Romans 6:6–13

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

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."

Our responsibility is bound up with what Christ has already accomplished... It is to "reckon" ourselves dead to sin. We must meet every evil suggestion, craving and impulse that rises within us by remembering that we have died with Christ. This act of faith is the secret of strength to overcome. Only in this way can believers obey the apostle's command: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body."

The flesh exists in the believer and will be there to the end... In Romans 6 we read, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." Such an instruction would be pointless if the flesh were not in the believer... There is a great difference between dwelling and reigning. It dwells in a believer, but it reigns in an unbeliever.

Not, let it not be, but Let it not reign: a very small result if we were actually and experimentally dead to it.

Verse 12 has three things in view: the evil principle of sin, or self-will, the mortal body, and the lusts of the body. Sin is the determination to do one's own will by satisfying lust. The body is the instrument for satisfying the lust. We are still in these mortal bodies, and the principle of sin is still in us. But if we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ, our mortal bodies will in practice be free from the rule of sin.

Paul calls the body our "mortal body," or body of death, because it is in our present body that sin seeks to reign to death (see Rom. 5:21).

The truth is then, not that sin is dead. Christ's death and resurrection entitle us to regard ourselves, in the reckoning of faith, as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus... Sin is spoken of here as a person, as it sometimes is elsewhere, seeking the upper hand in our mortal body so as to subject us to its lusts. But through Christ it has no claim over us... As dead to sin we owe it no allegiance whatever.

The truth behind this command is that by nature the evil principle inside us rules us completely. Selfish pursuits and pleasures carry away the whole person. The gospel delivers us from this slavery and brings us under a new Master, even Jesus the Lord.

I cannot rid myself of the enemy. But God has judged it, and I have only to act on that judgment. I must keep it in the place of death where He has already put it. So we are not told to expel sin, to root it out, to cast it away from us, as moralists, and even clergy who do not know the Scriptures, sometimes urge us to do. We are told not to let it reign. That is, we must keep it under, in the place and under the sentence of death already passed on it... Indwelling sin is strong and active, yet He who tells us to reckon ourselves dead to it has supplied the power to obey. The Spirit of God is our strength in this warfare, the all-sufficient power He gives so that we can keep sin from reigning in our mortal body.

While sin is in our mortal body, it has no more right to reign there. However it will reign, if we yield to the desires of the old nature... Whenever temptation comes, the believer must take refuge in prayer, self-judgment and self-surrender. He must present his members afresh as instruments of righteousness to God... Therefore sin shall not have dominion over a believer because he is under grace. But we must take hold of this promise by faith.

"Free" has a double sense in English. People say, "that horse is free from vice," meaning he has none at all. But suppose a man had been a slave and he is now free: we are "free from sin" in that sense. He does not say to a person who has never turned to God, "Give yourself to God." He says, "Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life." You have died in Christ. As those alive from the dead, what are you going to do with yourselves? Give yourselves to God, completely... God comes in. Grace cleanses us from guilt, then He says: "Now you are set free, and you have the privilege and title of giving yourselves."

The first occurrence of "yield" means, in the form of the word, the habit of yielding; the second, by its form, implies the surrender already made. This is not a gradual improvement of the nature or the will, as people speak of it. It is giving ourselves up to God in one complete act, as those alive from among the dead, and giving our members to God as instruments of righteousness.

In Romans 6:13 the Apostle had indicated that the way of deliverance from the service of sin was to yield ourselves to God, and our members as instruments of righteousness to God. We were to have the thing done, definitely and for ever, as a settled thing... Once each of us held his body as the vehicle in which his own will would be expressed. Once we each said in effect, "I am the captain of my body and it shall serve my pleasures."

Notice that in giving ourselves to God, it is not only the details of conduct that are mentioned, and not only our members. The order is first, "present yourselves to God," and afterwards "your members." What rich and profitable teaching this is!... It is one thing to try to make my conduct fit God's desires. It is another to give myself to Him. But once I have given myself fully and held nothing back, let my members become steady "instruments for righteousness."

This yielding is a very practical thing, as verse 13 makes plain. It affects all the members of our bodies. In the past, sin enlisted every member in its service, so each one became an instrument of unrighteousness. Is it not a wonderful thing that every member may now serve God? Our feet may run His errands. Our hands may do His work. Our tongues may speak His praise.

The Christian is called to put these members of the flesh to death... The members of which the Apostle speaks in that passage can hardly refer to the members of the body. Far from putting the parts of our bodies to death, Romans 6 tells us to give our members to God as instruments. The members here seem to be all the sinful things through which the flesh expresses itself, just as the actual parts of the body are the instruments it uses for its own service.

But note this well. The source of practical power — and that is the real question — is grace: "sin will have no dominion over you, SINCE you are not under law but under grace." If God and sin are in question, God is without doubt the strongest!