In Romans 6, Paul is dealing with a couple of objections he must have encountered more than a time or two in sharing the good news of Jesus with people. The first objection is in v. 1:
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
This goes back to what Paul said in 5:20, “where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
The other objection is stated in 6:15:
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?
What Paul will do in addressing both these objections is advance the way of Jesus that he introduced in 5:12-21 in his comparison of Adam and Jesus. He’ll do this by talking about baptism. Although Paul’s words show the importance of baptism in coming to God, that’s not the point he wants to make. (No writer of the NT ever thought to prove the necessity of baptism in coming to Christ because no one in NT times disputed the matter!). Paul’s purpose in talking about baptism is to show how coming to Jesus leads to continuing in Jesus. Just as exchanging vows in a wedding commits a man and woman to living as husband and wife in marriage, justification through faith in Christ leads to pursuing a sanctified life through faith in Christ.
Paul makes two points. One is about the severance to sin that baptism symbolizes (v. 2-14). I counted 15 occurrences of words like “death,” “die,” “died,” and “crucified” in this section. Death is from the word thanatos, and it carries the idea of separation. When we died physically our spirit is separated from our body (James 2:26). We die spiritually when our spirit is separated from God (Isaiah 59:1-2).
Jesus’ death on the cross severed His connection with sin (v. 10). The Hebrew writer tells us in 9:28 (NASB) that when Jesus returns, it will be “without reference to sin.” Paul wants them to understand that baptism does the same thing. They were baptized “into His death”—it severed their connection with sin (v. 3). Their past life in sin was just that—past!
The other point he makes is about the nature of enslavement (v. 15-23)—we are a slave to whoever we present ourselves to for obedience. They had been slaves to sin but in baptism they became “slaves of righteousness” (v. 18). They needed to live a life that reflected this truth.
In Paul’s time, somewhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of people in the Roman Empire were slaves—so his first century readers wouldn’t have batted an eye as they read this. They would have knowingly nodded their heads. For us today, talk of enslavement makes us squeamish and uncomfortable as we think about thinks like human trafficking.
Nonetheless it is true that we are all slaves of something. There is something we put above everything else (for many people it is themselves). Paul is reminding his readers that at baptism they made the commitment, in becoming followers of Jesus, to become slaves of righteousness. Therefore, carelessly sinning because they were grace rather than the law was not an option.
So what has Paul said in Romans 6? He’s dealt with the objection that the gospel he preaches promotes sin. He’s definitively shown how the roots of baptism are designed to lead to the fruits of righteous living.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 