Book of Romans Bible Studies
Romans 6.1-2 Freedom and the possible abuse of Grace
By Fraser Gordon
Roman 6.1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?
This verse follows on from Chapter 5 where the theme is justification.
Romans 5:1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Chapter 5 is about the wonderful truths of justification. Anyone who puts their faith in the living Lord Jesus Christ is declared righteous in His sight. They have a standing in God which God imputes to them and they are declared righteous in His Son. We have this standing by grace. These are wonderful positional truths. Then Paul goes on to write about how grace reigns over the lives of believers. From Romans 5.12 Paul then contrasts two different realms; one under the first Adam where sin, death and condemnation rule, and another under the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. All that are in that realm and under Him, grace, righteousness and life rule. All of those things abound in this realm. Paul talks about the abounding grace that is toward all who put faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul then asks in Romans 6.1 In light of all these wonderful truths; if all the sin of the world has been dealt with and poured out on the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. If that one act dealt with sin for all time then it raises an interesting question. For those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ, can we do whatever we want? I remember talking to a man at work who said to me, “What about sin?” I said, “Jesus Christ has died for all the sins of the world”. He said to me, “How do you know you're gonna get to heaven?” “Christ has covered my sin, it has been dealt with”, I said. His next question to me was, “So you can do whatever you want?” It's a logical question and is what Paul addresses here. If grace abounds and sin is no longer a barrier between us and God, does that mean we can live however we want? Paul asks, Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? It's a normal question. If grace so abounds that we are covered by the Lord Jesus Christ's death, and sin is no longer a barrier between God and man, does it then give us the freedom to do whatever we want? Should we continue on living the way we used to live before we knew the Lord Jesus Christ? If grace is so wonderful does it give us licence to do whatever we want? At the heart of my friend's question is a big I. The independent I, self. We want freedom, liberty, and forgiveness, but we still want to do whatever we want.
What does the New Testament say about this principle?
1 Peter 2.15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men– 16 as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God.
Peter is talking to Christians. You're free and you have liberty in the Lord Jesus Christ, but don't use that freedom as a cloak for vice. In this sense a cloak is something that you put on to disguise who you really are or to cover up what you're doing. Do not use the freedom and the abounding grace that you have as a believer for indulging in sin.
Peter goes on to say ‘but as bondservants of God’. In Deuteronomy 15.12-18 regulations are given by Moses on how to treat slaves. In the seventh year they were to be given their freedom. However, if the slave loved their master and wanted to stay with them, they would be taken to a door post and a hole would be punched through their ear. This was done as a free choice, otherwise they were free to leave. He could have been free and no longer a slave but if he loved his master, he would offer himself freely as a bond servant for life. We also have been given freedom and liberty, but we shouldn’t use it as an excuse to do whatever we want. We are bond servants, so serve God because He loves you and you love Him. Give yourself willingly to Him.
1 Peter 4.1 Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. 3 For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles--when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. 4 In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
Believers have two options. We can either live in the flesh or we can live in the will of God. We have spent enough of our past lifetime living for ourselves. How much time have we wasted? I wasted all my teenage years. Live now for the will of God and don't give room for any of your past life. The world can't understand why you don't walk the same path anymore, they think you're a weirdo. How many times have you heard, “Oh he's gone all strange now. He's found God and religion.” They don't understand that when Christ comes into the life of a believer, our desires are completely different to what they used to be. I didn’t want to party, drink or do drugs. The desire for those things was completely taken away. I no longer had any desire to live like that anymore. As a believer, we have two options. If you want, you can live to the flesh. But if you follow the will of God, know that you will be persecuted for it. They'll think you're strange.
Jude 1.4 For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jude is a great little book to study and I'd love to do it at some point. Jude wanted to write a letter to the believers concerning the great salvation they had come into, but instead he felt compelled by the spirit to write about what was coming into the church. Certain people had crept in by stealth. There are people among us in the church who teach certain things and live their lives in such a way that they turn the grace of God into lewdness and deny our only Lord God. Who are these people? Well, they're corrupt ministers, lecturers, and priests. Lewdness has a sexual aspect to it and they're turning the freedom that they perceive they have in God to indulge in things that are vile and perverted. Unfortunately the Catholic Church is rife with sexual perversion from so-called leaders and ministers and people in positions of power. They use those positions of power for their own impureness and vices. They are corrupt. They turn the grace of God into nothing. They use grace as a license to do what their evil hearts desire.
So back to Paul's question... Do you know that some teach that the more you sin the more it gives God an occasion to show grace? What they're saying is keep on indulging in whatever you want and it gives God a greater cause to show forgiveness and pour more and more grace on you. So in other words, you're bringing about more grace on mankind and yourself by the amount of sin that you do. It's crazy! This passage is not talking about the normal Christian that desires to follow God and fails at times because of weakness. This passage is about those who continue in sin. They live their lives just the same as before they came to Christ. There's a continuity to it. They're going on in sin instead of separating from it. I came to Christ after my teenage years where I wasted time at parties and with drugs. It’s like if, after I came to Christ, I continued on in that lifestyle. Some people think they can twist the grace of God and abuse it.
