Romans Chapter 6

vs 1

The idea being from the last chapter - that if our sin causes God's grace to become more abundant, then can there be anything wrong with sin? Shouldn't we want God's grace to be all the more abundant?

vs 2

By no means indeed! Paul makes it clear that, for the Christian, continual sin is not an option. The picture of us being dead according to sin is a strong one. Paul builds on this and explains it throughout this chapter, so I won't say too much about it now.

vs 3

So the first thing about us being dead to sin is that, because Christ died, we share in his death. We do this through baptism. Baptism is a hard thing to codify. I mean, sometimes we just view it as a symbolic thing, which in itself is nothing special. But the Bible does talk about it in a special way. Just not "this is your salvation" special. But how special it really is is not easy to gauge.

I have heard some people speak of there being much less distinction between baptism and believing back then too - because you believed, and were baptised pretty much straight away. So baptism could be seen as almost concurrent with the word believing.

vs 4

Obviously we did not die in any physical sense when we were baptised. We don't drown people. The point being that we identify with Christ, both in his death and his resurrection. In identifying with Christ in his death, we are in effect putting paid to sin, because its only power is death.

vs 5

The TNIV has a very interesting translation difference here - if anything more literal than the NIV, and following the path of the NASB - it makes it clear that we are not so much uniting with Christ in his death, but in a likeness of his death.The point being that if death unites us, then certainly life will unite us also - and so we have not only the power of the death of Christ, but also the power of his resurrection.

vs 6

KJV talks about crucifying our "old man" ... hehehe.

What exactly is the self, and the old self? What part of us is it that gets crucified with Christ? It's the sinful nature part of humanity, I guess. Unfortunately, it didn't die in any full sense when Christ was crucified. Its power was defeated, as it were, but in an atemporal sense. Which is great if you died before the cross. But for those of us living afterwards, and seeing victory but still remaining sinful, it can be a bit of a bummer.

So the point of our salvation is partly to free us from slavery - a slavery to sin, where we have no choice but to obey (or if that's too deterministic for you, we are coerced into obeying).

vs 7

Of course, sin only rules as long as you live - so when you die, sin can't disturb you or coerce you anymore. That doesn't mean that its legacy won't affect you post-death in some sort of eternal capacity, though.

vs 8

This is worded in the future tense, so I think we're still looking towards a future living with Christ at this point.

vs 9

This is of course different from Lazarus and the little girl, and anyone else Jesus raised from the dead. How Paul knows so much about the "science " of resurrection, well, I just don't know. Perhaps it has to do with reasoning that since Jesus was not alive to raise himself, and that God raised him directly, that it was an eternal thing. Then you start arguing about how much of the raise dead power that Jesus used from God, so what's the difference?

The truth is that logically you cannot deduct the reasoning from experience. The pat answer of course is that "Jesus told Paul" in that Damascus road experience where Jesus told Paul absolutely everything. Or if you're not so stuck up, then Jesus revealed it to Paul in the same way he revealed truth to him about other stuff - in a warm fuzzy spiritual way. Because the truth is, of course, that death didn't have any mastery over Jesus when he was alive the first time, because he wasn't sinful.

vs 10

Sort of the difference between a once of pay-off (contractual work?) and a long-term servant.

vs 11

Now this is where we step out of theologising, and into practical life. The thing is, that we are still sinful. We are still in frail human bodies, and we cannot escape sin in this life. But Paul wants us to drag our eternal Kingdom truth down to earth and make it a reality in the here and now. And he wants us to do that with our minds. We are to treat ourselves and each other as if we were dead to sin, and therefore free from its power. We are to live as if we are alive to Christ, that is, in the resurrection of a new life.

This is a phenomenal transformation in the life of an individual. Unfortunately, it cannot be 100% acted out in this life, and I think that bums us out and we feel like we can't do it, so we don't bother. But with this attitude, you can still win a lot of victories against sin that perhaps otherwise you would have never won.

vs 12

It's not about us defeating sin - it is about us realising that sin is a defeated foe. It still has teeth and it can bite, but it's dying. Now don't let that fool you into thinking that it is getting weaker. Wild boars have a surge of strength and deadly power before they die, and the death rattle of sin may go on for a long time. It's been rattling for 1900 odd years.

It's almost like a lot of us spend so much time in mourning over sin, that we remember it and toy with its memory, and reminisce and get all nostalgic. But we should act like sin is dead already, like going through your grandma's house and marking what you want to inherit while she's still alive. Just not so mercenary as that.