Abstract
The article analyses the words ‘we … died to sin’ in Rom. 6.2, with special reference to the question whether the words are to be taken in a ‘forensic’ or a ‘moral’ sense, and argues that a stronger case can be made for the latter. It is also argued that the words are written with reference to baptised believers with a view to reminding them of the radical change they experienced at the time of their initiation into the Christian faith, and exhorting them to continue living as those who have renounced their former life styles and are now alive in Christ.
1. Introduction
Rom. 6.1-11 is a well-known, yet also a perplexing, passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Almost every verse in this passage contains obscurities which call for clarification, and which are often given diverse interpretations in the commentaries. This article will not attempt to address every issue, though it will touch on many. Its primary focus will be on what may be regarded as the most fundamental issue of all, which is what Paul means by saying ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2.
The verse comes at a point in his exposition of the gospel at which Paul is moving from the subject of ‘the righteousness of God’ as revealed in the death and resurrection of Christ, and the new relationship with God which believers enjoy as a result (the main focus of 3.21-5.21), to the subject of the new life, freedom, and hope which are ours by faith in Christ (the main focus of 6.1-8.39). At 6.1 Paul asks the question, ‘What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?’ 1 – a question probably prompted by the statement made in 5.20 that ‘where sin increased, grace abounded all the more’ – and answers with an emphatic negative: ‘By no means!’ He then goes on to show how his doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone, as expounded in the preceding chapters, does not lead to some form of antinomianism, as some of his detractors had claimed (3.8), but rather is conducive to holy living. It is at this point that he asks: ‘How can we who died to sin go on living in it?’
Before beginning our examination of Paul’s implication that they had ‘died to sin’, it will be helpful to set out here the other clauses in the passage which seem to refer to the same event, and which may therefore assist us in interpreting these words:
‘all of us … were baptized into his death’(6.3)
‘we have been buried with him by baptism into death’(6.4)
‘we have been united with him in a death like his’ (6.5)
‘our old self was crucified with him’ (6.6)
‘we have died with Christ’ (6.8)
Also relevant for our discussion are the words in 6.10f., where Paul draws a parallel between the death of Christ and that ‘death’ which believers are exhorted to regard as theirs in Christ: ‘The death he died, he died to sin … So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin …’.
We will now consider, firstly, to whom Paul is referring in the above verses; secondly, in what sense he believed that they had ‘died … to sin’; and thirdly, when he believed this death had taken place.
2. Who had ‘died to sin’?
Clearly Paul is not referring to people in general, since, as 6.3f. makes clear, he is referring to those who had been baptized in water, 2 and therefore those who were already believers in Christ. 3 Equally clearly, we should not limit these believers to Paul and his readers alone, since what he says is applicable to all baptized believers.
Beyond stating these obvious facts, we need to note what Paul has already said about such believers in 5.1-11, where the words ‘we’, ‘us’ and ‘our’ occur no less than 24 times in the NRSV. They are people who have been justified by faith (5.1), have peace with God (5.1), have obtained access to grace (5.2), ‘boast’ in their hope of sharing the glory of God (5.2), ‘boast’ even in their sufferings (5.3), and are not disappointed by hope (5.5), because God’s love has been poured into their hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to them (5.5). They are also people who are assured of their future salvation through Christ from the wrath of God (5.9f.). These characteristics should be borne in mind as we consider the meaning of the clause ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2, where Paul talks about the same people.
