General Romans 6:7
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6:7 has been freed The Greek verb used here, dedikaiōtai, can be translated in this instance as “justified” or “freed” (4:3). Believers are justified or acquitted from the consequences of sin.
John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ro 6:7.
John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Ro 6:7.
6:7 For someone who has died has been cleared from sin. Literally, “For the one having died has been justified [or declared innocent] from the sin.” Yoma 86a speaks of death as “finishing” the punishment for sin quoting Isa. 22:14. In drawing on the Jewish tradition in which an individual’s own death atones for one’s sin, Sha’ul applies this midrash, affirming that our union with the Messiah (by way of his sacrificial death on our behalf) is for us a death in that we have died to our old way of life.
Barry Rubin, ed., The Complete Jewish Study Bible: Notes (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Bibles; Messianic Jewish Publishers & Resources, 2016), 1614.
Barry Rubin, ed., The Complete Jewish Study Bible: Notes (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Bibles; Messianic Jewish Publishers & Resources, 2016), 1614.
ROMANS 6:6–11
Dead to Sin, Alive to God
6 This is what we know: our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah, so that the solidarity of sin might be abolished, and that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 A person who has died, you see, has been declared free from all charges of sin.
8 But if we died with the Messiah, we believe that we shall live with him. 9 We know that the Messiah, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has any authority over him. 10 The death he died, you see, he died to sin, once and only once. But the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 “In the same way you, too, must calculate yourselves as being dead to sin, and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus.
From time to time I hear of someone who has suffered a bad accident, or a particular kind of illness, and can no longer remember who they are.
It must be deeply disturbing—both for the person concerned and for those trying to help. We are so used to people knowing their own name, where they live, what job they do, who their family are, and so on, that the thought of talking to someone who genuinely can’t remember any of these things is alarming. Taking it back a stage further, there are those even more rare occasions, verging off into legend, when a child who has been lost as a baby is found some years later, having been brought up by animals, without any idea even of what a human is, let alone that they themselves are human.
Faced with one of these situations, what we long to be able to do is to help the person concerned to discover who they are so that they can bring their lives back into line with their actual identity. People who suffer memory loss can often be eased back, bit by bit, into normal life, into finding their way around once more. The child brought up in the jungle can discover overnight all kinds of undreamed-of human possibilities, such as articulate speech. Paul’s aim in this passage is to do something of the same sort with people who need to learn, or at least to be reminded, of the new identity they have as baptized Christians.
The basic move he makes is to place them on the map he drew towards the end of chapter 5, and to insist that they belong on one side of it rather than on the other. You remember the map: there are two types of humanity, those in Adam and those in the Messiah. We all began life ‘in Adam’, and, if we’re honest, it often feels as though we are still there (particularly, I think, if you have been a Christian for some time, and have forgotten what it actually felt like to be ignorant of God’s love and forgiveness). But Paul insists that we are not. When Christians say, as they sometimes do, that they did something wrong because of the ‘old Adam’ or the ‘old man’ still at work in them, they are going against what Paul states explicitly in this passage: that the ‘old humanity’ was crucified with Jesus. The Adamic life had its own solidarity, bound fast in a network of sin, enslaving all its occupants as surely as Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites. And the point of being crucified is that once you’re dead you can no longer be enslaved in that way. As Paul explains in verse 7, once you’re dead, sin has no more claim on you. You are free from all charges.
So where does that leave us? In a kind of no man’s land, half way between Adam and the Messiah, neither dead nor alive? No. Paul insists that we are now ‘in the Messiah’, so that what is true of him is true of us, however unlikely it sounds and however much it doesn’t yet feel true. And what is true of the Messiah, ever since the glory of Easter day, is that he is alive again with a life death cannot touch. He hasn’t come back into the same life, as did Jairus’ daughter, Lazarus and those others raised by Jesus (and for that matter by Elijah and Elisha). He has gone on, through death and out the other side into a new bodily life beyond the reach of death—a concept we find difficult to grasp but about which the early Christians are very clear. Paul’s point is that, if we are ‘in the Messiah’, then that is where we are, too.
Of course, we are not yet bodily raised as one day we shall be. That remains in the future. That future is secure and certain, as Paul says in 8:11 and in the entire argument of 1 Corinthians 15, but it remains in the future none the less. But part of the point of being a Christian is that the future has come forward into the present in the person and achievement of Jesus, so that his followers already taste the reality of that future while living in the present. The Christian stands on resurrection ground. We are not ‘in Adam’, we are ‘in the Messiah’, the one who died and is now alive for evermore.
