“What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you write a lot of things, you occasionally find when you go to write something new that you’ve written it before. That happened a couple of weeks ago as I was starting to studying Romans 6 in preparation for writing about it as we continue our journey. More specifically, I discovered that I had written about these two verses before. I also found myself agreeing with what I said then. So, with some updates after six years, and for the first time ever in nearly eight years of writing this blog, here’s a repeat of an old post.

What should be the relationship of a follower of Jesus to sin? Obviously we shouldn’t do it, but let’s be honest: a simple “ought not” isn’t usually sufficient to keep us from it. We need to understand the why behind the ought before we’re going to wrap our hearts and minds around it to a sufficient degree that it begins to have the kind of power in our lives it needs to have. Here in beginning of Romans 6, after Paul has just been telling us about the power of grace in light of the power of sin, the apostle explores this very idea. His treatment may not be exhaustive, but it is powerful. Let’s start unpacking this today, and continue with Paul on the idea over the next several days.

If you’ll remember from yesterday and the last couple of weeks, in chapter five, Paul explored the relationship of sin and grace.He looked at how sin entered the world through one man, Adam, and how grace similarly entered the world through one man, Jesus Christ. Grace came in response to sin, and the deeper sin is in someone’s life, the greater grace appears. Here’s a truth in light of that fact that may be the only thing you need to hear today: There is no sin so great that grace cannot overcome it entirely if we will receive it.

This is good news, but it begs an interesting question. If grace is made to look ever better in the face of sin, should followers of Jesus who have received His grace continue sinning so that grace can keep looking so good? After all, if grace’s size is proportional to the sin in our lives, shouldn’t we jump head first into the deep end of sin so that we can experience as much of God’s wonderful grace in Christ as we possibly can?

Paul’s response is as clear as it could be: Absolutely not! It’s actually even clearer than that. The Greek phrase he uses is the strongest negation the first century language offered. A more literal translation of it would be something like, “_______ no,” where you just fill in the blank there with your favorite curse word.

Paul is essentially saying that is the craziest, dumbest idea ever. What would possibly possess someone to even consider such a suggestion? We always hear that there aren’t any dumb questions. Well, this proves that statement wrong. That’s a dumb question better left unasked.

But…

Why wouldn’t we? Once again, if sin makes grace great, wouldn’t more sin make grace greater? And isn’t grace something we want to experience in greater and greater amounts? So why not keep sinning even once we’ve experienced grace so we can keep experiencing more and more of it?

Paul knew we would be asking this in spite of his insistence on how stupid the question is, so he answers it for us anyway. The reason that’s such a terrible idea is that when we experienced the grace of Christ we died to sin. How can you keep doing something after you’ve died to it?

Now, this idea of our dying to sin is something Paul is going to explore (and us with him) in a lot more detail as we continue in chapter 6 over the next couple of weeks, but let’s explore it for just a second together today. How is it that we die to sin? Why do we need to die to it in the first place? Because apart from the grace of Jesus Christ, won for us on the cross (where He died), we are slaves to sin. We can’t not sin. We don’t have that power. And I don’t need to try to prove this to you either. As Chesterton said and I quoted for you yesterday, “Original sin is the only doctrine that’s been empirically validated by 2,000 years of human history.”

Everything we do ultimately ends with sin. We can do all the good and righteous things we want, but the underlying motivation will ultimately be sin in some form or fashion. That’s the life of a slave. A slave can do whatever she wants as long as it isn’t covered by the will of her master. At the end of the day, though, a slave does what his master wants.

Well, there are only three ways a person can get out of slavery. The first is to be voluntarily released from the slavery by the slave owner. When it comes to sin, though, it is jealous for what it has in us, meaning no such release is going to come. The second way is to be rescued from the slavery by someone else. This is more possible with sin – for instance, a person might help us break an addiction of some kind. But the problem here is that there is always the possibility of our going back to sin and being enslaved by it yet again. After all, in rescuing you, something of great value has been taken from your former master, and it is naturally going to want you back. This is why the third way is the only way of guaranteeing this release we seek.

The third way to get out of slavery is to die. When you die, your master loses any and all power over you and never gets it back. In Christ – and this is a big part of what makes grace so amazing – we spiritually participate in His death to break the power of sin, but because we also spiritually participate in His resurrection, we get to keep our lives in Him. So we die to sin, but live in and for Christ. It’s a bit of a master exchange, yes, something we’ll explore in more detail later on in the chapter, but our new master wants us to be free, so free we are.

This brings us back to Paul’s question. If we have experienced this incredible freeing from the power of sin by dying to its power in Christ, why would we voluntarily resubmit ourselves to it as obedient slaves by sinning again? Why would a slave who has been freed willingly go back into slavery? What insanity! What utter foolishness! What gross inappropriateness! What a tragic warping of the mind of the once former slave! What a profound display of ingratitude toward the one who died to make us free!

This is why Paul gets so worked up about the question. Sinning as free people who have received the grace of Christ is to either totally misunderstand the nature of the gift we have received, or else to reject it entirely. This is no way to live. Literally. When we have received grace, sin isn’t a legitimate option any longer. Righteousness is our new path. And life is found on that path and that path alone. In the days ahead, we’ll explore with Paul more of why.