3. How had they ‘died to sin’?
In Paul’s statement ἀπϵθάνομϵν τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ the dative case of τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ should probably be taken as a dative of reference or respect. 4 Obviously, they had not died in the physical sense of the word, but they had died in a metaphorical sense, in respect of sin. The dative case limits or qualifies the scope of the verb. However, we need to ask in precisely what respect had they died to sin? Here we are met with two main alternatives among the commentators, the forensic and the moral senses. 5 We will now examine each in turn:
3.1 The Forensic Sense
The forensic sense connects the expression ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2 with the doctrine of justification, and argues that Paul is referring to our deliverance from the guilt and penalty of sin through our union with Christ in his sin-bearing death on our behalf. Thus, for example, R. Haldane says in his comment on 6.2: ‘this expression indicates the justification of believers, and their freedom from the guilt of sin …sin has lost its power to condemn them …’. 6 Cranfield puts the same point of view thus: ‘They died to sin in God’s sight, when Christ died on the cross for them. This is a matter of God’s decision. His decision to take their sins upon Himself in the person of His dear Son may be said to be tantamount to a decision to see them as having died in Christ’s death.’ 7 Likewise, J. Stott writes that we ‘died to sin’ in the sense that ‘through union with Christ we may be said to have borne its penalty’. Christ died, he says, not only as our substitute, but also as our representative, ‘so that we may be said to have died in and through him.’ 8
The strongest arguments advanced in favour of this view are fourfold:
In 6.7, where Paul says ‘whoever has died is freed from sin’, the word for ‘freed’ is δϵδικαίωται, a word which is normally translated ‘justified’ and is regularly used to refer to the justification of believers in the letter to the Romans. 9 This shows that Paul has justification in mind throughout the passage whenever he speaks of our dying to sin. 10
In 6.10 Paul says of Christ: ‘The death he died, he died to sin, once for all’ and then he draws the parallel with believers in 6.11: ‘So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin …’. The word in Greek for ‘once for all’ (ἐφάπαξ) is used in the letter to the Hebrews for Christ’s atoning work on the cross (Heb. 7.27, 9.12, 10.10, cf. ἅπαξ at 9.26, 28). Moreover, it is argued, the clause ‘Christ died to sin’ cannot be taken here in a moral sense, because that would be to suggest that Christ did sin previously and ceased to sin on the cross, a thought which is ruled out by Paul’s declaration of the sinlessness of Christ throughout his life in 2 Cor. 5.21. If 6.10, therefore, refers not to Christ’s example, but to his atoning work, then 6.11 cannot refer to our behaviour but to our acceptance of his atoning work as granting us a right relationship with God, i.e. justification, 11 and the expression ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2 and other similar expressions in the passage must also be understood in the same forensic sense.
To take the words ‘we died to sin’ in a moral sense would make nonsense of passages such as 6.12-14, where Paul strongly exhorts his readers not to sin, but rather to dedicate themselves to God. This would not be necessary if they had already ‘died to sin’ in a moral sense. They must therefore be taken in a forensic sense. 12
Similarly, to take the words ‘we died to sin’ in a moral sense is incompatible with common Christian experience, since most Christians confess to feeling tempted by sin, and even succumbing to it from time to time. In fact, Paul himself seems to say this about himself in Rom. 7.14-25. The moral sense must therefore be rejected, and the forensic sense accepted as the only alternative. 13
3.2 The Moral Sense
The moral sense connects the expression ‘we … died to sin’ not with the doctrine of justification but with the doctrine of sanctification, and argues that Paul is referring to our deliverance from the power of sin through our union with Christ in his own ‘dying to sin’ and resurrection to new life. 14
First we will consider the answers given to the objections to this view by those who hold the forensic view, and then present some positive arguments for the moral view.
Argument (i) above may be answered in two ways, both of which are independently sufficient to nullify its force. Firstly, it can be accepted that the word for ‘freed’ in 6.7 (δϵδικαίωται) has indeed a forensic meaning, but affirmed at the same time that this does not affect the moral sense of the idea of ‘dying to sin’ in the rest of the passage. In other words, Paul is simply reminding his readers at this point that sanctification is the natural and necessary outcome of justification. 15 Secondly, the verb δικαιόω not only has the meaning of ‘reckon as right’, but in some contexts can also bear the meanings ‘put right’ or ‘set free’. 16 Even in the letter to the Romans itself, the cognate words δίκαιος and δικαιοσύνη sometimes carry the straightforward moral sense of ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness’ respectively. 17 It is not impossible, therefore, that the verb has this alternative meaning in this context.
