Personal Responsibility
Week of July 24, 2011
Bible Verses: Romans
6:8-18.
Lesson Focus: This
lesson is about how Christians can continually live out their freedom in
Christ.
Embrace Your New Identity: Romans
6:8-11.
[8] Now if we have
died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. [9] We know that Christ, being raised from the
dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.
[10] For the death he
died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. [11] So you also must consider yourselves dead to
sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
[ESV]
Verses 6-7
elaborated the implication of Christ’s death in relation to us, namely that our
former self was crucified with Him. Now verses 8-9 elaborate the implication of
His resurrection, again in relation to us, namely that we will also live with
Him. Will live refers both to our
sharing Christ’s life now and to our sharing His resurrection on the last day.
Life is resurrection anticipated; resurrection is life consummated. The
guarantee of the continuing nature of our new life, beginning now and lasting
forever, is to be found in Christ’s resurrection. Christ was not resuscitated
but raised to an altogether new plane of living, from which there will never be
any question of return [9]. Having been delivered from its tyranny, He has
passed beyond its jurisdiction forever. Although Paul implies that death and
life belong together and must never be separated, he also indicates that there
are radical differences between them. There is a difference of time (the past
event of death, the present experience of life), of nature (He died to sin,
bearing its penalty, but lives to God, seeking His glory), and of quality (the
death once for all, the resurrection life continuous). These differences are of
importance for our understanding not only of the work of Christ but also of our
Christian discipleship, which, by our union with Christ, begins with a
once-for-all death to sin and continues with an unending life of service to
God. We died with Christ [6-7]; we have risen with Christ [8-9]. Our old life
terminated with the judicial death it deserved; our new life began with a
resurrection. We could put it in this way. If Christ’s death was a death to
sin, and if His resurrection was a resurrection to God, and if by faith-baptism
we have been united to Christ in His death and resurrection, then we ourselves
have died to sin and risen to God. We must therefore consider (reckon, regard, look upon, count) ourselves dead to sin
but alive to God by reason of our union with Christ Jesus. We are to realize
and remember that our former self did die with Christ, thus putting an end to
its career. We are to consider what in fact we are, namely dead to sin and alive to God, like Christ. Once we grasp this, that
our old life has ended, with the score settled, the debt paid and the law
satisfied, we shall want to have nothing more to do with it. So the major
secret of holy living is in the mind. It is in knowing [6] that our former self
was crucified with Christ, in knowing [3] that baptism into Christ is baptism
into His death and resurrection, and in considering [11] that through Christ we
are dead to sin and alive to God. We are to recall, to ponder, to grasp, to
register these truths until they are so integral to our mindset that a return
to the old life is unthinkable. Regenerate Christians should no more
contemplate a return to unregenerate living than adults to their childhood,
married people to their singleness or discharged prisoners to their prison
cell. For our union with Jesus Christ has severed us from the old life and
committed us to the new. Our baptism stands between the two like a door between
two rooms, closing on the one and opening into the other. We have died, and we
have risen. How can we possibly live again in what we have died to?
Fight Sin: Romans
6:12-14.
[12] Let not sin
therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. [13] Do not present your members to sin as instruments
for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been
brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for
righteousness. [14] For sin will have no
dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. [ESV]
Moving from thought
to action, Paul now spells out just what it will mean for the believer to consider yourselves dead to sin and alive
to God [11]. He uses two prohibitions (let
not sin … do not present [12-13]) and one command (present yourselves[13]) to make his point. Let not sin therefore reign is matched by the promise at the end of
this small unit of verses that sin will
have no dominion over you [14]. Without this promise, which recapitulates a
main emphasis of verses 1-11, the imperative would be futile. Paul urges his
readers not to let sin reign in your
mortal body, which refers to the whole person in terms of the person’s
interaction with the world. The battle is a spiritual one, but it is fought,
and won or lost, in the daily decisions the believer makes about how to use their
body. In characterizing the body as mortal,
Paul is reminding us that the same body that has been severed from its
servitude to sin is nevertheless a body that still participates in the
weakness, suffering, and dissolution of this age. Until we are fully redeemed
[8:23] and put on immortality [1 Cor. 15:53], we will continue to be subject to
the influences of this age; and the believer must not let these influences hold
sway. The Christian is no longer body of sin [6:6] or body of death [7:24], but
he or she is still mortal body. The mortal body is, then, the believer’s form
of existence in this world, which still has part in this age. It is because of
this that Paul can in the last clause of verse 12 relate the body so closely to
sin: to make you obey its passions.
Passions refers to desires that are in conflict with the will of God. These
passions would include not only the physical lusts and appetites but also those
desires that reside in the mind and will: the desire to have our own way, the
desire to possess what other people have, the desire to have dominance over
others. The imperatives of verse 13 unfold in more specific and practical terms
the general command let not sin
therefore reign [12]. If body in verse 12 means the person in contact with
the world, then members also will
mean natural capacities rather than limbs, or parts of the body. Paul’s command
is that Christians not present these
members as instruments for
unrighteousness. Now that we understand ourselves to be dead to sin and
alive to God, we must constantly avoid using our abilities and resources in the
service of sin. The words Paul chooses here fit well with his focus throughout
this passage on the concepts of rulership and domination. Our natural
capacities are weapons that we are not to offer in service to the tyrant sin.
