Shall We Go on Sinning?

Shall We Go on Sinning?

Romans 6:1-14

What Shall We Say, Then?

In Chapter 6, Paul returns to the present to consider how the gift of God should change our lives. In verses 1-4, he presents an option we are supposed to recognize as ridiculous, when he asks if we should go on sinning. He is back to arguing both sides of the case, when he suggests that we should continue in sin, so that grace may continue. Paul calls on the symbolism of baptism to say that we have followed Christ in his death and resurrection, raised to a news life, so that our former ways must end.

The idea is a preposterous one, of course, and one we would we would not consider today. We would not, for example, think that we can continue to live as we like, as long as we come to church on Sunday – most Sundays, anyway. We would not believe that we can compartmentalize our lives between the sacred and the secular, and think that what we do in the one has no effect on the other. We would not seek gain for ourselves at the cost of the poor and oppressed. Or would we?

The Body of Sin

In verses 5-7, Paul goes on to say that we are free from sin, because our old self is dead. But is that the way it seems? Does it feel like we are free from sin, or that sin still has a hold over us? Is there something wrong with those of us who still feel captive to sin? In the next chapter, we will read that Paul himself remained a slave to sin, “What I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (7:14b) So how can he say we are free from sin?

When Paul says that we are dead to sin, he did not mean that we will never sin again, but that we are free from the obligation of sin. We have been raised to a new life, and Paul is clear that this new life should be different from our old life. How can the new life be different if we still sin? The first difference is that we know we are sinners. This knowledge must change our lives, but the change is in what we desire, and not what we achieve.

Death no Longer Has Mastery

We must remember, in reading verses 8-10, that when Paul says “we believe that we will also live with him” he is not making some weaker statement than when he says we known that Christ was raised from the dead. As we have seen, the English words “believe” and “faith” are both translated from the same Greek root, as the verb form and the noun form, respectively. When he says we believe this and we know that, he is not talking about something we are still skeptical of, that might be true and might not, but something we know by faith to be true and certain.

Later on, Paul will tell us that “the wages of sin is death.” (6:23a) Here, Paul says Christ paid that debt for us that we might be saved from death. This is a promise for the future, when we will follow our Lord through death into the eternal presence of God, but it is also a promise for the present, for eternity has already begun, and we have begun our eternal life in Christ. The life we once lived, we lived to sin, now we must live to God.

Instruments of Righteousness

The transition in verses 11-14 is characteristic of Paul. He can speak of lofty things; he can make strict, legal arguments, and then transition to simple, practical things. In this passage he gets down to basics: we must not let our bodies rule over us. If this immediately makes us think sins of a sexual nature, then Paul was right to admonish us, if that is where our minds are. But the body also wants food and comfort and security, and what it wants, it wants in excess. More is always better, where the body is concerned.

But Paul is not alone in the idea that we must die to self and control the appetite of our mortal bodies. In Matthew 16:24-26, the Lord himself tells us that we must each take up our cross and follow him. “What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

Paul exhorts us to offer our bodies as instruments of righteousness. How can the very instruments of wickedness become instruments of righteousness? In the same way that we mere humans can become children of God. It is his doing, and not ours.