Argument (ii) above may be answered in the same two ways. When Paul writes ‘The death he died, he died to sin, once for all’ (6.10), there may indeed be a reference to his atoning work, but the words addressed to the believers in 6.11, and therefore also in 6.2, may still have a moral sense. As Hodge argues, the fundamental point of comparison may be that of separation: ‘in the case of the believer, it is separation from personal, indwelling sin; in that of Christ, it is separation from the burden of his people’s sin, which he bore on the cross.’ 18 Alternatively, Christ’s dying to sin may refer to his victory over sin on the cross, or his personal obedience to God right up to, and including, the point of death on the cross, and in this sense provide a closer parallel with the believer’s death to sin in 6.11. 19
Arguments (iii) and (iv) may be answered together by saying that to ‘die to sin’ in Paul’s understanding does not mean being so removed from the presence of sin that the believer becomes totally sinless or immune from the temptation to sin, but rather that the believer escapes bondage to sin as a controlling power and enjoys a freedom not to sin. 20 Reference may be made to similar metaphorical uses of the concept of ‘death’ elsewhere in Paul’s letters. Thus, for example, when he says that he ‘died to the law’ in Gal. 2.19, he does not mean that the law ceased to make claims on his life. He means rather that the law ceased to be the controlling power in his life, as it used to be when he was a Pharisaic Jew. He no longer lived under its yoke. Likewise when he says in Col. 2.20 that the Colossians had ‘died to the elemental spirits of the universe’, he does not mean that the ‘elemental spirits’ had lost all influence on them, but that they had escaped from their grip. 21 So the moral sense of ‘we died to sin’ in Rom. 6.1-11 may be maintained: it does not mean that believers had ceased to be capable of sinning. This is why Paul repeatedly exhorts his readers not to sin, as in 6.12-14, and acknowledges that, apart from the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, they as human beings are naturally prone to succumb to sin, as in 7.14-25. But it does mean that they had in fact made a radical break with sin and had ceased to live under its control. 22
We move now to some more positive arguments in favour of interpreting the expression ‘we died to sin’ in 6.2 in a moral sense:
We need to remember the general context of Rom. 6.1-11. As we have already seen, Paul reminds his readers in 5.1-11 of the life-changing experience of those who have been justified by faith, an experience which includes their reception of the gift of the Holy Spirit, through whom God’s love has been ‘poured’ into their hearts. A moral transformation is clearly in view. Further, Rom. 6 itself begins with meeting the charge of antinomianism. Paul is combating the suggestion that, because God is a gracious and forgiving God, it does not matter if Christians continue to sin, because God will forgive them anyway. The doctrine of justification, from this perspective, may be seen to weaken the moral resolve of believers. It is against this false understanding that Paul asserts ‘we … died to sin’ as a reason for not sinning. Moreover, the passage is followed, as has also already been noted, by strong exhortations not to let sin have any dominion in one’s life as a believer, but to dedicate oneself to God (6.12-14), and this is followed by a reminder of what had happened previously in the lives of Paul’s readers: they had ‘become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching’ to which they had been entrusted (6.17) and had as a result ‘been set free from sin’ and ‘become slaves of righteousness’ (6.18); they had changed masters, having once been ‘slaves of sin’ (6.20), but now being ‘enslaved to God’, the result being ‘sanctification’ (6.22). A strong current of teaching on the subject of sanctification runs through this chapter, with increasing clarity towards the end, and lends strong support to the view that the concept of having ‘died to sin’ refers to the same experience of being set free from the power of sin.
There are also signs within the passage itself that the concept of ‘dying to sin’ has a moral connotation: In 6.2 itself, having ‘died to sin’ stands in contrast to ‘living in it’.