Paul declares that we must ‘calculate’ this (verse 11), or, in the more familiar translation, that we must ‘reckon’ it. This has often been seriously misunderstood. People have sometimes supposed that Paul was referring to a fresh leap of faith, a leap by which we might attain a new kind of holiness, beyond the reach of temptation and sin. That might be very desirable for anyone—one hopes, most Christians—who, still troubled by sin, is eager to leave it behind. But this is not what Paul is talking about.
The word he uses is a word used in bookkeeping, in calculating accounts, in working out profit and loss figures. Now of course when you do a calculation you get an answer which, in a sense, didn’t exist before. But in another sense all that the calculation does is to make you aware of what in fact was true all along. It doesn’t create a new reality. Until you add up the money in the till, you don’t know how much your day’s takings were worth. But adding it up doesn’t make the day’s takings a penny larger or smaller than they already are.
Paul is telling us to do the sums, to add up, to work out the calculation—not to screw up our spiritual courage for a fresh leap of faith in which we imagine ourselves to be actually sinless. And here is the point. It is often hard to believe the result of the calculation. But faith at this point consists, not of shutting one’s eyes and trying to believe the impossible, but opening one’s eyes to the reality of Jesus and his representative death and resurrection—and to the reality of one’s own standing as a baptized and believing member of Jesus’ people, those who are ‘in the Messiah’. That is the challenge of verse 11. We need to remember who we really are, so that we can act accordingly.
A well-known illustration makes this point exactly—one which, though I have known it for a long time, has just recently been echoed in real life for someone I know. Imagine renting a house from a landlord who turns out to be a bully, always demanding extra payments, coming into the house without asking, threatening you with legal action or violence if you don’t give in to his demands. You get used to doing what he says out of fear. There doesn’t seem to be any way out.
But then, to your relief, you find somewhere else to live. Someone else pays off your remaining rent and you can leave. You move out and settle in the new place. But, to your horror, a few days later the old landlord shows up at the door and barges into the house. He is angry and demands more money. He threatens to take you to court. The old habit returns: you are strongly tempted to pay him what he demands, just to get him to leave. But you know you are not his tenant any more. You have seen the paperwork; his final bill was paid; nothing more is owing. Trembling, you get up and tell him to leave. He has no claim over you.
Depending on how unpleasant a character the landlord is, you may or may not have to call the police. But Paul’s appeal in verse 11 is exactly like that. Remind yourself of the paperwork, he says. Remember who you really are. Don’t give in to the voices that tell you you are still in Adam after all, and should be behaving just like you used to. Resisting temptation isn’t a matter of pretending you wouldn’t find it easier to give in. It’s a matter of learning to think straight, and to act on what you know to be true.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 102–106.
Dead to Sin, Alive to God
6 This is what we know: our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah, so that the solidarity of sin might be abolished, and that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 A person who has died, you see, has been declared free from all charges of sin.
8 But if we died with the Messiah, we believe that we shall live with him. 9 We know that the Messiah, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has any authority over him. 10 The death he died, you see, he died to sin, once and only once. But the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 “In the same way you, too, must calculate yourselves as being dead to sin, and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus.
From time to time I hear of someone who has suffered a bad accident, or a particular kind of illness, and can no longer remember who they are.
It must be deeply disturbing—both for the person concerned and for those trying to help. We are so used to people knowing their own name, where they live, what job they do, who their family are, and so on, that the thought of talking to someone who genuinely can’t remember any of these things is alarming. Taking it back a stage further, there are those even more rare occasions, verging off into legend, when a child who has been lost as a baby is found some years later, having been brought up by animals, without any idea even of what a human is, let alone that they themselves are human.
Faced with one of these situations, what we long to be able to do is to help the person concerned to discover who they are so that they can bring their lives back into line with their actual identity. People who suffer memory loss can often be eased back, bit by bit, into normal life, into finding their way around once more. The child brought up in the jungle can discover overnight all kinds of undreamed-of human possibilities, such as articulate speech. Paul’s aim in this passage is to do something of the same sort with people who need to learn, or at least to be reminded, of the new identity they have as baptized Christians.
The basic move he makes is to place them on the map he drew towards the end of chapter 5, and to insist that they belong on one side of it rather than on the other. You remember the map: there are two types of humanity, those in Adam and those in the Messiah. We all began life ‘in Adam’, and, if we’re honest, it often feels as though we are still there (particularly, I think, if you have been a Christian for some time, and have forgotten what it actually felt like to be ignorant of God’s love and forgiveness). But Paul insists that we are not. When Christians say, as they sometimes do, that they did something wrong because of the ‘old Adam’ or the ‘old man’ still at work in them, they are going against what Paul states explicitly in this passage: that the ‘old humanity’ was crucified with Jesus. The Adamic life had its own solidarity, bound fast in a network of sin, enslaving all its occupants as surely as Pharaoh enslaved the Israelites. And the point of being crucified is that once you’re dead you can no longer be enslaved in that way. As Paul explains in verse 7, once you’re dead, sin has no more claim on you. You are free from all charges.
