Justification has been the major doctrine of Paul for the past few chapters; he teaches the clear truth of free justification by faith, not salvation by works. Now, Paul will transfer from justification to deal with indwelling sin in our lives. Consequently when he gets to Romans 6 in the first few verses, perhaps all the way to verse 15 he is dealing with the issue of sin. This is a hard chapter to interpret. As I read through the first 15 verses Paul is constantly dealing with sin, look at verses 1, 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 (16,17,18,20,22,23). What Paul is also conveying or communicating to us is that we must also believe ourselves dead unto sin. There is sin, but sin has been dethroned, its power destroyed and should no longer rule over us and we must reckon and consider ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin. Look also how the words dead, death and died are used also in this chapter, 2, 3, 4(2), 5, 7, 8, 9(2), 10(2) and 11.
Paul is deep here in this chapter. May God be pleased to teach us and show us what the true application of this chapter is. Don't trust what I say; you study it out, pray over this text, and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore I'm using the word suggestion to give my thoughts on this chapter. I think we can safely say that Paul is speaking about sin and death, i.e. we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin, but alive in Christ. This is how I will consider these first few verses as we look at Romans 6. There are 3 things I want to consider regarding the first 2 verses:
I. The Contemplation.
II. The Clarification.
III. The Contradiction. |
