Romans 6:1–7 (NIV)

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Paul has spent five chapters building one argument. Everyone has sinned. Nobody gets right with God by keeping the rules. Being right with God comes as a gift, received by faith in Christ. Then at the end of chapter 5 he says the line that makes people nervous: where sin increased, grace increased all the more.

So he raises the obvious objection himself, before a critic can raise it for him.

"Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?"

It is not a silly question. If God's grace is bigger than any sin, and if it rises to meet whatever we bring, then why not keep sinning? More sin, more grace. On paper it almost adds up.

Paul's answer is short and firm.

"By no means!"

But look at what he does next. He does not answer with a rule. He does not say "because it's wrong" or "because God will punish you." He answers with a fact about who we now are. That is the whole move of this passage. Paul does not first tell us what to do. He first tells us what has already happened to us.

"We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"

Notice the tense. Paul does not say we should die to sin, or that we are slowly dying to it. He says we have died. Past. Finished. Something already took place.

Most of us do not think about sin this way. We think about it in terms of effort. Try harder. Set a better rule. Start again on Monday and hope this month goes better than the last one. That approach makes sin a habit problem, and it leaves us exhausted, because a habit you fight from the outside always wins in the end.

Paul starts somewhere else. Before he asks anything of us, he tells us our position has changed. We are not people struggling to escape sin's country. We are people who have already been carried out of it. The question "how can we live in it any longer?" is not a scolding. It is closer to genuine surprise. Why would you go back and live in a house you were carried out of?

Then Paul reaches for the picture that makes it concrete.

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death."

He could have chosen a gentler image. He could have said we washed, or we started fresh, or we turned over a new leaf. He chose burial.

Burial is what you do when something is definitely dead. You do not bury someone who is resting. Burial is the moment the family accepts that this life is over and puts it out of sight. It is final, and it is public. Everyone standing there sees it happen.

That is what Paul says baptism is. Going down under the water is the burial. Coming up is the rising. The picture is not decoration on top of a decision we made in private. It is the whole gospel acted out with a body: this person went down into Christ's death, and this person came up into Christ's life.

And note who does the work. Paul does not say we buried our old life. He says we were buried with him. We did not manage our own funeral. We were joined to a death that had already happened, on a cross, without us. Christ died once, and everyone who belongs to him is counted as having died there too.

The verse does not stop at the grave. Paul puts a purpose on the other side of it.

"in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life"

The death is not the point. The death clears the ground for the point. God is not simply ending something in us; he is starting something.

And Paul is careful about the pattern. Christ was raised through the glory of the Father — the Father's power did it. So the new life we live is not us pulling ourselves together after a hard season. It is the same power that opened a tomb, now at work in an ordinary person going about an ordinary week.

Then verse 5 gives us the promise to hold when it does not feel that way.

"if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his"

Certainly. The two halves come together. You do not get the death without the life. If you were joined to him at the cross, you will be joined to him at the resurrection, and nothing you feel on a flat Tuesday changes that arithmetic.

Verse 6 says the same truth a third way, and this time it names the target.

"our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin"

The old self is not one bad habit. It is the whole person we were under the old management — the way we thought, wanted, and chose when sin was in charge. That person, Paul says, was crucified with Christ.

And the language he uses for the result is slavery. Not "so that we would sin less," but "no longer be slaves." That is a change of owner, not a change of score. A slave obeys because he has no choice; there is no other voice with a right to command him. Paul is saying that voice has lost its legal claim on you.

The last verse states the logic plainly.

"anyone who has died has been set free from sin"

A dead person is beyond the reach of an old master. The claim expires. Whatever hold sin had, it cannot follow you past that line.

We should be honest here, because Paul is. He is not saying a Christian never sins again. He knows better, and the rest of Romans 6 makes it clear — he goes straight on to tell us to count this true and to offer ourselves to God, which would be strange advice for people already incapable of sin. What he is saying is that sin's ownership is broken. It can still come to the door. It can still shout. It cannot claim you as its property, and you are no longer obliged to answer.

That changes how we fight. We are not slaves trying to earn our freedom. We are free people learning to live like it.

Most of us carry a version of ourselves we assume we are stuck with. The temper. The habit we have restarted a hundred times. The old shame that still speaks with authority. And when we fail again, we quietly conclude that nothing really changed.

Paul would say the question is not whether you feel changed. The question is whose you are. If you belong to Christ, the old self is not your master. It is a voice from a life that has already been buried.

So today, where is sin still speaking to you like it owns you? And what would it look like to answer it, not with "I'll try harder," but with the truth — that person died with Christ, and I do not have to obey a dead master?

You are not working your way toward freedom. You are learning to walk in freedom you already have.

All glory to God — forever and ever. Amen. 🤍

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