Romans 6:1-7:6 really act as a unit—it is a shame that whoever put in chapter breaks, put the beginning of chapter 7 where it currently is. What we find here is Paul’s specific answer the question, “What is going to keep one from sinning if you get rid of the Torah? If you get rid of Torah, and just tell people to receive grace, aren’t you essentially encouraging people to sin?”
Think about it, it’s a pretty good question! After all, if someone got up in your church to preach a sermon and told the congregation that smoking and drinking weren’t necessarily sins, and that we need to be more focused on receiving God’s grace, you know that a number of people in the congregation would get upset and accuse that person of encouraging the young to people to smoke and drink! Why is that? I think the answer is obvious. We just need to look at ourselves.
Paul was dealing with something that Christians find themselves dealing with still today: we are afraid of really letting go of our “security blanket/rule book” that makes us feel like good little boys and girls for the simple reason that we really don’t trust God’s offer of grace. It’s sad to say, but for far too many Christians, their “faith” is essentially a kind of “trump card” religion. Oh sure, we say we accept God’s grace and that it’s all about faith in Christ, blah blah blah…but in reality we have that rule-book in our back pocket, and we follow it because we think that will impress God. All that really shows is that, despite what we may say, the reality is we think we still need to earn God’s love.
Subconsciously, we think that when we die and stand and the judgment seat, if God is about to judge against us and send us to hell, we’ll be able to pull out this “trump card” of our rule-keeping, and say, “Hey God! Look at what I did! You’ve got to let me into heaven!” Such a “faith” is weak and immature at best; and at worst, it is idolatry. Paul, by addressing those fears, attempts to spell out a “New Kingdom Age Worldview” for his readers, and attempts to grow them up into maturity in Christ. What he thus spells out is the mature Christian’s understanding of our relationship to Christ, to sin—the whole ball of wax. To spell this out, Paul proceeds to give three images to illustrate his point. In 6:1-14, he uses the imagery of baptism; in 6:15-23, he uses the imagery of slavery; and in 7:1-6, he uses the imagery of marriage. Let’s see how he answers the accusation that by getting rid of Torah, that he was encouraging people to sin.
Romans 6:1-14: Look to Your Baptism—It’s a Whole New Ballgame
Paul begins with an absurd question: “Should we continue on in sin so that grace may abound?” His answer it a definitive, “No way! Look at your baptism! You’ve died to sin! That’s what baptism is all about!” Simply put, Paul is pointing out that the believer has a “death-resurrection” relationship with Christ: you have died to the authority, the power, and to the old order of sin and the Torah. Therefore, you are not to live under their influence any longer. In their place you have the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit who guides and instructs you, and who “grows you up,” so that you can “walk in newness of life.”
So what does it mean to “walk” in the “newness of life”? It first means that you’ve died to the old way of life characterized by sin, death, and Torah—thus being like Christ in his death. Then it means that you are raised in Christ when you are “born again,” and thus are born into an entirely new ballgame. We are born into “a new kind of life,” as opposed to “the old kind of life,” in which we essentially lived in death and sin and rule-keeping, thinking it will save our hides. Our new way of life is that of living in the Spirit, in grace, and in righteousness. If Sin/Death/Torah is the old game on the old ball field, then the Spirit/Grace/Righteousness is the new game on a brand new ball field.
This, of course, can be quite disconcerting to sinful people like us who really like clear-cut rules. Even in the church, as soon as someone gets saved by grace, what do we give them? The rule book! “Now that you’re saved by grace, here’s a list of things you can and cannot do!” If such a mindset doesn’t negate grace, I don’t know what does. But we need to face it: we get uneasy when anyone tries to take away our “rule-book” and gets rid of our old familiar boundaries. Old habits (particularly the ones that define the Old Age way of life) die hard.
Now we need to emphasize, as Paul does in 6:6-7: he’s not saying that believers no longer sin. He’s saying is that believers are no longer living under the “Old Age” dominion of sin and death. Hence, we are no longer enslaved to sin. And then again, in 6:9, Paul says it another way. He says that death no longer has dominion over the believer. And therefore, since that is the case, Paul give the commands for the believer in 6:12-14: don’t let sin reign in your bodies by obeying its passions (12), and don’t present your bodies to sin as instruments for wickedness, but rather as instruments for righteousness (13). And why are you to do this? Because you’re under grace, not the Torah! Sin is not to rule over you! (14).
Perhaps an Analogy Will Help…Let’s Get Drunk! Or Not…
That, though, can seem a bit abstract. Let’s use an analogy of an alcoholic. Life in the Old Age is like an alcoholic who is enslaved to alcohol. He might go without a drink for a day or two, or even a week, but he still is enslaved to it, and always goes back to it. If he said, “I’m a better alcoholic than the other guy because I only get smashed four times a week instead of six,” that would mean absolutely nothing. The fact is that his enslavement to alcohol is destroying his body, and will ultimately destroy his liver and kill him. It won’t matter how many times people tell him he shouldn’t drink, or that his liver is being destroyed, he is addicted to alcohol. No amount of words alone will ever change that.
But let’s say he is miraculously set free from his addiction. He has “died” to his old way of life, and is no longer enslaved to alcohol. He has been set free from it, and has been empowered to say no to alcohol, even though he still lives in a world where there are still bars and liquor stores. Therefore, it is imperative that he does not go back to the bars and liquor stores, or else he’ll get enslaved to alcohol all over again. The more he avoids alcohol and the places where alcohol is made available, the more his body will heal and recover. This is what Paul is saying that living the life of the New Age, even though we are still living in the Old Age, is like. If you have died to sin, you have been empowered by the Spirit and are no longer ruled by sin. That’s why you don’t choose to keep sinning.
