24  Alive to God (6:11-14)

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. (6:11–14)

After Lazarus had been dead for four days, Jesus called him forth from the grave. When he came out he was still wrapped from head to foot in his grave clothes, and Jesus instructed those standing nearby to “unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44).

That story is a vivid picture of a believer’s condition at the time of his conversion. He becomes fully alive spiritually when he trusts in Christ as Savior and Lord, but he is still bound, as it were, in some of the grave clothes of his old sinful life. The difference, of course, is that all of a believer’s sinful old clothes do not come off immediately, as did those of Lazarus. Not only that, but believers are continually tempted to put the old clothes back on. It is that continuing battle with sin and Satan that Paul recognizes in Romans 6:11–14.

After reminding his readers that they have died to sin and been raised to new life with Christ, the apostle now turns their attention to taking off the old grave clothes and living the new life to the fullness of Christ’s righteousness and to His glory.

In chapter 7, using himself as the example, Paul deals more fully with the believer’s battle with the old sinful habits and inclinations. He confesses that, even as an apostle, he did not fully understand why, since he had died to sin, the battle against sin still raged within him. “For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15). He does, however, know where the trouble lies, declaring a few verses later, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not” (v. 18).

In the present passage Paul again answers questions he knew his readers would wonder about: “If we have really been freed from sin by Christ (v. 7), why does it still give us so much trouble? If we are now holy before God, why are our lives so often unholy? If we are righteous, how can our lives better manifest that righteousness?” Three key words summarize the answers presented in 6:11–14: know, consider, and yield.

KNOW

Even so (6:11a)

The first key word (know) has to do with the mind and is implied in the transitional phrase even so. Those two words are crucial to Paul’s explanation, referring back to the truths he has just given in the first ten verses of the chapter. The idea is, “You must know and fully believe what I have just said, or else what I am about to say will make no sense. The truth that you are spiritually dead to sin, and the reality that you are spiritually alive to Christ are not abstract concepts for your finite minds to attempt to verify. They are divinely-revealed, foundational axioms behind Christian living, apart from which you can never hope to live the holy lives your new Lord demands.”

Realizing the importance of the truths he presents in verses 1–10, Paul uses forms of know and believe some four times (vv. 3, 6, 8, 9), and in other places he implies that his readers know about certain other truths (see, e.g., w. 2, 5, 7).

Scriptural exhortation is always built on spiritual knowledge. Although God would have been perfectly justified simply to have given men a list of unexplained do’s and don’ts, in His grace and compassion He did not choose to be autocratic. The basic reason He reveals as to why men are to live according to His standards was summarized in His declaration to ancient Israel: “Be holy; for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44). Quoting that very command, Peter admonishes Christians: “Like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy’ “(1 Pet. 1:15–16).

Scripture is replete with specific commands and standards for conduct, and behind all of them are divine truths, explicit or implicit, upon which those commands and standards are founded.

Paul has just declared that, as believers, we are united with Jesus Christ in His death and have through Him had the penalty paid for our sin. We have risen with our Lord Jesus Christ in His resurrection and therefore are able to walk in newness of life. Because Christ will never die again to sin, we will never die again to sin.

For a Christian to live out the fullness of his new life in Christ, for him to truly live as the new creation that he is, he must know and believe that he is not what he used to be. He must understand that he is not a remodeled sinner but a remade saint. He must understand that, despite his present conflict with sin, he is not longer under sin’s tyranny and will never be again, the true understanding of his identity is essential.

Through Hosea the Lord lamented, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God I also will forget your children” (Hos. 4:6). Isaiah declared, “Listen, O heavens, and hear, 0 earth; for the Lord speaks, ‘Sons I have reared and brought up, but they have revolted against Me. An ox knows its owner, and a donkey its master’s manger, but Israel does not know, My people do not understand’” (Isa. 1:2–3). Paul admonished believers in Philippi, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, let your mind dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8). He reminded Colossian believers that they had “put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him” (Col. 3:10). Faithful divine living without divine knowledge is impossible.

