Romans 6:1-14
Grace does not license sin; union with the crucified and risen Christ breaks sin’s reign and empowers holy living.
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
3 Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him;
9 knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him!
10 For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
11 Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13 Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
Grace does not license sin; union with the crucified and risen Christ breaks sin’s reign and empowers holy living.
To refute the idea that grace encourages sin and to explain that believers, united with Christ, have died to sin and now live in newness of life.
Romans 6:1-14 follows directly from Romans 5:20-21, where Paul declared that where sin increased, grace increased all the more, and that grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ. Romans 6 addresses the anticipated objection: if grace abounds over sin, should believers continue in sin so grace may increase? Paul answers by explaining union with Christ. The justified believer is not merely forgiven while remaining under sin’s reign. The believer has died with Christ, been raised with Christ, and now lives under grace’s liberating dominion. This passage begins Paul’s major sanctification section, showing that justification by grace produces a new relationship to sin, death, life, and obedience.
Paul writes after expounding justification by faith and the reign of grace over sin and death. Because his gospel could be slandered as encouraging sin, Paul clarifies that grace unites believers to Christ’s death and resurrection and therefore breaks sin’s mastery. Believers in Rome, including Jewish and Gentile Christians learning how justification by grace relates to holiness, baptism, and freedom from sin’s dominion Romans 6 stands after justification and before Paul’s fuller discussion of law, flesh, and Spirit in Romans 7-8. It shows that grace reigns not by leaving believers in Adam’s old realm, but by joining them to Christ’s death and resurrection and freeing them from sin’s dominion.
Dead to Sin and Alive to God in Christ Jesus
Grace does not leave believers under sin’s mastery; through union with Christ’s death and resurrection, they are dead to sin, alive to God, and called to present themselves as servants of righteousness.