Romans 6
v.6-7
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
In these two verses is encapsulated the heart of Paul’s message to the Romans as well to the general Christian reader, and it is necessary to get the tenses correct to understand what we possess and do not yet possess as believers. Through faith in Christ and baptism in him Christians have a new essence, a new being (our language strains for adequate words) that is an accomplished fact; that is the beginning of a process which must be worked out in appropriate and holy behavior. The new essence must be seized and acted out by the believer, for there is an already and a not yet aspect to salvation, as Paul reminds the Philippians in a pregnant text that combines the two aspects of “God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” and the need as responsible agents “to work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12-13).
v.11-12
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Because we are dead to sin through our union with Christ, we are not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies. Our daily experience with regard to sin is determined—not by our reckoning, but by our will—by whether we allow sin to reign in our bodies. But our will must be influenced by the fact that we died to sin.
Before our salvation, before our death to the reign of sin, such an exhortation would have been futile. You cannot say to a slave, “Live as a free man,” but you can say that to someone delivered from slavery. Now that we are in fact dead to sin—to its rule and reign—we are to count on that being true. We are to keep before us this fact that we are no longer slaves. We can now stand up to sin and say no to it. Before we had no choice; now we have one. When we sin as Christians, we do not sin as slaves, but as individuals with the freedom of choice. We sin because we choose to sin.
To confuse the potential for resisting (which God provided) with the responsibility for resisting (which is ours) is to court disaster in our pursuit of holiness.
v.13
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
v.16
Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?
v.19
I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.
v.23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.