23
The logic of Paul’s argument is more cogent if we take his words to mean ‘how can we who ceased to live under the power of sin continue to live in it?’ than if we take them to mean ‘how can we who ceased to live under the guilt and penalty of sin continue to live in it?’ Certainly the former argument would have been more likely to persuade antinomians of their error than the latter, because they believed that their release from the guilt and penalty of sin, so far from giving them an incentive to avoid sin, actually gave them the liberty to go on sinning repeatedly, in the knowledge that they could be repeatedly forgiven. In 6.4 Paul says that one result of being ‘buried with him by baptism into death’ is that ‘we … might walk in newness of life.’ The image of ‘walking’ is commonly used for a person’s character or way of life, both in the rabbinic literature and in Paul’s letters, and reinforces the view that Paul has moral conduct principally in mind in this verse.
24
In 6.5 Paul says that believers have been ‘united with him in a death like his’ and as a result are (or will be) ‘united with him in a resurrection like his.’ Most commentators agree that, contrary to the NRSV quoted here, there is actually no need to understand ‘with him [Christ]’ as the hidden indirect object of the adjective ‘united’ here (σύμφυτοι). A more exact translation would be ‘united with the likeness of his death’. Paul therefore asserts a certain affinity between the death and resurrection of Christ and our own ‘death and resurrection’, and suggests that Christ’s death and resurrection provide a pattern which is replicated in the experience of those who are united with him.
25
This fits much more naturally into the understanding of ‘dying to sin’ as a ceasing to live under sin’s control (to be followed by a rising to a new life under Christ’s control) than as an acceptance of the benefits of Christ’s (unique) atoning death, or an experience of justification.
26
In 6.6 we read ‘we know that the old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin’. No one questions that the final clause refers to a moral experience, and almost everyone agrees that the second clause also refers to a moral experience.
27
Most of those who hold to the forensic view of the meaning of ‘we … died to sin’ therefore find it necessary to argue that the first clause ‘our old self was crucified with him’ refers to our justification, but the second clause ‘that the body of sin might be destroyed’ refers to our sanctification, but it is not clear whether this can be done convincingly. To do so one would have to make a clear distinction either between the ‘old self’ and the ‘body of sin’, or between ‘crucified’ and ‘destroyed’, or both, in such a way as to warrant understanding the first clause as forensic and the second as moral, but neither is easily done. Haldane and Stott try to make a distinction between the ‘old self’ and the ‘body of sin’ by making the second phrase refer to something less than the whole person, Haldane by taking the latter to mean the ‘mass of sin’ (‘body’ being taken in a metaphorical sense),
28
and Stott by taking the latter to mean our ‘lower self’ (equivalent to the regular meaning of Paul’s word for ‘flesh’, σὰρξ),
29
but it is not clear that the word σῶμα has this limited meaning here. In fact many commentators take the phrase ‘body of sin’ to refer to the whole person from the point of view of his or her sinfulness, and therefore not as essentially different from the ‘old self’.
30
As far as the other pair of words is concerned, Haldane believes that the word ‘destroyed’ refers to the final (i.e. eschatological) destruction of the mass of sin,
31
while Stott believes that it should be translated as ‘defeated’, ‘disabled’ or ‘deprived of power’ rather than ‘destroyed’.
32
Both these alternatives are possible, but it is doubtful if either of them, if true, is strong enough to show that the word ‘crucified’ in the first clause must have a forensic as opposed to a moral meaning.
33
It is in fact perfectly possible to take all three clauses in 6.6 to refer to the moral experience of the believer, the first stating the fact of a parallel between the believer’s experience of ‘death’ to his or her old life and that of Christ on the cross (cf. Gal. 2.19f.), the second stating the consequent overcoming, or destruction, of the sin-dominated self, and the third stating the resulting freedom from the power of sin. In 6.11 Paul concludes this part of his argument by saying ‘So you also must consider yourselves [or ‘go on considering yourselves …’, as the present imperative λογίζϵσθϵ may be understood to mean] dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ The language of the first part of this sentence clearly echoes the clause with which the passage began: ‘we … died to sin’ (6.2).