Since sin is no longer our ruler, we must stop letting it reign over us, and
stop serving it as if it were our rightful sovereign. Those natural capacities
and abilities that God has given us are weapons that must no longer be put in
the service of the master from whom we have been freed. The renunciation of our
service to sin is to be followed immediately by our enlisting in the service of
a new master: God. There can be no neutral position between service of God and
service of sin. By characterizing those whom he commands as those who have been brought from death to life, Paul reminds us
that this presenting of ourselves to God can take place only because of the new
state we find ourselves in as a result of our union with Christ in His death
and resurrection. The bodily resurrection lies ahead, but there has already
taken place a spiritual resurrection that introduces the believer into a new
life in God’s service. Paul adds one last characterization of believers,
completing the contrasting parallel with the first part of the verse. What we
are to offer to God are your members …
as instruments for righteousness. The members
that were once used as weapons in the service of sin and for unrighteous
purposes are now to be used as weapons in God’s service, for righteous purposes
signifying behavior pleasing to God. After the imperatives of verses 11-13,
this short paragraph concludes with a return to the indicative. For sin will have no dominion over you
grounds the specific commands of verses 12-13 while summarizing the keynote of
the chapter. Sin is again personified as power. To put a stop to the reign of
sin – to stop engaging in those sins that have too often become so habitual that
we cannot imagine not doing them – is a daunting responsibility. We feel that
we must fail. But Paul then reminds us of just what we have become in Jesus
Christ: dead to sin but alive to God. This promise is confirmed by the
assurance that you are not under law but
under grace. To be under the law
means to be subject to the curse of the law that comes because of the
inevitable failure to accomplish the law. But confining the phrase only to the
notion of condemnation fails to grasp the salvation-historical contrast that
Paul sets up here. As in John 1:17, law and grace contrast the old age of
bondage with the new age of freedom. Under law, then, is another way of
characterizing the old realm. This explains why Paul can make release from the
law a reason for the Christian’s freedom from the power of sin. As he has
repeatedly stated, the Mosaic law has had a definite sin-producing and
sin-intensifying function: it has brought knowledge of sin [3:20], wrath
[4:15], transgression [5:13-14], and an increase in the severity of sin [5:20].
The law, as Paul puts it in 1 Cor. 15:56 is the power of sin. This means,
however, that there can be no final liberation from the power of sin without a
corresponding liberation from the power and lordship of the law. To be under
law is to be subject to the constraining and sin-strengthening regime of the
old age; to be under grace is to be subject to the new age in which freedom
from the power of sin is available. No longer is our relationship with God
based on our obedience to the law. Instead we are now God’s children because we
trust in the work of grace on the Cross.
Indicative and Imperative.
Romans 6 is the classic biblical text on the importance of relating the
indicative of what God has done for us with the imperative of what we are to
do. Paul stresses that we must actualize in daily experience the freedom from
sin’s lordship that is ours in Christ Jesus. State is to become reality; we are
to become what we are – or, with due recognition of the continuing work of God
in our lives, we might say become what you are becoming. Balance on this point
is essential. Indicative and imperative must be neither divided nor confused.
If divided, with justification and sanctification put into separate
compartments, we can forget that true holiness of life comes only as the
outworking and realization of the life of Christ in us. This leads to a
moralism or legalism in which the believer goes it on his own, thinking that
holiness will be attained through sheer effort, or ever more elaborate
programs, or ever-increasing numbers of rules. But if indicative and imperative
are confused, with justification and sanctification collapsed together into
one, we can neglect the fact that the outworking of the life of Christ in us is
made our responsibility. This neglect leads to an unconcern with holiness of
life, or to a God-does-it-all attitude in which the believer thinks to become
holy through a kind of spiritual osmosis. Paul makes it clear, by the sequence
in this paragraph, that we can live a holy life only as we appropriate the
benefits of our union with Christ. But he also makes it clear, because there is
a sequence, that living the holy life is distinct from (but not separate from)
what we have attained by our union with Christ and that holiness of life can be
stifled if we fail continually to appropriate and put to work the new life God
has given us.
Walk in Righteousness: Romans
6:15-18.
