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Leaders Notes
Romans 6:15-7:6
CONTEXT
Each of the questions in 6:1,15; 7:7,13 arises from what Paul has said immediately
before it and also all that he has said since 3:21. None of the answers will be complete
until 8:39 (or in fact until much later on).
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3:21
6:1
6:15
7:7
7:13
8:39
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]∴Q2
]∴Q3
]∴Q4
]
By the end of the letter, in order to ‘establish’ us, Paul needs to have reassured us that
we do indeed have the Abrahamic faith of 4:1-5:11 and that this does mean that we are
absolutely sure of future glory, even if we sin and die. As we read, we must make sure
that our understanding of the argument:
• is leading to the big ‘therefore’ of 12:1, and Paul’s insistence that those whose lives
are transformed by renewed minds must not think too highly of themselves (12:3 cf
16:17-18)
• explains why Paul does not go straight to 12:1 (or 16:25) from 5:21, 6:14, 7:6 7:l2
or8:39.
Paul’s conclusion that the problem of wrath at sin is solved (3:21-5:21) prompted the
urgent question ‘So are we still under sin now?’ (6:1). If so, God is unjust and we are
unsure, If not, how is grace shown? Paul has said so far that we are no longer under
sin’s present penalty of being ‘given up’ to sin, because believers have been united to
Christ’s death, which paid sin’s penalty. So we have new life and new minds which
know we have new life. So we must rebel against sin, because we can now do so, being
under grace not law. Paul has, however, fully proved neither the negative nor the
positive of 6:1-2. Since we all do sin, it seems in practice that we are either still wholly
under sin or are ‘dead to sin’ and ‘in sin’ at the same time. In 6:15-7:6, Paul is still
answering 6:1 and reconciling 3:21-5:21 with present experience; both halves of the
answer (6:22; 7:6) end with a ‘but now’ contrast which echoes 3:2 1.
From what Paul has said, it seems that taking away law’s restraint must free us to sin
(6:15). or if not that law is evil (7:7), or does us harm (7:13). If any of these are true,
Paul’s gospel contradicts God’s 0T word. In 6:16-7:6, Paul begins to answer 6:15 and
increases our concern that 7:7,13 be answered.
BIG PICTURE
† The powerful gospel of God
We are weak, but we have been ‘handed over’ to the gospel as our powerful master and
made obedient to it.
† About Jesus
Christ’s death has released us from the legal penalty of being ‘under sin’. We have
eternal life in him.
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Promised in the OT
The gospel is consistent with the Law’s demand that sin be punished by death, but also
with the promises that
God will make his people, even though weak (Ezek 36:16-19), serve him in the Spirit
(Ezek 36:27).
† All nations
If we have to be released from Law to serve God, possessing the Law cannot be what
makes us God’s people.
† The obedience of faith
Through the cross, God has made us his slaves by breaking our old slavery to sin and
changing our hearts and
minds. Our new obedience to ‘the teaching’ depends on having the Spirit, not just the
written word.
† The glory of God
The purpose of our belonging to Christ is that we ‘bear fruit’ under God’s ownership, not
sin’s.
MAIN POINTS AND APPLICATIONS
1. Being ‘under grace’ means not that we are free to sin but that we have been
‘handed over’ to serve the truth ‘from the heart’. We know the deadly wage of sin
and have received instead the gift of life.
From the human point of view, don’t sin. Recognise that sin is shameful and
deadly and that obedience is right and the way to life. Offer every detail of life
in slavery to Christ.
From the divine perspective, be humbled and thankful. God has ‘handed us
over’; we ‘have been freed’. It is completely a matter of free grace. But what is
this obedience? I still sin! Am I still ‘under sin and Law’ and not saved? Read
on!
2. If we were still ‘under Law’ it would be impossible to serve Christ. It is only
because our death, in Christ’s death, has satisfied all Law’s demands on us that
we are free to serve him.
Be thankful for Christ’s death. But be shocked by the apparent implications. Is
Paul saying being under God’s holy Law is evil or harmful? Read on!
6:15 Shall we sin because under grace not Law? No!
As with 6:1, so in 6:15 it is important to understand the question. Since Paul hasn’t
finished answering 6:1 it is not surprising that 6:15 and 6:1 have much in common. Both
seem to ask ‘If we are justified by grace, if the future problem is solved by the past
cross, shall we sin now?’ However, the two questions are not the same:
• The basic questions are different. In the Greek, whereas 6:1 refers to our status
now (‘shall we remain in sin or not’) 6:15 refers to our practice now (‘shall we sin or
not’)
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• The context is different. In 6:1 the context is ‘How is grace displayed now?’; in
6:15 the immediate context is ‘What is the impact of no longer being under law? In
what sense does it mean sin cannot lord it over us?’