34
Once again, as in 6.2, since the two halves of the sentence are so closely co-ordinated and express complementary truths, and since the second half clearly refers to an experience with a strong moral component,
35
it is more difficult to interpret the first half as meaning ‘So you also must consider yourselves justified by recognising that Christ died your death to atone for your sins’ than it is to interpret it as meaning ‘So you also must consider yourselves as people who have ceased to live under the power of sin’. And if the latter is the more natural interpretation, then, in view of the parallelism between 6.2 and 6.11, it must apply to the meaning of ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2 as well.
In sum, the arguments for taking the words ‘we … died to sin’ in a moral sense are stronger than those which take them in a forensic sense.
4. When had they ‘died to sin’?
So far we have argued that the ‘we’ in the words ‘we … died to sin’ refers to all baptized believers, and that the words ‘died to sin’ refer to their experience of having ceased to live under the power of sin. It now remains for us to consider when Paul believed that this had happened.
A number of commentators speak of this death-and-resurrection as taking place at the time of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. Take the words of W. Lüthi, for example: ‘There on the hill of Golgotha I died with Him, I was buried with Him in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, with all my goods and chattels … and at that same place I arose a new man.’ 36 This view gains some support from those words in Rom. 6.1-11 which use the συν- prefix in Greek (συνϵτάφημϵν, 6.4, ‘we have been buried with him’, σύμφυτοι, 6.5, ‘we have been united with him’, συνϵσταυρώθη, 6.6, ‘[our old self] was crucified with him’, cf. Gal. 2.19). However, as Agersnap has argued, 37 the συν- prefix in Greek does not necessarily imply contemporaneity, and may mean ‘like’, ‘similar to’, ‘in accordance with’, ‘in connection with’, or even ‘by means of’. 38 This way of speaking, therefore, cannot be used to prove that our ‘death to sin’, as variously expressed in Rom. 6.1-11, was contemporaneous with Christ’s death on the cross. 39
However, the overriding argument for excluding the presence of the idea of the contemporaneity of the believer’s death with Christ’s death in Rom. 6.1-11 lies in the fact that the text itself explicitly relates the believer’s ‘death’ to the time of his or her baptism: ‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death …’ (6.3-4a). All the parallel expressions listed in the introduction above, along with the initial statement ‘we … died to sin’ in 6.2, must similarly refer to this time. 40 It was at the time of their baptism that believers experienced the crucifixion of the ‘old self’, the destruction of the ‘body of sin’, liberation from the power of sin, and freedom to walk in newness of life. 41
This does not mean that Paul regarded baptism as being in itself the cause of this experience. We have already seen in our brief summary of Rom. 5.1-11 above that Paul regarded the blessings of salvation as coming upon believers because of their faith (for the key importance of faith in Paul’s exposition of the gospel up to this point see 1.16f., 3.22, 25-8, 30, 4.3, 5, 9, 11-4, 16-22, 24, 5.1). It can hardly be the case that, at this point in his exposition, Paul changed his mind and now believed that these blessings came through baptism instead, and it is unlikely that he regarded the performance of the ritual of baptism alone, apart from any accompanying faith, as being sufficient to convey the experience of dying and rising with Christ in a quasi-magical sense. 42 It seems probable that Paul saw baptism and faith together as different aspects of Christian initiation, or, as J. Denney put it, he saw ‘baptism and faith as the outside and inside of the same thing.’ 43 This perspective is confirmed by the observation that in Acts we find Paul described as one who was quite prepared to baptise believers within a few hours of their conversion, without any long catechumenate (Acts 16.14f., 33, 19.4f., cf. the apostles’ action in 2.41, Philip’s action in 8.36-8, Ananias’ in 9.18, and Peter’s in 10.47f.). 44 So we need to refine our earlier answer and say that Paul regarded baptism as a vivid illustration of our death-and-resurrection in Christ, and as the vehicle of its spiritual meaning to the extent that it was accompanied by saving faith, as it often was during his own ministry.
