PAUL’S LETTER TO THE CHRISTIANS IN ROME

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Verses 1-14 Freedom from sin in Christ

We ended the last chapter with a picture of the grace of God, which was on the throne. It ruled our life. It did not rule or reign in sin, but in righteousness. Grace reigns because God has given us Jesus to suffer and to die to take away our sins. He died to give us life. All this must be in our minds as we come to Chapter 6.

It may be the Jew who speaks in verse1. ‘If grace is free and if grace makes you free, you are free to sin’! This is, of course, nonsense, but it is nonsense which enemies of the Good News still talk today. If we are Christians, we may not hold on to sin. We must let go of it. It brings no honour to God if we think that His grace could be even greater than it already is. It is very wrong to think that our sin could make God’s grace greater. God promises to forgive people who repent. But He does not promise to give repentance to people who sin. Grace is more than this. God also gives His grace to us so that we can live new lives for His glory.

So Paul gives a short answer in verse 2. When sin was king (see 3:21) death was all round. We now live in Christ. We must move away from sin and death.

In verse 3, Paul begins a full answer.

We should see at once that Paul wants to talk about God’s grace. Luther said that your baptism is nothing less than grace ‘clutching’ or holding you by the throat. [6.1] So grace and baptism belong together.

Now we can see that the Christians in Rome knew about baptism. Paul says:- ‘Do you not know’. But this is only a way to say that they do know. Their Christian friends were mostly in the church at Jerusalem. Paul’s friends were mostly in the church at Antioch. Then he had many more friends in the churches which God had helped him to begin. Yet Paul knew that the Roman Christians would understand what he said about baptism.

The word ‘baptise’ means to ‘plunge’ or ‘dip’ in water. The Christians in the early churches used running water when they baptised if they could. If they did not have enough water to dip people in, they sometimes poured water instead. A very old book called The ‘Didache’ tells us this and that they poured water three times. This leads some people to think that we should ‘dip’ or baptise three times. This would be ‘in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. How we baptise does not matter so much. We may agree to differ about this.

New Testament baptism is the baptism of believers. Christian leaders baptised people who said that they had put their faith in Jesus. [6.2] The first known cases where parents baptised young children were cases where the children were near death. Christian parents must have asked the question whether they should baptise their babies. The baptism of babies did not begin in the New Testament period. So there is no Scripture teaching about it. This is why it gives rise to problems.

So in verse 3, Paul tells us what baptism does mean. First, our baptism is ‘into Christ Jesus’. That means that we are now one with Him. Notice that here Paul says ‘Christ Jesus’, not ‘Jesus Christ’. This may mean that Paul wants us to think about Jesus who has risen and is now in glory. The New Testament writers use the different names of Jesus with care. You should look at them with care too. But baptism means more. We are also ‘one with Jesus’ in His death. Paul speaks with care here. Jesus died one death. Then He rose from among the many who were dead.

Verse 4 speaks about ‘being buried with Jesus’. We should remember that Jesus’ friends did not bury His body in a grave it was in a ‘tomb‘. It was not a hole, dug in the ground. They laid His body on a stone shelf in a cave or ‘tomb’. So we should not be too sure that this is a picture of ‘dipping’ or plunging people under the water.

Now Jesus died nearly 2000 years ago. We are as much alive as we ever have been. So we need to find out what Paul means when he says that we died with Christ. God had a purpose when Jesus died, and it was to save sinners. We have faith in Jesus to save us. We have our share in what Jesus did when He died. There is more than that. God raised Jesus from the dead. This was an act of God’s glory. Jesus lives a new life and so do we. We live this new life for the glory of God.

In verse 5, Paul says that we are like plants. We are planted in the same ground as Jesus . So we shall grow like Him. Paul does not say here:- ‘Jesus rose from the dead. We shall rise from the dead too’. That would be true, and Paul does say this in 1 Corinthians 15. Rather he says that Jesus enjoys new life now in glory, and we enjoy new life here and now.

Verse 6 takes us further. Paul knew that Jesus died alone on the cross. God looks at this and sees us nailed to the cross as well.’Our old self’ is what we were before we became Christians. That was nailed to the cross. It is not just one or two of our sins which must go. It is the whole body which belonged to sin. It was ‘given over’ to sin. This ‘body of sin’ can no longer do its bad work. ‘Destroyed’ is too strong a word. Once we were the servants or even slaves of sin. (Verse 7) Christ died so that we should be free, but this is freedom to serve Him. This sounds rather like the first part of Chapter 7. Paul probably does not mean ‘anyone’. [6.4] All men die, but the death of Jesus is different. After we die, God will judge our sins. We shall not sin again after we die. That is the only way in which we can say we shall be quite free from sin. Jesus did not sin at all. So He takes no sin of His own with Him when He dies. He really is free or ‘justified’ in God’s court.