In both cases, Paul is introducing a positive step in the argument, not just ruling out a
possible misunderstanding. When he says ‘What then? Is A true? No B is true!’, his
main point is:
not
‘Since B is true, A can’t be a true conclusion of what I’ve said’
but
‘Rather than A being a true conclusion from what I’ve said, B is’
The false conclusion which Paul denies vehemently in 6:15 is that being ‘under grace
not law’ means we have a licence to sin, or that in the absence of a penalty sin no
longer matters The true conclusion which he goes on to prove has two parts, each
based, like 6:1-14, on what his new-minded Christian readers already know:
6v16-23
7v1-6
Common
knowledge
It is the one we obey to whom we are A legal contract to obey is binding during life
slaves
Implication
Thank God that we have now been Only those freed by death from their legal
made obedient to truth, not to sin, so contract to serve self are able to serve God
obey
Relevance
6v15
to Those under grace do not go on If we were under law we would go on sining
sinning
6:16-23
Those under grace are freed from sin, so obey righteousness!
IT IS THE ONE WE OBEY TO WHOM WE ARE SLAVES: SIN OR OBEDIENCE (6:16)
In the first-century Roman world, people might be forcibly enslaved but sometimes gave
up their freedom voluntarily to become slave to the master of their choice. It is common
sense that if we enter into slavery to a master and start obeying him, we become the
slaves of that master, which can lead to good or to bad depending on who he is. There
are three surprises in this verse:
• There are only two possible slaveries. Since sin and obedience are logical
opposites, there is no third way (Paul is still working through the proof of v2).
• Paul contrasts slavery to sin not with slavery to God but with slavery to
obedience. If ‘slavery to sin’ means inevitable sin (Ch 1), ‘slavery to obedience’
must mean in some sense inevitable obedience to God, not just obligation to God
(cf 8:9).
• Paul says that obedience - leads to righteousness. The word ‘righteousness’ is
the same as the word ‘justification’ in Greek and the context is final destiny
(righteousness is contrasted with death). So at first sight, it seems as if he is
teaching justification by works. Paul will need to explain what this ‘obedience’ is.
GOD HAS HANDED YOU OVER AS WILLING SLAVES TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
(6:17f)
So we are either slaves to obedience or to disobedience, But Paul does not yet repeat
his command to offer ourselves as slaves to obedience. He says we who used to be
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enslaved to sin (1:18-3:21) are already obedient slaves to the ‘form of teaching to which
we were entrusted’, the gospel which is God’s power to save (1:16).
This is because God has done it all. As in 6:3,4, Paul reminds us of our Christian
beginnings:
• We obey ‘from the heart’ (better than the NW ‘wholeheartedly’) and ‘offer ourselves’ as
God’s slaves
• But by thanking God, Paul recognises that even this is all God’s doing (v We only obey
because God has made us obedient by changing hearts which used to be darkened,
stubborn and unrepentant (cf 1:21; 2:5). We ‘were entrusted’ (passive) to the truth. The
word in v17 has nothing to do with the one translated ‘entrusted’ in 3:2 but is the same
as ‘gave them up’ in 1:24,26,28. God who once gave us up to sin has now given us up
to a pattern of teaching. We who rejected the truth (1:25) sit under it once again.
In other words, believers have been freed by God from the first of the slaveries
mentioned in v16 and have been made by God to serve willingly in the second,
described both as slavery to ‘the pattern of teaching’ and as slavery to ‘righteousness’
(v18). That is the truth as seen from God’s perspective.
I SPEAK HUMANLY BECAUSE OF THE WEAKNESS OF YOUR FLESH (6:19a)`
From our perspective, though, it does not look as if we are obedient from the heart. That
is probably why Paul now says he speaks ‘as a man’. V19 cannot, as some think, be
apologising for the metaphor in v16-18 because when Paul uses the language of
slavery elsewhere, it is with pride (eg 1:1,6,9; 16:1), in accordance with a strong OT
precedent (eg Is 49:3; 52:13). It is more likely that v19a refers to what follows and that it
is v19b- 23 (or even 7:19-8:39) which speaks from ‘the human point of view’ because
we are still ‘weak in the flesh’.
‘Weak’ is the word translated ‘powerless’ in 5:6 and the idea of ‘flesh’ will be developed
in 7:6 in contrast with ‘Spirit’. Paul is beginning to show us not only what ‘obedience to
the teaching/to righteousness’ is, but also what the ‘suffering’ of 5:1-5 means in
practice.
