What does Romans 6:2 mean?

Paul asked a strange-sounding question in the previous verse about something he wrote at the end of chapter 5. There he said that as sin increased, God's grace for those who trusted in Christ's death for their sin increased even more. In that way, God's grace always reigns over sin. We cannot out-sin God's grace and forgiveness. So, Paul asked, should we just keep sinning now that we are believers in Jesus in order to keep increasing God's grace?

He answers here with, "By no means!" This is the same use of the Greek phrase mē genoito that Paul often uses in response to posing ridiculous questions as a teaching tool. In short, Christians should not keep sinning to increase the grace of God. In fact, Christians should not keep sinning willfully and intentionally, at all. Elsewhere in Scripture, we're given more details on why a life of persistent, willful sin is actually inconsistent with those who have truly been saved (Galatians 5:19–24; 1 John 3:6–9).

Paul responds to this question with another question: How can people who died to sin still live in it? This raises a whole new aspect of Paul's gospel message. As he will show in upcoming verses, all people who come to God in faith, believing in Christ's death in their place on the cross to pay for their sin, are said to have "died with Christ" in a sense. More specifically, we are said to have died to sin in that moment.

Paul will expand this thought, but the idea is this: Those who are not in Christ live under the rule of sin. They cannot avoid sinning. It is the only option on the menu. Christ's death on the cross to pay for our sin, however, broke sin's rule over our lives. We now have the power, in Christ, to stop sinning. We have not lost our desire to sin, however.