Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Romans 6:11
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
11. Likewise ] Here is the strict result of the truth just stated, when the position of Christ as the Second Adam is remembered. What He did and does, as such, was done and is done by those who are “in Him” as their Head.
reckon ] This word, just as in Rom 3:28, (E. V., “conclude,”) marks a solid inference from facts. It implies also here an application of that inference to conscience, affections, and will; such as is now developed by the argument.
through Jesus Christ ] Lit., and far better, in Jesus Christ. The word “in” is quite strictly used here, of the relation of the Second Adam to His brethren. “ Our Lord ” should be omitted, on evidence of MSS., &c.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Rom 6:11-14
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus.
Death a duty
The Bible speaks of three kinds of deaths.
1. That which is a necessary event–the death of the body.
2. That which is a moral crime–death in trespasses and sins.
3. That which is a righteous obligation–death unto sin.
This is a death which every man should die, though few men do so. It is a death which requires earnest individual effort, and involves the agonies of a self-crucifixion. What is meant by being dead indeed unto sin?
I. Negatively. It does not mean–
1. Being dead to the existence of sin. Every soul should realise this. Without a due regard to this we shall be incompetent to appreciate the history of Providence.
2. Being dead to the memory of our own sins. We can and ought never to forget the fact that we have sinned. The memory of the fact will serve to restrain from the wrong, to stimulate to the right; it will heighten our gratitude to pardoning mercy, and swell the joys of eternity.
3. Being dead to the effects of our sin upon our own history. The pardon of sin does not free us from all the effects of sin. The law of moral causation goes on. The sins that we have in youth committed against our constitution, intellect, interests, follow us to old age. It was so in the case of Job.
4. Being dead to the ruinous workings of sin around us. David beheld the way of transgressors and was grieved. So did Jeremiah. So did Paul at Athens. So did Christ, etc. So must all good men. We are to battle against it.
II. Positively. It may involve three things.
1. The death of all interest in its attractions. Sin in our world has wonderful attraction. The taste, the skill, the genius of ages, have been expended in investing it with all conceivable charms. But the holy soul sees through it, and is disgusted. To it, all its attractions are but as a spangled dress that robes an ugly theatrical.
2. The death of all desire for its pleasures. Sin has pleasures for a season. The holy soul has higher–the pleasures of a purified imagination, as exalted hope, a God-inspiring soul, an approving conscience, a smiling God.
3. The death of all fear about its penalties. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The burial of the past
1. Life is a series of fresh beginnings. We cannot really undo the past, but still we have to do as much towards it as we can. Nothing is more natural than to say to ourselves, Let me begin again; all this has been a very foolish mistake; I am very sorry that I took the turn I did. The beginning again is made impossible by the indelible character of what we have done. Besides the reputation we have acquired, there is the memory of our past life. If we could but wipe out the past, and retain the experience that we have gained without the pain and sin through which we gained it, that would, as it seems, wholly satisfy our need, and we could really commence afresh. We do not quite ask to be put on the same level as we might have reached if we had been more careful, more in earnest. What we ask for is to be enabled to fight the next battle without the burden of the past on us. We want, in short, to bury a great deal of the past, and not have its presence haunt us any more.
2. To this need Easter Day is the answer. You are at full liberty to do all you ask. Let not the memory of sin haunt you with any such daunting terrors or shames. Bury the dead past with all its sins; on this one condition, that you are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. If you can learn from the past your weak points, your besetting sins; if you can gather out of it that which came from God, and that which you can use in the service of God, then, by all means, bury the rest, and defy its power; and live in the power of the Son of God.
3. It is true that every deed passes into the substance of our being, and we can never be after it what we were before. But for all that, the sins that we have committed must not be allowed to work upon us beyond the measure that God has assigned to them. You have sinned, and you cannot be what you were, nor what you might have been. But you still can be a servant of God, and even your past sins can become in His hands instruments of His will. The fall of David gave us the thirty-second Psalm; the fall of St. Peter fitted him to strengthen his brethren. The weakness of St. Paul taught us the lesson, My grace is sufficient for thee; for My strength is made perfect in weakness. There is even in evil a good element; and out of sin we may draw strength; and when we have drawn out all that may help us for the future, we need not fear to bury all the rest. Christ has expressly taken all that on Himself. We have, in the death and resurrection of Christ, the certain assurance that they who live unto Him need fear no condemnation.
4. Not with the past is our chief business, but with the present and the future. Let me then give a few cautions to those who really desire to reckon themselves to be dead unto past sins, but alive unto God. It is not at all uncommon to find that a high festival like Easter gives us a sense of recovered freedom, and a sort of confidence in our strength to win the battle. And then this excitement wears off, and we are not only back where we were before, but have the additional weakness caused by an additional defeat. Now–
I. Beware of confounding a slight repulse with a regular defeat, and of allowing your enemy to win, not because you are really beaten, but because you merely fancy you are. A temptation comes to you in the shape of an evil thought. Do not yield as if the evil thought were as bad as the evil word or deed. Cast out the foe, and let him not drive you to sinful actions. Or, again, if you have actually given way, do not say that this is complete defeat. Fight every inch of ground. However much you may be defeated, the mere fact of your having kept up the battle retains you on Christs side, and ensures you His help.
II. In recommencing the battle with sin, despise not the day of small things. Life to our foolish eyes seems not so earnest, not so solemn as we had thought it. We had been prepared for something extraordinary, and we find nothing that is not commonplace. We are like soldiers who have been drilled for a pitched battle, and then find nothing but a war of outposts, and so become discontented and careless. But the power of the Spirit of God is as much shown in small things as in great. The microscope proves that Gods hand will fashion the wing of an insect as carefully as the grandest and most complicated animal structure. So, too, is it in the spiritual world; and the Creator would have the slightest impulse of the will as perfect and as pure as the deliberate choice of the reason.
III. Be not content with negatives. Do not only resist temptation, but seek to serve God by diligent discharge of duties, by kindness, by turning your thoughts to your Father in heaven, to the Cross of your Redeemer. And I put the first of these first, though the last is the most important, because it is with the first, the outer duties, that we always have to begin. Begin with such duties, for those you are justified in even forcing yourself to do, and however much your inclination may lead you another way, still these duties are to be done. I cannot, in the same sense, bid you force yourself to love God and Christ; but God will most assuredly give you at last, if not at once, the power of loving Him if you are doing your best to obey Him, and when thoughts of Him and of Christ enter your heart, do not turn away. (Bp. Temple.)
Life in death
I. Paul here exhorts to the acceptance of an ideal scheme of life.
1. The facts of Christian experience are to be recognised. The moral antagonism of flesh and spirit, represented by the dispositions of the body and mind, is to be reckoned with (Rom 7:21; Rom 7:23).
2. They are to be interpreted in agreement with the facts of Christs crucifixion and resurrection.
(1) The body being mortal, we are to regard it as suffering the penalty of sin, even as our Lords body was crucified.
(2) Morally its promptings and tendencies are not to be accepted as the law of conduct, but to be subordinated to the purer and higher impulses of the spirit, which has already entered upon the resurrection life, being mystically united to Christ Jesus (verse 13).
II. The practical influence of this upon conduct.
1. This is not to be a merely abstract distinction; it is to be acknowledged as the law according to which we are to act, just as elsewhere the apostle exhorts Christians not to consider themselves dead to sin, but to become so (Gal 5:24; Col 3:5).
2. Nor is this to be understood as a violation of our physical nature, as if the spirit were to be benefited at the expense of the body. Asceticism is not countenanced by Paul or his Master.
3. It is but an assertion of the true order of our nature, in which conscience and the spiritual impulses are de jure the ruling authority and power. Our appetites and affections are not evil in themselves, but become so when allowed to rule.
4. The spirit in which this service is to be rendered is one of–
(1) Liberty; for the tyranny of sin, the worst of masters, is thus broken.
(2) Sacrifice; of ourselves to God through Christ; the sacrifice being possible and acceptable through association with that of His Cross. So it is, in a sense, a crucifixion, through which death voluntarily endured in one sphere, conduces to life in a higher one.
5. All this is not to be regarded as a mere taking for granted or figurative supposition, but is an exercise–
(1) Of faith, identifying us with Christ.
(2) Of free will determining that the ideal shall be realised.
III. The encouragement to this course.
1. A promise. Sin shall not, etc.
2. The nature of the Divine economy under which we elect to live. As we are incapable of obeying the law, and the law, when unfulfilled, tends to death, we can only rely upon Gods grace or favour, which abolishes not only the penalty of sin, but its influence, presence, and attraction. (St. J. A. Frere.)
Dead but alive
1. How intimately the believers duties are interwoven with his privileges! Because he is alive unto God he is to renounce sin, since that corrupt thing belongs to his estate of death.
2. How intimately both his duties and his privileges are bound up with Christ Jesus his Lord!
3. How thoughtful ought we to be upon these matters; reckoning what is right and fit; and carrying out that reckoning to its practical issues. We have in our text–
I. A great fact to be reckoned upon.
1. The nature of this fact.
(1) We are dead with Christ to sin by having borne the punishment in Him (verses 6, 7).
(2) We are risen with Him into a justified condition, and have reached a new life (verse 8).
(3) We can no more come under sin again than He can (verse 9).
(4) We are therefore forever dead to its guilt and reigning power (verses 12-14).
2. This reckoning is based on truth, or we should not be exhorted to it.
(1) To reckon yourself to be dead to sin, so that you boast that you do not sin at all, would be a reckoning based on falsehood, and would be exceedingly mischievous (1Ki 8:46; 1Jn 1:8). None are so provoking to God as sinners who boast their own fancied perfection.
(2) The reckoning that we do not sin must either go upon the antinomian theory, that sin in the believer is no sin, which is a shocking notion; or else our conscience must tell us that we do sin in many ways; in omission or commission, in transgression or shortcoming, in temper or in spirit (Jam 3:2; Ecc 7:20; Rom 3:23).
(3) To reckon yourself dead to sin in the scriptural sense is full of benefit both to heart and life. Be a ready reckoner in this fashion.
II. A great lesson to be put in practice (verse 12).
1. Sin has great power; it is in you, and will strive to reign. It remains as–
(1) An outlaw, hiding away in your nature.
(2) A plotter, planning your overthrow.
(3) An enemy, warring against the law of your mind.
(4) A tyrant, worrying and oppressing the true life.
2. Its field of battle is the body.
(1) Its wants–hunger, thirst, cold, etc.
may become occasions of sin, by leading to murmuring, envy, covetousness, robbery, etc.
(2) Its appetites may crave excessive indulgence, and unless continually curbed, will easily lead to evil.
(3) Its pains and infirmities, through engendering impatience and other faults, may produce sin.
(4) Its pleasures also can readily become incitements to sin.
(5) Its influence upon the mind and spirit may drag our noble nature down to the grovelling materialism of earth.
3. The body is mortal, and we shall be completely delivered from sin when set free from our present material frame, if indeed grace reigns within. Till then we shall find sin lurking in one member or another.
4. Meanwhile we must not let it reign.
(1) If it reigned over us it would be our god. It would prove us to be under death, and not alive unto God.
(2) It would cause us unbounded pain and injury if it ruled only for a moment.
Conclusion: Sin is within us, aiming at dominion; and this knowledge, together with the fact that we are nevertheless alive unto God, should–
1. Help our peace; for we perceive that men may be truly the Lords, even though sin struggles within them.
2. Aid our caution; for our Divine life is well worth preserving, and needs to be guarded with constant care.
3. Draw us to use the means of grace, since in these the Lord meets with us and refreshes our new life. Let us come to the table of communion and to all other ordinances, as alive unto God; and in that manner let us feed on Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Dead to sin and alive unto God
The great object of this chapter is to establish the alliance between a sinners acceptance through Christ and his holiness. And here there is a practical direction given for carrying this alliance into effect.
1. Now, if these phrases be taken in their personal sense they would mean that we are mortified to the pleasures and temptations of sin, and alive to nothing but the excellencies of Gods character, and a sense of our obligations to Him; or in other words, we are to reckon ourselves holy in order that we may become holy. It were a strange receipt for curing a man of his dishonesty, to bid him reckon of himself that he is an honest man. How, by the simple act of counting myself what I really am not, can I be transferred to that which I choose to imagine of myself? How can I reckon that to be true which I know to be false? We have heard much of the power of imagination; but this is giving it an empire that exceeds all which was before known.
2. Now you free the passage of these difficulties by taking the phrases forensically. To be dead unto sin is to be in the condition of one on whom death, the sentence of sin, has already been inflicted–if not in his own person, in that of his representative. To be alive unto God is to live in the favour of God–to which we have been admitted through Christ. To reckon that Christ died for the one purpose, and that He brought in an everlasting righteousness for the other, is to reckon, not on a matter of fancy, but on a matter proposed on the evidence of Gods own testimony to faith. And when, instead of looking downwardly on the dark and ambiguous tablet of our own character, we look upwardly to the Saviour, we rest on the completeness of a finished expiation and perfect obedience, and transfer our reckoning from a ground where conscience gives us the lie, to a ground where God, who cannot lie, meets us with the assurances of His truth.