CONSIDER

consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. (6:11b)

The second key word (consider) has more to do with what we would call the heart. In its literal sense, logizomai means simply to count or number something. Jesus used it of Himself during the Last Supper when He disclosed to the disciples that He was the One “numbered with transgressors” of whom Isaiah prophesied (Luke 22:37; cf. Isa. 53:12). But the word was commonly used metaphorically in the sense of fully affirming a truth, of having unreserved inner confidence in the reality of what the mind acknowledges. Though both aspects actually occur in the mind, we think of this matter in the sense of being “heart felt.”

In the next chapter of this epistle Paul will illustrate from his own life how difficult it is for a Christian to realize experientially that he is free from sin’s bondage. As we look honestly at our lives after salvation, it is more than obvious that sin’s contamination is still very much with us. No matter how radical our outer transformation at the time of salvation may have been for the better, it is difficult to comprehend that we no longer have the fallen sin nature and that our new nature is actually divine. It is hard to realize that we are actually indwelt by the Holy Spirit and that God now calls us His children and deems us fit to live eternally with Him in His heaven.

To help us consider, it is advantageous to note that there are a number of reasons believers often find it difficult to comprehend that they are now free from sin’s bondage. Many of them do not realize that marvelous truth simply because they have never heard of it. They assume, or perhaps have been wrongly taught, that salvation brings only transactional or forensic holiness—that because of their trust in Christ, God now regards them as holy but that their basic relationship to sin is the same as it always was and that it will not be changed until they go to be with Christ. That view of salvation often includes the idea that, although trust in Christ brings the believer a new nature, the old nature remains fully operative, and that the Christian life is essentially a battle between his two resident natures. This makes salvation “addition” rather than “transformation.”

A second reason Christians often find it hard to believe they are actually free from the tyranny of sin is that Satan does not want them to believe it. If the enemy of our souls and the accuser of the brethren can make us think he still dominates our earthly lives, he weakens our resolve to live righteously by making it appear hopeless.

A third reason Christians often find it difficult to believe they are free from sin’s compulsion is that the reality of the new birth in Christ is not experiential, it is not physically observable or verifiable. Redemption is a divine and spiritual transaction that may or may not be accompanied by physical or emotional experiences. A believer cannot perceive or experience in any humanly verifiable way the moment of his dying and resurrection with Christ.

A fourth and perhaps the most common reason why Christians find it hard to believe they are freed from sin’s tyranny while they are still on earth is that their continued battle with sin seems almost constantly to contradict that truth. If they have a new holy disposition and sin’s control has truly been broken, they wonder, why are they still so strongly tempted and why do they so often succumb?

Paul’s answer follows, Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. He was not speaking of a psychological mind game, by which we keep affirming something over and over until we are convinced against our better judgment or even against reality that it is true. We know we are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus because God’s Word declares it is so. In other words, those are truths of faith and they must be affirmed in faith.

David C. Needham wrote, “What could be more frustrating than being a Christian who thinks himself primarily a self-centered sinner, yet whose purpose in life is to produce God-centered holiness?” (Birthright: Christian, Do You Know Who You Are? [Portland: Multnomah, 1979], p. 69). Until a believer accepts the truth that Christ has broken the power of sin over his life, he cannot live victoriously, because in his innermost being he does not think it is possible.

Commentator Donald Grey Barnhouse said,

In a similar way, Christ’s righteousness is draped over every believer, protecting him from sin’s deadly attacks.

We believe we are in God’s eternal purpose, plan, presence, and power because His Word assures us we are. Paul assured the Ephesian believers that God “chose us in Him [Christ Jesus] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Eph. 1:4). And to the church at Philippi he wrote, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus…. So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 1:6; 2:12–13).

There are many important and practical results of our considering ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. First, we can have confidence in the midst of temptation, knowing that with sin’s tyranny broken we can successfully resist it in God’s power. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

Second, we have confidence that we cannot sin our way out of God’s grace. Just as we have been saved by God’s power alone, we are kept by His power alone. “My sheep hear My voice,” Jesus said, “and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand” (John 10:27–29).