So where does that leave us? In a kind of no man’s land, half way between Adam and the Messiah, neither dead nor alive? No. Paul insists that we are now ‘in the Messiah’, so that what is true of him is true of us, however unlikely it sounds and however much it doesn’t yet feel true. And what is true of the Messiah, ever since the glory of Easter day, is that he is alive again with a life death cannot touch. He hasn’t come back into the same life, as did Jairus’ daughter, Lazarus and those others raised by Jesus (and for that matter by Elijah and Elisha). He has gone on, through death and out the other side into a new bodily life beyond the reach of death—a concept we find difficult to grasp but about which the early Christians are very clear. Paul’s point is that, if we are ‘in the Messiah’, then that is where we are, too.
Of course, we are not yet bodily raised as one day we shall be. That remains in the future. That future is secure and certain, as Paul says in 8:11 and in the entire argument of 1 Corinthians 15, but it remains in the future none the less. But part of the point of being a Christian is that the future has come forward into the present in the person and achievement of Jesus, so that his followers already taste the reality of that future while living in the present. The Christian stands on resurrection ground. We are not ‘in Adam’, we are ‘in the Messiah’, the one who died and is now alive for evermore.
Paul declares that we must ‘calculate’ this (verse 11), or, in the more familiar translation, that we must ‘reckon’ it. This has often been seriously misunderstood. People have sometimes supposed that Paul was referring to a fresh leap of faith, a leap by which we might attain a new kind of holiness, beyond the reach of temptation and sin. That might be very desirable for anyone—one hopes, most Christians—who, still troubled by sin, is eager to leave it behind. But this is not what Paul is talking about.
The word he uses is a word used in bookkeeping, in calculating accounts, in working out profit and loss figures. Now of course when you do a calculation you get an answer which, in a sense, didn’t exist before. But in another sense all that the calculation does is to make you aware of what in fact was true all along. It doesn’t create a new reality. Until you add up the money in the till, you don’t know how much your day’s takings were worth. But adding it up doesn’t make the day’s takings a penny larger or smaller than they already are.
Paul is telling us to do the sums, to add up, to work out the calculation—not to screw up our spiritual courage for a fresh leap of faith in which we imagine ourselves to be actually sinless. And here is the point. It is often hard to believe the result of the calculation. But faith at this point consists, not of shutting one’s eyes and trying to believe the impossible, but opening one’s eyes to the reality of Jesus and his representative death and resurrection—and to the reality of one’s own standing as a baptized and believing member of Jesus’ people, those who are ‘in the Messiah’. That is the challenge of verse 11. We need to remember who we really are, so that we can act accordingly.
A well-known illustration makes this point exactly—one which, though I have known it for a long time, has just recently been echoed in real life for someone I know. Imagine renting a house from a landlord who turns out to be a bully, always demanding extra payments, coming into the house without asking, threatening you with legal action or violence if you don’t give in to his demands. You get used to doing what he says out of fear. There doesn’t seem to be any way out.
But then, to your relief, you find somewhere else to live. Someone else pays off your remaining rent and you can leave. You move out and settle in the new place. But, to your horror, a few days later the old landlord shows up at the door and barges into the house. He is angry and demands more money. He threatens to take you to court. The old habit returns: you are strongly tempted to pay him what he demands, just to get him to leave. But you know you are not his tenant any more. You have seen the paperwork; his final bill was paid; nothing more is owing. Trembling, you get up and tell him to leave. He has no claim over you.
Depending on how unpleasant a character the landlord is, you may or may not have to call the police. But Paul’s appeal in verse 11 is exactly like that. Remind yourself of the paperwork, he says. Remember who you really are. Don’t give in to the voices that tell you you are still in Adam after all, and should be behaving just like you used to. Resisting temptation isn’t a matter of pretending you wouldn’t find it easier to give in. It’s a matter of learning to think straight, and to act on what you know to be true.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 1: Chapters 1-8 (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 102–106.
6–7 What is the significance of the death Christians die by faith in baptism? We know this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our sin-dominated body (cf. 8:3) might be abolished, that we might no longer be slaves to sin—for a dead man is clear from sin. The essential substance of this conviction is clear: death with Christ is an ethical experience, affecting the relation between man and sin, the latter being understood in both its pre-ethical roots and its ethical expression.
