What does it mean to be dead to sin (Romans 6:11)?

Now mark what follows; all believe this verse to be quite true of the blessed Lord. None believe that He died to the love or the practice of sin, but to sin itself. But what does verse 11 say? "Likewise reckon," not, observe, realise, that we could never do, but, "reckon" — account, "ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Surely nothing could possibly be plainer than this in the reckoning of faith. "Likewise" — in like manner plainly means, that the believer is to reckon himself dead to sin and alive unto God in the same sense that Christ is. He who denies this, does violence to the word, casts an indignity on the work of Christ, and reaps, as the fruit of his unbelief, a harvest of doubts and fears.

When once we do know, the reckoning enjoined 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 mere make-believe. It is not that we try to reckon ourselves to be what in point of fact we are not. The very reverse. We are dead to sin and alive to God by His own acts, accomplished in the death and resurrection of Christ (to be made effectual in us by His Spirit, as we shall see later on) and that being so, we are to accept it and adjust our thoughts to it. As things are, so we are to reckon.

We reckon this so, not feel it to be so. It is an entire mistake, and fraught with important consequences, to imagine this being dead to sin to be feeling or experience. 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 be an absolutely perfect one, no evil thought, feeling, or desire, ever in the heart; and this not true of some of the more advanced, but of all Christians always; but this is contrary to the experience of all. The attempt to produce such a condition in oneself ends in the misery of utter failure, or, still worse, in self-satisfaction, indeed, the well-nigh incredible delusion for a Christian man, that he is as impassive to sin as Christ Himself! The words do not, as already said, express such an experience; as indeed, in any such sense as this, Christ never died to sin: what for us might be the expression of perfection would be the denial of such perfection as was His. In every way, then, in which we look at it, it is plain that it is not an experience of which the apostle is speaking here. We could not be told to reckon that we experience: what we reckon is a fact for faith, the fruit of the work done for us, not of that done in us: because Christ died unto sin once for all, and in that He liveth, liveth unto God, thus also do we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

p207 Dear J James, - I do not understand what people mean by being actually dead, seeing they are living at -. But patience clearly is our part. It is not like a heresy: it is only an absurdity. If they hold the flesh to be really gone, then indeed it is a mischievous error. I should not have to reckon were I really dead, and the context makes it clear. "Reckon" (Rom. 6:11) is the estimate I form according to faith of my condition and standing, the estimate of my faith, not a statement as to the state I am in; and this is equally true as to "alive." But the statement here is not that I have life, but that I so account of myself. But when he adds, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to obey it in the lusts thereof," it is a plain testimony that it is not gone, or it would be a very poor conclusion - besides other passages, that "the flesh lusts against the Spirit," and that "if we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves." The "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," is assuredly the holding the flesh practically dead. The circumstances which tested it, delivered to death, are in the following verse.

In like manner are we responsible to reckon for ourselves. As to sin — dead TO IT: as to God — alive IN CHRIST JESUS (N. T.). It is not that sin is dead; but we reckon that in Christ's death, we have died to it. It is not that we actually have our resurrection bodies as yet; but we reckon that in Christ Jesus, we are alive to God.

For those, then, who have life in Christ, that they are "dead with Christ" has the very deepest meaning. It speaks, not of an inward change, but of a change of relation. It is that in which our relation to the old creation is judicially ended. In this sense, as a question of liability on this ground, we have died to sin, and to have died to sin is to be justified from it. This, then, is the fact for every child of God; but it is a fact, not to be felt or experienced, but reckoned; not for sense or of attainment, but a basis-fact for faith. "In that Christ died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. So," as the word is better, reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:10-11, R.V.).

Here we are exhorted to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God. It must be carefully observed that this is an exercise of faith. If we consider ourselves conscientiously we shall find ourselves capable of sinning, if not actually sinning. We fail to find inward or subjective evidence that we are dead to sin. But faith accepts the testimony of the word of God that I am associated with Christ in both death and resurrection. Hence I am dead to the dominant power of sin and alive heavenward. This status I must accept if I believe God rather than self.

"Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey its lusts."* (Ver. 12.) The truth is then, not that sin is dead, but that we are entitled by Christ's death and resurrection to regard ourselves in the account of faith as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign. It is personified here as elsewhere sometimes, 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 He lives to God who died to sin once for all, so also we are to reckon ourselves done with the dominion of sin and not to obey its lusts. As dead to sin we owe it no allegiance whatever.

A Christ in death, with whom before God the believer is identified, is a Christ dead to sin, as having, in that death, ended for ever all connection and association with it. He not only died FOR our sins, as in the early part of Romans, but He died TO sin, as one who loses his life FOR another also dies TO all that with which he stood connected in life. Hence, as divinely parallel, the believer, being identified with Christ's death, his relation to sin within is set forth in the words, "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus." Christ's attitude in death to sin becomes, by virtue of the believer's identification with Him in death, his attitude morally, but in the form of an assumed relation; i.e., reckoning himself dead, the only divine, legitimate sequence to having died with Christ. * This, practically carried out, involves not responding to, or obeying, the nature which seeks to dominate. This is the substance of the apostle's further communication, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." (v. 12.) "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead" (v. 13); i.e., after the pattern of one raised up from death, and now energized only by what is of God, and not of sin within.

Romans 6 teaches that as many of us as were baptised unto Christ Jesus were baptised unto His death. He died to sin once, and I, having been buried with Him by baptism unto death, am called to reckon myself to be dead unto sin, that I should walk in newness of life. "Sin," my old master, had its erst dominion over me, but faith accepts the truth of the chapter, that my death with Christ has released me from sin's jurisdiction, and the Lord Jesus is now my Master. "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:8). The "sin" that dwelleth in me is not gone, but it has been condemned in the cross of Christ (8:3), and it shall not have dominion over me. The Christian's responsibility is "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body that ye should obey its lusts," nor yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. Being freed from this tyrant, we own our allegiance to righteousness, and have become servants to God.