[15] What then? Are
we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
[16] Do you not know
that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of
the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience,
which leads to righteousness? [17] But
thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient
from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, [18] and, having been set free from sin, have
become slaves of righteousness. [ESV]
[15-16] Verse 15 is clearly parallel to
verse 1. Substantially the same question is being asked in both verses, namely
whether grace sanctions sin, and even encourages it. And in both cases it calls
forth from the apostle the same vehement protest: By no means! Paul makes two significant shifts of emphasis in the
two sections. First, although he develops the same argument that freedom to sin
is fundamentally incompatible with our Christian reality, he describes this in
terms of our being united to Christ in verses 3-14 and of our being enslaved to
God in verses 16-23. It is not only the figure of speech which is different,
however, namely dead to sin and alive to
God [11] and free from sin and …
slaves of God [22]. It is also and secondly how these radical changes came
about. The emphasis of the former is on what was done to us (we were united to
Christ), while the emphasis of the latter is on what we did (we offered
ourselves to God to obey Him). The passive statement alludes to our baptism (we
were baptized), whereas the active is properly called conversion (we turned from
sin to God), although of course only grace enabled us to do it. What Paul does
in the second half of Romans 6 is to draw out the logic of our conversion, as
in the first half he has drawn out the logic of our baptism. In both cases his
argument begins with the same astonished question, Do you not know? [3,16], and continues by probing our understanding
of our Christian beginnings. Since through baptism we were united to Christ,
and in consequence are dead to sin and alive to God, how can we possibly live
in sin? Since through conversion we offered ourselves to God to be His slaves,
and in consequence are committed to obedience, how can we possibly claim
freedom to sin? Verse 16 presents Paul’s basic question to his readers. His
point is that those who thus offered themselves invariably had their offer
accepted. They could not expect to give themselves to a slave-master and
simultaneously retain their freedom. It is the same with spiritual slavery.
Self-surrender leads inevitably to slavery, whether we thus become slaves to
sin which leads to death, or to obedience which leads to righteousness. The
notion of slavery to sin is readily intelligible [see John 8:34], and so is the
fact that it leads to death (separation from God both here and hereafter),
since at the end of the chapter Paul will refer to death as the wages which sin
pays [23]. It is less easy, however, to understand his apparently inexact
parallels. As the alternative to being slaves to sin one might have expected
slaves to Christ, rather than slaves to obedience, and as the alternative to
death the expectation would be life rather than righteousness. Yet the idea of
being obedient to obedience is a dramatic way of emphasizing that obedience is
the very essence of slavery, and righteousness in the sense of justification is
almost a synonym of life. At least Paul’s general meaning is beyond doubt.
Conversion is an act of self-surrender; self-surrender leads inevitably to
slavery; and slavery demands a total, radical, exclusive obedience. For no one
can be the slave of two masters. So, once we have offered ourselves to Christ
as His slaves, we are permanently and unconditionally at His disposal. There is
no possibility of going back on this. Having chosen our master, we have no
further choice but to obey him.
[17-18] Having laid down the principle
that surrender leads to slavery, Paul applies it to his Roman readers,
reminding them that their conversion involved an exchange of slaveries. Indeed,
so complete is the change which has taken place in their lives that he breaks
out into a spontaneous doxology: But
thanks be to God. He then sums up their experience in four stages, which
concern what they used to be (slaves to
sin), what they did (obedient from
the heart), what happened to them (set
free from sin) and what they had become (slaves of righteousness). First, you were once slaves of sin. Paul does not mince his words. All human
beings are slaves, and there are only two slaveries, to sin and to God.
Conversion is a transfer from the one to the other. Secondly, you have become obedient from the heart to the
standard of teaching to which you were committed. This is a most unusual
description of conversion. Here it is not God or Christ whom they are said to
have obeyed, but a certain standard of
teaching. This must have been a pattern of sound teaching, or structure of
apostolic instruction, which probably included both elementary gospel doctrine
and elementary personal ethics. Paul evidently sees conversion not only as
trusting in Christ but as believing and acknowledging the truth. Moreover, Paul
writes not that this teaching was committed to them, but that they were
committed to it. Thirdly, the Romans have been
set free from sin, emancipated from its slavery. Not that they have become
perfect, for they are still capable of sinning, but rather that they have been
decisively rescued out of the lordship of sin into the lordship of God, out of
the dominion of darkness into the kingdom of Christ. In consequence, fourthly,
they have become slaves of righteousness.
So decisive is this transfer by the grace and power of God from the slavery of
sin to the slavery of righteousness that Paul cannot restrain himself from
thankfulness to God for this great conversion.
Questions for
Discussion:
1. What does Paul mean by consider
yourselves dead to sin and alive to God?
2. How do we put our being dead
to sin and alive to God into practice in our daily Christian walk?
3. What role does the
promise in 6:14 play in enabling believers to obey the commands of 6:13? How
does faith in the promise strengthen us in our battle against our sinful
passions?
4. Paul presents his basic
question in 6:16: To whom are you a slave: sin or obedience? Christ has
redeemed all believers out of slavery to sin. But now we are to live as slaves
of righteousness. How are we to do this? What have we learned from 6:8-14
that shows us how to live in light of our becoming obedient from the heart?
References:
The Epistle to
the Romans, Douglas Moo, Eerdmans.
Romans, Thomas Schreiner, ECNT, Baker.
Romans, John Stott, Inter Varsity.