3. But it may be said, might not this be an untruth also? The apostle says to his converts, Reckon yourselves dead unto sin–but is it competent to address any one individual at random, to reckon himself in this blessed condition? Might not he, in so reckoning, be as deluded as in the other reckoning? I answer, It is nowhere said that Christ died so for me in particular, as that the benefits of His atonement are mine in possession; but it is everywhere said that He so died for me in particular, as that the benefits of His atonement are mine in offer. They are mine if I will. Such terms as whosoever, and all, and any, and ho, everyone, bring the gospel redemption specifically to my door; and there it stands for acceptance as mine in offer, and ready to become mine in possession on my giving credit to the word of the testimony. The terms of the gospel message are so constructed that I have just as good a warrant for reckoning myself dead unto sin, as if I had been singled out by name.
4. And what is more. You will not acquire a virtuous character by imagining that you have it. But there is another way in which it may be acquired. Not by any false reckoning about your actual character; but by a true reckoning about your actual condition. It is not by imagining I am a saint that I will become so; but by reflecting on the condemnation due to me as a sinner–on the way in which it has been averted from my person–on the passage by which, without suffering to myself, I have been borne across the region of vindictive justice, and conclusively placed on the fair and favoured shore of acceptance with God. The sense and the reckoning of all this may transform me from the sinner that I am into the saint that I am not. How shall I, now that I have been made alive again, continue in that hateful thing, of whose malignant tendencies in itself, and of whose utter irreconcilableness to the will and character of God, I have, in the death of my Representative and my Surety, obtained so striking a demonstration?
5. Mark, then, the apostles receipt for holiness. It is not that you reckon yourself pure, but that you reckon yourself pardoned. And how it should fall with the efficacy of a charm on a sinners ear, when told that the first stepping stone towards that character of heaven after which he has been so hopelessly labouring, is to assure himself that all the guilt of his past ungodliness is now done away–that the ransom of iniquity is paid, and that by Christs death the penalties of that law he so oft has broken shall never reach him. It is this which brings home to the believers heart the malignity of sin; it is this which opens to him the gate of heaven, and, disclosing to his view the glories of that upper region, teaches him that it is indeed a land of sacredness; it is this which inclines his footsteps along the path to immortality, which the death of Christ alone has rendered accessible; it is this which conforms his character to that of the celestial spirits who are there before him; for the will of Christ, whom he now loves, is that he should be like unto him; and the grateful wish and grateful endeavour of the disciple, draw forth from his labouring bosom that prayer of faith, which is sure to rise with acceptance, and is sure to be answered with power. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)
Dead to sin, alive to God
I. What it is we are to reckon ourselves as being.
1. Dead unto sin.
(1) He who is dead is bereft of all power of thought or action. We may call him by his old familiar name, but he knows it not. We may appeal to him by all in which he used to be most keenly interested, but our words fall unheeded.
(2) Such it is to be dead to sin. Temptation comes to him who is dead to sin and finds no part in him. Old sins which were once full of attraction he now cares not for; and they have no power over him. They are as much matters of indifference to him as last years news, or last years fashions.
2. Alive unto God.
(1) To be alive to anything is to take a keen interest in it. The mother is alive to the needs of her children; the tradesman to the variations of the market; the general to every point of advantage for his own forces, or of difficulty to those of his adversary.
(2) The Christian is alive towards God. He is sensitive to His smallest revelation. He listens for every whisper of His Spirit. He recognises His presence in all things. He is alive towards God because he has learned that he lives on God. Like the flower that ever opens its petals to the sun and closes them when the light and warmth of its rays are withdrawn, so the Christian soul is ever open to all the influences of God, and closed to the dark and chilling atmosphere of the world.
II. What right have we thus to reckon ourselves as dead unto sin and alive unto God? Because we are members of Him who died unto sin once, and who now forever liveth unto God.
1. Jesus our Head and Representative lived a life that was completely dead unto sin (Joh 14:30), and His final struggle with it was on the Cross, which was the completion of His death unto sin. Which of you convinceth Me of sin? is His own challenge to His enemies, and one by one they were forced to own His sinlessness. Judas, Pilate, the penitent thief, the Roman centurion.
2. He liveth unto God. Throughout His earthly ministry He did so. From the first He is the Son of Man who is in heaven; He is never alone, for His Father is with Him. But it is in His resurrection that He is visibly shown to be living unto God.
3. It is into Him that we are incorporated. Therefore as He died unto sin and liveth unto God, it is both our duty and our right that we should thus claim the privilege He has won for us.
III. The benefit which we gain by thus reckoning ourselves.
1. To believe that we can do a thing goes a long way in enabling us to do it. We may have the power, yet if we do not believe that we have it, we lose all its benefits. This belief does not make the power, but it makes it operative. In like manner, to reckon ourselves to be anything is a great help towards being it. No doubt if we reckon ourselves to be what we are not we are guilty of self-deceit and vanity. But in seeking to avoid this mistake we must not fall into its opposite by refusing to claim what it is our right and duty to claim.
2. As Christians we have a right to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, and the fact that we can claim it will go far to make the claim a reality. When we realise that our true position is that we are dead to sin we can face temptation with certainty of success. When we are assured that we are alive to God we can feel more confidence that He is living in us, and that His life will be perfected in us. Many a battle has been lost through fear which would have been won if the defeated army had only reckoned themselves equal to the conflict.
IV. How may we be sure that this reckoning is no mere feat of imagination or figure of speech, but a solid fact?
1. As a matter of fact we do not find ourselves to be dead to sin. If it does not now win us by its open allurements, it lies in wait for our own unguarded moments. Neither are we yet truly alive unto God. Our moods vary. We are keenly alive to Him at one hour, and cold and indifferent the next.
2. There is but one way by which our actual condition may be made to correspond with our ideal; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(1) It is because we are united to Him that we may reckon ourselves dead to sin.
(2) It is because He to whom we are united is our Lord, that we have confidence that that which He bids us to be we may be. The more we realise that He is Lord of our inmost being, just so far will He bring it into subjection to Himself, and mould it after His own pattern. Is not all power given to Him? Has He not therefore power to make us indeed dead to sin and alive unto God? Believe it. Trust Him. (Canon Vernon Hutton.)
Dead to sin and alive unto God through Christ
I. What it is to be dead unto sin. Obviously the opposite of being dead in sin. As he who is dead has nothing more to do with earthly things, so he who is dead to sin has nothing to do any more with sin or its attractions.
II. What is it to be alive unto God? To be full of life for Him–to be altogether active and on the alert to do His will.
III. What is it to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin? To believe, esteem yourselves dead to it. Regard this as truly your relation to sin; it shall have no more dominion over you.
IV. What is meant by reckoning yourselves alive indeed unto God through Jesus Christ? That you are to expect to be saved by Christ and to calculate on this salvation as your own.
V. What is implied in the exhortation? That there is an adequate provision for realising these blessings in fact. A precept requiring us to account ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, would be utterly untenable if no provision were made for its accomplishment.
VI. What is implied by complying with this injunction?
1. Believing such a thing to be possible.
2. Ceasing from all expectation of attaining this state of ourselves.
3. A present willingness to be saved from sin, and the actual renunciation of all sin as such.
4. An entire committal of our whole case to Christ, not only for the present, but for all future salvation from sin.
5. The foreclosing of the mind against temptation, in such a sense that the mind truly expects to live a life purely devoted to God. Christians in this state of mind no more expect to commit small sins than great sins. Hating all sin for its own sake and for its hatefulness to Christ, any sin, however small, is to them as murder.
6. That the Christian knows where his great strength lies. He knows it does not lie in works, but only in Christ received by faith.
Conclusion:
1. This text alone entirely justifies the expectation of living without sin through all-abounding grace.
2. To teach that such an expectation is a dangerous error is to teach unbelief. Dangerous to expect salvation from sin? If so, what is the gospel worth? Some expect to have to count themselves not dead indeed unto sin, but somewhat alive to it, and in part alive to God through all their mortal life. It follows as quite a thing of course that expecting no complete victory over sin they will use no appropriate means, since faith stands foremost among those means, and faith must include at least a confidence that the thing sought is possible to be attained. An elder I knew rose in a meeting and told the Lord he had been living in sin thus far, and expected to go on in sin as long as he lived; he had sinned today and should doubtless sin tomorrow, and so on–and he talked as calmly about it all as if it were foolish to make any ado, as well as impossible to attempt any change for the better. How horrible! Suppose a wife should say to her husband, I love you some, but you know I love many other men too. And yet this is not to be compared in shocking guilt and treason with the case of the Christian who says, I expect to sin every day I live, with unmoved carelessness. You expect to be a traitor to Jesus each day of your life; to crucify Him afresh each day; and yet you talk about having a good hope through grace! But tell me, does not every true Christian say, Do not let me live at all if I cannot live without sin; for how can I bear to go on day by day sinning against Him I so much love! (C. G. Finney, D. D.)
Dying to sin and living to God
Pauls object in this chapter is to exhibit the inconsistency of sin with the Christian faith and position. We are, he says, planted together with Christ, and baptized into His death that we may pass with Him into a new life. There is only one kind of perfect human life, the life exemplified in Jesus Christ; and to this there is only one possible path, viz., death. The grub cannot pass to the higher life of the dragonfly without first sickening and becoming dead to all the life it has been familiar with, and we, in order to enter the true life of man, must die to the old.
I. What is it to be dead to sin?
1. To be beyond its power to inflict penalty upon us. If a servant has come to a settlement with his master there remains no longer any bond between them. Now the wages of sin is death, and our wages have been paid in the death of Christ. The law has no claim upon a man who has suffered its extreme penalty, and this the old legal phraseology of Scotland brought out when it spoke of criminals being justified in the Grassmarket, when they were hung there. By death they cleared scores with the law. Thus we have by the death of Christ the removal of our guilt.
2. To be irresponsive to the appeals of sin. How unmoved, how irresponsive the dead are! Let the master shout at his slaves dead body; not one finger stirs to obey his orders. Was the dead man vain and fond of applause? the acclaims of a world bring no smile of pleasure to his face now. Was he mean and greedy? Fill the dead hand with gold; the fingers will not close upon it. The soldier who a few months before sprang forward at the sound of the bugle, now knows no difference between the charge and the retire. The most passionate kiss that love presses on the face of the dead wins no acknowledgment, no returning embrace. Such is the insensibility of the true Christian who avails himself of his position. The man who was led by his appetites, and could not walk the streets without sinning, sets the Cross of Christ before him, and finds he can as little sin as if he were a corpse.
3. Not only a complete but a final severance from sin. Death is a state from which no one returns to the old life. So it was with Paul himself, who realised his position in Christ.
(1) There are animals which hibernate, and for all practical purposes are dead for a season; they cease to be a terror to their natural prey, they entirely abandon their haunts and habits; but when the warmth of spring penetrates to their temporary burying place there is a revival of their old instincts, energies, and habits. With many persons the abandonment of sin is a mere hibernation. For a while they seem to have lost all taste for their old ways, and, in the ardour of a newly conceived idea of life, the man is impregnable to all that would lead him from it. He is wrapped up in his new and strong resolve, and while that lasts he is insensible to the storms that would drive him from his path. Or something has made the world distasteful; his prospects have been blighted, and he withdraws from his former keen engagement in this worlds affairs. Or there comes to the man of pleasure higher and better impulses; the Spirit of Christ strives with him, or some outward event warns him, and for the present he becomes dead to the solicitations of appetite. Or a young person comes under the influence of someone who does live a consecrated, unselfish, Christ-like life, and the influence is commanding while it lasts. All those temporary abandonments of sin are mere sleeps, or states of torpor; the soul of sin lives on securely underneath the lethargic surface, and, when the period of slumber passes and the cause of insensibility has exhausted itself, will return again with renewed and stronger life to all its old habits and ways.
(2) Men sometimes commit suicide. They see that things have gone so far wrong as to be irretrievable. To go into hiding and wait for a better time is in vain; carefully weighing probabilities, they conclude that their severance from the world must now be final. This requires a clear judgment and a strong will. The same deliberate and decisive finality of action is required of us. Less than this will not do. We cannot get into a new life in any other way than by dying to the old. Yet how many of us stand, like Nero, with the dagger at our throat but with a hand far too nervous to drive it home. It is this great act of will that marks the second birth.
II. What is meant by living to God? This aspect of our participation with Christ is more important.
1. To die to sin is but a necessary preliminary. By itself it is incomplete and ineffective. Death can never form a desirable state, but only life, and it is because death of this kind promises fuller life that we pass through it.
2. Some persons, however, are dead to sin, but they are dead to everything else. Religion, instead of enlivening and enlarging them, seems to benumb and deaden them. For all the active good they do they might as well be in the grave. The poor man who needs help would as soon think of knocking at a tombstone as of knocking at their door; active beneficence on their part would startle us as if the sheeted dead had come to our aid. Where there is fulness of life there is activity, joy, love, intensity; not coldness, selfish caution, parsimony, and seclusion from the woes, the joys, the interests of men.
