The New Spiritual Life. Romans 6, 7, 8

 

Romans chapter six is such a crucial section in understanding the spiritual life, the whole process whereby we are sanctified. The focal point here is on sanctification.

 

In terms of an overview to give a focal point on how to understand Romans 6, 7 and 8 here are some summary points:

 

  1. The foundation of Paul’s explanation is who we now are in Christ. The first seven verses of Romans 6 ground his understanding of what we refer to as the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit. At the baptism of the Holy Spirit at the instant of salvation we are placed in Christ. That means that we are intimately and eternally identified with His death, burial and resurrection. And it is that resurrection aspect that is so vital because that is the point of his analogy. The purpose of that is that as Christ was raised to new life so we are raised to a new life that we are to walk in, Romans 6:4. The purpose of becoming saved isn’t just so we can spend eternity in heaven but so that we can have the fullness of life here today, that we can glorify God in our life today, can be a consistent witness for Him and grow to spiritual maturity, serve Him in the body of Christ in the local church, and be used by Him as an outreach to a fallen world.
  2. Living the spiritual life is presented by Paul as being now possible only because of a total break with the power of the sin nature that occurred at the instant of justification. He presents this as an absolute transition that takes place. At the instant of salvation the tyranny of the sin nature is completely and irrevocably broken. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have a sin nature and that we cannot yield to it. (All we mean by “nature” is a capacity for something) A sin nature does not refer to a concrete something but it refers to the fact that the human person is under the penalty of sin and has been corrupted in terms of his core constitution by sin, and so there is this proclivity to rebellion against God and to sin. And prior to salvation, because the person is spiritually dead, there is only one option in life and that is to live like a spiritually dead person, separated from God, divorced from the source of life, incapable of doing anything that has eternal value before God. This is how everybody is, no matter how good, intelligent, productive, or kind; the unbeliever is not producing the kind of righteousness that is characteristic of God. It is not until we receive the imputation of God’s righteousness, declared just, regenerated and become a new creature in Christ that that power is broken. But that power is still there and the habit patterns formed as an unbeliever are still there.
  3. The ultimate issue then becomes our volition. We make of our lives what we choose to make of them. It ultimately boils down to responding to what God says is true because God says it is true. He says that we are now dead to the sin nature and we should not yield to the sin nature, we should not put ourselves back into the position of slavery to the sin nature, because positionally we are now slaves of righteousness. So it is our decision. We have this battle that goes on inside in the Christian life. This whole issue of the believer and sin is one that has plagued Christianity from the very beginning. What do you do with a believer who is a child of God but sins like a child of the devil? The basic response of people down through the ages is that maybe they are not really saved. And that reflects a somewhat shallow view of sin and it also reflects a shallow view of grace. We are still capable of as many sins and living like we did before our salvation. This is why we have these injunctions from Paul that we should no longer be slaves of sin.  
  4. Spiritual growth is more than simply a choice. It is a choice that is based on biblical truth. There is an emphasis in this section on coming to know everything that God has provided for us, that it is not just a matter of choosing not to sin versus sinning, it is a choice based upon a growing and increasing knowledge of truth. 2 Peter 3:18 NASB “but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ…” Our growth is not apart from knowledge, knowledge alone is insufficient; it needs something else, the Holy Spirit.
  5. The consequences that are presented throughout this section are life or death, not in terms of an eternal (eternity in heaven) or an eternal death (eternal condemnation) but in talking about experiencing the fullness of life here and now in this life. Or, in contrast, being a believer but living as though spiritually dead and experiencing a life of corruption because of living on the basis of the sin nature. So the consequences are not just eternal, they focus on the present realities.
  6. Human effort and morality is not only irrelevant but it is incapable of solving the problem. Human effort and morality can’t do it. There is a difference between morality and spirituality. Spirituality has to do with the walk according to the Spirit which comes into play in the eighth chapter of Romans. In the seventh chapter Paul as a believer is still trying to do it according to the law which is a system of morality, and it doesn’t work. So morality and human effort are irrelevant in the sense that they can’t overcome the problem of the sin nature. In answering the question, how do I live as a slave of righteousness? It can’t be done by just trying to be moral, trying to do the right thing. It can only be done (Romans 8) by walking according to the Spirit.
  7. Paul emphasises that the law is good, but it is limited. And the limitation of the law is that it only exposes sin. It only makes us more and more aware of how sinful we are. The more prohibitions there are the more we are aware of sin in the life, but it doesn’t provide power to overcome the sin.
  8. Every believer struggles with sin. The more mature we are, the more we grow as a believer, the more we realise how exceedingly sinful sin is and how pervasive it is in our life and thinking. The new believer isn’t as conscious of sin as a more mature believer. The more we grow and mature as a believer and become aware of the sinfulness and extensiveness of sin we then realise how totally impossible to live the Christian life. It can’t be done in our power; it can only be done in the power of the Holy Spirit.
  9. Only when we understand the provision we have in Christ and by the Spirit can we relax and have genuine spiritual growth and victory.