FOR YOU MUST OFFER YOURSELVES AS SLAVES TO RIGHTEOUSNESS (6:19b23)
Being given over ‘to obedience to the teaching’ does not mean that we automatically
carry out every command of scripture. It cannot mean perfection. Moreover, from man’s
perspective (v 19b):
• Just as when we were given up by God to sin we nevertheless put our own will and
effort into the vicious circle of lawlessness
• So when we are given up by God to obedience we must nevertheless put will and
effort into obeying righteousness which leads to holiness
It is a surprise, especially in the light of vi 6, that Paul says righteousness/justification
leads to holiness, not vice versa. However, he seems throughout this passage to equate
righteousness not with man’s good work but with the ‘form of teaching’ (vi 7-18), the
gospel of justification by faith, God’s righteousness as the gospel reveals it (1:16-17).
The pattern (which implies obedience is different from perfect holiness) seems to be:
GOD-GIVEN OBEDIENCE TO GOSPEL OF JUSTIFICATION -> JUSTIFICATION ->
HOLINESS AND GLORY (5:2)
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So it is not surprising that the command and motivation to offer ourselves as willing
slaves comes from ‘the teaching to which we were entrusted’. V20-23 (which begin with
‘for’) explain why we should serve righteousness by reminding us of the basic gospel
truth, which we now have changed minds to understand, that serving sin doesn’t makes
sense. Whereas in v13 the gospel reason for total practical obedience (‘offering the
parts of our bodies in slavery’) was ‘reckon you are alive’ the gospel reason in v20 is
‘reckon this is the way to life’. To decide which of the two slaveries to be in, those with
straightened-out minds only need to look at where they lead. Sin leads, in the short
term, to more sins, which we are now ashamed of because we know (and, unlike those
in 1:32, understand) that they lead ultimately to death, In contrast, the present fruit of
enslavement to God leads to (Paul doesn’t actually say ‘is’) the holiness without which
we now admit we cannot enter eternal life (cf 2:7):
Then...
But now... (3v21)
Relation to sin
Relation to
righteousness
Fruit
End
Slave
Free
Shameful
things
death
Free
Slave
To holiness
Eternal life
V23 makes the motivation, and the contrast with works-righteousness, absolutely clear.
‘The wages of sin’ probably means ‘the wages sin pays’ rather than ‘the wages God
pays to sinners’. The choice is between:
• earning death by slavery to sin
• receiving an unearned gift of eternal life not through our ‘work’ as God’s slaves, but ‘in’
Jesus. The Lord whom believers now serve is the Redeemer who has already won
them life (cf 1:3,4; 4:24,25; 5:11,21)
So there is really only one right-minded option. Those under grace can’t and don’t just
go on disobeying as before. What Paul shows next is that we can only obey God under
grace if we are not under Law.
7:1-6
Only we who are free from Law can obey
A LEGAL CONTRACT IS BINDING DURING LIFE, BUT ENDED BY A DEATH (7:1-3)
Although Paul’s readers are ‘weak in flesh’ they are nevertheless ‘brothers’ who ‘know
the law’ (7:1 cf 6:19). So he can assume they agree with the second established
principle he draws on to answer 6:15, that a legal contract is binding (literally ‘lords it’ cf
6: 14a) for life, only ending when one party dies. (The NIV ‘only’ is not in the Greek and
wrongly stresses the nullification of the contract rather than its bindingness).
Paul establishes the point by an example. While her husband is alive, a wife is ‘bound
to’ her husband; according to OT Law, it would be adultery to ‘belong to’ another (Deut
22:22). Only if her husband dies is she ‘released from the law of him’ and not an
adulteress if she marries another.
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SO WE HAVE BEEN FREED FROM LAW BY THE CROSS TO OBEY GOD (7:4)
The difficulty of v4 is that suddenly it is the one who dies who is freed, instead of the
one who remains alive. It is simplest to see 7:2-3 as an illustration of 7:1 rather than an
allegory of 7:4. The link between v1-3 and v4 is then straightforward provided we
remember that the death of either party breaks the contract. In v1, it is the death of the
one under contract, in v2-3 the death of the person one is contracted to, and in v4-6
again the death of the one under contract. But the principle is always the same; until a
death occurs the contract holds.
It may however be that the apparent confusion between the two parties to the contract
in v4 is intentional and significant, Because of the nature of the Law which binds us (sin
=> under sin => death) we are both:
• the one who cannot enter another contract unless a death occurs
• the one who must die if the old contract is to be ended.