When we look at verse 8, Paul says:- ‘We believe’. Verse 9 is stronger. There he says:- ‘We know’. God joined us with Christ in His death for sin. So our faith says:- ‘Christ is in glory now. God has made us one with Him. So we shall be with Him in glory at last’. See John 17:24. (Verse 9) When Jesus died, for a very little while it seemed that death was His ‘lord’. Jesus rose from the dead to show that He had won the battle with death. He is not only risen, He is victor. He is ‘Lord’ over death. That is a battle which Jesus will never have to fight again. He is alive in the power of a life which will never end. See Hebrews 7:16.

So verse 10 tells us that the death of Jesus means that He will never have anything more to do with sin. See Hebrews 7:27. Jesus had no sin of His own. He chose to die, rather than to sin by not doing the will of God, His Father. He died with sinful men all round Him. Much more than all this, He died to take away our sins. He lives for us now. More than this, He now lives to God, and this life will have no end. So (verse 11) we are to count or ‘reckon’ ourselves dead to sin. We are one with Christ Jesus, our Lord, who lives. So we count ourselves to live to God.

Sin (verse 12) has not just gone away. It is still with us, sadly. It is no longer to rule as King Sin in our bodies. See Psalm 19:13 and Psalm 119:133. This body of ours will die sooner or later. God will give us a new body; see 1 Corinthians 15: 42-44. Our body has its desires. It lets us know what it wants! Yet it is only the ‘old’ body. The desires it has must not lead us into sin. If we are hungry, we eat good food. Every desire can be met or ‘satisfied’ in a good way. See Psalm 103:5.

In the rest of the chapter, Paul gives us more pictures in words. Perhaps in verse 13 we have a picture of the slave market in a city. Often in Paul’s day, a man who was free would be worse off than a slave who had a good master. So a man might offer himself for sale as a slave. If he did, he could not always choose whether he had a good or bad master. ‘Instruments’ here may mean a soldier’s weapons, or it may mean tools. A man who became a slave had not only his arms and legs to offer, but his mind as well. His new master could use it all. Now we may have a good master, God. Or we may have a bad master, sin. God has done something wonderful for us already. He will do more! (Verse 14) When sin is our master, it leads us into death. When God is our master, He leads us into righteousness and life.

Verses 15-23 Be free: serve God

The question which Paul asks in verse 15 is not so very different from verse 1. The Jew that Paul argues with thought:- ’ God’s law is the only thing that keeps men back from sin. Take that away, and men will sin more and more.’ Paul says:- ‘That is not true’. Then in verse 16 Paul uses the picture of the slave market again. Here it is clearer than it was in verse 13.

There may just be another picture in verse 17. Paul may mean that when we became Christians, we were like very hot metal. When metal is very hot we can pour it into a ‘mould’. When it cools again, it has taken on the shape of the mould. It also becomes hard again. Christians are like that. Their lives have a new shape, which Christian teaching gives to them. In verse 18, Paul says again:- ‘God has set you free from your own sins. Now you are servants or slaves! But it is through God’s righteousness’. You thought that you were free to sin before. Now you are God’s servants, you really are free.

Paul says three things in verse 19.

1) Before we were Christians we offered each part of our body to sin.
2) He speaks about uncleanness and breaking the law. That led into yet more sin. We cannot check sin, or keep it under control. It gets worse and worse.
3) Now we are to think about all the parts of our bodies. We must offer each part of our body as a slave to God’s righteousness. That is what we call ‘consecration’. Paul says that is the way which leads to real holiness of life, that is, ‘sanctification’.
Before you were Christians (verse 20) you were the slaves of ‘King Sin’. The only freedom which you had then was freedom from God’s righteousness. No freedom could be worse than that. We do need to hear what Paul says here. So many people talk about man’s ‘free will’. Paul talks only about being the slave of sin or of God’s righteousness. When the NIV says ‘the control of righteousness’, it adds something which Paul does not say at all.

In verses 21 and 22, Paul has another picture. We shall find this again in verses 4 and 5 in the next chapter. We are like plants or trees on which there should be fruit. When we were the slaves of sin, there was really no fruit on our lives. If there was any we were ashamed of it because at the end, it was only death. (Verse 22) But now you are Christians. God has set you free from the power which sin had over you. Already now there is good fruit on your life which leads to real holiness. Beyond that, the end is no longer death but life with God forever.

There may be yet another picture in verse 23. The Roman empire did not pay its soldiers very much. They could not live on their pay. Sometimes the pay which they should have had did not get to them. But when a new Caesar took over - like Nero! - he wanted the soldiers to think what a good man he was. So he paid out large sums of money to them. He hoped then that the soldiers would be on his side if there was trouble in the Empire. So Paul says:- ‘The wages which sin pays is death. You cannot live on that! But God’s gift to us when we become Christians is the rich, wonderful gift of eternal life’.

The first six verses of Chapter 7 really belong with Chapter 6. Paul still speaks about ‘we’ and ‘you’ and not about ‘I’ as he will from verse 7