Romans 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul answers the question raised by his teaching on grace: should people keep on sinning so that grace increases? He says no, and explains that those baptized into Christ were joined to his death and burial, so that they may live a new life. He tells his readers to count themselves dead to sin and alive to God, and not to hand over their bodies to sin. He then uses the picture of slavery: a person serves either sin, which ends in death, or obedience to God, which ends in eternal life.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • A question is raised about what conclusion should be drawn.
   • A question is raised about whether we should continue in sin.
   • The purpose proposed for continuing in sin is that grace may abound.
2. 6:2
   • The proposal is emphatically rejected.
   • We died to sin.
   • A question is asked how those who died to sin can live any longer in it.
3. 6:3
   • A question is asked whether the readers are ignorant of something.
   • As many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death.
4. 6:4
   • We were buried with him by baptism into death.
   • Christ was raised from the dead.
   • Christ was raised by the glory of the Father.
   • The purpose of burial with him is that we also should walk in newness of life, just as Christ was raised.
5. 6:5
   • If we have been planted together with him in the likeness of his death, then we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
6. 6:6
   • We know that our old man was crucified with him.
   • The purpose of the old man's crucifixion is that the body of sin might be destroyed.
   • The further purpose is that we should no longer serve sin.
7. 6:7
   • The one who has died has been freed from sin.
8. 6:8
   • If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.
9. 6:9
   • We know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.
   • Death has no more dominion over Christ.
10. 6:10
    • In that Christ died, he died to sin once for all.
    • In that Christ lives, he lives to God.
11. 6:11
    • The readers are commanded to reckon themselves dead to sin.
    • The readers are commanded to reckon themselves alive to God.
    • This being alive to God is through Jesus Christ our Lord.
12. 6:12
    • The readers are commanded not to let sin reign in their mortal body.
    • Sin reigning would result in obeying the body's lusts.
13. 6:13
    • The readers are commanded not to yield their members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness.
    • The readers are commanded to yield themselves to God.
    • The readers are to yield themselves as those who are alive from the dead.
    • The readers are commanded to yield their members to God as instruments of righteousness.
14. 6:14
    • Sin shall not have dominion over the readers.
    • The readers are not under the law.
    • The readers are under grace.
15. 6:15
    • A question is raised about what conclusion follows.
    • A question is asked whether we should sin because we are not under the law but under grace.
    • The proposal is emphatically rejected.
16. 6:16
    • A question is asked whether the readers know something.
    • Whoever you yield yourselves to as servants to obey, you are the servants of the one you obey.
    • One option is being servants of sin, which leads to death.
    • The other option is being servants of obedience, which leads to righteousness.
17. 6:17
    • Thanks is given to God.
    • The readers were formerly servants of sin.
    • The readers obeyed from the heart.
    • What they obeyed is the form of doctrine delivered to them.
18. 6:18
    • The readers were made free from sin.
    • The readers became servants of righteousness.
19. 6:19
    • The speaker says he speaks after the manner of men.
    • The reason he speaks this way is the infirmity of their flesh.
    • The readers formerly yielded their members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity, resulting in iniquity.
    • The readers are commanded now to yield their members as servants to righteousness, resulting in holiness.
20. 6:20
    • When the readers were servants of sin, they were free from righteousness.
21. 6:21
    • A question is asked what fruit the readers had at that time.
    • The readers are now ashamed of those things.
    • The end of those things is death.
22. 6:22
    • The readers have now been made free from sin.
    • The readers have become servants to God.
    • The readers have their fruit unto holiness.
    • The end is everlasting life.
23. 6:23
    • The wages of sin is death.
    • The gift of God is eternal life.
    • That eternal life is through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"Grace" translates a Greek word for a favor freely given to someone who has no claim on it. In ordinary Greek it covered a wealthy patron's generosity toward a dependent, and it carries no idea of payment or earning.

6:2

"God forbid" translates a Greek phrase that does not mention God at all. Literally it is "may it not be," the strongest way that language had of throwing out a suggestion. Paul uses it repeatedly in Romans to reject a conclusion someone might draw from what he has just said.

6:3

The Greek verb behind "baptize" means to dip or plunge, and baptism in the first century normally meant going down into water and coming back up. That physical picture is what verse 4 builds on. "Baptized into" someone uses the language of ownership and allegiance: to be baptized into a name was to be transferred into that person's possession.

6:4

"Walk" is a standard idiom in both Jewish and Greek writing for the whole conduct of a life, the way a person goes about living. It is not about physical walking.

6:5

The King James "planted together" no longer says what the Greek says. The word means grown together, fused, the way a graft knits into a tree. The grammar is also compressed, and can be read either as united with him in a death like his or as united with the very likeness of his death; translators differ.

6:6

"Our old man" means the former self, the person you used to be; "man" here is not about being male. Crucifixion was a real Roman public execution, used on slaves, rebels and non-citizens, designed to be slow and humiliating. Paul's first readers heard a punishment they had seen, not a figure of speech.

6:7

"Freed" here translates a verb that everywhere else in Romans is rendered "justified" or "acquitted," a courtroom word. Paul appears to be quoting a legal commonplace of his day: once a person is dead, claims and charges against him can go no further.

6:10

"Once" in 1611 English here means once for all time, not "formerly" or "on one occasion among others."

6:11

"Reckon" is a bookkeeping word: to enter an amount in an account and treat it as settled. The request is to count something as a fact on the books, not to work up a feeling about it.

6:12

"Lusts" in 1611 English meant strong desires of any kind. The word had not yet narrowed to sexual desire.

6:13

"Members" means the parts of the body: hands, eyes, tongue, feet. "Instruments" translates a Greek word that most often means weapons or military gear, so the picture is of body parts handed over as armaments to one side or the other in a war.

6:14

"The law" means the law of Moses, the body of commandments in the Jewish scriptures that governed Israel's worship and daily life.

6:16

The King James "servants" is too mild. The Greek word is doulos, a slave: in the Roman world, a person who was legally the property of an owner and owed that one owner absolute obedience. Slavery was everywhere in the cities Paul wrote to, and people did sometimes hand themselves into it to settle debts, which is the transaction this verse pictures.

6:17

"Form" translates a word for a mold or stamp, the shape that presses itself onto whatever is put into it. "Doctrine" simply means teaching. "Delivered" is the ordinary technical term for handing on a fixed body of instruction intact from teacher to student.

6:18

"Righteousness" stands for a single Greek word that covers both being in the right, as in a verdict, and doing what is right, as in conduct. English has no one word for both, so translations shift between the two senses.

6:19

"I speak after the manner of men" is Paul flagging that the slave and master picture is an everyday analogy, not an exact description. "Flesh" here means human nature in its weakness and limits rather than the physical body on its own. "Holiness" translates a word group meaning set apart for a god's use; it was applied to objects, buildings and people dedicated to a temple and withdrawn from ordinary use.

6:20

This means right living had no hold on them. They just did not listen to it.

6:21

"Fruit" is farming language: the yield a field or vine hands back at harvest. It was used generally for profit or return on something. "The end" means the outcome a thing finally arrives at, not simply the point where it stops.

6:22

"Holy" means set apart for God and belonging to him, the way a special cup is kept only for one purpose.

6:23

"Wages" translates a word for a soldier's pay, the regular allowance of money and rations issued to a man in service. It is what you are owed for work done. Against it Paul sets "gift," a word built on the same root as "grace" in verse 1, meaning something handed over freely that was never earned.