FIRST PART. SUPPLEMENTARY. CHAPS. 6-8. SANCTIFICATION. BY faith in the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus Christ the believer has obtained a sentence of justification, in virtue of which he stands reconciled to God. Can anything more be needed for his salvation? It seems not. The didactic treatise, inten... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _What shall we say then? Should we continue in sin, that grace may abound?_ ” The meaning of this question: _What shall we say then?_ can only be this: What consequence shall we draw from the preceding? Only the apostle's object is not to draw a true consequence from the previous teaching, but me... [ Continue Reading ]
FIRST SECTION (6:1-7:6). THE PRINCIPLE OF SANCTIFICATION CONTAINED IN JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH. This entire section is intended to lay the foundations of Christian sanctification. It includes three portions. The first (Romans 6:1-14) unfolds the _new principle_ of sanctification in the very object o... [ Continue Reading ]
THIRTEENTH PASSAGE (6:1-14). SANCTIFICATION IN CHRIST DEAD AND RISEN. The apostle introduces this subject by an _objection_ which he makes to his own teaching, Romans 6:1; he gives it a _summary answer_, Romans 6:2, and _justifies_ this answer by appealing to a known and tangible fact, namely bapti... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Let it not be so! We who are dead to sin, how shall we live any longer therein?_ ” Just as a dead man does not revive and resume his former occupations, as little can the believer return to his old life of sin; for in his case also there has been a _death._ The phrase μὴ γένοιτο, _let it not be... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Or know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?_ ” The ἤ, _or, or indeed_, ought, according to the usual meaning of the phrase: _or know ye not_, to be paraphrased thus: Or, _if you do not understand what I have just said_ (that there has been a... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: in order that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life._ ” If baptism _were_, or _represented_, the death of which Paul had spoken, the _therefore_ would be very hard in... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _For if we have become one and the same plant [with Him] through the likeness of His death, we shall be also partakers of His resurrection;_ ” The apostle had used the rite of baptism to illustrate the impossibility experienced by the believer of continuing in his former life. Now he expounds the... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Understanding this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin._ ” Why introduce abruptly the notion of _subjective knowledge_ into a relation which Romans 6:5 seemed to have laid down as objectively necessary? Th... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _For he that is dead is of right freed from sin._ ” Many commentators, from Erasmus to Thol., De Wette, Philip., Hodge, Gess, etc., take the participle ἀποθανών, _he that is dead_, in the figurative sense (comp. the similar expressions in Romans 6:6; Romans 6:8). But these critics divide immediate... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:knowing that Christ after being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died unto sin once for all: and the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God._ ” The... [ Continue Reading ]
This faith, this firm expectation of the believer who is dead with Him, is not a vain imagination. It rests on a positive fact, the resurrection of Christ Himself: εἰδότες, _knowing that._ This participle justifies the _we believe_ of Romans 6:8. _We believe_ that our spiritual resurrection will com... [ Continue Reading ]
The first proposition of Romans 6:10 unfolds the reason why death was allowed to reign over Him for a moment; the second explains the reason why this cannot be repeated. The two pronouns ὅ, _that which_, may be taken either as a determining expression: _in that so far as_, or as the direct object o... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Thus also reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord._ ” The οὕτω, _likewise_, indicates the inference to be drawn from the conformity between the case of believers and that of Jesus. _ Ye also:_ ye, as well as he. Λογίζεσθε, _reckon, consider_,... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey its lusts.Neither yield ye your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that have become alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness for God._ ” In Chr... [ Continue Reading ]
After speaking of the body in general, the apostle in Romans 6:13 a mentions the _members_ in particular. Philippi, who, with Calvin, has understood the body in Romans 6:12, not of the body properly so called, but of the body and soul united (in so far as the latter is not under the influence of the... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _In fact, sin will not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace._ ” We have not here a disguised exhortation, expressed by a future taken in the sense of an imperative: “Let not sin reign any more”...! Why would the apostle not have continued the imperative form used i... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _What then? should we sin_, _because we are not under the law, but under grace? Let it not be so!_ ” The question of Romans 6:15 is not a repetition of that in Romans 6:1. The discussion has advanced. The principle of holiness inherent in salvation by grace has been demonstrated. The apostle only... [ Continue Reading ]
FOURTEENTH PASSAGE (6:15-23). THE POWER OF THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF SANCTIFICATION TO DELIVER FROM SIN. The new principle had just been laid down. The apostle had found it in the object of justifying faith. But could a principle so spiritual, apart from every external and positive rule, take hold of the... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Know ye not, that in respect of Him to whom ye devote yourselves as servants to obey, ye are henceforth His servants who owe Him obedience; whether it be sin unto death, or obedience unto righteousness?_ ” The question of Romans 6:15 arose from an entirely erroneous way of understanding the relat... [ Continue Reading ]
_ VV._ 16-19 describe the new subjection (_to righteousness_) by which grace displaces the old subjection (_to sin_).... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _Now God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but ye obeyed from the heart that type of doctrine which was delivered you; then being made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness._ ” VER. 16 established the necessity of choosing between the two masters: sin which leads to de... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness, and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness._ ” Several critics (Beng., De Wette, Mey., Philip.) refer the... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free in respect of righteousness. What fruit therefore had ye then? Things of which ye are now ashamed; for certainly their end is death._ ” We must seek the counterpart of Romans 6:20, not in Romans 6:18, which belongs to a passage now concluded, but... [ Continue Reading ]
And what was the result of this shameful liberty? The apostle analyzes it into a _fruit_, καρπός, and an _end_, τέλος. _What fruit had ye then?_ he asks literally. The verb ἔχειν, _to have_, no more here than in Romans 1:13, signifies _to produce._ Paul would rather have used for this meaning one of... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit holiness, and your end everlasting life._ ” For the abstract master designated above, namely righteousness, Paul here substitutes _God_ Himself; for in Christ it is to the living God the believer is united. The form... [ Continue Reading ]
“ _For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord._ ” On the one side, _wages_, something earned. The word ὀψώνιον strictly denotes _payment in kind_, then the payment in money which a general gives his soldiers. And so it is obvious that the complement τ... [ Continue Reading ]