 

The sixth chapter of Romans focuses on our position in Christ and all that we are given in Christ. The seventh chapter focuses on the fact that we are incapable of solving these problems on our own through morality. The eighth chapter focuses on what we have been given in terms of God the Holy Spirit. Romans 6 focuses on our new identity in Christ; Romans 7 focuses on the consequences in terms of not being able to do this on our own, by just wanting to do the right thing. That leads to a point of tension and complete frustration and the only solution, then, is going to be in terms of the spiritual life.

 

The basic foundation in Romans 6:1-4. Romans 6:1 NASB “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” If sin caused God to give us His grace, to bestow all of this on us freely, then if we sin more God will just give us more, so why not just sin more? That is the antinomian presentation. Paul completely rejects it: [2] “May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” That is the foundation of what he is saying in really the verses down to verse 14: that we have died to sin. That is an important concept to think about. What does it mean to be dead to sin? Does it mean that there is no longer any temptation? Does it mean that we are not longer able to sin like we did before were a believer? Death in the Scripture often has the idea of a separation from something, and what we see here is not an absolute separation but is separation from the power or the dominion of sin.

 

Then Paul goes immediately into his explanation of this important doctrine which is basically vv. 3, 4 NASB “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” So he makes this transition based on understanding what happens at salvation. What is important there is he is talking about a non-experiential event, so we have to trust what the Scriptures describe and implement that. That means we have to understand it and then we have to live in light of it. So the faith principle there is that we recognise and live as a new creature in Christ.

 

In verse 5 he lays down a condition, “For if.” He has further explanation, v. 7, “for he who has died is freed from sin.” He builds to the next level of his argument, [8] “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” Note that there is the phrase “knowing this” in v.6 and “knowing that Christ” in v. 9. So in the middle of both of these sections there is an emphasis on knowing something.  And this isn’t just an abstract knowledge; it is a recognition of learning something that actually took place before God. In v. 10 notice that he begins with a “for”: “For the death that He died, He died to sin,” so this is explaining the principle at the end of verse 9, that death no longer has dominion over Christ. Why? “the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.”

 

Then he makes his point, his analogy, v. 11: “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” The word “reckon” [consider] is the same word that is used in relation to imputation—logizomai [logizomai] which has to do with drawing a logical conclusion and thinking a certain way. This means that we are to consider that there should be this separation in our life from the dominion of sin and, instead, that we are alive to God in Christ. That phrase “in Christ” is foundational for understanding this shift that has occurred from the death of the old man and the body of sin (v.6) and that now we are freed from sin—but the sin nature is still there.

 

In the section from vv. 12-19 there is a conclusion in v. 12, “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.” That is a direct command to the believer. Don’t let sin dominate your life. Then he adds to that. “13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body [the entirety of your life] to sin {as} instruments of unrighteousness …” There is a choice: life or death, righteousness or unrighteousness. Then there is a contrast: “but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members {as} instruments of righteousness to God.” Why? [14] “For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” This is a statement of the way it ought to be, not the way it is. Because you are a child of God you should not let sin have dominion or rule over you, “because you are not under law but under grace.” This is the beginning of the contrast that Paul is going to bring in over chapters 7 & 8, the contrast between law and grace.

 

Grace does not mean that because we are freed from sin and the penalty of sin that we therefore are free to sin as much as we like. That is not the idea. He says that sin should not have dominion over us. Because we are under grace it should not be present in our lives. [15] “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!”