3. And where there is life it will appear; burying the seed beneath the clod, the life that is in it will work its way through, and show what it is. The body of Christ could not be held under the power of death, and if the Spirit of life that was in Him be really in us, that life will break through all that overlies it. And if you do not fill your life with Christian activities, and your heart with Christian joys, they will soon be filled and flooded with the old life. Do not make it needful that men should feel your pulse, or hold a mirror to your mouth to see if you be really alive; but let it be seen by the brightness of your vision, by the activity of your step, by the force and helpfulness of your hand, that you have a more abundant life.
4. This life, like Christs resurrection life, is real. Our Lord took pains to prove that His risen body was not a phantom. Our risen life must be equally substantial. From the first some have had a name to live while really dead. Their appearance of newness does not bear scrutiny; they are airy nothings, pithless, pretentious, disappointing appearances; they imitate the conduct of those who have real life, or they are lifted up and carried along by the crowd around them, but when left to act in their own strength they are found to be powerless–dead. All about them is unreal; the religious expressions they use are borrowed, learned as a foreign tongue, so that you can readily detect the accent. Their prayers are forced; their whole religious life is a makeup; not an actual, constant, self-supporting, free life. Strive to be true, to stand upon your feet, to act upon convictions of your own, to speak as you feel, without being an echo of other persons. Be sure that in yourself there is a true, risen life. (Marcus Dods, D. D.)
Dying to sin and living unto God
The apostle exhorts us to reckon ourselves to be–
I. Dead unto sin.
1. This involves death.
(1) To its ensnaring artifices. Moses chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Hence we learn that sin is not without its pleasures, and that if we will cast in our lot With the people of God we must lay our account with losing them.
(a) But these pleasures last but for a season.
(b) They are only pleasures when viewed in a false light. Let but the light of truth dawn in upon the soul, and we find that we have been embracing disappointment and vanity and pain (verse 21).
(2) To the indwelling love of it. This will follow on the true discovery of its nature. When we are conscious of having had a deception practised upon us, our hatred is proportionate to the measure of our former love. We find that we have been nursing a viper in our bosom, and therefore, on discovering it, we are anxious to cast it away.
(3) To its reigning power. This, indeed, is the only true mortification of sin. Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth. Let the natural man be pierced through and through, until ye have crucified the whole body of sin. The head of pride must be crowned with thorns; the hands of covetousness must be pierced with nails; the unruly appetites must be put off with vinegar and gall. Yea, the whole man must be laid in the grave, must be buried with Christ, in order that with Christ also it may rise to newness of life.
2. Here is the design of all religious ordinances, viz., that the root of bitterness may be destroyed in the soul. We are buried with Christ in baptism, in faith that our corruptions shall be drowned, even as the Egyptians were when they lay dead on the seashore. We approach the Lords table in faith that the food which we there receive spiritually into the soul shall operate as a poison to all those corruptions which yet reign within us. Every prayer we offer up is a blow at sin; every self-denial we practise is to starve out corruption from the soul. But, in order to the completeness of this death of sin within us, it is needful that we take away all the means of life. Fire is as effectually put out by taking wood away as by throwing cold water upon it. We must take care to blockade all the avenues of temptation; we must intercept those supplies which the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, are forever conveying into the soul.
II. Alive unto God. We are not to give a dead carcase to a living God; neither, on the other hand, when the members of the old man have been crucified, are they to remain idle. No; after they are buried, they are to rise again, and be laid as a free will offering on the altar of God. Being dead to sin we must henceforth be alive to God.
1. To the honour of Gods name.
2. To the interests of His kingdom.
3. To the glory of His grace in the entire sanctification of our souls.
Conclusion:
1. All comes to us through Jesus Christ our Lord. If there be any subjugation of the power of sin in the soul, His right hand hath got the victory; if there be any quickening to a renewed existence, He it was who began, and who must complete the work.
2. Let shame prompt you to die to sin. If Christ died for sin, the least we can do is to die to sin.
3. Let gratitude prompt us to live to God. (D. Moore, M. A.)
Dying to sin and living unto God
I. The believers true position.
1. Dead to sin: to–
(1) Its attractions.
(2) Dominion.
(3) Condemnation.
2. Alive unto God.
(1) His presence.
(2) His favour.
(3) His influence.
(4) His authority.
II. The means through which it is attained–Jesus Christ.
1. Faith in Him.
2. Identification with Him.
III. The duty of realising this.
1. Theoretically.
2. Experimentally.
3. Practically.
IV. The motives by which it is enforced–likewise. (J. Lyth, D. D.)
Christians dead unto sin and alive unto God
We are reminded that Christians are–
I. Dead indeed unto sin.
1. This implies more than their avoiding sin. A man from fear of loss, hope of advantage, or from reference to his reputation, may be induced to avoid what he loves: and there are many who are ready to wish that it were lawful to indulge in sin. Lots wife left Sodom, but her heart was in it still, and if all those were to become pillars of salt who profess to forsake the world, while hankering after it, we should hardly be able to move about.
2. Christians are mortified to sin. The Christians aversion to sin is natural, and we know that all natural aversions operate universally. It is not to some particular vice to which he may have no constitutional propensity or little temptation. If it were lawful to say to a mother, Why you may take your child and throw it out of the window, she could not do it. And why? Has she not strength to open the window? Has she not arms to throw it out? Oh! but it would violate every feeling of her nature; it would be impossible and this would be a safer prevention than any argument or threatening against it. So the Christian doth not commit sin–that is, as others do, and as he once did–for His seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin because he is born of God.
3. You see how the apostle treats this matter: How shall we, who are dead to sin, by profession, by obligation, by inclination, live any longer therein? (verse 2). As no creature can live out of its own element, so it is impossible for the Christian, now that he is regenerated, to live in sin.
II. Alive unto God. If there were no instance of immorality in the world, I should want no other proof that man was a fallen creature than his insensibility and indifference towards God. That a subject should be dead to his sovereign, a child to his father, the creature to his Maker, a beneficiary to his benefactor; can you imagine that God made man with such a disposition as this? Now real religion must commence in the destruction of this insensibility. Christians are alive unto–
1. Gods favour. While many ask, Who will show us any good? he prays, Lord, lift up the light of Thy countenance upon me. He knows and feels now that His favour is life, and His loving kindness better than life. This makes him happy, whatever may be his outward condition.
2. His presence. Is the sanctuary now attractive to him? It is principally because it is the place where His honour dwelleth. Does he love the retirement of the closet? It is because there he holds communion with his God. He loves the company of the godly because they remind him of God, and considers heaven as the perfection of his happiness because he will be forever with the Lord.
3. His glory. It is this that led the apostle therefore to say, Whether we eat or drink, etc. Hence he sympathises with the cause of God in all its variations. If professors fall away, and bring a scandal upon it, he is sorrowful. On the other hand, if the Word of the Lord runs and is glorified, and if believers walk in the fear of the Lord, in this he rejoices.
III. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. As–
1. Their Example. In His principles, temper, practice, they see the character which we have described fully embodied. In Him there was no sin; He always did the things that pleased the Father: He was our religion incarnate.
2. Their Teacher. He has set before us those arguments and motives which have the greatest tendency to turn us from sin and to God, so that we may be dead to the one and alive to the other.
3. Their dying Friend. Is it possible for me to love and live in that which crucified the Lord of glory?
4. Their meritorious Saviour. When He died for their sins He at the same time obtained for them grace for trial, duty, and conflict.
IV. Reckon yourselves as such.
1. In order to maintain the conduct that is suitable to such; for your conduct should correspond with your character and your condition. The way to know what you ought to do is always to consider what you are.
2. In order to keep you from wondering at the treatment of such.
3. In order that ye may rejoice in the portion of such. If the world frowns on you, God smiles; if they condemn you, He is near to justify. You may be losers in His service, but you can never be losers by it. (W. Jay.)
Alive unto God
This means that a man–
I. Breathes Gods life. There was a man taken out of the water apparently dead. The physician came and breathed into the nostrils and mouth of the poor fellow, and then pressed the breast; breathed in again and pressed the breast. At last he had the joy of hearing a gasp, and then of seeing the opened eye. Alive unto God means that God has breathed into you His breath; the breath of life and of righteousness.
II. Puts forth effort. There is a picture in Brussels of a man thought dead of the plague. He was not dead. After a time, awaking, he felt he was nailed up in the coffin, and the picture shows him to be in the act of pushing up the lid. So it is with the man who is alive unto God. He puts forth efforts, and he repeats them till he is delivered.
III. Requires food, to sustain the new life.
IV. Desires the knowledge of God. What efforts some men make to acquire knowledge of earthly things. The Christian, whilst not despising that knowledge, desires especially to know God.
V. Resists sin. There is that fight going on. The unconverted man reasons–Dont sin, because you may be found out. The devil strikes him down to the ground, and he says, There is no life in him now. But how is it with the Christian when Satan endeavours to overcome him? He has Gods armour on, and the sword of the Spirit, and he stands, because he is alive unto God.
VI. Bears the cross. Being alive unto God, and having Christs love in the soul, we can lift up and carry the heaviest burden with rejoicing of heart, for we have His life; the life that Christ had, that same life is in us. Conclusion:
1. Is it not being alive in faith to God? It is not alive unto creeds, but unto God. It is faith in the presence of God.
2. It also is alive in hope to God–that hope which is the anchor holding on amidst all earths tempests and all the wild seas roar.
3. It is alive in love to God. What will not the soul endure for those whom it loves! It imitates the example of those who have its affection. (W. Birch.)
The transfer of life to God
In the days of King John of England the dignity of the English crown was brought to its lowest. King John submitting to the Pope as a vassal, and before the Popes legate, taking off his crown, he handed it to the legate, who took it, put it down for a moment to show his possession of it, then handed it back to John to be held by him as a vassal of Rome. But this incident illustrates how we Christians can die to ourselves, yet be living for Christ. We take our life in our hands, and hand it over to God. But see, He lifts it again and holds it out towards us, saying, Take this life and use it for Me, as My vassal, My servant. (J. Hamilton.)
Holiness the Churchs life
Holiness is the life of the Church; it is this that makes the Church a living body, and consequently the means and agent of its own growth and happiness. A living thing grows from itself, and not by accession from without, as a house or a ship grows. A flower does not grow by adding a leaf to it, nor a tree by fastening a branch to it, nor a man by fixing a limb to his frame. Everything that has life grows by a converting process, which transforms the food into means of nourishment and of growth and enlargement. A holy Church lives, and its holiness converts all its ordinances and provisions into means of deep-rooted, solid, enlarged, and beautiful holiness. (T. W. Jenkyn, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 11. Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead] Die as truly unto sin, as he died for sin. Live as truly unto God, as he lives with God. This seems to be the spirit of the apostle’s meaning.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
So we in like manner must make account, that by virtue of his death we are dead to sin, and by virtue of his resurrection are alive to God, and so alive as never to resume our former courses, or return again to our former sins.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord; or, in Jesus Christ our Lord; i.e. after the similitude of Jesus Christ, who so lives as to die no more. Or else this phrase imports that Jesus Christ is the root of our spiritual life; even as the scion lives in the stock. so believers are alive unto God in Jesus Christ, receiving from him that virtue whereby their spiritual life is begun, maintained, and perfected.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
11. Likewiseeven as your LordHimself.
reckon ye also yourselves tobe dead indeed“dead on the one hand”
unto sin, but alive unto Godthrough Jesus Christ our Lord(The words, “our Lord,”at the close of this verse, are wanting in the best manuscripts.)
Note, (1) “Antinomianismis not only an error; it is a falsehood and a slander” [HODGE].That “we should continue in sin that grace may abound,” notonly is never the deliberate sentiment of any real believer in thedoctrine of Grace, but is abhorrent to every Christian mind, as amonstrous abuse of the most glorious of all truths (Ro6:1). (2) As the death of Christ is not only the expiation ofguilt, but the death of sin itself in all who are vitally united toHim; so the resurrection of Christ is the resurrection of believers,not only to acceptance with God, but to newness of life (Ro6:2-11). (3) In the light of these two truths, let all who namethe name of Christ “examine themselves whether they be in thefaith.”
Ro6:12-23. WHATPRACTICAL USEBELIEVERS SHOULDMAKE OF THEIRDEATH TO SINAND LIFE TO GODTHROUGH UNION TO THECRUCIFIED SAVIOUR.
