Alive to God

Read the chapter: Romans 6 in the ESV · Start here: Introduction to Romans

Romans 5 ended with grace reigning through righteousness where sin had reigned in death. Paul now faces the obvious objection: if grace increases where sin increases, why not keep sinning? His answer takes believers back to Jesus's death and resurrection. Grace joins them to Christ, changes whose rule they live under, and calls for their bodies to be offered to God. Watch the chapter move from what has happened in Christ, to what believers must count true, to what they must do.¹

Grace does not make sin a home

Read Romans 6:1–4.

“Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Paul draws a false conclusion from 5:20 into the open and rejects it: “By no means!” He is not asking whether Christians will ever stumble again. He is asking whether they can settle into sin as a way of life because grace will cover it. They cannot, because they have died to sin. The issue is a changed relationship to sin's power, not a claim that temptation has disappeared.¹

Paul appeals to baptism. The Romans were baptized into Christ Jesus, into his death, and buried with him. Baptism publicly marks identification with the crucified and risen Lord; Paul's argument does not leave Christ's death at a distance from the believer. The purpose clause matters: “so we too might walk in newness of life.” Death to the old rule is joined to a new way of walking. Paul does not use baptism as a mechanical substitute for trust and obedience, nor does he treat it as an empty picture. He points to what belonging to Christ means for the life that follows.¹

The old self has lost its master

Read Romans 6:5–11.

Those united with Christ in a death like his will also share in his resurrection. There is a future hope here, but Paul also sees a present consequence. “Our old self was crucified with him” so that the body of sin would be rendered powerless for its former service and “we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” The body has not vanished; Paul will soon tell believers what to do with it. The old self describes a person under sin's former dominion. Its crucifixion breaks that claim. Verse 7's “set free” carries a legal sense in the ESV footnote, but Paul's conclusion is practical: sin is no longer entitled to command the one who died with Christ.¹

Christ himself “will never die again.” His death was once for all, and death no longer has dominion over him. That makes the believer's new life more than a hopeful mood. Paul says “we believe that we will also live with him,” then commands, “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” To consider is to reckon with what Christ has done as true when a competing desire speaks. It does not mean pretending the struggle is gone. It means refusing to let the struggle define who owns the person facing it.

Put the body at God's disposal

Read Romans 6:12–14.

Paul now says “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” The word “therefore” carries the death-and-life argument into ordinary action. Sin still seeks obedience through bodily passions, so Paul does not call the Christian battle imaginary. Yet its demand is no longer the rightful rule. Believers can refuse to hand over their members, their actual capacities for speaking, seeing, working, and acting, as instruments of unrighteousness.

The alternative is positive: “present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life.” Paul does not ask for a bare refusal that leaves the person empty. The same hands that could harm can help; the same speech that could deceive can tell the truth; the same time that could feed a destructive habit can serve someone. Presentation is a concrete choice grounded in a new belonging. Righteousness is not merely a word in a verdict here; it takes shape in what the body does.¹

“Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” is a promise about lordship, not an announcement of sinless perfection. Nor is it permission to discard God's good will. Paul will ask the permission question again in the next sentence. Law cannot itself free people from sin's rule; grace in Christ has opened the new allegiance. The shorter Wisdom for Everyday Life reading stays with this moment of daily presentation.

Grace forms obedience from the heart

Read Romans 6:15–19.

“Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Paul again answers, “By no means!” What a person repeatedly obeys reveals a master. One path is obedience to sin, which leads to death; the other is obedience that leads to righteousness. Paul thanks God that the Romans, once enslaved to sin, have “become obedient from the heart” to the teaching entrusted to them. Grace has not made obedience irrelevant. It has reached the heart from which obedience grows.¹

Paul's slave language was forceful in a society where actual people were owned, and he explicitly calls it speech “in human terms.” The analogy has limits; it does not make human slavery good. It presses the question of allegiance. Being “set free from sin” is not the same as becoming an isolated, self-governing person. It means becoming a servant of righteousness. What had been offered to impurity and increasing lawlessness can now be offered to righteousness, with sanctification as its fruit. That is growth into a life set apart for God, not the price paid to earn liberation.

A wage is not a gift

Read Romans 6:20–23.

Paul asks the Romans to examine the old fruit: “What fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?” Shame is not his final word about people forgiven in Christ. It is part of an honest look at where the former way led. Sin's path ended in death. Now, as people freed from sin and belonging to God, they bear fruit leading to sanctification and, at the end, eternal life.¹

The closing contrast makes the gospel unmistakable: “the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Wages are what service earns. God's life is a gift. Paul has described real obedience and growth, but he does not turn them into payment for eternal life. The life promised in Christ is received under grace. That is why the answer to sin is neither complacency nor the frantic attempt to buy God's favor. It is life under the Lord who has already broken sin's claim.

Romans 7 will continue the question of law and sin. Here the chapter has already made one thing clear: the grace that justifies also brings a person into a new belonging, and that belonging reaches ordinary choices.

Words of Wisdom

When a familiar temptation says, “You have no choice,” Paul asks whose claim you are hearing. Sin may still press hard, but it does not own the one joined to Christ. Name one part of your day that you usually hand over without thinking. Before that moment arrives, offer it to God in a specific act of truth, restraint, service, or care.

A Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for bringing me from death to life with you. When old habits demand my obedience, help me remember whose I am. Teach me to present my attention, words, and actions to you. Let the fruit of your grace grow in what I do today. Amen.

Sources Consulted

The ESV chapter and exact passage notes are linked throughout.