The ‘old self’ is literally the ‘old man’. Compare Col. 3:9 f. (Eph. 4:22, 24). The interpretation which commends itself by its simplicity is that the ‘old man’ is the nature of the unconverted man, which upon conversion and baptism is replaced by a new nature, the ‘new man’. But careful reading of Col. 3, and of the present passage, makes this interpretation impossible. In Colossians it is the Christian readers of the letter who are told to put off the old man, and to put on the new. Here in Romans Christians are told that they must consider themselves to be dead to sin and alive to God (v. 11). It is much more exact to say that the ‘old man’ is Adam—or rather, ourselves in union with Adam, and that the ‘new man’ is Christ—or rather, ourselves in union with Christ. Compare Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 15:22, 47 ff. Old and new are not simply in sequence but concurrent.
The old, Adamic, self was crucified with Christ. In his crucifixion Jesus endured the messianic affliction, and it is by sharing this affliction in union with Christ that the descendants of Adam participate in the New Creation of which the New Adam is the head. This, however, is no mystical or metaphysical process. Its purpose is the abolition of the sin-ridden body which men have from Adam. From his time, sin and death reigned (5:14, 17, 21); human nature (for Paul’s word ‘body’ means hardly less than this) correspondingly passed into slavery (cf. vv. 6c, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22). Baptismal ‘death’ accordingly is a step towards the putting out of action of this sin-dominated aspect or element of humanity. The more remote consequence is that ‘we’ should no longer be in servitude to sin. That is, ‘we’ are distinguishable from the sin-controlled side of our being.
And (to translate literally) the man who has died has been justified from sin. There are two possible interpretations here. (i) ‘Justify’ may have its usual forensic meaning: death pays all debts. (ii) ‘Justify’ means ‘to free from sin (actually)’. This meaning does occur (e.g. Ecclus. 26:29; Corpus Hermeticum xiii. 9; perhaps Acts 13:38 f.; 1 Cor. 6:11). It is not, however, right to distinguish sharply between these alternatives. The second is suggested by vv. 6 and 10; but there follows immediately v. 11 (consider yourselves dead). Thus (i) is true absolutely—the man who has died with Christ by faith has been justified; and (ii) ought to be in process of realization.
C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans, Rev. ed., Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 1991), 116–117.
The ‘old self’ is literally the ‘old man’. Compare Col. 3:9 f. (Eph. 4:22, 24). The interpretation which commends itself by its simplicity is that the ‘old man’ is the nature of the unconverted man, which upon conversion and baptism is replaced by a new nature, the ‘new man’. But careful reading of Col. 3, and of the present passage, makes this interpretation impossible. In Colossians it is the Christian readers of the letter who are told to put off the old man, and to put on the new. Here in Romans Christians are told that they must consider themselves to be dead to sin and alive to God (v. 11). It is much more exact to say that the ‘old man’ is Adam—or rather, ourselves in union with Adam, and that the ‘new man’ is Christ—or rather, ourselves in union with Christ. Compare Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 15:22, 47 ff. Old and new are not simply in sequence but concurrent.
The old, Adamic, self was crucified with Christ. In his crucifixion Jesus endured the messianic affliction, and it is by sharing this affliction in union with Christ that the descendants of Adam participate in the New Creation of which the New Adam is the head. This, however, is no mystical or metaphysical process. Its purpose is the abolition of the sin-ridden body which men have from Adam. From his time, sin and death reigned (5:14, 17, 21); human nature (for Paul’s word ‘body’ means hardly less than this) correspondingly passed into slavery (cf. vv. 6c, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22). Baptismal ‘death’ accordingly is a step towards the putting out of action of this sin-dominated aspect or element of humanity. The more remote consequence is that ‘we’ should no longer be in servitude to sin. That is, ‘we’ are distinguishable from the sin-controlled side of our being.
And (to translate literally) the man who has died has been justified from sin. There are two possible interpretations here. (i) ‘Justify’ may have its usual forensic meaning: death pays all debts. (ii) ‘Justify’ means ‘to free from sin (actually)’. This meaning does occur (e.g. Ecclus. 26:29; Corpus Hermeticum xiii. 9; perhaps Acts 13:38 f.; 1 Cor. 6:11). It is not, however, right to distinguish sharply between these alternatives. The second is suggested by vv. 6 and 10; but there follows immediately v. 11 (consider yourselves dead). Thus (i) is true absolutely—the man who has died with Christ by faith has been justified; and (ii) ought to be in process of realization.
C. K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans, Rev. ed., Black’s New Testament Commentary (London: Continuum, 1991), 116–117.
7. ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν … ἁμαρτίας. The argument is thrown into the form of a general proposition, so that ὁ ἀποθανών must be taken in the widest sense, ‘he who has undergone death in any sense of the term’—physical or ethical. The primary sense is however clearly physical: ‘a dead man has his quittance from any claim that Sin can make against him’: what is obviously true of the physically dead is inferentially true of the ethically dead. Comp. 1 Pet. 4:1 ὅτι ὁ παθὼν σαρκὶ πέπαυται ἁμαρτίας: also the Rabbinical parallel quoted by Delitzsch ad loc. ‘when a man is dead he is free from the law and the commandments.’
Delitzsch goes so far as to describe the idea as an ‘acknowledged locus communis,’ which would considerably weaken the force of the literary coincidence between the two Apostles.
δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας. The sense of δεδικαίωται is still forensic: ‘is declared righteous, acquitted from guilt.’ The idea is that of a master claiming legal possession of a slave: proof being put in that the slave is dead, the verdict must needs be that the claims of law are satisfied and that he is no longer answerable; Sin loses its suit.
W. Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of the Romans, 3d ed., International Critical Commentary (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 159.
Delitzsch goes so far as to describe the idea as an ‘acknowledged locus communis,’ which would considerably weaken the force of the literary coincidence between the two Apostles.
δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας. The sense of δεδικαίωται is still forensic: ‘is declared righteous, acquitted from guilt.’ The idea is that of a master claiming legal possession of a slave: proof being put in that the slave is dead, the verdict must needs be that the claims of law are satisfied and that he is no longer answerable; Sin loses its suit.
W. Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle of the Romans, 3d ed., International Critical Commentary (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1897), 159.
7. ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπό τῆς ἁμαρτίας. It is quite likely that these words are consciously reminiscent of a well-known Rabbinic legal principle (cf. the material assembled in SB 3, p. 232), but (pace a number of commentators) it is not at all clear that Paul is really clinching his argument by appealing to a general principle of the Rabbis. In the sense that ‘death pays all debts’ this principle is valid only in relation to a human court: it is certain that Paul did not think that a man’s death atoned for his sins in relation to God, or that a dead man was no longer accountable to God for his sins. The Rabbinic principle is, in fact, singularly inappropriate as a confirmation of what has just been said. It is therefore much more likely that Paul, though quite probably aware of the use of similar language by the Rabbis, was using the words in his own sense, and that he meant them not as a general statement about dead men, but as a specific theological statement that the man, who has died with Christ in God’s gracious decision with regard to him, that is, who has died that death in God’s sight to which his baptism points back and of which it is the sign and seal, has been justified from his sin. To state this fact is indeed to confirm v. 6; for it is the fact that God has justified us that is the firm basis of that new freedom to resist the bondage of sin in our practical living, to which the last six words of v. 6 refer.
C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 310–311.
C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (London; New York: T&T Clark International, 2004), 310–311.
7 ὁ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας, “for he who has died is declared free from sin.” δικαιοῦσθαι ἀπὸ ἁμαρτίας is uncharacteristic of Paul, but is sufficiently well enough attested elsewhere for us to recognize an accepted image (Sir 26:29; T. Sim. 6.1; cf. Acts 13:38); though whether “freed from sin” (BGD, δικαιόω 3c) is quite adequate as a translation of these passages is open to question. A better rendering would be “declared free from (responsibility in relation to) sin,” “no longer has to answer for sin” (njb, similarly neb), where the sinful act rather than the more typically Pauline idea of sin as a power is in view (though see on 3:9). The absolute form of the subject, rather than a συν- formulation (as in v 8) also implies that here we do not have a specifically Christian thought, but something more like a proverb from a larger stock of communal wisdom. This particular version is not attested elsewhere, though reference is usually made to the rabbinic sayings: “When a man is dead he is freed from fulfilling the law” (Šabb. 151b Baraita); “All who die obtain expiation through death” (Sipre Num. 112 on 15:31) (Kuhn, “Röm 6:7”; Str-B, 3:232; TDNT 2:218). Cranfield disputes any dependence on a proverbial principle like “death pays all debts” (see the more sympathetic treatments of Schlier and Wilckens), though it is a striking fact that the closest parallel to the preceding talk of “the body of sin” uses the imagery of the body in debt to sin (Wisd Sol 1:4: ἐν σώματι κατάχρεῳ ἁμαρτίας), and cf. Sir 18:22 (μὴ μείνῃς ἓως θανάτου δικαιωθῆναι). However, even if the degree to which Paul is dependent on or has adapted a particular proverbial formulation remains unclear, his main thought and its coherence with his own line of thought is clear: death marks the end of sin’s rule, in both senses of “end”—climax and cessation; “a dead man can no more be enslaved” (Kuss). What the dead man is freed for is not given in the proverb (whether nothingness, or some ill-defined after-life, or other); the image is more of death as a release from a crushing burden (the force of the perfect indicating a complete “wiping clean of the slate”). The saying is, therefore, not Christian in itself (contrast Scroggs, “Romans 6:7”; Kearns, who refers it primarily to Christ, leaving v 10 as somewhat tautologous). The Christian usage comes in what Paul does with it: death is the end of sin’s dominion for man (everybody); but only one man (Christ) has died a death which broke the final grip of death (cf. Wilckens).