Not content with showing that hisdoctrine has no tendency to relax the obligations to a holy life, theapostle here proceeds to enforce these obligations.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves,…. Two things the apostle would have believers consider of themselves, and reckon themselves, to be, in consequence of their relation to Christ, who was dead, but is alive, and as agreeable thereunto: the one is, that they would look upon themselves
to be dead indeed unto sin: believe their discharge from it, and not fear condemnation and death on account of it; and that it shall not be imputed to them, or have any damning power over them, since Christ has died unto it, or for it; and therefore should have no fellowship with it, nothing to do with it, as being dead unto it, and that to them: the other is, that they would consider themselves
alive unto God, through, Jesus Christ our Lord; and that either in a legal sense, as justified persons; men in a state of nature, or of “Pharisaism”, think themselves alive, when they are not; but when they come under a work of the Spirit of God, they see themselves otherwise, and are convinced both of the exceeding sinfulness of sin, and the insufficiency of their own righteousness to justify from it; and when they have the righteousness of Christ revealed unto them, and faith is wrought in them to look unto it, and lay hold upon it, they are in themselves, and in their own apprehensions, alive, and that “unto God”, in the sight of God; and their life of faith on the righteousness of Christ, is unto the glory of God, and will be followed with an eternal life with God, to which the justifying righteousness of Christ gives them a title; and this is all through Christ, and his righteousness: or this is to be considered by them of themselves as sanctified persons, who are quickened by the Spirit of Christ, and can feel the burden of sin, see the corruption of their nature, hear the voice both of law and Gospel, breathe after spiritual things, speak the language of Canaan, walk by faith on Christ, and work and act for him; which life of faith and holiness is “unto God”, to his glory and honour, and is “through Christ”, and is maintained and supported by him: or they should consider themselves not only as being justified before God, and made alive by his Spirit, but as such who shall live to and with God, through Christ, for evermore; for as Christ died and rose again, and lives unto and with God for ever, so they being dead to sin through him, and being quickened together with him and by his Spirit, shall never die the second death, but shall have everlasting life.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Reckon ye also yourselves ( ). Direct middle imperative of and complete proof that Paul does not mean that baptism makes one dead to sin and alive to God. That is a spiritual operation “in Christ Jesus” and only pictured by baptism. This is a plea to live up to the ideal of the baptized life.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1) “Likewise reckon ye also,” (houtos kai humeis logizesthe) “Even so (in like manner) you all reckon or consider,” give logical consideration yourselves, as patterned after him, as dead or unfruitful to the old nature, “to put off” moral and ethical wrong and put on Jesus Christ, Gal 2:19-21; Eph 4:22; Eph 4:24-25; Eph 4:28-29; Eph 4:31-32; Col 3:8-14.
2) “Yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,” (he autous einai nekrous men te hamartia) “Yourselves to be or exist indeed (as) a dead corpse to sin,” not responsive to sin, barren to sin, that such is not in harmony with life in Christ; Col 3:1-3; Gal 2:20; Gal 6:14; Jas 2:23-24; Imputed faith in Christ calls to fruitbearing in the new nature, while pruning away the old, 2Pe 1:5-9.
3) “But alive unto God,” (zotes de to theo) “But (reckon yourselves as) living actively, continually, to God,” in moral behavior and service of Spiritual labors to the Lord, 1Co 6:19-20; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 13:13-14.
4) “Through Jesus Christ our Lord,” (en Christo lesou) “in Christ Jesus,” saved, redeemed, Gal 3:17; Col 3:23-24; Gal 5:16; Gal 5:24-26.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
11. So count ye also yourselves, etc. Now is added a definition of that analogy to which I have referred. For having stated that Christ once died to sin and lives for ever to God, he now, applying both to us, reminds us how we now die while living, that is, when we renounce sin. But he omits not the other part, that is, how we are to live after having by faith received the grace of Christ: for though the mortifying of the flesh is only begun in us, yet the life of sin is destroyed, so that afterwards spiritual newness, which is divine, continues perpetually. For except Christ were to slay sin in us at once to the end, his grace would by no means be sure and durable.
The meaning, then, of the words may be thus expressed, “Take this view of your case, — that as Christ once died for the purpose of destroying sin, so you have once died, that in future you may cease from sin; yea, you must daily proceed with that work of mortifying, which is begun in you, till sin be wholly destroyed: as Christ is raised to an incorruptible life, so you are regenerated by the grace of God, that you may lead a life of holiness and righteousness, inasmuch as the power of the Holy Spirit, by which ye have been renewed, is eternal, and shall ever continue the same.” But I prefer to retain the words of Paul, in Christ Jesus, rather than to translate with [ Erasmus ], through Christ Jesus; for thus the grafting, which makes us one with Christ, is better expressed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(11) Theoretical application to the readers. They are to regard themselves as dead, i.e., insensible and inaccessible to sin, but living in close allegiance and devotion to God through union with Christ.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
‘Even so reckon you also yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.’
In the same way we as Christians are to reckon ourselves as dead to sin, but alive to God, ‘in Christ Jesus’. This is what our response to what has been described must be. It must be a recognition of the fact that we are truly dead to sin. Compare Gal 5:24, ‘but those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its affections and desires’, and that in a passage where practical living is very much in mind. This is because we, as the man we were, have died with Christ. And it must be an acceptance of, and response to, the fact that we as the man we now are (the new man) share in His resurrection and life (Joh 11:25) because we are ‘in Christ Jesus’. Through Him we are ‘alive to God’. And we are therefore to live to God as He does.
That this is to be a practical experience, and not just positional, comes out in the fact that we are made ‘alive to God’ and in its description as a ‘newness of life’ in which we have to walk (Rom 6:4). This is confirmed by the references to yielding our bodies as instruments of righteousness (Rom 6:12-14), and is further confirmed in Rom 8:1-17 where it is seen as due to the work of the Spirit. We have experienced a new birth of the Spirit (Joh 3:1-6). We have been begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1Pe 1:3). Christ lives in us (Gal 2:20; Col 1:27). How can it not be experiential?
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Rom 6:11. Likewise, &c. Thus then reckon ye yourselves, &c. See Col 3:3.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Rom 6:11 . Application of Rom 6:10 to the readers.
Although in Rom 6:10 there was no mention of a on the part of Christ, we are not, with Griesbach and Koppe, to break up the discourse by the punctuation: . . [1432] (comp on the contrary Luk 17:10 ).
Accordingly reckon ye yourselves also (like Christ) as dead , etc. , namely, containing the standard by which they are to apprehend their moral life-position in its reality, is not, with Bengel and Hofmann, to be taken as indicative , but rather, seeing that here the discourse passes over to the second person and proceeds in exhortation in Rom 6:12 ff., with the Vulgate, Chrysostom and Luther, as imperative .
. .] These words, which Rckert, Kllner, de Wette, and others quite arbitrarily join merely with . , belong to both portions of the summons; and do not mean per Christum (Grotius and others, including Fritzsche), but denote rather the specific element, in which the being dead and living take place, namely, in the ethical bond of fellowship, which is just the .
[1432] . . . .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ver. 11. Reckon ye also ] By faith, reason and reckon yourselves wholly dead in and through Christ, who once died perfectly to sin, as a common person.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
11. ] An exhortation to realize this state of death unto sin and life unto God with Christ . Thus (after the same manner as Christ) do ye also (imperative: Meyer only holds it to be indic.) account yourselves (better than ‘ infer yourselves to be ,’ as Chrys. and Beza, see reff. and on ch. Rom 3:28 ) dead ( indeed ) unto sin (as Rom 6:2 and following), but alive unto God in Christ Jesus (i.e. ‘ by virtue of your union with Him :’ not through ( ) Christ Jesus; in this chapter it is not Christ’s Mediatorship , but His Headship , which is prominent. . ., is not (Reiche, Meyer, Fritz.) to be joined with both . . and . . ., but only with the latter, next to which it stands, and of which it is literally and positively, whereas of the other it is only figuratively ( ., Rom 6:5 ) and negatively true).
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Rom 6:11 . In this verse the application is made of all that precedes. The death with Christ, the life with Christ, are real, yet to be realised. The truth of being a Christian is contained in them, yet the calling of the Christian is to live up to them. We may forget what we should be; we may also (and this is how Paul puts it) forget what we are . We are dead to sin in Christ’s death; we are alive to God in Christ’s resurrection; let us regard ourselves as such in Christ Jesus . The essence of our faith is a union to Him in which His experience becomes ours. This is the theological reply to antinomianism.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
reckon. See Rom 4:4.
also yourselves = yourselves also. through = in. App-104.
our Lord. The texts omit.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
11.] An exhortation to realize this state of death unto sin and life unto God with Christ. Thus (after the same manner as Christ) do ye also (imperative: Meyer only holds it to be indic.) account yourselves (better than infer yourselves to be, as Chrys. and Beza,-see reff. and on ch. Rom 3:28) dead (indeed) unto sin (as Rom 6:2 and following), but alive unto God in Christ Jesus (i.e. by virtue of your union with Him: not through () Christ Jesus; in this chapter it is not Christs Mediatorship, but His Headship, which is prominent.- . ., is not (Reiche, Meyer, Fritz.) to be joined with both . . and . . ., but only with the latter, next to which it stands, and of which it is literally and positively, whereas of the other it is only figuratively ( ., Rom 6:5) and negatively true).
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Rom 6:11. , you reckon) The indicative; for the imperative begins in the following verse. So , Rom 3:28 [we conclude that a man is justified by faith, etc.] Whatever is the standing in which every one is, in and according to that standing he ought to account himself.[58]-) is omitted by a few copies, but they are ancient. Baumgarten adopts this reading-I consider it doubtful.[59]-, in) It is construed with alive, nay even with dead too: So Rom 6:8, only that the prepositions with [, Rom 6:8] and by, ch. Rom 7:4 [, by the body of Christ] are rather used in that connection.- ) See Appendix. crit. Ed. II. on this passage.[60]
[58] So also the Christian, whose standing is, that of being dead to sin with Christ, and raised with Him in newness of life.-ED.
[59] AD()G Memph. Vers. Hilary, omit the . But BC Vulg. fg and Rec. Text retain it.-ED.
[60] ABD() Gfg Vulg. Hilary, reject . But C Memph. and Syr. Versions retain the words.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Rom 6:11
Rom 6:11
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin,- Since the believer entered into Christ by being baptized into him and died with him to sin, he is now to consider himself dead unto the dominion of sin forever.
but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.-The death of Christ was to deliver all who believe in him from sin and the effects of sin. Therefore, the believers new life belongs wholly to God, and must, like Christ, whose life he shares, be devoted entirely to his service. These verses are to show how man cannot continue in sin that grace may abound, after he believes in Christ.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
A Good Reckoning
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.Rom 6:11.
1. St. Pauls object in this chapter is to exhibit the inconsistency of sin with the Christian faith and position. We are, he says, planted together with Christ, or engrafted into Him, and as little as the shoot can bear fruit different from the stalk, so little can we, if faithful to our position, live differently from Christ. We are baptized into His death that we may pass with Him through death into a new life. As interment is the evidence of death, so baptism, in Pauls view, is the outward symbol that we are done with the old life and have entered on the new. When a person is buried, that means that death has taken place; when a person is baptized, that means that death to sin, with Christ and in Christ, has taken place. Paul asserts that in every genuine Christian there is a process going forward parallel to that which our Lord Himself passed through. The outward appearance of Christs experience may be wholly different from that of His followers, but essentially and inwardly they are precisely the same. For us, as for Him, death to sin results in resurrection to newness of life. We can get to life, Paul would say, only through a genuine death, a death not indeed of the body, but a death as real and generally much more painful.
2. Now, though this is a style of teaching very common with Paul, there are some minds to which it always seems nearly mystical. They are baffled when they strive to bring it into connexion with their own experience. They think Paul speaks as if the process of sanctification worked with mechanical certainty, whereas they find that after believing in Christ they are by no means dead to sin. They cannot make Pauls teaching square with their own experience; it seems to them that the decisive severance from sin which he has in view does never in reality occur. This disagreement is merely superficial. Paul, in describing the process by which the sinner passed into life, was, of course, compelled to describe the ideal process, and not the actual experience of any single believer. That ideal process may never be actually realized by any one, but it is more or less nearly approached by all. The professor of surgery in describing the actual history of a gunshot wound, from the moment of its infliction, on through treatment and convalescence to perfect health, may describe a process from which each patient finds his own case to differ in certain particulars, but the description remains on that very account a sufficient guide in essentials for all cases; and Paul sufficiently indicates in this very chapter that there is nothing mechanical in his view of salvation. When he says, Reckon ye yourselves to be dead unto sin let not sin reign in your mortal body yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, and so forth, he sufficiently shows that our salvation is in his view not finished and not complete by one act of faith, but is only slowly and painfully accomplished by the constant renewal of spiritual desire and spiritual energy. He appeals to what we all know to be the spring and source of character, the human will.
Give me first a death in which there is no life, and then a life in which there is no death. He who uttered these words was not a Christian as we count Christian, but he understood the great law which regulates human and Christian life better than many of us Christians do. There is only one kind of perfect human life, and that is the life which is exemplified in Jesus Christ; and to this life there is only one possible path, and that is through a genuine death. The grub cannot pass to the higher life of the dragon-fly without first sickening and becoming dead to all the life it has been familiar with in the water, and we, in order to enter the true eternal life of man, must die to what we have been most familiar with in the old life.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]
I
Dead to Sin
1. To be dead to an object is to be as incapable of being touched, influenced, or affected by it as if we were really dead. Thus some people are dead to the pleasures of the worldthat is, earthly pleasures have no attraction for them; or they are dead to ambitionthat is, the honours and dignities of the world are to their minds nothing better than childrens toys. And in this way, too, men are often dead to what is goodto truth, to justice, to honour, to duty; they are as insensible to their claims as a dead man would be. And so it is with regard to sin. To be dead to sin is to be insensible to all its temptations; it is to be in that state in which the motions of sin within and the allurements to sin without have no power; it is to be dead to all sinful appetites, passions, desires, thoughts; dead to all sinful objects and aimsin a word, it is to have ceased from sin, as one who is dead has ceased from all living acts.
