Romans 6:2 - Printer Friendly

ESV: By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

NIV: By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

NASB: Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

CSB: Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

NLT: Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

KJV: God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

NKJV: Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

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.

Romans 6:1–14 explores how Christians should think about and respond to sin now that we are in Christ and our sins are forgiven. In explaining this, Paul reveals new information about what happened when we put our faith in Christ. In a spiritual sense, we died with Him, and to our sin. We were then resurrected to a new spiritual life. Now Paul instructs us to continue remembering that we are no longer slaves to sin. We must not offer our bodies to be used for sin, but we must offer ourselves as instruments of righteousness, instead.

In Romans 6, Paul answers the question of whether Christians should continue to sin. His answer is emphatic: we absolutely should not. First, when we came to God by faith in Jesus, we died to sin. We are not slaves to it any more. Second, what did living for sin ever get us? It led to shame and death. The righteousness given to us for free by God in Christ Jesus leads to becoming like Jesus and to eternal life. We should serve righteousness instead of sin.

After comparing Adam and Christ and what their choices brought into the world, Paul now turns to ask if Christians should continue in sin once they have been saved. He gives several reasons why we must not: we died to sin's power over us; we are now servants to righteousness; and what good did sin ever bring to you, anyway? Paul will transition in Romans 7 to a discussion of what it means to be released from the law of Moses.

The book of Romans is the New Testament's longest, most structured, and most detailed description of Christian theology. Paul lays out the core of the gospel message: salvation by grace alone through faith alone. His intent is to explain the good news of Jesus Christ in accurate and clear terms. As part of this effort, Paul addresses the conflicts between law and grace, between Jews and Gentiles, and between sin and righteousness. As is common in his writing, Paul closes out his letter with a series of practical applications.