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, vol. 38A, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1988), 320–321.
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, vol. 38A, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1988), 320–321.
7. He who has died is freed from sin (lit. ‘has been justified from sin’). The point of this is paraphrased by neb: ‘a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin.’ Death pays all debts, so those who have died with Christ have the slate wiped clean, and are ready to begin their new life with Christ freed from the entail of the past.
F. F. Bruce, Romans: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 6, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 143.
F. F. Bruce, Romans: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 6, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1985), 143.
7. For he that is dead is freed from sin [Ὅ γὰρ ἀποθανὼν δε δικαίωται ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας]—‘For he that hath died hath been set free from sin;’ lit., ‘hath been justified,’ ‘absolved,’ ‘acquitted,’ ‘got his discharge from sin.’ As death dissolves all claims, so the whole claim of sin, not only to “reign unto death,” but to keep its victims in sinful bondage, has been discharged once for all, by the believer’s penal death in the death of Christ; so that he is no longer a “debtor to the flesh, to live after the flesh” (ch. 8:12).
David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, vol. VI (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.), 226.
David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, vol. VI (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.), 226.
7. Because introduces an explanation of the preceding. Paul drops his “we”, and the third person introduces a general statement. Some see a reference accordingly to the general truth which we often find among the rabbis, that death cancels all obligations.43 But Paul’s reference to being justified shows that he is not simply repeating a rabbinic commonplace. His anyone who has died is not further defined, but it must be taken to mean “in the way just described” (cf. Harrisville, “death as such does not free from sin”). Paul is not referring to physical death but to dying with Christ. Anyone who has died in this way has been “justified (NIV, freed) from sin”. Robin Scroggs stresses the importance of seeing Jesus’ atoning death behind the passage: “The verse refers to the death of Jesus.” It may be doubted whether Paul saw Jesus’ death as atoning because it was the death of a martyr, as Scroggs suggests, but that he saw it as atoning is beyond doubt. The person who has died with Christ enters into Christ’s atonement and is justified from his sin.
It is also possible that the imagery is pointing to a master claiming a slave who proves to be dead. The legal verdict is that the slave is no longer answerable (cf. SH; NEB has “a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin”). But Paul is not speaking only of a cancelling of evil; he refers to a positive act of justification. He has just said that the believer is not enslaved to sin. Why not? Because he has died with Christ and has thus been justified. Our sin deserved death, and we have died (been “crucified with Christ”). Murray speaks of the “judicial aspect from which deliverance from the power of sin is to be viewed”. A slave who dies is quit of his master, and those who die with Christ are acquitted from their old master, sin. Sin has no claim on the justified person, just as the law has none on the one who has died.
Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 252–253.
It is also possible that the imagery is pointing to a master claiming a slave who proves to be dead. The legal verdict is that the slave is no longer answerable (cf. SH; NEB has “a dead man is no longer answerable for his sin”). But Paul is not speaking only of a cancelling of evil; he refers to a positive act of justification. He has just said that the believer is not enslaved to sin. Why not? Because he has died with Christ and has thus been justified. Our sin deserved death, and we have died (been “crucified with Christ”). Murray speaks of the “judicial aspect from which deliverance from the power of sin is to be viewed”. A slave who dies is quit of his master, and those who die with Christ are acquitted from their old master, sin. Sin has no claim on the justified person, just as the law has none on the one who has died.
Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 252–253.
In 6:7 Paul explains why believers are no longer ‘slaves to sin’: because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Attention has sometimes been drawn to the rabbinic principle that a man’s death pays all debts, but Paul is unlikely to think that this principle, applicable in a human court, would apply to a person’s relationship to God. In context Paul is thinking not of a person’s own death, but the believer’s death to sin by being united with Christ in his death at baptism.