The restaurant
Romans 6.2 Certainly not!
In other versions this verse reads God forbid! How can we go on sinning if we really know who we are and what God has done? The purpose of grace is not to give you a licence to do whatever you want, the true purpose of grace is to bring about freedom and deliverance in your life so that you can be rescued from the power and the rule of sin. I really want to bring that about. If we really knew who we were, we wouldn't give ourselves license or place ourselves in circumstances where we can indulge in sin.
Let's say you own a chain of restaurants all over the country and you're very wealthy. You come out into the back alleyway of one of these restaurants and see this pitiful looking creature, me. Here I am in the rubbish bin fighting over the food scraps with cats and rats. My hair is all out of place and I'm covered in scabs. I have a chicken bone in one hand and I'm fighting over it with the cats. You take pity on me and say, “Come inside”. You feel sorry for my condition and the way I look. You bring me inside and say to me, ‘I've got a full banquet here and I own a chain of restaurants all over town. Because I love you, you can freely eat anything that is in my restaurant’. So I look around and it's like a smorgasbord. There's roast lamb, turkey, salads, puddings, everything your heart could want. I say to you, ‘Do you mean to say that I can freely eat anything I want?’ You say, ‘yes Fraser, you can eat anything and you can continue to eat anything you want anywhere in town. Because I love you, I'll do this for you’. So I look at you and with a gleam in my eye say, “Can I go and eat the garbage?”
Now, if I said that to you, you'd look at me and think “what is wrong with this guy? He’s absolutely nuts. I've just offered him all this amazing food and all he wants to do is go back to the rubbish bin and eat garbage!” If you really knew who you were in the Lord Jesus Christ and all that He has offered you, would you want to continue in sin? Would you want to eat garbage? If you knew that a banquet was laid out before you, and all the good and precious things are free for you to take, would you continue eating out of the rubbish bin? Why would you? If you really knew who you were, why would you continue to indulge in sin when all this goodness is laid up for you? Paul says, certainly not, or God forbid.
A transference of kingdoms
Romans 6.2 …How shall we, who died to sin live any longer in it?
This is a positional truth but what does it mean? Who of you feels dead to sin? Do you feel dead? Some of you might look a bit tired. Someone once said. ‘Dead? I'm not sure but once I felt a little bit faint. Some people teach that dead men can’t sin. In other words, because the Lord Jesus Christ included you in His death on the cross, you are now dead so you can't sin. An example would be going down to the morgue, pulling a body out then trying to tempt that body to sin. It can't sin because it's dead. We are now dead to sin therefore we can't sin any longer. Is this true in your experience? No.
Another example is the eradication view of some Christians. You are so dead to sin, that sin no longer has any effect or calling on you. You're just dead to it. The old man has gone and they call it eradication. I was at a conference once and I met a man who believed in this view and he said to me all that he had left of his sinful nature was just a tiny little slither on the bottom and it would be gone shortly. I wanted to say to him, “Is your wife here? I think we need the real story!” This view is similar to the perfectionist. Some Christians believe you can reach a state in your Christian walk where the sin nature no longer has an effect on you anymore. You're completely dead to sin. I wish I was! Paul writes of how we are to reckon ourselves to be dead. He writes in Romans 6.12, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body. We have a part to play and one day we will be totally free of it when we are fully redeemed in the Lord Jesus Christ, but not until then.
So what is Paul talking about in Romans 6.2, when he wrote, …we, who died to sin? In its context it points backwards towards one event that has been accomplished for all time. What we're talking about is a positional truth which has to be worked out in our Christian life so that it becomes experiential truth as well. Positionally, as far as God is concerned, 2000 years ago when the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross you were included in that death, burial and resurrection. God did that so its ruling power over you is broken. Yes, you still have a fallen nature. Yes, you sin, but before, when you were in Adam, all that ruled was sin and death. Now there has been a massive transference and this is what grace is really all about. God moves you from one kingdom to another where grace rules. It rules because it has broken the ruling power of sin over your life. You died 2000 years ago. Whereas before you were under Adam, under its rule, power, and in its realm now you are under grace. Grace has a rule, power, and a realm.
When you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ and believed that He died for your sin it wasn't feelings based. It is an effect and you placed faith in that effect. You will not feel dead to sin but God declares that you died in the Lord Jesus Christ so that its ruling power over you would not dominate you like it did before. It is a transference of kingdoms. You have been moved out of one kingdom into another. The Kingdom of Grace is one that rules and reigns and is one of freedom. In the same way that you accepted Christ for your salvation, as Colossians 2:6 says, As you have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. In other words, you placed your faith in the fact that Jesus died for your sin, now do exactly the same for your walk with Him. Put your faith in the fact that you died with the Lord Jesus Christ so now this sinful principle will not rule in you continually. It's a positional truth not a feeling. You'll never feel dead, but you may feel a little bit faint. It's a fact that you need to place simple faith and trust in and allow God through the Holy Spirit to make it real in your experience. When I started looking at this, I saw that there's been a massive transference of what we were in Adam to what we are now in the Lord Jesus Christ. That makes all the difference in the world - to really know who you are.
