Romans 6 — dead to sin, alive to God: what changed when you were saved

Through Romans, part 10 · Romans 6

Paul started with condemnation, moved to justification, and now comes to sanctification. We've covered our position in Christ — declared righteous. Now we come to our practice in Christ — living righteously.

Justification and sanctification

Sanctification means set apart, made holy, cut away — from the power of sin, the world system, and the devil, and unto Jesus. It helps to lay the two side by side.

Justification is what God has done for me: my legal standing before Him, righteousness imputed, one time, an act, a heavenly courtroom, an immediate pronouncement, the same for every believer.

Sanctification is what God is doing in me: my daily walk, righteousness imparted, an ongoing process, an activity, an earthly scene, a lifelong pursuit, different in every believer.

And the connection between them: everyone He justifies, He sanctifies. Sanctification has three aspects — positional (a decisive break with the rule of sin that begins at salvation), progressive (becoming more like Jesus and less like the world), and perfected (when He glorifies us).

Shall we keep sinning? (vv. 1–2)

"What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?"

Two questions hide in verse 1. If there's grace for all sin, why not sin more? And if my sin brings out more of God's grace, and God is glorified in giving grace, doesn't my sin glorify God? Paul's answer is the strongest negative in the language — let it never be.

The power of sin in your life is dead. Its penalty still exists, and you still exist, but you're no longer under sin's dominion; you're under Jesus'. That death to sin was spiritual, past, immediate, complete, radical, once for all, noticeable, and permanent. The change should be so drastic that people ask, "What happened to you?"

Seven things that happened at salvation (vv. 2–7)

Paul lists what took place. We died to sin — like a citizen escaping a dictatorship, or a dictator dying. We were baptized into Christ. We were baptized into His death — when Jesus died for sin, we died to sin. We were buried with Him. We were raised with Him. We were crucified with Him. And we were freed from the power of sin.

The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus doesn't just save us; it's also the pattern that develops sanctification in us. Baptism here is spiritual — placed into Christ so completely that whatever is true of Him becomes true of us. Our sin nature, the "old self," was put to death with Him. The burial matters because it proves the death was real; we were buried with Him to show we really died. And "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life." Like a branch grafted into a vine, we now identify with Him.

"Our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin." Before salvation, we had no real choice about serving sin. Now we do. The only way out of sin's bondage was death, and Jesus took our old nature to the cross and crucified it. We don't have to serve sin anymore. We're free.

A death and a life (vv. 8–10)

The death we died was spiritual, complete, shared, real, and liberating. The life we now live is supernatural, new, abundant, victorious, and permanent. "Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again; death no longer rules over him." He'll never go back to that state, and neither can we. He died to sin once; He lives to God.

Reckon it so (v. 11)

"So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."

This is the first command in the book of Romans. Consider — reckon, count it true. Come to the settled conclusion that what God says about you is so. This is where assurance lives: dead to sin, alive to God.

Don't let it reign (vv. 12–14)

"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires." Since sin's reign is dead in your life, live like it. We let sin reign by obeying what it wants. As Christians we do what we ought, not what we want. "Do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness."

"Offer" means to place at someone's disposal — to present as a sacrifice. There's one throne in your life, and for a believer Jesus sits on it. "Ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). Submission to God is the only way to forsake sin. Offer Him your mind, your eyes, your ears, your tongue, your feet, your hands. Be loyal to God; sin will always betray you. And while you're at it, be loyal to the people who'll actually be there for you — don't let a job or a title crowd out your family, and never let anything crowd out God.

"For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace." The indicting power of the law is over. That's not an excuse to sin; it's a reason to obey.

Slaves of a new Master (vv. 15–18)

Paul raises the question a second time — "Should we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?" — and answers it the same way: absolutely not. "Don't you know that if you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of that one you obey — either of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness?"

We obeyed sin because it was our master. Now Jesus is, and we obey Him. "You obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching to which you were handed over" — the gospel is a gift, and it's free, but it's also a command to be obeyed, and those who don't obey it don't receive it (Romans 16:26, "the obedience of faith"). "Having been set free from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness."

That word "enslaved" makes us squirm because we love our freedom. But Paul is putting the jelly on the bottom shelf for people who understood slavery. Thirty to forty percent of Rome's population was enslaved. A slave had no rights; he was property, bought and sold in public squares with a sign around his neck. We were on that auction block, slaves to sin with nothing to offer, and Jesus paid in His blood. That's the picture of the Christian life from the first verse of the letter — "Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus." He is the Master. We belong to Him.

Progression, not perfection (vv. 19–21)

"Just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification." The life of a sinner is constant digression. The Christian life isn't a state of perfection; it's a state of progression. The middle ground in our culture is vanishing — sin is becoming more openly sinful. Christians should be becoming more openly holy.

"When you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness" — free, but free from doing good. "So what fruit was produced then from the things you are now ashamed of?" Either we had no fruit, or the fruit we had was shameful. We don't glory in our past, even if it looked good on the outside. We glory in the cross. Jesus had to reach far for every one of us. And for those who grew up in church — it took as much, if not more, to keep you from the world as it did to get someone else out of it.

The wages and the gift (vv. 22–23)

"But now, since you have been set free from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification — and the outcome is eternal life." This is a renovation. Old out, new in, and the finished project is the presentation of the bride to the Father. Let Him renovate — hand Him the mind, the eyes, the ears, the speech, the feet, the hands.

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

The old master shamed us and paid us death. The new Master makes us holy and gives us life. If we get what we've earned, we get death — and that death is eternal; we know because the contrast is eternal life. Death in Scripture is separation, not annihilation: the body separated from the soul, and the soul separated from God forever. But the gift — unearned, undeserved — is life. Which paycheck you receive depends on which Master you serve.

One more thing about that paycheck

If you've never been saved, understand what's happening right now: you're earning. On the clock, every day, wages adding up. That's not a scare tactic, it's arithmetic. Sin pays death and it always pays on time. But nobody in the history of the world earned the other one. Eternal life is a gift, and a gift has only ever needed to be received. Jesus died for your sin, God raised Him from the dead, and the moment you stop working and simply take Him at His word, the wages get torn up and the gift is in your hands. Do it now, sitting there. Wait a week and you'll talk yourself out of it.

Believer, it's a renovation, and the contractor works on what you hand Him. So don't hand Him everything this week. That's easy to say and easy to skip. Hand Him one room. The eyes, maybe — what you scroll past midnight. Or the speech, how you talk about people who aren't there to hear it. Name that one out loud in the morning and give Him the key to it. He's been standing in the hallway a while.

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