Romans 6:1-2

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

We died to sin. Paul’s focus in all of chapter 6 is to overcome the objection that would be common after what he said in chapter 5, v20, that immoral living is fine according to Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith. Some of his audience, now called Antinomians, thought that it really should be okay to continue living in sin, since God justifies, or declares righteous, people based on nothing in them or nothing they do, but based on the work of Christ. And Paul said that just because justification is by faith alone, and not by works, does not mean that justification is by a faith that is alone. Paul goes to great lengths to fight off this view of justification. Antinomianism suggests that a genuine one-time profession / confession of faith in Christ is enough to save, regardless of how a person lives their life afterward. And Paul disagrees. Paul says that those of us in Christ have died to sin. So how can we live in it any longer?

Secondly, this objection that Paul spends so much effort refuting is proof enough that his doctrine of justification really is by faith alone. Here Paul also fights of the Legalists. It’s not by faith plus works. If it was, then Paul wouldn’t have received this objection. So the Catholic Church and all other denominations or preachers teaching a faith-plus-works justification are clearly misunderstanding Paul’s teaching. If Paul was teaching that justification was by faith plus works, nobody could have said to him, “Well, shouldn’t we continue to sin so that grace might increase?” It is precisely because he is not teaching justification by faith plus works that he gets this objection. Do you understand that? It’s important, because many of the arguments that Paul refutes are keys to understand his actual teachings. We’ll see that especially in chapter 9.

The point here in v1-2 is that we cannot continue in sin, not because our works have something to do with our justification—they don’t—but because we are united to Christ, and we carry His name in the world. To continue living in sin would be a contradiction because of who we are. Christians have died to both the penalty and power of sin, and having been reborn, they live a new life free from bondage to sin. All of us are sinners and guilty because we are united to the first Adam. We will be saved or not based on whether we are united to Jesus Christ, the second Adam, by faith. And there is a kind of life that comes from being united to Christ. That’s what Romans 6 is about. And so Paul’s rhetorical questions at the beginning of chapter 6 are to make a statement. “Shall we go on sinning?” No. “How can we live in sin any longer?” We can’t. Why not? Because we died to sin, and dead people don’t live, much less live in sin.