There is one more scripture in Colossians, Col 1:9 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; 10 that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; 11 strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; 12 giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. 13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
The Lord has moved us from one Kingdom under Adam that was ruled in darkness, governed by sin, and resulted in death and put us into a completely different kingdom the Kingdom of the Son of His love. It's a beautiful verse. In the ancient world when conquerors defeated nations they would take everything, all the people, all the goods lock, stock and barrel back to their own country. In a sense it’s the same for the Christian. God has delivered you out of darkness and the power of darkness and brought you into the Kingdom of the Son of His love.
Light, love, grace, and freedom
One kingdom is governed by darkness, the other is governed by light just like the psalmist says, Psa 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path. We need the light of God's word to show us the path ahead and the direction we should go. The light also shines on our feet and exposes their condition. We walk in the world and our feet get mucky and need cleaning, just as Jesus said to Peter in John 13.10. It's a Kingdom governed by the love of the Father. If you're a saint you are a love gift from the Father to the Son in this Kingdom of His love. It's one that's governed by grace and acceptance. You can be who you are as an individual and you're loved by God for who you are.You don't have to be someone you're not. You're fully accepted in the Lord Jesus Christ, accepted in the beloved and the Father's love is toward you. It's a Kingdom of freedom.
Martin Lloyd Jones gives a really good picture of it in one of his commentaries on Romans. He says that it's like two fields, and I guess he's imagining what it was like in England, but you could say the same for New Zealand. Anyway, there's two fields with a road or wall in between. One field is governed by darkness, it's got high walls and everyone that dwells within that field is subject to the ruler's will. What it pictures is everyone under the first Adam, everyone in this world is under the power of darkness. Their eyes are blinded to the gospel by the prince of this world. You can't get out of this field because it has really high walls. You can't get out, over, or under it. There's nothing you can do to remove yourself unless by a greater power, you are drawn out of the field and placed into another. Martin Lloyd Jones says this is what the gospel is all about. We don't have the ability to save ourselves, but God can draw us out of one field and place us in another. That field is completely different. It's the Kingdom of the Son of His love. It's governed by light not darkness.
The question remains, then why do we sin? We've been taken out of one realm into another, taken out of a field of darkness and placed into the Kingdom of the Son but we can still hear the ruler from the other field. Just next door we hear him talking. The Bible talks about the wiles of the enemy and we need to be aware of them. Even though we're in another kingdom, we can still be affected, we hear his taunts and his threats. But he can't touch you anymore because you're now under a different realm of grace, love and acceptance. It's like what John Bunyan wrote in Pilgrim’s Progress. When Christian went on his journey he saw lions come roaring out against him and he was afraid to go on. But as he got courage, he realized the lions were chained and could only go so far. They roared like they normally did, making all sorts of scary noises but Christian saw that he could walk between them. He realized they were limited in how far they could reach. The book of Job teaches us this about Satan's rule, he can only go so far with us. You've been moved under the Lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ and into His Kingdom. The enemy is only allowed to do what God allows but we still hear the accusations coming from the other field prompting us to live how we used to.
One of the biggest things Satan seeks to do is dull the effect of our new ruler. It's probably one of the biggest wiles he's got. Even though we’ve been moved out of one kingdom and into another, he seeks to dull the effect of the new ruler over our life. He does this in many, many ways. Even though we've been given a new position - we have died with Christ. The realization of that position is another thing. It has to be revealed in our Christian lives. About 100 years ago when slavery was abolished in America the slaves were given their freedom. Many of the slaves found it really difficult to live as free people. They were born slaves and that's all they knew. They found it difficult to transition into the new freedom they'd been given. When they saw or heard the voice of their old master, everything they had experienced under that old master, all the fears and insecurities, came flooding back. It's very similar for the Christian. We have been given freedom, grace has been poured out on us, but we are still affected. We need to understand the position God has now placed us in. We have been put into the Kingdom of the Son of His love. It's a completely new position from our old one. You are under a completely new ruler - one of grace.
So getting back to Paul's question, if you really knew who you were, that you are beloved and in a completely new kingdom. Moved out of one and into another. Would you carry on eating garbage? You would have to agree with Paul, Certainly not. ‘Why would I? God forbid. How could I do such a thing as to continue when God has done so much for me and moved me from one realm into another?’ Yes, grace abounds but because of who we are now, we're not going to let sin rule any longer. Its ruling power over us has been broken. We have died in the Lord Jesus Christ so that power doesn't have to rule us any more. This is what Paul is telling us in this passage - its ruling power has been broken. Do we need to live like we used to live? Certainly not. Don't go anywhere near it. We have a new power in our lives, one of grace. The Holy Spirit wants to make these things real in our experience. We need to yield ourselves to Him and give Him room to make these things alive in us.
The rest of Romans 6 goes into the reasons of how we died and why we died. For today I just wanted to look at those first two verses and cover the question 'Can we do whatever we want?' 'Should we do whatever we want?' Paul says if you really knew who you were in Christ you wouldn't even bother, you wouldn't eat garbage because you've got a higher calling on your life!