What does Romans 6:6 mean?

Paul began this chapter by asking if believers in Jesus—those who have been saved through their faith—should go on sinning to somehow increase God's grace. He said no, but then he backed up to explain some things about what happened to us when we trusted in Christ for our salvation from sin. For one thing, we died with Christ, in a spiritual sense, and then we were resurrected spiritually to new life. We are not the same spiritually dead people we were before (Ephesians 2:5).

Now Paul adds a new layer of understanding to what exactly happened to us when we died spiritually with Christ. He writes that we also experienced a crucifixion. Our "old self," the one that existed in sin and self-reliance before we were in Christ, was spiritually crucified in the same way that Christ was physically crucified on the cross. In response to our faith, God mysteriously, powerfully put to death our old self that was under the rule and power of sin.

When the old self was crucified, the "body of sin" was brought to nothing or done away with. Paul pictures sin as having a body, as an entity that controlled us before we were in Christ. Now that sin's body has been removed in the spiritual crucifixion of our old self, however, sin is not in charge of us any longer. We were slaves to sin, and we have now been freed from its power and authority in our lives.

Does that mean we don't want to do sinful things anymore? Paul will show that the "want" to sin remains. The requirement to sin is gone, however. We can never be compelled to sin again, because Christ has rescued us from that slave owner. Now we can only volunteer to sin. This is consistent with other New Testament passages, which describe a saved person's life as imperfect (1 John 1:9–10), but not marked by pervasive, deliberate sins (Galatians 5:19–24; 1 John 3:6–9).