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"We shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection" (6: 5).
"We believe that we shall also live with Him" (6: 8).
"Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more" (6: 9).
"In that He liveth, He liveth unto God" (6: 10).
"Reckon yourselves . . . . . alive unto God" (6: 11).
"Yield . . . . . unto God as those that are alive from the dead" (6: 13).
Here are nine references, not including the passages that speak of deliverance from the
dominion of death and sin. It is evident that if we miss the meaning of the apostle
relative to these two great themes we shall miss his teaching entirely. Therefore we must
patiently examine them, and first of all the words with which the objection is repudiated.
What is meant by "dead to sin"?
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
Rom. 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
Euripedes Alc. 541 `Those who have died (aorist) and are dead (perfect)."
Up to Rom. 5: 11 the burden of the epistle has been justification by faith.
Rom. 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 the apostle uses, in verse 10, the same expression of Christ Himself: "In that He
died, He died unto sin once", shows that he had in view death to its guilt. As Calvin
says:--
"The very form of the expression, as applied to Christ, shows that He did not, like us,
die to sin for the purpose of ceasing to commit it."
The Lord was never under the power of sin. He took the guilt of sin that belonged to
us, and for that He died:--
"He that has died is freed from sin" (6: 7).