straight to the heart of the matter, revealing it to be a matter of life and

Grace is grace because of righteousness, so teaches Romans 5:21: 'Even

so might grace reign through righteousness', and the only way that grace

could reign through righteousness is for sin to have been dealt with

righteously, and we know that the wages of sin is death.

The answer to the question of Romans 6:1 is found in 6:3-14.  Verse 2

is not so much an answer as a refusal to admit the validity of the objection

that superabounding grace will encourage laxity of morals.  The close of

verse 14 corresponds with verse 2 in setting the objection aside as

incompatible with the 'grace wherein we stand'.  The answer (3-14) is divided

into three main sections:

Identification of the believer in the death, burial and

resurrection of Christ (3-10).  This we shall discover is

subdivided into three features.

Reckoning of the believer that all this is true.

Practical results of this identification and reckoning: 'Let

not', 'Yield not'.

There is a system of teaching that appears to take these words as

meaning abstaining from, resisting, mortifying sin, in which there can be

degrees of 'depth'.  Hence the expression: 'to die more and more unto sin'.

There is most truly an experimental entering into the death of Christ, but we

are persuaded such is not intended here.  In Romans 6:2,7,8 and 9 the verb

'to die' is not thnesko, but apothnesko, 'to die out, to expire, to become

quite dead'.  Moreover, it is the actual death of Christ that is in view,

'His death' (3 and 5), death 'with Christ' (8), and it is death 'to sin'.

Here again we need care.  It is not death to the power of sin, but death to

its guilt that is here intended.  Our death to sin is not mentioned here as

of our conduct or our character, but of our State before God.  The R.V.

recognizes the aorist tense, and translates the passage, 'We who died to

sin', in place of the A.V., 'We that are dead to sin'.  Into the vexed

question of the true rendering of the Greek aorist we cannot go.  On verse 7

Dr. Weymouth gives the following note, which is of weight:

'Lit.  "has died"; not "is dead".  The distinction cannot be expressed

in Latin or French, but can in English and in Greek.  The classical

scholar will find an excellent example in Euripides, Alc. 541 "Those

who have died (aorist) are dead (perfect)"'.

Up to Romans 5:11 the burden of the epistle has been justification by

faith.  Chapter 5:12-21 adds its quota of superabounding grace, and when the

apostle says in 6:2: 'How shall we who died to sin live any longer therein?'

he is not introducing some new aspect of death, but referring to what has

already been established.  In other words, he replies to the objection by

saying, Justification by faith cannot lead to living in sin, for the simple

reason that justification is based upon death to sin and guilt.  The fact

that Paul uses, in verse 10, the same expression of Christ Himself: 'In that