5. Conclusion
I conclude, therefore, by saying that when Paul wrote the words ‘we … died to sin’ in Rom. 6.2, he was not thinking primarily of Christ’s atoning death on the cross for the justification of believers, nor of a death they died with him at that moment. Rather he was thinking primarily of the experience of believers who, at the time of their baptism (which was normally also, in the context of Paul’s ministry, the time of their conversion), underwent a ‘death’ in respect of sin, which meant ceasing to live under its power, and then began to live a new life in Christ. He further uses this fact, in the context of Rom. 6.1-11, to argue for the incongruity of turning back to a life of sin and to exhort his readers go on regarding themselves as ‘dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus’, so as to continue living morally transformed lives. He thereby excludes the legitimacy of interpreting his gospel in an antinomian way.
This understanding of Paul’s words in 6.2 coheres well not only with the parallel statements made within 6.1-11 itself, but also with the rest of the letter up to this point, in particular 5.1-11, which depicts believers as having undergone a mighty change at the time of their conversion.
Coming Next Month
In next month’s issue, Karin Maag continues our reformers series with a look at the life and work of Theodore Beza. In ‘The Liturgy of the Last Gospel’, James, W. Bunce considers the liturgical significance of John’s Gospel.
Footnotes
1
Where the English text is quoted, the NRSV will be used.
2
Baptism in water is the most likely kind of baptism referred to. M. Lloyd-Jones, Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 6, the New Man (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972), 35, states that Paul was referring to the (purely spiritual) baptism by the Spirit into the body of Christ which he believes is also mentioned in 1 Cor. 12.13, but in the absence of any contextual indications that this kind of baptism is meant we should almost certainly assume that the reference is to water baptism.
3
Since he is writing to first-generation Christians, who were capable of understanding his teaching, we may safely assume that Paul is thinking of those who had been baptized on confession of their faith.
4
This view is favoured by, among others, R. Jewett, Romans (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007), 395, C.F.D. Moule, ‘Death “To Sin”, “To Law”, and “To The World”: A Note On Certain Datives’ in eds. A. Descamps and A. De Halleux, Mélanges Bibliques en homage au R.P. Béda Rigaux (Gembloux: Duculot, 1970), 367-75, and D.B. Wallace, Greek Grammar: Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 145. The alternative is to take it as a dative ‘incommodi’, or dative of disadvantage, as if to say that they had died to the disadvantage of sin, but even so we still need to ask in what sense they had ‘died’.
5
C.E.B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1975), vol. 1, 299f., distinguishes four senses of ‘dying to sin’: the ‘juridical’, ‘baptismal’, ‘moral’, and ‘eschatological’ senses. The ‘juridical’ sense is synonymous with the ‘forensic’ sense above, and the ‘baptismal’ sense will be dealt with in section 3.2 below. What Cranfield calls the ‘moral’ sense refers to believers’ daily and hourly experience (illustrated in Rom. 6.11) rather than their initial experience at the time of their baptism, and what he calls the ‘eschatological’ sense refers to what will happen to the believer at physical death and at Christ’s return, neither of which senses apply directly to the specific expression being examined in this article.
6
R. Haldane, Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), 239 (italics original). The original commentary was published in 3 volumes between 1835 and 1842.
7
Cranfield, Romans, 299 (italics original).
8
J. Stott, The Message of Romans (Leicester: IVP, 1994), 172. For other expressions of the same view see T. Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (Glasgow: William Collins, 1842), vol. 2, 55-63, H.G. Grey, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (London: Robert Scott, 1911), 50-3, H.C.G. Moule, The Epistle to the Romans (Fort Washington: CLC, 1975; first published in 1928), 159-67, H. Olshausen, Biblical Commentary on the New Testament: Romans (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1899), 208f., W.S. Plumer, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1971), 273, W.G.T. Shedd, A Critical and Doctrinal Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (Minneapolis: Kloch and Kloch Christian Publishers, 1978; originally published by C. Scribner’s Sons in 1879), 146-58, and J.R.W. Stott, Men Made New (London: IVF, 1966), 31-52.
