“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
— Romans 6:1-2
Context & Key Themes
Chapter five ended with a line that demanded an answer: where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. An opportunistic reader could hear that as permission — if grace grows where sin grows, then sin is actually doing grace a favor. Paul knows this objection is coming, and chapter six is his response. The question is not theoretical. It is the perennial question of what happens inside a person once they have been declared righteous. Does justification change how the justified live? Paul’s answer is yes, and the reason is not moral exhortation but union — the believer has been joined to Christ in his death and his resurrection, and that union settles the question.
The chapter builds on a central image that Paul takes from baptism. To be baptized into Christ is to be baptized into his death. The old self, the self that belonged to sin, has been buried. What comes up out of the water is not that old self improved but a new person raised to walk in a new kind of life. The logic of the chapter follows from this: you cannot serve what you have died to. And since you have been freed from one master, you are now free to serve another — not because slavery to righteousness is the same as slavery to sin, but because Paul is willing to use the language of slavery to drive home the point that neutrality is not an option. Everyone serves something. The gospel is not the end of allegiance; it is the transfer of allegiance.
Summary
Paul begins by shutting the door on antinomianism. Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means. The reason is that we have died to sin — and the dead do not continue living in what they died to. Baptism, Paul says, is the sign of this death. When a believer is baptized, they are being united with Christ in his burial. They go down into the water as one who belongs to the old order, and they come up as one who has been raised with Christ into newness of life.
This union has a purpose. The old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin — the whole complex of human life organized around rebellion — would be rendered powerless. One who has died has been set free from sin. That is not a metaphor about feelings; it is a legal and spiritual fact. Death breaks sin’s claim. And because Christ was raised to die no more, the same is true of those united to him. The life he lives, he lives to God. The life the believer now lives is the same life, shared.
From this foundation Paul draws the practical exhortation. Count yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so as to obey its desires. Do not present the members of your body — your eyes, your tongue, your hands — as instruments for unrighteousness. Present them instead to God as instruments for righteousness. Sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are not under law but under grace. The law exposed sin’s power; grace breaks it.
Paul anticipates another bad inference. Does being under grace rather than law mean we can sin freely? Again, by no means. And here he reaches for the slavery image. You are a slave of the one you obey — either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness. The Roman believers were once slaves of sin, but they became obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching they received. They were set free from sin and became slaves of righteousness. Paul apologizes for the crude analogy but insists it is necessary because of human weakness — we understand ownership in a way we do not always understand freedom.
The chapter ends with the wage comparison. What fruit did you have in the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now, having been set free from sin and having become slaves of God, the fruit is sanctification and the end is eternal life. The famous summary verse seals it: the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Two employers, two compensations. One pays what is owed. The other gives what could never be earned.
Reflection
Romans six is the answer to the question that haunts every honest reader of Romans five: if I am saved by grace apart from works, does anything I do actually matter? Paul’s answer reframes the question. The issue is not whether the justified must earn their standing by obedience — they cannot, and they do not need to. The issue is that the justified have been joined to Christ, and that union has consequences. You cannot be united to a crucified and risen Lord and remain unchanged in your practical life. The change is not the cause of salvation; it is the evidence that salvation has occurred.
The language of dying to sin is often softened, as if Paul means that sin’s influence gradually lessens or that the believer should feel less attracted to old patterns over time. That is not quite what Paul says. He says the decisive break has already happened. The old self was crucified. Sin’s legal claim is broken. What remains is the ongoing work of living out what is already true — what Paul elsewhere calls reckoning or counting it so. This is why the exhortation in verse eleven is to consider yourselves dead to sin. It is not wishful thinking; it is thinking clearly about what has actually occurred.
The closing image of two wages carries the whole chapter’s weight. Sin is not a recreation that occasionally charges a fee. Sin is an employer whose pay scale is fixed, and the pay is death. Every act of service gets paid eventually. This is not an arbitrary penalty imposed by a grumpy God; it is the inherent end of a life organized around rebellion against the source of life. But the gospel is not a better wage. The gospel is not wages at all. It is a gift — unearned, uncoerced, unrepayable — and the gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul will spend chapter seven on what this means for the believer’s ongoing struggle with the flesh, and chapter eight on the Spirit who makes the new life actually possible. But chapter six sets the terms. You have died. You have been raised. Now live like it is true, because it is.