 

Romans 6:16 NASB “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone {as} slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” Notice here he is not talking to unbelievers. He said, “You’re going to obey God and it will lead you to righteousness.” This is experiential righteousness, he is talking to believers. Or you will present yourself to sin and that will lead to death—not physical death, not eternal death, but experiencing the same death-like consequences in life that an unbeliever experiences. It has no value, no eternal value; it will bring corruption and destruction into your life. There are consequences to sin. Even though there is forgiveness for sin there are still consequences for sin. But the contrast is that God’s grace is always greater than sin.

 

Romans 6:17 NASB “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, [18] and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” So at the instant of salvation we had an authority shift. The authority before salvation was the sin nature; the authority afterward was God. There is no neutrality. But do we act like an obedient slave or a disobedient slave. Paul is saying that if we act like a disobedient slave we are going to reap all the negative consequences that go to a disobedient slave, and you are going to self-destruct. That self-destruction may not be immediate, there may be some good times first, but eventually there is self-destruction.

 

We are alive from the dead in 6:13 and now we are to present ourselves as slaves of righteousness. For what? For “holiness” [KJV]. The Greek is really “sanctification”—for our experiential sanctification. Verse 19 emphasises the fact that we are now to “present ourselves”—a decision-making term. The old term was “yield” and that picked up a lot of extraneous baggage under the old victorious life teaching. It emphasised this “yieldedness” all the time and people didn’t really understand that so much. It is the idea of making a decision to be obedient to God and the Scriptures, and to walk by the Spirit and keeping short accounts in that direction. So we have to be a slave of righteousness to get to sanctification.

 

In vv. 20-23 we see a summary of the argument up to this point. Romans 6:20 NASB “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” In other words, you couldn’t be righteous. When you were a slave before you were saved you could not produce righteousness, it was impossible. Cf. Isaiah 64:6. We can’t produce righteousness in our status of being unregenerate, unjustified.

 

Romans 6:21 NASB “Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? …” What was the fruit of that activity? Death. “… For the outcome of those things is death.” If we walk according to the flesh [sin nature], as a slave of sin, then the end result is death. That is true for the unbeliever. It would also include eternal condemnation. But it is true for the believer, though it doesn’t include eternal condemnation; it means that in terms of life now there is a death-like experience because we are producing corruption from our sin nature. So it ends up having all sorts of negative consequences in our lives.

 

The contrast. Romans 6:22 NASB “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.” Now there is a production to sanctification, to spiritual growth, and the end result is everlasting life—not in the sense of life in heaven but in the sense of that abundant life that is part of what we are given at the instant of salvation. There are many passages that talk about eternal life as a future reality but as a present possession—John 3:16; 5:24; 6:47, etc. Present tense, it is a reality today. John 10:10.

 

Paul’s conclusion: Romans 6:23 NASB “For the wages of sin is death…” Here he uses the imagery of a labourer who gets the consequences related to his labour, and so if he spends his labour in sin then he gets paid in kind, which is death. And of he does not then it results in eternal life. “… but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This is a restatement of what is clear from vv. 21, 22. He is not talking here about getting eternal life at justification, but the fullness of that life, realising all of its blessings here and now.

 

But this raises another question. How do I do this? How do I consider myself dead to sin? How do I experience this fullness of life today? Do I just go out and do what the Scripture says to do and obey all of these commandments? That is just like any other world religion, just go out and be morally reformed and you’ll be okay. But we can’t do that. And Paul coming out of his Pharisaical background recognises that there an absolute incapability to ever have any point in time that is not governed by the sin nature. The law just can’t do it.

 

Romans 7:1-6 talks about the law, the relation of the law to the Christian life. The law here is not talking about general law, even though it doesn’t have an article in the Greek. In many passages in the New Testament where the Mosaic law is in view it is expressed without the use of a definite article. Here Paul is picking up a thread that he has already talked about back in the previous section. In 6:15 he raised the question: What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” So now he is going to talk more about this issue of not being under law. He is explaining what it means that we are no longer under law.

