In Romans 6 God makes an incredible – and if, or since, this is God speaking: highly practical – promise to us: `Sin` – that is, any negative, wrongful or destructive behaviour at all – `shall NOT be your master!’ (v14). Can this be? (It’s God saying so!) If so, how does it work? What exactly have we been given here?
Part of our problem in answering this key question is that chopping Scripture into short chapters often hides the ideas. Chapter 6 doesn’t stand alone. So in this post we’ll go big-picture. If we want to grow in this experience of triumph, probably we should speed-read chapters 6-8: where are they going? How does their flow of thought answer our question about victory?
It’s good to jot down what seem to be the main sections of Paul’s explanation, and their themes. (As usual, even if we get them wrong we end up knowing the passage better.) Try it. And when you have, here’s my attempt!
The first thing we see is that that great promise in 6:14 isn’t this passage’s only concern; Paul’s letters are rich, multi-levelled things. As we look for the overall shape of these sections, it seems marked by four repeated questions and responses, `What shall we say, then?… By no means!’ (NIV as usual), in 6:1, 6:15, 7:7, and 7:13. Judging by these, his topmost aim here is to answer the misrepresentations of an imagined opponent who objects to this radical gospel which offers to redeem people without their having fulfilled the Jewish law. (We seem to encounter this `heckler’ elsewhere too, in 3:3-8 and 9:14,19-20.) That’s Paul’s initial concern here, and as we’re looking for the `flow’ we need to recognise it. En route, however, Paul’s mind goes to work on just how this gospel does liberate us from sin. As we try to grasp the `flow’ of these chapters, then, we may well feel that…
- That astoundingly liberating promise in 6:14, `Sin shall not be your master!’, is linked to `because you are not under law’; but that remark leads, not so much into 6:15-23 (where Paul is dealing with the issues from his heckler’s objection in v15), but rather into the verses about being `released from the law’ in 7:1-6.
- Again, 7:7-25 respond to another objection to Paul’s gospel; and so he resumes the topics of 7:6 (`We serve in the new way of the Spirit, not in the old way of the written code’) when he comes to the famous words of 8:1-2: `Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.’
- Thence, we’ll probably feel, the argument proceeds straight down to, say, 8:14. After that, the next three verses make a transition into the book’s next major theme.
So now we can try to list the answers these passages give to our question. Why exactly will `sin not be our master’?
- First, because we’ve died and risen with Christ (6:1-11). (We need to understand just what this means, but that’s for our next post!)
- Then, because we ourselves deliberately `offer the parts of our body to’ Christ, not to sin (6:12-13, 15-22).
- Thirdly, `because you are not under law, but under grace’ (6:14, 7:1-6, 8:1-4).
- And finally, we’ll be victorious because we who are born again are ultimately `controlled not by the sinful nature, but by the Spirit’ (8:4-14).
(We can pause here to reflect, and then worship God for each of these!)
8:2, and 8:4, make it sound as if the last two of these ideas may be two sides of the same coin: being united with Christ means the law is dealt with, and the Spirit takes over. Paul says the same in his closely-related letter to the Galatians: `If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law’ (5:18). (See also how the same pair of ideas appear in his shift of thought from the law in Galatians 3:23-24 [which contains ideas we find in Romans 7] to the Spirit in 4:4-7 [a key theme also in Romans 8]. In many ways Galatians parallels Romans; if we’re studying Romans in any depth, it’s worth speed-reading Galatians’ five pages too.)
So it’s because the first of these is true – that is, the law’s fatal barrier to our communion with God has been removed by the cross – that the second, the coming of His Spirit, becomes possible. The two together promise us triumph! Thankyou, Lord!
So now we have at least a possible picture of these chapters’ overall direction. Next post we’ll focus in again: what really is Romans 6 saying is the way to lifelong victory?
It’s surely worth working at, if full liberation from our negative behaviour patterns is indeed what it offers. So, more next time!