Third, when we truly consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ, we have confidence in the face of death. “I am the resurrection and the life,” our Lord said; “he who believes in Me shall live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25–26; cf. Heb. 2:14).

Fourth, we know that, regardless of what happens to us in this life, no matter how disastrous it may be, God will use it not only for His glory but also for our blessing. “We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28).

All of those things, and many more, are true because we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. No religion in the world can or does make such a claim. Even the most ardent Muslim does not claim to be in Mohammed or in Allah. Buddhists do not claim to be in Buddha or Hindus to be in any of their multitude of gods. As Christians, however, we know that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3; emphasis added).

YIELD

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. (6:12–14)

The third key word is yield, or present (v. 13), which obviously has to do with the will. Because of the incomprehensible truths about his relationship to God that the believer knows with his mind and feels deeply committed to in his heart, he is therefore able to exercise his will successfully against sin and, by God’s power, prevent its reign in his mortal body.

In this present life, sin will always be a powerful force for the Christian to reckon with. But it is no longer master, no longer lord, and it can and must be resisted. Sin is personified by Paul as a dethroned but still powerful monarch who is determined to reign in the believer’s life just as he did before salvation. The apostle’s admonition to believers, therefore, is for them to not let sin reign, because it now has no right to reign. It now has no power to control a believer unless the believer chooses to obey its lusts.

Peter makes a similar appeal. Because “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,” he says, “I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul” (1 Pet. 2:9,11). The moment they are saved, Christians become citizens of God’s kingdom of righteousness, and thereby aliens and strangers to Satan’s realm of sin and death.

Because a believer is a new creature in Christ, his immortal soul is forever beyond sin’s reach. The only remaining beachhead where sin can attack a Christian is in his mortal body. One day that body will be glorified and forever be out of sin’s reach, but in the meanwhile it is still mortal, that is, subject to corruption and death. It still has sinful lusts—because the brain and the thinking processes are part of the mortal body—and Satan uses those lusts to lure God’s people back into sin in whatever ways he can.

Paul later declares in this letter, “For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:22–23). Teaching the same truth, he wrote the Philippian believers, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory” (Phil. 3:20–21) And to the Corinthians he wrote, “For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Cor. 15:53).

It is because our mortal bodies are still subject to sin that Paul says, Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. He does not warn about sin reigning in our souls or our spirits, but only about its reigning in our bodies, because that is the only place in a Christian where sin can operate. That is why later in this epistle he laments, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members” (Rom. 7:18, 22–23). He then concludes, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin” (Rom. 7:24–25; emphasis added).

It is because the Christian’s warfare with sin is waged in the body that the apostle also declared, “I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Rom. 12:1), and “I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly, after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified” (1 Cor. 9:27; emphasis added).

It is obvious that sin can reign in our bodies, else Paul’s admonition would be pointless. But it is also obvious that sin does not have to reign there, or the warning would be equally pointless. He therefore commands: Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

By definition, a command presupposes a will in the one being commanded. The commands in God’s Word are no exceptions. It is therefore the Christian’s will that Paul is speaking about here. For a sin to have power over a child of God, that sin must first pass through his will. It is for that reason that Paul exhorts believers: “So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13). God’s will can be active in our lives only as our wills are submissive to His.

When a believer yields the members of his body to sin, those members become instruments of unrighteousness. On the other hand, when in obedience to his heavenly Father he yields himself as one who is alive from the dead ways of sin and death, those same members become holy instruments of righteousness to God.

In verse 14, Paul changes from admonition to declaration, offering the assuring words: For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

God’s law “is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12). But the law cannot break either sin’s penalty or its power. It can only rebuke, restrain, and condemn. The Christian is no longer under the condemnation of God’s law but is now under the redeeming power of His grace. It is in the power of that grace that the Lord calls him to live.