It is almost as if this Law contracts us to self, to ‘the old man of us’. Under Law, having
once yielded to self, we are ‘given up’ to an idolatrous service of self utterly
incompatible with service of God (cf 1:23; 2:3a).
Either way, Paul draws from the analogy:
• that through the Redeemer’s body (ie through being united with his death as a man in
our place cf 6:3-14) we have ‘been made to die’ (ie by God’s work not ours) ‘to the Law’
(ie under the lordship of Law)
• that the God-centred purpose of this is to free us to ‘belong to’ the one who was raised
• that the God-centred purpose of this in turn (which could mean our being freed, Jesus’
being raised or both) is that we might bear fruit ‘to God’ (ie under the lordship of God as
our new owner)
FOR WHEN WE WERE IN THE FLESH, SIN DID ITS DEADLY WORK BY LAW (7:5)
7:5 spells out in striking language why we need to be freed from law. Law actively
consigns those who sin to slavery to sin (cf 1:18-32), so that all the deadly work that
sin’s ‘passions’ do in those ‘in the flesh’, causing them to do what earns death, is done
with a legal warrant and indeed under legal decree. Sin lords it over us ‘by law’. So we
cannot be free from slavery to sin, with its deadly fruit, unless we are freed from that
law.
BUT NOW WE ARE FREE FROM LAW TO SERVE IN NEWNESS OF SPIRIT (7:6)
However we have been freed. In 7:5-6, Paul again sets two ways in opposition:
Under Law
In flesh
Sinful passions, which
were by Law at work
Fruit for death
Under Grace but
not cf 3v21
Dying to what
held us
Nullified from Law
Serve in newness of Spirit,
not oldness of letter
We who ‘suppressed truth’ (1:18) were ‘suppressed’ by truth, so that we were prevented
from serving God, but our death ‘nullifies’ us from law, just as it ‘justifies’ us from sin
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(6:7). We can therefore now serve God ‘in newness of Spirit’. There is a double contrast
in 7:6b:
Under Law
Free from the Law
a)
Oldness
Newness
Cf. 6v4,6
b)
Letter
Spirit
Cf. 2v27, 29
Old Israel trusted with the word
New Israel: given up to the
teaching
The gift of the Spirit was one of the great Old Testament promises. True Israel would
one day return from exile, receive the Spirit and live in obedience under David (eg Ezek
36:26,27; 37:24). We who believe have this gift now, and not only can and ought to
serve but do serve. We have the circumcised hearts which mere, possession of the
‘written code’ cannot achieve (2:29). Paul does not actually add ‘through Jesus Christ
our Lord’ in 7:5-6 but the same ideas from 1:3,4 (Jesus’ bodily death and resurrection,
the Spirit’s power and the fulfilment of Messianic promise) conclude 7:1-6 as they did
6:15-23.
Paul has now said we are no longer under sin but already have new life (6:1-14), and
that this must lead to obedience because we are under grace, and can and does lead to
obedience because we are not under law (6:15-7:6). We want to apply at once: ‘So offer
yourselves as those now free to serve God’ (12:1). But Paul has raised questions about
the Law which cast doubt on his gospel, If we have to be freed from Law, it seems it is
evil or harmful, which contradicts both 3:1,31 and the OT. Paul has also still not shown
us how grace is magnified (6:1), and how 6:2, 6:17 and 7:4-6 are true if believers sin
(unless all of us who still sin are unbelievers!). Moreover, in order to prevent us thinking
too highly of self (12:3) and establish us in true Abrahamic hope, Paul must explain
what serving in the Spirit, obedience and suffering are (12:3; 16:17f).
Bible Study Questions and Application
Begin with some background and introduction to Romans:
1. Clarify the meaning of the gospel from Romans 1v16-17
2. Talk about the wonder of justification by faith.
Move on to the passage chapter 6v14-23
1. What is the difference between those who are under the Law and those who
under grace?
2. If nobody is saved by keeping the Law, then what place does the Law have in the
Christians life v15? Why bother with the Law?
3. Discuss the 3 reasons Paul gives as to why Christians should bother with the
Law
4. What are some of the distractions we face from day to day challenging our
allegiance to righteousness
5. Ask the group to give some examples of obedience from the heart in the context
of family, work and church life.
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6. Ask the group to share some news items from the past weeks illustrating the
truth in people’s lives of sin leading to death.
7. Talk about the reality of eternal death
8. Encourage thankfulness and humility toward God for the gift of everlasting life
9. In John 17:24 Jesus prayed... Father, I desire that they also, whom you have
given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
What is this glory Jesus refers to and are we as believers experiencing it in some
measure already and is there any anticipation for this beyond the grave?
Pray for each other and others