Being dead to sin must obviously be the opposite of being dead in sin. The latter must undeniably be a state of entire sinfulnessa state in which the soul is dead to all good through the power of sin over it. But right over against this, to be dead to sin must be to be indifferent to its attractivenessbeyond the reach of its influenceas fully removed from its influences as the dead are from the objects of sense in this world. As he who is dead in the natural sense has nothing more to do with earthly things, so he who is dead to sin has nothing to do any more with sins attractions or with sinning itself.1 [Note: C. G. Finney.]
2. More particularly, St. Pauls expression, dead to sin, suggests such ideas as these
(1) We are dead to sin in the sense of being beyond its power to inflict penalty on us. He that is dead is freed from sin in that sense. If a servant has come to a settlement with his master there remains no longer any bond between them. Now the wages of sin is death, and our wages have been paid in the death of Christ. That is, roughly, Pauls theology. The law has no claim upon a man who has suffered its extreme penalty, and this the old legal phraseology of Scotland brought out when it spoke of criminals being justified in the Grassmarket, when they were hung there. By death they cleared scores with the law. Thus we have by the death of Christ the removal of our guilt.
(2) To be dead to sin means, further, that we are irresponsive to the appeals of sin. How still, how unmoved, how irresponsive the dead are! Let the master shout at his slaves dead body; not one finger stirs to obey his orders. Let him bring his lash across the upturned face; not a muscle quivers. Was the dead man vain and fond of applause? the acclaims of a world bring no smile of pleasure to his face now. Was he mean, greedy, grasping? tell him of the most promising investments; he has no ear, no heart for them. Fill the dead hand with gold; the fingers will not close upon it. Set round the dead the things that but a few hours ago made his eye glitter and his pulses quicken; now he is beyond them alldead to them. The soldier who a few months ago sprang forward at the sound of the bugle now lies stiff on the field, and knows no difference between the charge and the retire. The most passionate kiss that love presses on the face of the dead wins no acknowledgment, no returning embrace. As a wild Bechuana said: Soon I shall be dead, and they will bury me in my field; my flocks will come to pasture above me, but I shall no longer hear them, and I shall not come forth from my tomb to take them and carry them with me to my sepulchre. Such is the image of our life in the midst of the world since we believed in Christ; such is the insensibility of the true Christian, of the man who avails himself of his position; such is his insensibility to the temptations that charmed him in his former years, to all that constituted the very essence of his old life. The man who was led by his appetites, and could not walk the streets without sinning, sets the Cross of Christ before him, and finds he can as little sin as if he were a corpse. The man who lowered his character and lost his self-respect to make a larger profit than was legitimate, carries with him the remembrance of Christs death, and can as little overreach or swindle as the miser who was buried a century ago. He is dead to the old life; it is a thing of the past; it is not in that direction he looks for happiness, nor from it that appeals have any effect.
It is in Christ Himself that we see what complete death to sin means. To the most subtle and enticing allurements that this world, and the varying exigencies of a most complicated life in this world, could present, He was simply dead. How vain to offer Him, after He was risen, any prizes of this world! How absolutely irrelevant and pointless any such offer or any such temptations appear! How insignificant, how paltry, how past and done with, do all the gaieties, the affections, the dangers, the prizes of this life seem in the light of that new life. And it is that new life, it is that risen life of Christ, we are to share in now; and we are to learn to be, and actually to be, as superior to temptation, as dead to sin, as He was. We are to keep impressing on ourselves that we belong to another worldReckon ye yourselves to be dead to sin. We are to keep impressing on ourselves that it is not in the ways of this world that we are to attain our ends, that we have an inheritance above, and it is through real sympathy with Christ Himself that we can alone reach this position.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]
(3) Again, to be dead to sin implies not only a complete but a final severance from it. Death is a state from which no one returns to the old life. When death comes there is at once and for ever an end of what has been. So must it be with our severance from sin; so, one is tempted to say, it was with Paul himself, who realized his position in Christ. But so it is not always. There are animals which hibernate, and for months seem to be dead; there are animals which become torpid, and for all practical purposes are dead for a season; they do no mischief, they cease to be a terror to their natural prey, they entirely abandon their customary haunts and habits; but when the warmth of spring penetrates to their temporary burying-place there is a revival of their old instincts, energies, and habits.
With many persons the abandonment of sin is a mere hibernation, not a death. For awhile they seem to have lost all taste for their old ways; temptations which before were irresistible now flit past them and attract no notice, cause no movement; for awhile, in the ardour of a newly conceived idea of life, the man is impregnable to all that would lead him from it. He is wrapped up in his new and strong resolve, and while that lasts he is insensible to the storms that would drive him from his path. Or something has made the world cold, distasteful to a man; his love of it has got a chill; his investments have not turned out well; his prospects in life have become contracted or have been blighted, and he withdraws from his former keen engagement in this worlds affairs. Or there comes to the man of pleasure or to the sensualist higher and better impulses; the Spirit of Christ inwardly solicits him and strives with him, or some outward event warns and admonishes him, and for the present he becomes dead to the solicitations of appetite. Or a young person comes under the influence of some older and stronger character, of some one who does live a consecrated, unselfish, Christlike life; the influence is commanding while it lasts, but when it is removed it becomes apparent that it was merely a mesmeric state, which had produced not a real death, not a final separation from old weaknesses and habits. And so with all those temporary abandonments of sin; they are mere swoons or fits, or sleeps, or states of torpor; the soul of sin lives on securely underneath the insensible lethargic surface, and, when the period of slumber passes and the cause of insensibility has exhausted itself, will return again with renewed and stronger life to all its old habits and waysa most melancholy, most discouraging, but most common spectacle.
II
Alive to God
1. This is the other aspect of our participation in Christ, and it is even more important than the death to sin. To die to sin is but the necessary preliminary to the new life. By itself it is incomplete and ineffective. It is not death that can ever be in any form a desirable state, but only life, fulness of life, and it is because death of this kind promises fuller life that we pass through it. Some persons, however, are dead to sin, but they are dead to everything else. Religion, instead of enlivening and enlarging and inspiring them, seems to have benumbed and deadened them all round; they would be larger and better men if they had no religion at all. For all the active good they do they might as well be in the grave. The poor man who needs help would as soon think of knocking at a tombstone as of knocking at their door; active beneficence on their part would startle us as if the sheeted dead had come to our aid. Where there is fulness of life there is activity, joy, love, intensity; not coldness, selfish caution, parsimony, retirement, and seclusion from the woes, the wounds, the joys, the interests of men. And where there is life it will appear; burying the seed beneath the clod, the life that is in it will work its way through, and show what it is. The body of Christ could not be held under the power of death, and if the spirit of life that was in Him be really in us, that life will break through all that overlies it and will appear.
Do not try to live neither for sin nor for God. Engage at once in the spiritual and heavenly life, the life that is for God. To be dead is to be miserable, nay, it is worse, it is on the road to dissolution, and the reason why Christian society is so unattractive, so feeble, so disappointing, is that so many of us are content to be dead to the old sins, but without any activities that make room for themselves in the world around us, and carry a blessing with them. Take note that if you do not fill your life with Christian activities, and your heart with Christian joys, they will soon be filled and flooded with the old life; commit yourself quickly to the new life, making its joys, its hopes, its privileges, its views, its ways yours; give yourself fairly, speedily, and in very truth to the risen life, to that life that is in thorough sympathy with Christ. Be strenuous and abundant in expressions of this risen and heavenly life, or there is small hope for you. Do not make it needful that men should feel your pulse, or hold a mirror to your mouth to see if you be really alive; but let it be seen by the brightness of your vision, by the activity of your step, by the force and helpfulness of your hand, that you have a more abundant life.1 [Note: Marcus Dods.]
2. When is a man alive to God?
(1) When he fully recognizes the signs of the presence of God. That man is alive to God who habitually realizes the divine presence, to whom God is not a theory by which he can conveniently account for the universe, or a name for certain human conceptions of nature and its working, or a principle which deserves investigation when lifes hard work is over, or an invention of priestcraft to terrify and scare the soul, or a philosophic concept, the presence or absence of which has little to do with life or happiness, but the great and only reality, the prime and principal element of all his thoughts. He has learned from nobler sources than the pure reason, or the trembling conscience, or the widespread activities of power, his estimate of the character of God. He has been to the Cross of Christ and there comprehended the righteousness and the love of God, and he has gone back into the great region of conscience, of reason, and of nature, with the lesson he has learned there, and can compel the cold impassive laws to murmur to him of pity, and teach conscience to be at peace with a higher revelation than that of law: and while his reason exults in God, who is one and not two, he spreads out the ineffable love over the universal wisdom; he feels that the justice and the mercy of God are two manifestations of the same God; he adores the compassion and exults in the grace of God, while he bows before His unsullied and eternal Majesty.
(2) Again, a man is alive to God when the sense of the divine presence awakens all his energies and engages all his faculties. Conscious of the divine presence, he renders to Him into whose presence he is brought the appropriate homage of his entire being. Then every place is a temple, every act is a sacrifice, every sin the pollution of a sacred place, the defilement of a holy day. No praise that he can render can ever equal the demand of conscience, nor will his actual obedience ever realise the ideal he has formed of consecration to Him. It is morally impossible for one who is alive unto God to imagine that he is doing too much to express his sense of reverence, gratitude, or obligation. He can hold back no faculty, no affection, no treasure, saying, This is mine and may be appropriated to my own ends. The faculty is Gods own giftnay, rather, Gods own power working through the human will; the affection is a divine incentive meant to reveal the God of love, and must not be made a rival to Him who gave the power to love and the object to be loved; while on every one of his treasures he has learned to write, Holiness unto the Lordbought with a price. In one word, self is subdued to Him, and human will is lost in Gods.
(3) If a man is alive unto God, he will not only realize the divine presence, and feel the claim made by the divine Being upon every faculty of his nature, but he will find his highest desires gratified. In thy presence is fulness of joy. If we are alive unto God, we shall find that we are following the bent of our true nature. We shall fear an inward contradiction and antagonism of our nature to God far more than the crucifixion of our passions. He that drinketh of the water given him by Christ shall never thirst after those draughts of carnal pleasure to be found in the broken cisterns of human invention, and it shall be in him a well of water springing up to everlasting life.
A lady came to me in Japan last summer, and said, I am a missionary here, and have come to make a sad confession to you. I have come to tell you thisthat though I came out from America to teach the people here in Japan, I have never had a single hour of joy in my Christian life. And, she said, I feel so ashamed of it. Can you tell me the secret of joy? Can you tell me how to get some gladness into my life? I feel that I cannot commend the religion of Jesus Christ to people, while I have a joyless experience. I said, I do not know any secret of joy like thisI am alive in the risen, victorious, indissoluble life of my risen Lord. The glory of that Easter morning is mine. Why, I cannot think of that for five minutes without being glad, without saying good-bye to sorrow and sighing.1 [Note: J. Gregory Mantle.]
That manly Christian, that stalwart teacher, Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, tells us that, towards the end of his life, he began to ask God to forgive something for which he had never asked forgiveness before. He asked God to forgive him for the sin of gloom. He felt that his face had been gloomy, and that his voice had been gloomy; and he wanted forgiveness for the gloom that had overshadowed his life. You remember what happened. On one Easter morning, as he was getting ready for the Easter Day Services, there flashed upon him, with a new meaning, the thoughtJesus Christ is alive! He walked up and down his study, and said, Jesus Christ is alive! And, in the glory of that risen life, he went to preach; and his sun nevermore went down. In the gladness of that resurrection vision, in the glory of that Easter morning, he lived, and his congregation sang every Sabbath morning the Easter hymn, Christ the Lord is risen to-day, Hallelujah.
Buried with Christ, and raised with Him too,
What is there left for me to do?
Simply to cease from struggling and strife,
Simply to walk in newness of life.
Glory be to God.
III
In Christ Jesus
St. Paul describes both the death to sin and the life to God as in Christ Jesus. In Christs death we diedin Christs resurrection we rose again to newness of life. It is by contemplating Christ as dying in our room, and as thereby suffering the punishment due to our sins, that we come to reckon ourselves as dead unto sinto look upon all sin as that with which we should now have nothing to dowhich belongs to a former condition of things that has passed awaythe gulf of death having intervenedand which, whenever doubts appear, should be looked upon with surprise and alarm as a message from the dead, to be immediately dismissed. It is by thus looking upon Christ, as dying that we might live, and as rising again for our justification, that we should be led to reckon ourselves as exempted from death and all its consequencesas restored to the enjoyment of that life, which we had forfeited, with all its privilegesand as thus bound by the most solemn obligations to devote it to Him who looked upon us in our low and lost estate, and who sent forth His only-begotten Son to die in our room.
1. The death to sin is in Christ Jesus. By the cross of Christ, says the Apostle, the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world; I am crucified with Christ; If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. We are buried with him by baptism into death. The thought often recurs that our faith in Him nails our own hands to the cursed tree, closes and films our eye on worldly pageant and glory, crowns us with thorns, exposes us to contumely and shame, makes us the butt of devilish malice, taunts our agony with a cup which we cannot drink, buries us away out of sight of the world, rolls a stone to the door of our sepulchre, shuts us up in darkness, makes us see to the uttermost the misery, the shame, the cowardice, the miscreant humour, the curses, the consequences, the wages of sin. If we have taken up this thought, not only into our intellects, but into our entire spiritual nature so that it has entered into the very essence of our being, that Christ died for our sins, then we are dead. We have gone through the shame and humiliation of His death.