9
Haldane, Exposition, 248f., Cranfield, Romans, 311 n1, Stott, Message, 177. For the forensic use of δικαιόω in Romans see 2.13, 3.20, 24, 26, 28, 4.2, 5, 5.1, 9, 8.30, 33.
10
This argument is not affected by the question whether the expression ‘whoever has died’ in this verse refers to people in general who die physically or to believers who ‘die’ with Christ in a metaphorical sense. The forensic meaning of δϵδικαίωται can sit comfortably with either interpretation.
11
Haldane, Exposition, 251f., Cranfield, Romans, 316, Stott, Message, 170, 178f.
12
Stott, Message, 170.
13
Stott, Message, 170f.
14
A view held, among others, by C.K. Barrett, The Epistle to the Romans (London: A.&C. Black, 1962), 121, H. Boers, ‘The Structure and Meaning of Romans 6.1-14’ in CBQ 63 (2001), 664-82, J.D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Dallas: Word Books, 1988), 307, J.A. Fitzmyer, Romans (New York etc.: Doubleday, 1993), 429-39, W. Hendriksen, Romans 1-8 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1980), 195, C. Hodge, Romans (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1972, first published in 1835), 192, D.J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 357f., J.A.T. Robinson, Wrestling with Romans (London: SCM, 1979), 68f., P.L. Stepp, The Believer’s Participation in the Death of Christ: ‘Corporate Identification’ and a Study of Romans 6.1-14 (Lewiston, Queenston and Lampeter: Mellen Biblical Press, 1996), 37, and B. Witherington, Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 156 n5.
15
Cf. Hendriksen, Romans, 198, Hodge, Romans, 198, J. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 222, N.T. Wright, The New Interpreters Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), vol. 10, 540.
16
Cf. BAGD s.v. δικαιόω, S. Agersnap, Baptism and the New Life: A Study of Romans 6.1-14 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1999), 324 n20, Barrett, Romans, 125, Moo, Romans, 376f., Witherington, Romans, 161.
17
For δίκαιος, see e.g. 3.26, 5.7, 7.12; for δικαιοσύνη, see e.g. 3.5, 6.13, 14.17.
18
Hodge, Romans, 200-1. Similarly, Hendriksen, Romans, 200.
19
Barrett, Romans, 126, C.H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1932), 90, Moo, Romans, 379, Murray, Romans, 224f., Robinson, Wrestling, 71f., W. Sanday and A.C. Headlam, The Epistle to the Romans (Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1902 5 ), 160.
20
Stott, Message, 169, seems to have been particularly led to adopt the forensic view because he could not reconcile the idea of being ‘dead to sin’ to the common Christian experience of being still sensitive to sin and capable of responding to temptation, but we need to question whether the metaphor of ‘death’ needs to be taken in the way he assumes it must be.
21
Similar cases are provided by the language of Gal. 5.24 ‘those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh’, and 6.14 ‘the world has been crucified to me and I to the world’. Paul does not mean that the ‘flesh’ and the ‘world’ may not still affect the believer and seek to influence the believer’s behaviour (cf. Gal. 5.16-21, Rom. 12.2), but that the believer has broken away from a state of being dominated by the ‘flesh’ and the ‘world’ respectively. We may also compare 2 Cor. 11.23, where Paul uses the word for ‘death’ hyperbolically to describe what we might rather describe as life-threatening experiences (the NRSV translates the phrase as ‘often near death’, but the Greek literally says ‘in deaths often’).
22
Outside the Pauline corpus, we may compare this way of speaking with the statements in 1 Jn. 3.6, 9, 5.18 which say that believers ‘do not’, even ‘cannot’, sin, statements which appear to be even more extreme than saying that they have ‘died to sin’, yet which commentators invariably interpret in a qualified sense to mean that they do not, and cannot, sin habitually, or deliberately.
