Set Free to Sin?

Our study in Paul’s great epistle to the Romans has now brought us to the midpoint of chapter 6. What have we learned thus far?

Paul spent the first four chapters of the letter covering the basic facts of the gospel of God: human beings’ need of righteousness and God’s provision of it through justification by faith in Christ alone. He then turned his attention in chapter 5 to showing the sure and certain nature of that justification. But his keen mind spotted a potential objection—if God truly has given us the gift of Christ’s righteousness, one could argue that there is no need to try to live a righteous life. But it’s not that simple, Paul said. In the first half of chapter 6, he showed that we have been brought into union with Christ and have, in a spiritual sense, died to our old life of casual sin. By our identification with Christ, we have begun a new existence and simply cannot go back to the old; we can only go forward with God, striving for holiness. Not surprisingly, as Paul now begins to teach in this second half of the chapter, that is what God intends for us to do.

In a sense, the second half of chapter 6 covers the same ground as the first, again showing why Christians cannot continue in sin. Both halves of the chapter even open with very similar hypothetical questions (vv. 1, 15). However, Paul uses a different metaphor here, slavery as opposed to death. And this half of the chapter springs from his statement in verse 14 that believers are “not under law but under grace.” This does not mean the law of God has been set aside but that we have been freed by God from any notion that we must fulfill the law in order to be saved. Salvation is of God, completely due to His grace. Thus, the basis of our relationship to Him is now grace rather than law. But Paul realizes that verse 14 sparks a question: “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” In other words, is obedience now optional in the Christian life? Paul’s response is the same as in verse 2—“Certainly not!”—but he might as well answer “Impossible!” He asserted earlier in chapter 6 that believers have died to sin and cannot continue in it. Now he is prepared to argue, as Dr. James M. Boice puts it, that “we have been freed from law, not to become autonomous creatures (which we cannot be on any account), but to be slaves of God. We must be slaves to righteousness.”