As we become alive to what the death of Christ really is and means, how it prepares the only way by which a new life could enter our race, and a new spirit be given to transgressors; by which God could justify the ungodly, and still be just: as all this, and very much more than this, is partially felt by the simplest mind when it closes with Christ (as the old divines expressively said), it is not difficult to understand that faith in Christ, that union to Christ, involves dying with Christ to sin; that it involves our being crucified and buried with Christ; that it is the mortification of sin, the sharing of His agony, and the participation of the soul in His death. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts. A true and deep faith in Christ, a recognition by mind and heart of the work of Christ, is such an intuition of law, such a sense of God, such a revelation of the evil of sin, such a burning of the heart against self and the flesh, and the world and the devil, that the Apostle was justified in saying, that through faith in Christ our Lord, Roman Christians might reckon themselves dead unto sin.1 [Note: H. R. Reynolds.]
When Jesus Christ died, every member of His body died too. That follows logically. His hands, His feet, His head, were all dead. Hence, if you are a member of Jesus Christ spiritually, when Jesus Christ died you died too. That is what St. Paul is arguing. It is because of your union with Him, as a living newborn soul, that you look back upon His death and say, I have died. A friend of mine, who is a missionary, had once witnessed a public flogging, and he turned to his wife and said: That man committed a theft with his hands. How was it then that his back was flogged? She saw what he was aiming at, and said: I think, John, it is the union that does it. Precisely. How is it that you suffer with Jesus Christ, the Head? It is the union that does it. And in Jesus Christs death, I who have thought that I was alive, if I will begin where St. Paul begins, will say, I died too. That is the first great fundamental point. Our old man was crucified when Christ was crucified.2 [Note: H. C. Lees.]
2. The life to God is in Christ Jesus. This is more obvious, for
(1) Christ is the revelation of the Father, the organ and chief minister of God; the highest manifestation of the righteousness, of the mercy, of the wisdom and truth of God. By faith in Him we have the highest opportunities for the recognition of the character and nature of God. Christ is not a rival to the God of nature and providence; if He were so, if the Christian consciousness had made of Him a second God, if the Catholic Church had suffered the Gnostic schism in the Divine manifestation and attributes to have stolen into its creed, if the Arian delusion had not been driven off from the Church by deeper views of both God and man, the language of the text would have been very perplexing. As it is, Christ is no rival to God. The Divine element in the Christ is the eternal Son of God; the whole of the Divine nature manifests itself to us under the aspect of the eternal Son. God is manifest therefore in the flesh. The Word that is God has been incarnate, and we have beheld his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It is by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that we are alive to God, because it is in Him that we can see the Father, and because no man knoweth the Son but the Father; and no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.
(2) Faith in Christ is, further, a resurrection with Christ from the death to sin. The illustrations which Paul draws from the resurrection of Christ to throw light on our divine life are very numerous. The new life of the soul is a resurrection-life, charged with all the associations and aspirations which would be possessed by one who had passed, through dying, from death to life.
(3) The life to God flows out of the life of God in the soul. It cannot be that the life of the soul will be characterized by deep perceptions of God, that the delighting in God, resting in God, hoping in God, will be the characteristics of the human spirit, unless God Himself create within us the new life by His Holy Spirit. This Holy Spirit is the dispensation of the exalted Christ. The new germ of life in our humanity is planted there by the risen Jesus. The new vision of God is the work of Him who is the life of our life, the strength of our heart, and our portion for ever.
IV
Reckoning
When the Apostle bids us reckon ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God, of course he is telling us to reckon ourselves to be what we really arenot something different from what we are. It is not that we are to suppose or imagine ourselves to be dead to sin in some figurative or fictitious sense, but that being so, we are to recognize the truth, and make it a conviction. If we are not dead to sin and alive to God, there would be absolutely no meaning at all in this precept and no possible effect from it.
You could not say to a blind man, Reckon yourself to be one possessed of sight; or to a paralysed man, Reckon yourself to have the use of your limbs; or to an ignorant man, Reckon yourself to be learned. A man must possess sight before he can consider himself able to see, and he must have the use of his limbs in order to count on being able to move, and he must have wealth or knowledge if he is to reckon on using either. It would be not only ineffectual and senseless, but a cruel mockery to call upon any one to exercise gifts or powers which they did not possess, or were incapable of exercising.
Why am I authorized to reckon on these glorious facts? Simply because God does it. God reckons me to have died with Christ, and I am going to reckon myself to be where God reckons me. God reckons me to be living in Christ, and I am going to reckon myself to be living in Christ. The word in the Book of Genesis about Abraham is thisnot Abraham believed God, but Abraham amened God. He staggered not at the promise, through unbelief, but said Amen to it. It seems akin to madness for you to reckon yourself dead to the foul things in your life that have mastered you a hundred times, so that you continue under an overwhelming sense of defeat. Say Amen to God. Then God will honour your faith and make victory real in your life, and your Amen to God will please Him as Abrahams did, for God was so pleased with Abrahams Amen that He counted it to him for righteousness.1 [Note: J. Gregory Mantle.]
1. It is an exercise of the Imagination. The imagination is the faculty by means of which we perceive the facts of life and apply them to our lives. Reckon yourselves dead, reckon yourselves alive; in other words, be convinced of it, and you will be it. It is a significant anticipation of the method adopted by those who call themselves Christian Scientists in their attempts to heal the body. It is what is called Auto-suggestion, namely, a strong, purposeful denial of one set of experiences and phenomena, and an equally strong affirmation of others, and the anticipation that the series thus denied will wither, as a plant withers when deprived of water.
There is little doubt that the principle of auto-suggestion is rapidly being recognized on the physical plane in the sphere of the influence of mind over body. On this plane the principle works both waysboth for disease and for health; the mind, dwelling constantly on particular symptoms of disease, renders the body liable to be affected by that disease. In an obituary notice in the Lancet of a great nerve doctor, who died from paralysis, this is practically acknowledged, for we read: It is remarkable that he wrote much about diseases of the nervous system, thus giving another example of the curious coincidence that not infrequently medical men die of the diseases to which they have given special attention. It certainly tells for health. In spite of many failures, and premises that, in my opinion, are erroneous, and an exaggeration of the matter-denying philosophy of Berkeley, the so-called Christian Scientists may fairly claim to have established the principle that the sphere of causes is the mind. Their council to their disciples is: Ally yourself in thought with the resistless Divine life within you as the one true fact of your being. Obliterate the obstructions of doubt and fear, that the Divine force within may have scope to work; reckon yourself dead to all the illusions of the false self; reckon yourself alive to all the elements of health and power, and strength, and perfection, and this mental process will result in change throughout the whole physical frame. And it certainly does, and in numerous instances, to some of which I am able to testify from personal observation, the result is the cure of disease. It is almost a matter of surprise, considering the training of the man in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, to note the strong grasp of spiritual intuition with which this truthknown to the Easterns 2000 years b.c.is adopted by St. Paul, and applied to the Divinely ordered method of spiritual growth. Reckon yourself dead to sinreckon yourself alive to God. The road to a true and noble life, he would say, is the intense, purposeful focusing of your mental faculties upon all that is high, noble, pure, Divine, and the deliberate, persistent ignoring, denying, all that contradicts it. The seed of action is impulse. Meet the impulses within you on their own groundwhere you find them. They are all in the mental regionthink yourself into Godreckon yourself alive to God.1 [Note: Canon B. Wilberforce.]
There is a pathetic story of a slave who was put up for auction at a slave-mart. A kind-hearted man in the crowd paid the price and gave him his freedom; but the iron of slavery had entered his soul, and he could not divest himself of the mental habit of a slave. He failed to imagine the change in his position, and so he went back to his squalid hut, took up the hoe, and resumed his old place in the slave-gang. He could not imagine anything so good, and until he could, he was not free. There are thousands like him, slaves because the imagination is enslaved, in bondage to habit, to vice; and they might be free if only it could be brought home to the imagination. It is not money that delivers: it is the imagination.2 [Note: W. G. Stooke.]
2. But, more biblically and more accurately, it is an exercise of Faith. It will be observed that the starting-point in these verses is not something at which we are to aim, but a fact which has already happened, and which is stated to us on authority. Over and over again it is repeated that we have died; that we are dead; that we died when Christ died; and that we died with Him. This is a matter of revelation and of fact for every Christian Upon this is built a primary dutythe duty of believing it, because Scripture says that it is true. It is a subject for faith. Why is it that we do not get the better of our sins? Why do the best of us make so little progress in practical obedience? Why are some living in a constant succession of failures, so that they seem never to improve? Why are others living to the present world, or living in sin? There is one cause of this common to every case alikewant of faith. We do not advance because we want faith; we lead careless, ungodly, sinful lives, because we want faith. We do not believe in Christs work. We languidly believe in what He once did for usthat He died for our sins upon the Cross, and rose again; and we believe in what He is ready and willing to do for usthat He is ready to help us now if we seek Him; but we do not believe in what He has done in usin that great and real work which He did once actually accomplish upon our individual nature; we do not believe that we are now, or ever were, truly dead to sin; we have not faith in this great fact; and this is what St. Paul bids us believebelieve now, and believe at all times. Let us reckon by faith that in Christ Jesus we are both dead to sin and alive to God.
(1) Let us reckon on the fact. For in that He died to sin we died to sin. Notice the use of the word with by St. Paul. In Rom 6:6, Crucified with him; in Rom 6:8, Dead with him; in Rom 6:4, Buried with him; in Rom 6:8, Live with him. Crucified with Him, dead with Him, buried with Him, living with Him; identification in crucifixion, in death, in burial, in resurrection. And if we are to rest our faith unwaveringly, without any hesitancy, upon this great fact, we must remind ourselves once again that it is gloriously true that our old man, that is, our fallen, unregenerate nature, not as God created it, but as sin defaced and defiled it, our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sinso called because every part of our being has been corrupted by sinmight be done away or abolished.
(2) Let us reckon on the fellowship. Notice how the Apostle insists upon that, in this chapter. He says, Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection. If we be dead with Christ (Rom 6:8), we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead. What a wonderful argument that is at the close of chapter 5., that magnificent contrast between the first Adam and the last Adam! Every living soul is identified either with the first Adam or with the last Adam.
(3) Let us reckon on the continuity of the death and life. In that he died, he died unto sin once for all (notice the addition of these two words, for all, in the margin of the Revised Version), but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Is there not need to emphasize the continuity of this resurrection life?
I have been disheartened, at times, when I have gone back to some place where there has been a gracious visitation of the Spirit of God, and many men and women have, by faith, identified themselves with Christ, in His death and risen life. It has been a great discouragement to me to find that they have gone back; and that, when I have gone to the place again, they have had to renew this great act of identification with Him.1 [Note: J. Gregory Mantle.]
An old divine says: A sheep and a sow may each fall into the same quagmire; but the sow will wallow in it, whilst the sheep will bleat piteously, until she is extricated and cleansed. Such is the difference between the ungodly and the children of God. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; that is, sin can never become his normal and habitual State.2 [Note: F. B. Meyer.]
A Good Reckoning
Literature
Bishop (J. W.), The Christian Year, 205.
Cunningham (W.), Sermons, 251.
Drummond (H.), Stones rolled away, 62.
Hickey (F. P.), Short Sermons, 2nd Ser., 134.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year. Easter to Ascension Day, 138.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, New Ser., iii. 63.
Maturin (W.), The Blessedness of the Dead in Christ, 317.
Meyer (F. B.), Christian Living, 45.
Rogers (J. H.), The Verily, Verilys of Christ, 53.
Temple (F.), Sermons preached in Rugby School Chapel, 1st Ser., 306.
Thompson (R. E.), Nature, the Mirror of Grace, 19.
Tyng (S. H.), The Peoples Pulpit, New Ser., ii. 197.
Wilberforce (B.), Feeling after Him, 29.
Wilberforce (B.), New (?) Theology, 203.
British Congregationalist, Jan.June 1910, 538 (Jowett).
Christian World Pulpit, x. 169 (Bainton); xxxvi. 252 (Dods); lxxiv. 205 (Stooke).
Churchmans Pulpit (Good Friday and Easter Even), vii. 172 (Temple); (Easter Day and Season), vii. 198 (Keble); (Sixth Sunday after Trinity), x. 385, 389 (Reynolds), 391 (How).
Keswick Week, 1908, 51 (Lees), 68 (Mantle).
Plain Sermons by Contributors to the Tracts for the Times, vii. 111.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
reckon: Rom 8:18
be dead: Rom 6:2
but: Rom 6:13, 1Co 6:20, Gal 2:19, Gal 2:20, Col 3:3-5
through: Rom 6:23, Rom 5:1, Rom 16:27, Joh 20:31, Eph 2:7, Phi 1:11, Phi 4:7, Col 3:17, 1Pe 2:5, 1Pe 4:11
Reciprocal: Luk 15:24 – this Luk 20:38 – for all Rom 6:10 – he liveth unto Rom 7:6 – serve 2Co 5:15 – that they 1Pe 2:24 – being 1Pe 4:2 – the will 2Pe 1:9 – that he
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Rom 6:11
The Epistle to the Romans contains the very sum and substance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It has been excellently styled The Cathedral of the Christian Faith. In words inspired by God the Holy Ghost, the grand, the vital truth is laid down, that We are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works and deservings (Art. XI).