23
Hodge, Romans, 193.
24
Agersnap, Baptism, 273.
25
F.A. Morgan, ‘Romans 6.5a: United to a Death like Christ’s’ in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, 59 (1983), 301: ‘… a death which in its rejection of sin is a likeness of Christ’s, a death in the same form as his’.
26
It is interesting to note that even Stott, Message, 175, who otherwise holds to the forensic meaning of the expression ‘we … died to sin’, quotes with approval in connection with 6.5 the comment of C.J. Vaughan that ‘our baptism is a sort of funeral’ in that it is ‘symbolic … of dying to the old life.’ It is significant that he does not say here that it is symbolic of our acceptance that Christ died our death for us.
27
The only exception of which I am aware is Cranfield, Romans, 310, who gives two reasons: (i) ‘the self as controlled by sin’ (which is how he understands the phrase ‘the body of sin’) ‘is still very much alive in the Christian’ whereas Paul says it has been destroyed; (ii) if the second clause is taken in a moral sense, then the third clause is tautological. However, argument (i) can be answered in the same way as the argument that ‘dying to sin’ entails sinlessness has been answered above: it is not the capacity to sin which is denied, but control by sin. In answer to (ii) we may say that the third clause is not tautological but clarifies the implications of the second.
28
Haldane, Exposition, 247.
29
Stott, Message, 175-6.
30
E.g. Agersnap, Baptism, 320-3, Cranfield, Romans, 309, Dunn, Romans, 319-20, Hendriksen, Romans, 198, Moo, Romans, 375-6.
31
Haldane, Exposition, 247.
32
Stott, Message, 176.
33
Some commentators actually see ‘crucified’ as less absolute than ‘destroyed’ rather than the other way round, reminding us that crucifixion in the ancient world was a long, drawn-out process leading up to death. Cf. Cranfield, Romans, 310, Dunn, Romans, 332, Tholuck quoted in Plumer, Romans, 287.
34
Stepp, Participation, 49, actually sees 6.2 and 6.11 as a formal inclusio.
35
As Agersnap, Baptism, 347, remarks on 6.11b: ‘a life to God … in the context … must be understood as an ethical life’.
36
W. Lüthi, The Letter to the Romans (Edinburgh and London: Oliver and Boyd, 1961), 81. For similar expressions of the same view, cf. G.R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1962), 133-4; Hendriksen, Romans, 198; F.J. Leenhardt, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Lutterworth Press, 1961), 165; H. Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of his Theology (London: SPCK, 1977), 207; C.J. Vaughan, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880), 117; A.J.M. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1987), 67.
37
Agersnap, Baptism, 330-9.
38
Agersnap, Baptism, 337. One text he cites in this connection is 2 Cor.7.3, where Paul says that the Corinthians are ‘in our hearts, to die together and to live together’, implying a close association but not necessarily a prediction that they will die at the same time.
39
2 Cor. 5.14 has also been used the support the idea of contemporaneity, but is too ambiguous to provide a firm foundation for such a doctrine. See M. Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: T.&T. Clark, 1994) 1.410f. for six different possible interpretations of the clause ‘all have died’.
40
As E Schweizer, ‘Dying and Rising with Christ’ in NTS, 14 (1967-8), 7, puts it: for Paul, ‘dying to the old life of sin has already happened in baptism’.
41
However much 6.5b and 6.8b may refer to the believer’s future resurrection life, few doubt that at least 6.4b refers to the present life.
42
In 1 Cor. 10.1-5 Paul rejects the idea that the Israelites’ ‘baptism into Moses’ at the Red Sea guaranteed their salvation, and in the context implies that the (baptized) Corinthians are likewise not immune from God’s judgment or the possibility of falling (1 Cor. 10.6-12).
43
Quoted in J.A.T. Robinson, Wrestling, 68, cf. A.M. Hunter, The Epistle to the Romans (London: SCM, 1955), 64.
44
J.D.G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (London: T. & T. Clark, 1998), 449.