Romans 6:15-23: Don’tcha Know You’ve Gotta Serve Somebody?
In 6:15-23, Paul begins with another ridiculous question: “Should we sin because we’re not under Torah, but rather under grace?” The assumption here that Paul has to deal with is that the Torah somehow keeps a person from sinning. It goes back to what we said earlier about our tendency to pay lip service to “grace,” but then our insistence of holding on to the “rule-book,” because we think that will guarantee our righteousness and essentially obligate God to accept us. Well, Paul is going to blow that assumption out of the water. The fact is, if you are trying to secure your righteousness, then that shows that you really haven’t gotten what faith is all about. If you think you can secure your own righteousness be keeping rules, you are trying to put yourself in a position of power over righteousness and treat it like a commodity you can buy by your own efforts.
And so, Paul answers this question by using the imagery of slavery (already hinted at in his previous discussion regarding baptism). Paul’s point here is this: you are a slave to whomever you submit. To quote Bob Dylan, “Don’t you know you’ve gotta serve somebody? Well, it may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody!” The fact is, you are a slave—you’ve got to serve somebody! Therefore, you will either be a slave who submits to sin, which results in death, or you will be a slave who submits to righteousness, which results in life.
“Obeying From the Heart”—That’s Holy Spirit Language!
But Paul wants the believers in Rome to realize something: they were slaves to sin…but aren’t anymore! In 6:17-19, Paul says that instead of obeying the dictates of sin anymore, they have obeyed “from the heart” the type of teaching “to which you were handed over.” First of all, we need to note that Paul’s reference to “the heart” is clearly an allusion to the covenant language found in passages like Jeremiah 31:31-33, Ezekiel 36:26-28, and Joel 2:28-29 that links the new covenant with the coming of the Holy Spirit. With the coming of the long-promised Holy Spirit, Paul is saying, the New Age has dawned—so live out the New Age kind of existence!
Secondly, notice that Paul says they have been “handed over” to the new teaching of the Gospel—what kind of person is “handed over” to anything? A slave! Again, if you’re no longer a slave to sin, then you’re now a slave to righteousness! So therefore, Paul points out the obvious. He tells his readers that they used to offer their bodies as slaves to impurity and lawlessness (i.e. anti-Torah behavior), and that led to more lawlessness. But now they are to offer their bodies as slaves to righteousness, and that leads, not to lawlessness, but rather to holiness.
And with that, Paul can’t resist a little bit of wordplay in 6:20-22. He says that when you were slaves to sin, you were technically “free” of righteousness, but the “fruit” such slavery bore were shameful things that ended in death. But now, after being “set free from” sin, you have become slaves to God! And the “fruit” of that kind of slavery is holiness, and those holy things will end up in the Life of the Ages (i.e. eternal life).
Paul then brings up a verse that most of us know, but hopefully now will be seen in a better context: “The wages of sin is death…” (6:23). In other words, what Paul is saying is that death is well-earned. Therefore, a life of freedom from sin does not mean it’s the kind of freedom for sin. The “New Age” worldview is not, “I have to be righteousness now to get God to like me!” Rather, it is, “I get to be righteous now, because God loves me and has been gracious to me!”
Romans 7:1-6: Mawwiage! That Dweam Within a Dweam! (Unless There’s a Death)
Finally, in 7:1-6, Paul gives one more analogy, that of marriage and remarriage. Now, it’s an analogy that doesn’t technically work, but Paul’s point is clear nevertheless. Paul first states the marriage law stipulated in the Torah: a woman who get married is legally bound to her husband for as long as her husband is alive. When he dies, though, she is then free to marry another man. Paul then relates that situation to the believer’s relationship to the Torah. The believer is like the wife, and the Torah is like the husband.
Here is where the analogy doesn’t quite make sense. In order for the analogy to work, Paul would have to say, “When the Torah dies, we are now free from it.” But that wouldn’t really work, because the Torah can’t really “die.” And so Paul simply says, “You have died to the Torah, and therefore are free to marry Christ!” How can you be free to marry someone else if you’ve died? Clearly that doesn’t make sense—but Paul’s point is clear nonetheless: through death, you are no longer bound to Torah. You are set free from Torah, and are therefore free to unite yourself to Christ.
Paul then extends the analogy of marriage a little further. In that “old marriage” in which you were married to the Torah, the “fruit” you bore was death. In other words, marriage to Torah causes you to give birth to death. But now that we’ve died to and been released from Torah, now that we’re no longer enslaved to Torah, the “fruit” we bear is for God—the fruit of the Spirit.
In Conclusion
Paul then sums up his three images from 6:1-7:4 with two key points.
- In 7:5, he paints a picture of a life in the “flesh,” in the Old Age, pre-Holy Spirit times: it is a life in which sinful passions were ironically stoked and inflamed by the commandments in the Torah, and gave birth to death.
- By contrast, in 7:6, Paul paints a picture of the life of the Spirit, in the New Age: it is a life in which we have been released from Torah and have died to what held us captive, namely, sin and death.
The upshot is clear: we are no longer enslaved to the “old written code of Torah.” We are now “enslaved” to the new life of the Spirit. Paul will now elaborate on these two key points in the next two sections: Romans 7:7-25 will elaborate on 7:5; and Romans 8:1-30 will elaborate on 7:6.