A related issue is how the verb rendered ‘set free’ is to be understood here. In one form or another it is found twenty-seven times in Paul’s letters, and is almost always rendered correctly in English translations as ‘justify’ or ‘declare righteous’. In the light of its overwhelming use to mean ‘justify’ elsewhere in Paul’s letters, it could be understood in the same way here, thus producing the translation: ‘he who has died is justified from sin’, rather than ‘he who has died is set free from sin’. Scholars are divided in their opinions regarding this matter. Some say that the context of chapter 6, which speaks of believers being no longer slaves to sin, and the real transformation occurring through conversion/baptism, suggest a translation, ‘has been set free from sin’. Most scholars argue that the word should be given its normal meaning and so opt for the translation, ‘justified from sin’.120 Wright asks: ‘Why, then, “justified”, rather than “freed”? The answer must be that … Paul is able to keep the law-court metaphor still running in his mind even while expounding baptism and the Christian’s solidarity in Christ. The Christian’s freedom from sin comes through God’s judicial decision. And this judicial decision is embodied in baptism’. Dunn claims: ‘A better rendering would be “declared free from (responsibility in relation to) sin”, “no longer has to answer for sin” (NJB, similarly NEB’),122 which is not that different from rendering it ‘justified from sin’.
Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ed. D. A. Carson, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Cambridge, U.K.; Nottingham, England; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2012), 264.
A related issue is how the verb rendered ‘set free’ is to be understood here. In one form or another it is found twenty-seven times in Paul’s letters, and is almost always rendered correctly in English translations as ‘justify’ or ‘declare righteous’. In the light of its overwhelming use to mean ‘justify’ elsewhere in Paul’s letters, it could be understood in the same way here, thus producing the translation: ‘he who has died is justified from sin’, rather than ‘he who has died is set free from sin’. Scholars are divided in their opinions regarding this matter. Some say that the context of chapter 6, which speaks of believers being no longer slaves to sin, and the real transformation occurring through conversion/baptism, suggest a translation, ‘has been set free from sin’. Most scholars argue that the word should be given its normal meaning and so opt for the translation, ‘justified from sin’.120 Wright asks: ‘Why, then, “justified”, rather than “freed”? The answer must be that … Paul is able to keep the law-court metaphor still running in his mind even while expounding baptism and the Christian’s solidarity in Christ. The Christian’s freedom from sin comes through God’s judicial decision. And this judicial decision is embodied in baptism’. Dunn claims: ‘A better rendering would be “declared free from (responsibility in relation to) sin”, “no longer has to answer for sin” (NJB, similarly NEB’),122 which is not that different from rendering it ‘justified from sin’.
Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, ed. D. A. Carson, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Cambridge, U.K.; Nottingham, England; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Apollos, 2012), 264.
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7. the one who has died has been acquitted of sin. Cf. Sir 26:29. Two main explanations are current for the difficult vb. dedikaiōtai, though C. Toussaint (Romains, 182–83) has listed seven different interpretations. Pallis (To the Romans, 86) regarded this verse as an interpolation, but commentators usually reckon with the verse as genuinely Pauline.
Understood in a forensic sense, dikaioun would mean that from the standpoint of Jewish law a dead person is absolved or “freed,” for sin no longer has a legal claim or a case against such a person. It is said to have the meaning of dikaioun that is often given to it (rightly?) in Acts 13:38. Possibly, too, Paul is echoing a Jewish universal legal principle, formulated thus in the late Babylonian Talmud: “When one dies, one is freed of the obligation of the law and its precepts” (b. Shabb. 151a; see Str-B 3.232). K. G. Kuhn (“Rm 6,7: ho gar apothanōn dedikaiōtai apo tēs hamartias,” ZNW 30 [1931]: 305–10) argued similarly on the basis of Sifre Num. §112: “All who die obtain expiation for their sin through death” (commenting on Num 15:31). Although the death envisaged was meant to be martyrdom, it was physical death in any case of which there is mention in Sifre. Whereas such physical death was considered expiatory, Paul would have transferred the meaning to the death by which the Christian dies in baptism. G. Schrenk, TDNT 2.218; and Michel, Brief an die Römer, 207 argue similarly. Cf. 4 Macc 6:29. Yet one may wonder whether Paul himself ever regarded the physical death of a person as expiatory of sin. Perhaps then the Jewish dictum is not operative.
The other, more likely explanation seeks to interpret the vb. dikaioun not as “free,” but as “justify, acquit” in the genuine Pauline sense, and hamartia, not in the sense demanded above (something like “obligation to the Torah”), but in its Pauline sense, an act against the will of God (so Lyonnet, Romains, 89; Cranfield, Romans, 310–11): the one who has died has lost the very means of sinning, “the body of sin,” so that one is definitively without sin; one has been freed of the fleshy, sin-prone body. In either case, a change of status has ensued; the old condition has been brought to an end in baptism-death, and a new one has begun. See 1 Pet 4:1; Cyril of Alexandria, In ep. ad Romanos 6.6 (PG 74.797); Lyonnet, “Qui enim”; cf. Scroggs, “Romans vi. 7: ho gar apothanōn dedikaiōtai apo tēs hamartias,” NTS 10 (1963–64): 104–8, who argues in the right vein, but who questionably interprets Jesus’ death as that of a martyr.