But the hope that is held out to Christians does not end with this great doctrine. By faith in the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ, he that believeth in Jesus obtains a sentence of justification in virtue of which he stands reconciled to God. But there is something more. Christ died and rose again.
I. He is our living Lord.The Christian not only partakes in His Death and in His Burial, but also in His Resurrection. He rose with and in Him; he is to live with and in Him. Of this, his baptism is not only the symbol, but the seal and pledge. And to live is not merely to regain peace with God through the forgiveness of sin. It is to seek the light of His holiness, to walk in newness of life, in communion with the Father and the Son through the Spirit. As Godet says: In the cure of the soul, pardon is only the crisis of convalescence; the restoration of health is sanctification. This brings us to the thought expanded and enforced in chapters 68.
II. The end which God has in view, the Apostle teaches, is the restoration of the sinner to life with Himself. Holiness is true life. Reconciliation is the first step; justification by faith is the means; sanctification is the end. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, however, while it brings freedom from guilt, does not prescribe freedom from moral obligation. On the contrary:
III. It enjoins practical holiness.The objection, therefore, that Christianity encourages its disciples to continue in sin, that grace may abound, is utterly without foundation. So far is this from the truth, that the Apostle exclaimed, with all the strength of asseveration, and we exclaim with him, God forbid! The doctrines of Jesus Christ have the very opposite tendency.
Prebendary Eardley-Wilmot.
Illustration
This is perhaps one of the very strongest statements in all the New Testament. We are to account ourselves dead to sin. And yet all the while we know that we go on sinning. Even the just falleth seven times a day. And St. Paul himself, in this very Epistle, bewails with the most impassioned bitterness the all too undeniable fact that what the Christian would not, that he still continues to do. But for all this here the words stand.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE RECKONING
This is an emphatic exhortation drawn from a great argument. St. Paul has been discoursing on the prime duties and immunities of Christian believers. His main point is thisthat Jesus died for their sin that they might live to God.
I. The first part of the reckoning relates
(a) To the greatest evilSin. There was a time when sin was a very little thing, but a paradise has been changed into a pandemonium, and pure beings into corrupt souls. The history of the world is the history of sin.
(b) To separation from this tremendous evil. Dead indeed unto sin. A dead man is wholly insensible to the sounds, the tastes, the pleasures, and the avocations of life; and so should be a Christian man to all kinds of sin; they should have no dominion over him.
II. The second part of the reckoning relates
(a) To the greatest BeingGod. He is absolute love. And herein is His supreme greatness manifested.
(b) To connection with Him. Alive unto God. The Apostle does not attempt to explain or prove this. He prefers to assert it independent of all metaphysical principle. But his statement, brief though it is, contains a world of meaning.
Illustration
Is it a paradox, or is it said in sober earnest? Is it a contradiction, stating what is not, only with the intention of fixing your minds more strongly on what really is; or is it the statement of a living fact which is to have a place and home in daily life? We know full well it is the latter. It is a paradox no doubt; but the life of faith is full of paradoxes. We may even say that the life of faith upon earth is itself one great paradox. You may say that such a precept as this is in itself a call to the impossible. But is not Christianity itself a call to the impossible?to the impossible, that is, looked at from the merely human point of view.
(THIRD OUTLINE)
DEATH AND LIFE
The religious and the irreligious man take different views alike of sin and of God.
I. The Christians view.
(a) He deems himself dead unto sin. Sin once had mastery over him, but now it has lost its charm, its power, and its dreadful threatening. He is emancipated through a spiritual death.
(b) He reckons himself to be alive to God. Formerly his soul was dead unto God; but now the thought of God is congenial, the voice of God is welcome, the will of God is authoritative. This spiritual life unto God involves the glorious resurrection and the life eternal.
II. This view derived from relation to Christ.What we need for our true well-being is a revelation of God and a victory over sin.
(a) The change is in the likeness of Christs death and resurrection. In his crucifixion, our Lord died unto sin; in His resurrection, Jesus rose, and lived unto God. When we affirm that our death unto sin, and our life unto God, are in the likeness of Christ, we mean in fact and not in measure.
(b) The change is by the power of Christs death and resurrection. In Christ Jesus here means in union with Him.
Illustration
Truth, honour, the craving after better things, which even bad men show, are the struggling witnesses to the fact that scarcely any depravity in this life can quite crush out the new life which God of His goodness has put within us. These are the facts. If you have sinned ever so deeply, or ever so long, it cannot alter the fact. It is the Christians birthright. Let your sins have been what they may, you may at any time turn round upon the Tempter, and, in the power of God which is yours in Christ, you may defy him to do his worst. Alive towards God. Yes, so we are. Would to God we could believe it.
(FOURTH OUTLINE)
ALIVE UNTO GOD
I. This principle is of the very essence of the Christian life.The words are express and uncompromising, but they are not more so than scores of parallel expressions.
II. We must make it our business so to live in this world as to carry out this idea of deadness to all that is merely of the world and evil.
III. There is a whole world of life on the side next God.Try this and you will find it true. What does life mean? It means action and energy, and not mere existence. Life means love, and affection, and desire, and intercourse, and active energy on behalf of that for which we live. And the life of the soul is drawn from God and tends to God.
IV. Here we have the grand secret of Christian improvement.It does not lie so much in merely taking precautions against individual sinsthough this, alas! is all too necessaryas in vigorous pressing on in goodness, and in living in perpetual intercourse with God. How do we live in intercourse with God? There are three ways mainly.
(a) There is the closest of all when we come to Himor rather when He comes to usin Holy Communion.
(b) There is the next in our stated prayers, whether in His own house or in private.
(c) And then, linked on with these, and carrying their fragrance into our hourly life, there is the perpetual recollection and realising of His Presence.
Illustration
When Christ our Lord became man, He was not merely man minus human imperfections, He was more than that. Adam had been that once. So when Christ became man it was not merely a going back to what once had been, but a going forward to something new and better. The second man was the Lord from heaven. And this teaches us wherein our renewal must consist. As when Christ became man, the Godhead came into our nature, so when we are baptized into Christ, a new and Divine vitality is set a-going in our personality as well.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
:11
Rom 6:11. The death and life of this verse both have a spiritual sense.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Rom 6:11. Thus, or, so. This is an inference and the application to the readers.
Reckon. The word may be either imperative, or indicative; the former suits the context best.
Also; like Christ (Rom 6:10).
Dead indeed unto sin. The notion of reckoning that they died for sin, in and with Christ, seems contrary to the whole argument of the passage.
But alive onto God in Christ Jesus. Only in fellowship with Christ Jesus can we reckon ourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God. The negative and positive sides of the new moral life are based upon fellowship with the Personal Redeemer who died and rose again. The exhortation is to an apprehension (reckon) of this as a motive for holy living. Hence the utter impossibility of our continuing in sin that grace may abound (Rom 6:1). The obvious inference is that dying to sin and living to God is the evidence (and the only valid evidence) of our fellowship with Christ. On the other hand, the way is thus prepared for enforcing the thought, so essential in Pauls argument (and equally so in Christian experience), that fellowship with Christ, and not the pressure of law, is the fundamental fact in a life of holiness. Christian morality cannot exist without Christ.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Here we have two parts of our sanctification described, namely, mortification and vivification, dying unto sin, and living unto God.
1. Mortification, or dying unto sin, Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin; that is, look upon the death of Christ, as a strong argument against the reign and power of sin; account yourselves dead unto sin.
Now deadness argues three things:
1. Disability. Such as are dead are disabled for working. Proportionable to the measure of our death unto sin, will be our disability to fulfil the lusts of it. Sin in a regenerate man is no more able to do all its will, than a crucified man is able to do what he will; He that is born of God cannot commit sin 1Jn 3:9; not as others do, and as himself formerly has done.
2. Deadness to sin argues disaffection towards sin, as well as disability: when we die to sin, our love to sin dieth.
3. Deadness argues liberty and unsubjection: he that is dead is freed from sin, as the woman by death is freed from her husband; and the Christian that is dead with Christ unto sin, stands fast in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made him free.
Observe, 2. The other part of our sanctification here declared: and that is, living unto God.
This likewise consists in three things:
1. In having our sensitive appetites in subjection, and under the subjection and dominion of reason; when we are governed like men, by reason and conscience, not like beasts, by sense and sensual inclination.
2. In having reason illuminated by faith, guided and directed by divine revelation.
And, 3. When this faith inclines and enables us to live unto God; when faith begets in us a resolution to obey God, and to persevere in our duty to him. This is to be dead unto sin, and alive unto God.
Observe lastly, Christians are said to be dead unto sin, and alive unto God, Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Which phrase imports, that Christ is the root and principle of our spiritual life by faith in whom we are enabled to live unto God: as the scion ingrafted into the stock, lives by the juice and nourishment it receives from the stock; so Christians are alive unto God, in, by, and through Jesus Christ, receiving from him that virtue whereby their spiritual life is begun, carried on, and maintained, and shall in due time be perfected and completed.
From whence we learn, that Christ is not only an head of authority, but an head of influence, to his church and members; He strengthening them, they can do all things, but without him they can do nothing: that is, without an interest in him, and an influence of grace derived from him.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Vv. 11. Thus also reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The , likewise, indicates the inference to be drawn from the conformity between the case of believers and that of Jesus.
Ye also: ye, as well as he., reckon, consider, is evidently an imperative, not an indicative: comp. the following imperatives, Rom 6:12-13. The apostle means: Behold, in consequence of what you witness in Jesus Himself, the view-point at which you ought to put yourselves when you regard your own case. You have no longer to see your condition as you were in yourselves: slaves of sin, dead unto God. You have to regard yourselves as you are in Christ, as I have just explained to you: dead to sin, alive to God. Beside and above the old man which still lives in him, the believer possesses a new ego contained in Christ who lives in him; this ego has broken with sin, it is wholly consecrated to God. Such is the being whom he ought henceforth to regard as his true self; he ought consequently to appropriate it subjectively by constantly substituting it for his natural self, which is henceforth denied at the foot of the cross. Such is the divine secret of Christian sanctification, which distinguishes it profoundly from simple natural morality. The latter says to man: Become what thou wouldst be. The former says to the believer: Become what thou art already (in Christ). It thus puts a positive fact at the foundation of moral effort, to which the believer can return and have recourse anew at every instant. And this is the reason why his labor is not lost in barren aspiration, and does not end despair. The believer does not get disentangled from sin gradually. He breaks with it in Christ once for all. He is placed by a decisive act of will in the sphere of perfect holiness; and it is within it that the gradual renewing of the personal life goes forward. This second gospel paradox, sanctification by faith, rests on the first, justification by faith.
After having shown the believer how he is to regard himself in virtue of his union with Christ, the apostle calls him not to let this new position be a mere matter of theory, but to work it into his real life, to make it his life from moment to moment. As Philippi says, Christians ought to begin with discerning what they are, and then labor to manifest it. Such is the subject of Rom 6:12-14.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. [At this point the apostle passes over from the symbolic union which is effected on our part by baptism, to the actual union effected on Christ’s part by his real assumption of our humanity through his incarnation. Though, in baptism, we only symbolically died, yet we may be sure that the symbolism has actual truth and verity back of it, for we know that our sinful human nature, which we sought to bury in baptism, did really, actually, die in the person of Christ crucified, that the sin might be purged, and that it, being a slave to sin, might obtain actual, unqualified liberty; for who so dies pays the penalty of sin, and (if he can live again) obtains his freedom. But if we thus actually die in Christ, we believe that we shall also actually live with him (not a merely symbolically glorified life, such as this present, but an actually glorified existence in the future), for we were actually united with him in his passion, and we know that he rose triumphant from the grave, to die no more; and so, we being in him, did likewise, and the act was final (as to us), for Christ died to sin once (and we also in him), but the life that he liveth he liveth no longer in mortal flesh on earth among men, but he liveth it in the presence of and unto God (and we also in him). Since we know, therefore, that these grand verities underlie the symbolic profession which we make in baptism, we must exalt the actual above the symbolic, and indeed look upon ourselves as dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus, and not as mere dreamers following an idle, visionary symbol.]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
11. Thus you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. Hitherto the apostle has been on the divine side presenting the mighty works of God in the destruction of the sin-principle in the human heart. He now turns over to the human side, telling us how to get it. This reckon means consider, believe, reason, et cetera. It is a verb in the imperative mood, plural number, and present tense. Good Lord, help us to obey this commandment and reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. See the emphatic adverb indeed obliterating every possible doubt. Now will you do this reckoning? Rest assured God will make it good. When I crossed the Atlantic Ocean the second time, we were confronted by an awful storm five days and nights; no glimpse of sun, moon, nor stars, but mountain billows lashing the clouds and rolling over the ship. We were mid-Ocean, the storm striking us five hundred miles this side Gibraltar and letting up a thousand miles east of New York. Yet our noble ship with her thirty-six boilers shot through the storm like an arrow, landing precisely on time according to the reckoning of those sturdy old German sailors. If human reckoning can be relied on amid ocean storms, certainly we can depend on divine reckoning amid all the storm of probationary life. So you make the reckoning. He who has commanded you to reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, will certainly make the reckoning good by killing sin outright, so dead it will never kick again. Shall I make this reckoning when I know sin is alive in me? Of course, with the painful consciousness that sin is alive in you as big as a rhinoceros, you muster courage to reckon [it] dead indeed. You have nothing to do but hold on to the reckoning, shout victory and be true. God, pursuant to your faith, will certainly attend to the death problem. He will kill it. So, to your infinite delight, you will find it is indeed dead.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
SECTION 18 WE SERVE SIN NO MORE
CH. 6:11-14
So also ye, reckon yourselves to be dead to sin but living for God in Christ Jesus. Then let not sin reign as king in your mortal body, in order to obey its desires. Neither present the members of your body, as weapons of unrighteousness, to sin; but present yourselves to God as if living from the dead, and the members of your body, as weapons of righteousness, to God. For of you sin shall not be lord: for ye are not under law but under grace.
