Elliff’s Living Room, August 8, 2007
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
Romans 6:1-3
The Dangerous Doctrine of Justification
I want to begin by exposing for you one the most dangerous doctrines that exists in Christianity. To some people this doctrine is absolutely fatal. It is this: that God, for the glory of His grace and because all men are sinners and under just punishment, sent His Son to become a man, live a faultless life, die on a cross, and thus take all of the punishment of His elect, redeeming them for Himself. That doctrine, sometimes called the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, is lethal.
Why? Because there are some people (like the false teachers of 2 Peter) who will abuse true and good dogma for the sake of sensuality. These men willfully twist the truth and say, “Every time I sin I am forgiven, and every time I am forgiven God’s grace is exalted. Should I not, then, sin more and more so that grace will abound more and more to praise of His name?” The doctrine of justification, in its beautiful extremity (as displayed in chapter 5), without the balance of chapter 6, can be fatal.
So Paul, in Romans 6, turns directly to licentious men who would abuse the justification of God, and asks the question, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase?” This question should be the banner you have in the front of your brain for the next two chapters. Because all that follows, from here into chapter seven is in answer to this question and its implications.
The Short Answer
There are two ways Paul lays down his answer; there is a short answer and a long answer. First, the short answer.
“May it never be!” Sinning, for whatever reason, is always abhorrent to God. It is absurdity to think that we ought to honor God by dishonoring Him. Despite the fact that God does use sin for His glory and even decrees it for that purpose, we ought never to think that he would command it. We have only to look at Golgotha to understand His intense hatred of it. This is Paul’s initial reaction and should be ours as well. And for most of us it is enough of an answer already. But thankfully the Holy Spirit did not leave it here, but inspired Paul to push far into the nature of our union with Jesus, justification, and our freedom from sin.
The Beginning of the Long Answer
Verse 2 is a question that summarizes much of what comes after until verse 11. It is the beginning of the long answer. “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” In this question Paul is not seeking an answer. He is not asking his readers to give a reasoned argument as to how people who died to sin can logically still continue in sin. On the contrary, he is asserting a truth. It’s the sort of question you would ask if you saw a man who complained of soreness in his body jumping out of his second-level apartment twice a day. “How can expect your body to be healthy if you persist in doing cannonballs out of your apartment window?” Paul is not asking a question, he is making a statement—“we who died to sin cannot live in it any longer.”
Died to Sin
What is meant here by the phrase “died to sin?” That is the issue that will be the door to this chapter.
First, let me dispose of what I think is a very common misconception about the above phrase. The bulk of Christians today believe we are now dead to sin, which means to them that we are unresponsive to its control and allurement. Here is an illustration that conveys their view. You, a dog, while walking along the road one day, are run over by a car. It kills you. A few hours later your master comes to you and begins to prod you and issue commands like “Sit,” or “fetch.” But you do not move or even hear his voice. Why? Because you are dead and cannot respond. His next tactic is to allure you. So he places by your nose a medium-rare, half-pound T-bone steak. But again you are completely unaffected. And that again is because you are dead and cannot even smell the enticing aroma of the steak. The problem with that interpretation of “died to sin” is that our death to sin is presented as a metaphorical death or a word picture to illustrate a spiritual reality. Paul, on the other hand, is not speaking metaphorically; he is stating an actuality—our death to sin was an actual death with Jesus. This is clear from the next verse and all of the text to verse 11.
Baptism Provides the answer
Verse 3 is the pillar that will support the rest of the structure. It describes for us the base of what it means to have “died to sin.” “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” A connection with the previous verse is obvious. The reference to Christ’s death in verse 3 links to our death to sin in verse 2. “How shall we who died to sin . . .” and, we “have been baptized into His death . . .” This observation can be made: somehow our death to sin has to do with our baptism into Christ’s death on the cross.
Paul is not talking here about water baptism. This is true for two reasons. (1) If this were water baptism, Paul would be saying that baptism does far more than just symbolize. He would be saying that water baptism actually unites believers to Christ in some real way. The rest of Scripture, conversely, tells us that baptism is a symbol. (2) Most importantly, there is nothing in the context that forces us to believe that this is a reference water baptism. On the contrary, the context pushes us to a far different conclusion.
The literal translation of “baptize” is “immerse” or “put completely into.” This is what Paul means to convey. “Or do you not know that all of us who have been immersed in Christ Jesus have been immersed into His death?”
When Jesus came to live His life and die His death for His people, there is a sense in which all of those people (past, present and future) were immersed (baptized) completely into Christ; they became one with Him so that when He lived a perfect life, they lived a perfect life, and when He died under the punishment for their sin, they died under the punishment for their sin in Him.
This is extremely vulnerable to misunderstanding because, on the surface, it seems to contradict everything we have been taught about Jesus’ substitutionary work and rob Christ of deserved glory. We bridle at thought that we could have contributed anything to our salvation, a perfect life and atonement for our sin most of all. But that is far from what this passage is saying.
Rather, Paul’s thought is all centered in the idea of representation. Jesus lived and died as our representative before God. And so God accepts His life and death as the life and death of all of His elect. They lived and died in Him. Consider this scenario. If you owe me $20 and a friend pays it for you, I have two courses of action open to me. I can accept your friend’s money as a gift but still consider you a debtor to me. (You have not paid me what you owe, your friend only gave me a gift.) Or, I can accept your friend’s gift as your payment of the debt. I can look on his payment and judge you to have paid in him. This is the situation we are in. Christ became our righteousness. But God must accept His righteousness as being our righteousness. He must look upon Christ’s work and unite us to Him so that His work becomes ours. This is what it means to live and die with Christ and to be baptized into Him and into His death.
Summary
-The doctrine of justification for the glory God’s grace can be dangerous if presumed upon. Therefore, Paul asks the question, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may increase?”
-Paul summarizes his answer to that question with another question. “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”
-Paul then begins to explain what he means by “died to sin.” “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized (or immersed) into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” When Christ died, we died in Him because God credits His death to us.
-Our death to sin is directly connected to our death with Christ on the cross.
I have not fully explained the phrase “died to sin.” But the ground is laid for next week. For this week, rejoice in your union with Christ. Without it, there is no hope.
© 2007 Bryan Elliff