 

Romans 7:1 NASB “Or do you not know, brethren (for I am speaking to those who know the law), that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?” He is going to use an analogy now from marriage. There are many who go to this as a passage that has something to say about marriage and divorce, and that is not relevant. He is really using an analogy from the law related to marriage that when two people are married that marriage lasts until death. When death occurs the living spouse is no longer under the authority of the person who died, no longer in that marriage. This is a narrow use of an analogy and you never build doctrines off of analogies. He is making a point that when death occurs the relationship ends. That is all he is saying.

 

Paul is saying is that because we have died to the law in terms of our identification with Christ in His death there is no longer a relationship to the law in its entirety. There is a complete break that occurs and so the law no longer has a binding nature. But he is not saying that because we are not under law we can therefore be lawless. He is simply saying that we are not under the Mosaic Law as a standard of living. This makes it very clear that God has changed the way that He is administering history, administering His authority to believers. In the Old Testament that administration of His authority was through the Mosaic Law which was a temporary covenant that God made with Israel, and only with Israel. No Gentile was ever held accountable to the precepts of the Mosaic Law.

 

Romans 7:5 NASB “For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were {aroused} by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.” The purpose of the law is to expose sin and to make it clear how extensive sin is.

 

Romans 7:6 NASB “But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter.” There is a complete break. There is clearly a distinction in the spiritual life of the church age from that which went on prior to the cross. This is the first mention of the Holy Spirit.

 

Basically the thrust of the rest of Romans 7 is: in vv. 7-12 Paul is talking about his previous experience with the law, that the law could not produce freedom because, as he says, when you had the 10th commandment, You shall not covet, it is not an external thing, it is and internal mental attitude and he realised that that was present in almost everything that he did. So he couldn’t get away from his violation of the law.

 

Then in verse 9 something interesting happens. Romans 7:9 NASB “I was once alive apart from the Law …” That is a fascinating term because you are dead until you are regenerate, and this is a term that relates to regeneration indicating that at this point “I became alive,” or “made alive” once without the law. The law did not bring about regeneration. “ … but when the commandment came,” i.e. after regeneration, when he goes back to trying to live his spiritual life on the basis of obeying the Mosaic Law, “sin became alive [revived] and I died.” He is basically saying it is impossible to live the spiritual life. Carnal death is what Paul talks about in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.” He recognises he is a sinner and he is dead—not spiritually dead but is producing a death-like life—and that following the law could not bring life.

 

In subsequent verses from v. 13 on he answers the next question: “Therefore did that which is good [the law] become {a cause} {of} death for me? May it never be!...” No, the law simply exposes sin, and he has become more aware that he has sinned, that he is sinful, that he is carnal, that he still can be controlled by sin. “… Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.”  

 

In the next passage from v. 15-22 Paul expresses this conflict that many of us have experienced so well. Romans 7:15 NASB “For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I {would} like to {do,} but I am doing the very thing I hate. [16] But if I do the very thing I do not want {to do,} I agree with the Law, {confessing} that the Law is good. [17] So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.” Sin just takes over.

Romans 7:18 NASB “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good {is} not. [19] For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. [20] But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.” He builds to the crescendo of vv. 25, 25, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.”

He expresses total frustration: I want to obey God but I can’t do it. And when I know something is wrong and I don’t want to do it, that is exactly what I end up doing. How can I serve God when I am controlled by this body of sin?

We get into the solution in chapter eight, which has to do with walking by the Spirit. Romans 8:1 NASB “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” This is important because often we quote this verse in terms of eternal condemnation. But this section isn’t about what happens after we die, it is about what is going on right now.

There is a recognition of the principle all through this section of the contrast between the law of the Spirit versus the law of sin and death. Verse 4, not walking according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Verse 5, “For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, [et their minds on] the things of the Spirit.” In other words, it is your mental attitude and mental focus that is going to make a difference. And if you don’t build that mental attitude by taking in the Word day in and day out then you are not going to be focused on the things of the Spirit and the things that have eternal value.

This continues down to verses 14-17 where he is going to bring in the whole issue of ultimate reward and blessing in terms of inheritance. The next topic, vv. 18-39, is the transition to chapter nine. The spiritual life really ends in verse 17, after which the focus begins on how to handle suffering and the faithfulness of God down through the end of the chapter.

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