In Rom 6:1-10, Paul proved that God wills us to be dead to sin and living a new life: in Rom 6:11-14, he teaches how Gods purpose may be realised in us, and bids us claim its realisation: in Rom 6:15-23, he will go on to prove, by comparison of the old and new, that this realisation is for our highest good.
Rom 6:11. Practical application of Rom 6:10.
So also ye: just as Christ once for all died to sin and lives for God, the case of the servants being added to, and corresponding with, that of their Lord.
Reckon: a mental calculation, as in Rom 2:3; Rom 3:28. Since, in this case, it results in a rational and assured conviction resting upon the word and character of God, it is the mental process of faith.
Dead to sin: completely delivered from it, as Christ escaped from His enemies by His death on the cross.
Living for God: as Christ lives (Rom 6:10) upon the throne. [The particle makes these two sides, negative and positive, of the new life distinct objects of thought.]
In Christ Jesus: by inward and spiritual contact and union with Him who once died to sin and ever lives for God. So Rom 6:23; Rom 3:24; Rom 8:1-2; Rom 12:5; Eph 1:3-4; Eph 1:6-7; Eph 1:9-10; Eph 1:12-13, etc. Same phrase in a slightly different form in Joh 6:56; Joh 14:20; Joh 15:2-7; Joh 17:21; 1Jn 2:6; 1Jn 2:24; 1Jn 2:28, etc. It is a conspicuous feature of the teaching of Paul and of John; and represents Christ as the secure refuge and home and vital atmosphere of His servants, in which they are safe and at rest and live. Notice here a double relation to Christ: they are like Him, sharing His death to sin and life of devotion to God; and in Him, their likeness to Him being an outflow of inward and vital contact with Him.
The exhortation of this verse is not, like that in Rom 5:1, merely rhetorical. For it is repeated with evident practical earnestness in Rom 6:12-13; Rom 6:15-21, as a needful warning and encouragement. The experience here set forth is thus contrasted with pardon or justification, which the N.T. writers never exhort their readers to claim, but always assume that they already have: cp. Rom 5:9-11; 1Co 6:11; Eph 1:7; 1Jn 2:12. We have here two stages or sides of the new life, closely related but distinct in thought and usually in time. For many venture to believe that God here and now forgives their past sins, and thus by faith obtain forgiveness, who have not yet dared to believe that in Christs grave their past life of sin is buried, and that by inward union with Him they will henceforth live a life of unreserved devotion to God.
In this verse, we learn how to obtain this full salvation. viz. by reckoning, at Gods bidding and in reliance upon His promise and His wonder-working power, that what He bids us reckon He will Himself, in the moment of our reckoning and henceforth, work in us by inward contact with Him who Himself died to sin and ever lives for God. This involves the great truth that, whatever God requires us to do and to be, He will work in us through Christ and in Christ. In Rom 8:2-16, we shall learn that this inward union with Christ and new life in Christ is wrought in us by the agency of the Spirit of God.
We come therefore to the cross and to the empty grave of Christ. We remember the sinlessness and the devotion to God of the dead and risen Saviour; and we know that He died in order that we, by spiritual union with Him, may be like Him. Perhaps until this moment we have been defiled and enslaved by sin and only in small part loyal to God. But God bids us reckon ourselves to be sharers of the death and life of Christ. In view of the earnest love and infinite power manifested in the death and resurrection of Christ, we dare not hesitate; and in contradiction to our past experience and to our present sense of utter weakness, we say, In Him I am dead to sin and henceforth living only for God. What we say, we reckon at Gods bidding to be true; and God realises in us, in proportion to our faith, by uniting us to Christ, His own word and our faith. Thousands have thus found by happy experience of the grace and power of God, in a measure unknown to them before, a new life of victory over sin and of loyal devotion to God.
Notice in this verse a FOURTH FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINE viz. that the new life of victory over sin and devotion to God is wrought by God, through faith, in those who believe. This doctrine may be called (see under Rom 6:19) Sanctification through Faith. It is in close harmony with, and a needful supplement to, Justification through Faith. For complete harmony with God, victory over all sin and unreserved devotion to God are as needful as forgiveness: and we are as little able by our own works to obtain the one as the other. When therefore we have learnt that God, who accepts as righteous those that believe, designs them to be sharers of the moral life of Christ, we are prepared to learn that also this new life in Christ is Gods gift to those that believe. This close correspondence and natural inference account for the informal manner in which this fourth doctrine comes before us. It was needless to state it explicitly, or to defend it. For the exposition and defence of justifying faith. In Romans 4 avails equally for sanctifying faith. Like the faith of Abraham, expounded in Rom 4:17-21, the faith which apprehends the new life in Christ is a reliance upon the word and power of God. Pauls explicit assertion and abundant defence of faith as the condition of justification give him a right to assume it silently, as he does here, as the condition of sanctification.
Like justifying faith, sanctifying faith is a reliance upon the word and character of God. But they differ in their object-matter. The one accepts and appropriates the promise of pardon for all who believe: the other accepts and appropriates the promise of complete salvation from all sin and of a new life of devotion to God like that of Christ. Moreover, this latter is at once verified by a conscious experience of victory over sin and of felt loyalty to God: and this inward verification verifies also the faith with which we ventured to accept the Gospel of pardon.
Rom 6:12. Further exhortation arising out of the exhortation foregoing.
Sin reign: as in Rom 5:21.
In your body: as the throne and basis of its royal power. Cp. Rev 3:21 : sit with Me in My throne.
Mortal: emphatic, as in Rom 8:11, your mortal bodies. That our body is not yet rescued from corruption and is therefore still under the dominion of the foe, is a reason why we should not submit to a power which seeks to dominate us by means of our body.
In order to obey etc.: purpose for which men permit sin to usurp authority over them through their bodies, viz. they wish to gratify, i.e. to obey its desires.
Desire: a definite wish going after an object pleasant or helpful. Same word in Rom 1:24; Rom 7:7-8; Rom 13:14 : cp. desire of the flesh in Gal 5:16; Gal 5:24; Eph 2:3. It is in itself neither good nor bad: see Php 1:23, 1Th 2:17; Luk 15:16; Luk 16:21; Luk 17:22; Luk 22:15. The moral colour of the desire is reflected on it from the context. Hence the unsuitability of the R.V. rendering lust. But obedience to the desires of the body as a directive principle of action always leads to sin. For the body is the lower side of our nature, is essentially selfish, caring for nothing except itself, and is unconscious of the moral law. It therefore needs to be held in by a strong hand, to be laid (see Rom 6:13) on the altar of God, and to be used for His service. To permit the body to rule, i.e. to make gratification of its appetites, or even its preservation, the end of life, is to permit sin to reign over us as king, and our bodies, already doomed to decay, to become its throne. Against such submission, and such motive, Paul warns his readers.
Rom 6:13. Another exhortation, the negative side expounding the practical result of obeying the desires of the body, and the positive side expounding what is involved in living for God.
Present: so Rom 6:16; Rom 6:19; Rom 12:1; cp. Rom 16:2; Col 1:22; Col 1:28 : to place at the disposal of another.
Members: the various parts of the body, each with its own faculty: Rom 12:4; 1Co 12:12; 1Co 12:14; 1Co 12:18-19; Mat 5:29-30, etc. Its looser modern use has led me to render members of your body.
Weapons: instruments for carrying on war: Rom 13:12; 2Co 6:7; 2Co 10:4; Joh 18:3. Being used for an evil purpose, they are weapons of unrighteousness. To obey the desires of our body, is to place our hands and lips at the disposal of sin to be weapons which it will use in unrighteous war.
Yourselves: the personality behind the bodily powers, given up, not to sin, but to God.
Present yourselves as if living from the dead: looking upon yourselves as if your life had come to an end, as if ye had been laid in, and raised from, the grave, and thus raised from among the dead, and as if now living a resurrection life; and, thus viewing your position, place yourselves at the disposal of God.
And your members etc.: a detail involved in present yourselves.
Weapons of righteousness: a marked contrast: our hands and lips given to God to be used by Him in His righteous war. Instead of obeying the desires of our body, and thus permitting sin to erect its throne there and to use our bodily powers for its own ends, Paul bids us place our whole personality at the disposal of God, resolving that henceforth our hands shall do His work, our feet run on His errands, and our lips speak His message, in His conflict against sin. Notice here a new view of Christian duty. God bids us, not merely to avoid sin, but to place ourselves with all we have and are at His disposal for use in the tremendous struggle now going on between good and evil.
Rom 6:14. Encouragement to obey the foregoing exhortation. This last implies complete deliverance from service of sin. And Paul assures us, sin shall not be your lord.
Under law: governed by God on the principle, Do this and live, i.e. treated by Him according to our obedience. Such was Gods relation to Israel under the Old Covenant. Hence the Jews were under law: 1Co 9:20; Gal 4:4-5. Some Christians desired to remain under the same terms: Gal 4:21. This momentary reference to the Law prepares a way for further teaching about it in Romans 7.
Under grace: under a method of government determined not by mere justice but by the undeserved favour of God, i.e. under the reign (Rom 5:21) of grace. God makes, not our deserts, but His own goodwill the standard of His treatment of us. Otherwise He would never have given His Son to die for us, or have brought to bear upon us, while in our sins, those influences (see Rom 2:4) which led us to repentance and salvation. Upon the ground that God will treat us, not according to our works, i.e. according to the letter of the Law, but according to His undeserved favour, rest all our hopes of blessing from Him.
In Rom 6:11-14, we have the Law and the Gospel of the new life in Christ, what God claims from us and what He is ready to work in us. He claims that we devote to Him and His service our whole personality and all our bodily powers. Incidentally we learn that He who makes this claim is engaged in tremendous conflict, and that He claims our devotion in order that He may use us in His righteous war against sin. Unfortunately we are not free to render to God the devotion He justly claims. For His foe is our lord: we are the fettered slaves of sin, and therefore cannot serve God.
Paul bids us look upon ourselves as if we were dead, dead on the cross of Christ and buried in His grave, and thus free from our former bondage; and, though dead, yet living, sharing the life of the Risen One, a life of unreserved loyalty to God.
In obedience to this claim, we now lay, upon the altar consecrated by the blood of Christ, ourselves and all our bodily powers; and we do this in faith, relying upon the promise and power of God that from this moment we shall be free from our old master and shall live by inward contact with Christ a life like His. This consecration and faith are a higher counterpart to the repentance and faith which are the condition of justification.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
Since God has united us with Christ we should "consider," "count," or "reckon" ourselves as those who are not under the dominating influence of sin any longer. The verb is a present imperative in the Greek text indicating that we should definitely and constantly view ourselves this way. We must realize that we are free to enjoy our new relationship with God forever. One writer explained well how Christians should view themselves. [Note: See Don Matzat, Christ-Esteem.]
Paul previously stressed the importance of knowing certain facts (Rom 6:3; Rom 6:6; Rom 6:9). Now he said that we should count on their being true. We must not just understand them but believe them. He used the same Greek word (logisthesetai) here as he did in his explanation of justification (Rom 2:26; Rom 4:3-6; Rom 4:8-11; Rom 4:22-24). God puts righteousness down on the believer’s account. Similarly we should put it down as true that our relationship to sin and death has changed. Only as we do so will we relate to temptation, sin, and death realistically. If we fail to believe that sin no longer dominates us, we will be much more vulnerable to yield to temptation, to practice sin, and to fear death. However if we believe sin does not have that power, we will be more apt to resist temptation, to stay clear of sin, and to anticipate death less fearfully. "Consider" is in the present tense in the Greek text indicating that we need to maintain a realistic view of our relationship to sin (i.e., to "keep on considering").
"The word reckon is a word for faith-in the face of appearances." [Note: Newell, p. 225.]
In some parts of the United States, "I reckon" means "I guess." For example, "I reckon it’s going to rain this afternoon." That is not its meaning here. It means to count on something being true, to believe it.
"This is no game of ’let’s pretend’; believers should consider themselves to be what God in fact has made them." [Note: Bruce, p. 132.]