Kearns (“The Interpretation”) would rather emphasize that “the one who has died” is primarily Christ himself, and only secondarily (and by consequence) the baptized person. He cites 8:34; 2 Cor 5:15; 1 Thess 5:9–10 as indications that Paul otherwise predicates apothnēskein of Christ (cf. also 1 Pet 4:1). Thus the baptized would share in the acquitting death of Christ. Perhaps, but such an interpretation renders v 10 somewhat tautologous, as Dunn (Romans, 321) notes.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer S.J., Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 33, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 436–437.
Understood in a forensic sense, dikaioun would mean that from the standpoint of Jewish law a dead person is absolved or “freed,” for sin no longer has a legal claim or a case against such a person. It is said to have the meaning of dikaioun that is often given to it (rightly?) in Acts 13:38. Possibly, too, Paul is echoing a Jewish universal legal principle, formulated thus in the late Babylonian Talmud: “When one dies, one is freed of the obligation of the law and its precepts” (b. Shabb. 151a; see Str-B 3.232). K. G. Kuhn (“Rm 6,7: ho gar apothanōn dedikaiōtai apo tēs hamartias,” ZNW 30 [1931]: 305–10) argued similarly on the basis of Sifre Num. §112: “All who die obtain expiation for their sin through death” (commenting on Num 15:31). Although the death envisaged was meant to be martyrdom, it was physical death in any case of which there is mention in Sifre. Whereas such physical death was considered expiatory, Paul would have transferred the meaning to the death by which the Christian dies in baptism. G. Schrenk, TDNT 2.218; and Michel, Brief an die Römer, 207 argue similarly. Cf. 4 Macc 6:29. Yet one may wonder whether Paul himself ever regarded the physical death of a person as expiatory of sin. Perhaps then the Jewish dictum is not operative.
The other, more likely explanation seeks to interpret the vb. dikaioun not as “free,” but as “justify, acquit” in the genuine Pauline sense, and hamartia, not in the sense demanded above (something like “obligation to the Torah”), but in its Pauline sense, an act against the will of God (so Lyonnet, Romains, 89; Cranfield, Romans, 310–11): the one who has died has lost the very means of sinning, “the body of sin,” so that one is definitively without sin; one has been freed of the fleshy, sin-prone body. In either case, a change of status has ensued; the old condition has been brought to an end in baptism-death, and a new one has begun. See 1 Pet 4:1; Cyril of Alexandria, In ep. ad Romanos 6.6 (PG 74.797); Lyonnet, “Qui enim”; cf. Scroggs, “Romans vi. 7: ho gar apothanōn dedikaiōtai apo tēs hamartias,” NTS 10 (1963–64): 104–8, who argues in the right vein, but who questionably interprets Jesus’ death as that of a martyr.
Kearns (“The Interpretation”) would rather emphasize that “the one who has died” is primarily Christ himself, and only secondarily (and by consequence) the baptized person. He cites 8:34; 2 Cor 5:15; 1 Thess 5:9–10 as indications that Paul otherwise predicates apothnēskein of Christ (cf. also 1 Pet 4:1). Thus the baptized would share in the acquitting death of Christ. Perhaps, but such an interpretation renders v 10 somewhat tautologous, as Dunn (Romans, 321) notes.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer S.J., Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 33, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 436–437.
6:6–7 Our confidence in a resurrected life rests upon the fact that our old self was nailed to the cross with Jesus. We were “crucified with him” (v. 6). Believers, by definition, are those who by their union with Christ died with him on the cross. That death had a definite purpose in the spiritual life history of the believer. We were crucified in order that our sinful nature might be stripped of its power. “Might be done away with” translates a form of the Greek verb katargeō, which speaks of being “reduced to a condition of absolute impotence and inaction, as if it were dead.” Death fulfills the demands of sin.21 But death opens the way for resurrection. Resurrection lies beyond the control of death. It is the victor over death. With the old self rendered powerless, it is no longer necessary for a person to continue in bondage to sin. In Christ we are set free. Since sin exhausted itself in bringing about death, from that point forward it is powerless to overcome new life.
Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 151.
Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 151.
You must be alive, conscious, aware in order to sin as Jesus explains about our thoughts are the birthplace of sin, Mark 7:21,22,23 . In Psalm 146:4 death ends thought. Dead people cannot sin because of this reason. Death does not forgive the sins committed while alive, only the grace of Yahweh through the sacrifice of Christ forgives sin. Unconverted people die in their sins. John 8:24 Jesus told the Pharisees, John 8:21,22,23,24 The human spirit is what sins, your body is only the vehicle you use to make your sin visible to others. The whitened sepulcher syndrome.