Commentary on Romans 6.1–6.23

“What, then, shall we say? Shall we remain in sin, so that grace may abound? By no means.” That is, must we always sin so that the gift of God may abound, covering our sins; so that, always hoping for the remission of sins because God is kind, we may extol the grace of Christ? Certainly not. For God had mercy on us through Christ for this reason, that, sinning no more, we might make both our merit and the grace of God reign in us. For one who goes back again to the old man, that is, to the manner of his former life, takes the kingdom away from the grace of God and hands it over to sin. For we received mercy for two reasons: that the kingdom of the devil might be shut out, and the rule of God be proclaimed to those who did not know it, a dignity being sought for us by this very means.

“For we who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it?” He says this because, living to sin, we were dead before God; for one who sins lives to sin, as one who does not sin lives to God. For when the grace of God came upon us through Christ, regenerating us through faith by the spiritual washing, we began to live to God and to be dead to sin, which is the devil; yet this is to die to sin: to be freed from sin and to become a servant of God. And so, being already dead to sin, let us not return to former evils, lest we live again to sin and, dying to God and losing our dignity, incur the punishment we escaped.

“Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” He says this so that we may know that, having been baptized, we ought no longer to sin; because when we are baptized we die together with Christ. This is to be baptized into his death; for there all our sins die, so that, renewed and having laid death aside, we may be seen to rise again, reborn to life; so that, as Christ died to sin and rose again, so we too through baptism may have the hope of resurrection. Baptism, then, is the death of sin, so that another birth may follow, which, while the frame of the body remains, renews the person in mind, the oldness of all evil acts being buried.

“For we were buried together with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ rose from the dead through the power of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life.” In saying this he also signifies what is the case, that Christ raised his own body from the dead; for he himself is the power of God the Father, as he says: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it in three days.” “But he spoke,” it says, “of the temple of his body” (John 2:19, 21). And he signifies that he rose into a new life which can no longer die. It is called new because it was given by Christ, which is the Christian discipline. We, baptized, have been buried together with Christ (Col 2:12), so that thereafter we may follow this life in which Christ rose. Baptism, then, is the pledge and image of the resurrection, so that, remaining in the precepts of Christ, we may not roll back again to the past. For one who dies no longer sins: for death is the end of sin. For this reason it is celebrated with water, so that, as water washes away the dirt of the body, so we may believe that through baptism we have been spiritually cleansed from every sin and renewed; so that what is incorporeal may be washed invisibly.

“For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also of his resurrection.” He says that we can happily rise if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, that is, if in baptism we lay aside all vices and, transferred into the new life, sin no more thereafter; by which we shall also be like him in his resurrection; for we live rightly in the likeness of his death when we keep our members from every shameful thing.

“For sin will no longer have dominion over you; for you are not under the law, but under grace.” He says that if we walk according to the precepts he gives, sin cannot have dominion over us; for it rules over those who sin. For walking as he commands, we are not under the law: if we do not sin, we are not under the law but under grace. But if we sin, we are turned back under the law, and sin will begin to rule over us; for “whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:34); and he must be under the law as long as he does not receive remission; for sin, by the authority of the law, makes the sinner guilty. And therefore one to whom remission has been given, and who guards himself so as not to sin thereafter, neither will sin rule over him, nor is he under the law. For the authority of the law ceases concerning one who has been freed from sin; for those whom the law holds guilty have been handed over to it by sin. One, then, who has been stripped of sins cannot be under the law.

“What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means.” Since the law is from God, lest perhaps it be objected, he raised the question himself: If the law is from God, he says, why ought we not to be under the law? He clears this up and teaches that it is with the will of God, who is the author of the law, that we have been freed by Christ from under the law. For though the law was rightly given (for it was given both to show guilty before God those who sinned before the law, and to be a cause of fear, so that thereafter one would not sin), yet because the human race, through the feebleness of its weakness, could not restrain itself from sins, having become liable to the death of the underworld, God, moved by the kindness of his clemency, by which he always helps the human race, provided through Christ the means by which a remedy might be given to those already despairing; so that, having received remission of sins, rescued from the law which held them liable, and relieved and restored, with God helping through faith, they might fight against the vices by which they had formerly been subdued. And therefore we have not sinned as if despising the law of God, but we have followed, as it were, the providence of God himself through Christ.

“Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as servants for obedience, you are servants of the one whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness?” Now, lest we profess one thing and do another, and while we are called servants of God be found by our deeds servants of the devil, he warns and declares that we are servants of the one whose will we fulfil by our works; and that it harms not a little to confess God as Lord and to serve the devil in acts. For God long ago marks and accuses this, saying: “This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Isa 29:13). And the Lord says in the Gospel: “No one can serve two masters” (Matt 6:24). And in the law it is said: “God is not mocked” (Gal 6:7).

“But thanks be to God that, though you were servants of sin, you obeyed from the heart that form of teaching into which you were handed over.” By believing in Christ we have become servants of righteousness. For we are called servants of the one whom we obey. And because it is right to obey Christ (for he himself is righteousness, and what he commands is righteous), he says that we have become servants of righteousness from the heart, not from the law; from will, not from fear; so that our profession may come forth from the judgment of the mind. For we have been led to faith by nature, not by the law; in which form of teaching we have been made by the command of God, who formed nature. For we have it in nature to know from whom, through whom and in whom we were created. The form of teaching, then, is that into which the Creator handed us over by nature; this is what he said above: “They are a law to themselves” (Rom 2:14), when they see that what they believe belongs to their nature; so that what the law and the prophets proclaimed to the Jews about Christ, the gentiles trust from the heart. Hence he gives thanks to the Lord that, when we were servants of sin, we obeyed from the heart by believing in Christ, so that we might serve God not through the law of Moses but through the law of nature.

“I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.” In mentioning the weakness of the flesh he indicates that he requires of a person less than is fitting for the worship of God. Then it follows: “For as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification.” To take from us any occasion of fear in coming to faith, as if it seemed unbearable and harsh to us, he commanded us to serve God in the same measure in which we formerly served the devil; though certainly God ought to be served more readily than the devil, since here salvation is worked, there damnation. Yet the spiritual physician requires no more of us, lest, fleeing the precepts as heavy, weighing our weakness, we remain in death. Hence the Lord says: “Take my yoke upon you … for it is pleasant, and my burden light” (Matt 11:29–30). (Verses 20 and 21.) “For when you were servants of sin, you were free of righteousness. What fruit, then, did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For their end is death.” It is plain that one who is free of God is a servant of sin; for when he sins, he withdraws from God and comes under sin. Of what kind, then, are the fruits of sin, in which, having lived and now learning a good life, we are put to shame because we formerly lived shamefully! And not only this, for the doctrine of the pagans too is shameful and foul, especially that found in Phrygia, in which, unless an impure man is present, the rite is mute and the religion grows torpid! Behold a liberty full of stains and bound by filth, whose work has a shameful wage: “whose end is death.” He called the end the outcome of life and of acts, which either death or life follows. But in this place the death is double, for one passes from death to death.

“But now, freed from sin and made servants of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life.” That is, if, having received remission of sins, we become emulators of good acts, we will acquire holiness, and will have as our end, that is, outcome, perpetual life; for from this death, which he called the end, we will pass to life, which is without end.

“For the wage of sin is death.” He calls death the earnings of sin, because death comes through sin; and therefore those who henceforth abstain from sins receive as their pay eternal life, since those who do not sin are strangers to the second death. “But the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” For as those who follow sin acquire death, so those who follow the grace of God, that is, faith in Christ, which forgives sins, will have eternal life; so that they may rejoice to be dissolved for a time, knowing that they will obtain this life which is free of all weariness and has no succession. Longing for this, holy Simeon asked to be released from here (Luke 2:29), so that he might go in peace, that is, into the life which suffers no disquiet. And he testifies that this gift has been given us by God through Christ our Lord, so that we may give thanks to God the Father through no other than his Son.