Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Romans 7:1-6

Romans 6:1 to Romans 7:6. The ethical bearing and standard of the new life in Christ.

(1) Are we to conclude that the state of sin is to continue, as a provocative, so to speak, of the graciousness of GOD; the more sin the greater grace? (2) It is a monstrous thought; the fundamental characteristic of our Christian position is that when we became Christians we died to sin and our sinful life, (3) it is elementary that in baptism into Christ we shared His death, (4) His burial, and His resurrection by the manifest act of the Father; now we are in a new life and our conduct must be correspondingly new. (5) For baptism involved union of our nature to Christ’s both in His death and His resurrection; (6) His death implies the destruction of the old nature, the abolition of the rule of sin; His resurrection, shared by us—a freeing from death and sin, a living to GOD—implies that we are dead to sin and in Him living to GOD (so that sin is in the highest degree unnatural to this new creature). (12) Therefore both the use and the obedience of even your mortal body must be rendered no longer to sin for unrighteous work, but to GOD for righteousness; the authority of sin being broken because you are not under law but under grace. (15) Not under law, but not therefore free to sin, for that were a return to the old slavery; but under grace, you are under a new slavery (to use human language), willingly adopted; (19) your very members must be turned from the old slavery to the new. (20) For that was a state of slavery and freedom—freedom as against the claims of righteousness, slavery to the claims of sin and its result in death: (21) from that slavery you are freed and brought into a new slavery to GOD; with its proper result, sanctification, leading to its end, eternal life. (23) For all that is earned from sin is death: but GOD gives, of His free grace, eternal life by communion with Christ Jesus our Lord.
The section deals with the response natural in those who are under GOD’s grace. It is, incidentally, a repudiation of the charge made against S. Paul that, by denying the obligation of law, he was destroying the support and the obligation of a holy life. It gives consequently the true basis for a Christian ethics: and the fundamental point is the new life in union with and dependence on Christ.

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Cambridge Greek Testament Commentary

Romans 7:1-6

Old Testament

New Testament