripture were raised and later died. This verse rules that out for Christ — and, by the same pattern, for those who belong to Him.
The resurrection of God's people will match their Lord's in character. Lazarus died again — otherwise he would be on earth today. But Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him (Rom. 6:9). And Scripture says of God's people: "those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore" (Luke 20:35-36).
The verse says He will never die again. One writer explains why He had to die even once.
He came about sin, to take our place as sinners, and He died to sin. He died out of grace toward us, and He died with sin in view. He did it once, when, for our sakes, He needed to do it — and He did it once for all. It was a work He had to do about sin, and He has done it. He has nothing more to do with sin. He will judge sinners, no doubt, but He is finished with sin, finished with being occupied with it, once and for ever. Up to the cross He, the sinless One, had to deal with sin. On the cross sin was the whole question, though it was for the glory of God that He was made sin. But now He has done with it once and for ever.
Verse 8 said we shall live with Him. Verse 9 tells us what that life is like, because His life sets its measure.
"Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him." The life that has now begun is bound up with His life and depends on it, just as the death we have been considering is bound up with His death. So that life is changeless, eternal, beyond the power of death.
Commentators press this beyond the future and into the present.
He no longer lives under sin's dominion. In grace He once came under it, but by dying and rising again He now lives in eternal deliverance from sin's power. As people who are under grace — as being in Him — we are in the same sphere of life He is in, where sin cannot enter. It is not simply that we have life in Him; we live with Him. And living with Him means living in practical deliverance from sin's dominion.
- Dominion, submitted to. Sin never ruled Christ. Death did — but only because He chose to enter that condition, for God's glory and our freedom.
- Dominion, broken. Lazarus died again; Christ never will. He has left death's order of life behind forever, and His people's resurrection will match His.
- Dominion, done with. He dealt with sin once for all at the cross. Now He has nothing more to do with it.
- Dominion, shared. Our new life is tied to His life, and so carries His character: changeless, eternal, beyond death's power.
- Dominion, in practice. We live with Him where sin cannot enter. So freedom from sin's rule is meant for today, not only for the resurrection.
For in that he has died, he has died to sin once for all; but in that he lives, he lives to God.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
So also *ye*, reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul has just said that Christ died to sin once and now lives to God. Now he turns that fact on the believer with one command — so what does it ask of me, and how can I count myself dead to sin while sin still stirs inside me?
The ESV says "consider"; the writers quoted here use the older wording, "reckon." The command rests on facts already settled:
Once we know this, the reckoning commanded in verse 11 becomes perfectly plain to us. Our case is governed by Christ's, for we are identified with Him. Did He die to sin? Then we are dead to sin, and so we reckon it. Does He now live to God? Then we now live to God, and so we reckon it. Our reckoning is not make-believe. We are dead to sin and alive to God by His own acts, accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ.
The word "likewise" sets the believer's death to sin on the same footing as Christ's:
Now notice what follows. Everyone believes verse 10 is true of the blessed Lord. Nobody believes that He died to the love or the practice of sin, but to sin itself. But what does verse 11 say? "Likewise reckon" — that is, account. "Likewise" means "in the same way." It plainly means that the believer is to reckon himself dead to sin and alive to God in the same sense that Christ is.
It is an accounting word, not a report on my inner state:
I would not have to reckon if I were really dead, and the context makes that clear. "Reckon" is the estimate I form by faith of my condition and standing. It is the estimate of my faith, not a statement about the state I am in. The same is true of "alive": the statement here is not that I have life, but that I account myself so.
Turning this into a matter of experience leads to one of two bad ends:
We reckon this so, we do not feel it to be so. It is an entire mistake to imagine that this being dead to sin is a feeling or an experience. That mistake carries serious consequences. We cannot feel Christ's death on the cross, and it was there He died to sin, and we because He died. If it were experience, it would have to be a perfect one — never an evil thought, feeling, or desire in the heart. And that would be true of all Christians always, not just the more advanced. This is contrary to everyone's experience. Trying to produce such a condition in oneself ends in the misery of utter failure, or, worse still, in self-satisfaction.
The verse has a negative side and a positive one, and neither stands alone:
In the same way we are responsible to reckon for ourselves. As to sin — dead TO IT; as to God — alive IN CHRIST JESUS. It is not that sin is dead; it is that we reckon that in Christ's death we have died to it. It is not that we already have our resurrection bodies; it is that we reckon that in Christ Jesus we are alive to God.
Where does the right to reckon come from? One writer answers with a picture:
An illustration may help. Suppose you had committed murder. Someone else was accepted as your substitute and hanged instead of you. The person who took your place would certainly be dead indeed to sin. And would you not clearly be entitled to take the same position? So it is with the believer. Christ has died on our behalf. The value of His death is all for us. Our connection with it is of the most vital kind. It is in Him that we can reckon ourselves "dead indeed to sin."
Reckoning is not the same as realising, and the command itself shows that sin has not left the believer:
Note carefully the force of the apostle's word, "reckon." How very different it is from our word "realise"! We can realise natural or physical facts. But with a spiritual truth, it is not a question of realising but of reckoning. How can I realise that I am dead to sin? All my experience, my feelings and my inner sense of myself seem to contradict the truth flatly. I cannot realise that I am dead; but God tells me I am... If I were sinless, if I had no sin in me, I would never be told to reckon myself dead to sin. I would never need to hear the words, "Let not sin reign in your mortal body."
- Ground. Christ died to sin once and now lives to God. Your reckoning agrees with what God has already done in that death and resurrection.
- Gauge. "Reckon" is an accounting word — the estimate faith forms of my standing, not a report on how I feel.
- Guard. Treating this as experience ends in either the misery of failure or self-satisfaction.
- Grip. Hold both halves — dead to sin and alive to God — and hold them only "in Christ Jesus," where His death counts as mine.
- Goal. Sin still lives in the believer. That is exactly why God commands the reckoning — so sin does not reign.