What Dead To Sin Does Not Mean

[newnature]

Romans 6:6, before you consider what Romans 6:6 means, you have to clear away what it does not mean, because two wrong answers have been stuck to this verse for a long time and they have crushed a lot of people. The first wrong answer is that the old self is your body, that your physical body is the problem, the enemy, the thing that keeps dragging you down. If that is what Romans 6:6 means, then the Christian life becomes a war against your own skin, you start to hate the body God gave you, you start to think the way out is to punish it, starve it, silence it. You start to believe that the flesh you live in is a trap you have to escape, that God is embarrassed by the body he made. But the Greek does not say that, Paul uses a different word for body, the body of sin, he calls it, but the old self is a different word entirely, the old self is not your body.

The second wrong answer is that Romans 6:6 is a command to crucify yourself morally, kill your sinful nature by sheer effort, white knuckles, gritted teeth and if that is what the verse means, then the Christian life is a self-improvement project you are failing at. You wake up every morning with the same list of things to kill and you go to bed every night with the same list still there. You measure your week by how many temptations you survived and you fall asleep ashamed of the ones you did not. You wonder why everyone else seems to have it together and you do not. That is not the gospel, that is exhaustion with a Bible verse attached.

Consider the actual word, the old self, in Greek it is palaios anthropos, the old man, the old person and here is what that means, it is not your body, it is not your personality, it is not your memories, it is who you were before Christ. The whole person, the way you were wired, the way you thought, the way you wanted, the way you lived, defined by sin. Paul uses the same contrast in his other letters, in Ephesians 4:22-24, he writes about putting off the old man and putting on the new man, in Colossians 3:9-10 the same language and in 2 Corinthians 5:1-17, so the old self is not a part of you that needs surgery, it is the whole person you were before you were united to Christ. The person who was in Adam, the person who was under sin’s dominion and here is the news that changes everything, that person is dead, not dying, not on the way out, dead, because of what happened on a hill outside Jerusalem.

 

[faithhopecharity]

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. James 1:12

Thks

 

[quietthinker]

Romans 6:6, before you consider what Romans 6:6 means, you have to clear away what it does not mean, because two wrong answers have been stuck to this verse for a long time and they have crushed a lot of people. The first wrong answer is that the old self is your body, that your physical body is the problem, the enemy, the thing that keeps dragging you down. If that is what Romans 6:6 means, then the Christian life becomes a war against your own skin, you start to hate the body God gave you, you start to think the way out is to punish it, starve it, silence it. You start to believe that the flesh you live in is a trap you have to escape, that God is embarrassed by the body he made. But the Greek does not say that, Paul uses a different word for body, the body of sin, he calls it, but the old self is a different word entirely, the old self is not your body.

The second wrong answer is that Romans 6:6 is a command to crucify yourself morally, kill your sinful nature by sheer effort, white knuckles, gritted teeth and if that is what the verse means, then the Christian life is a self-improvement project you are failing at. You wake up every morning with the same list of things to kill and you go to bed every night with the same list still there. You measure your week by how many temptations you survived and you fall asleep ashamed of the ones you did not. You wonder why everyone else seems to have it together and you do not. That is not the gospel, that is exhaustion with a Bible verse attached.

Consider the actual word, the old self, in Greek it is palaios anthropos, the old man, the old person and here is what that means, it is not your body, it is not your personality, it is not your memories, it is who you were before Christ. The whole person, the way you were wired, the way you thought, the way you wanted, the way you lived, defined by sin. Paul uses the same contrast in his other letters, in Ephesians 4:22-24, he writes about putting off the old man and putting on the new man, in Colossians 3:9-10 the same language and in 2 Corinthians 5:1-17, so the old self is not a part of you that needs surgery, it is the whole person you were before you were united to Christ. The person who was in Adam, the person who was under sin’s dominion and here is the news that changes everything, that person is dead, not dying, not on the way out, dead, because of what happened on a hill outside Jerusalem.

I notice you write many words @newnature . I find them dry as chaff....sorry!

 

[GodsGrace]

Romans 6:6, before you consider what Romans 6:6 means, you have to clear away what it does not mean, because two wrong answers have been stuck to this verse for a long time and they have crushed a lot of people. The first wrong answer is that the old self is your body, that your physical body is the problem, the enemy, the thing that keeps dragging you down. If that is what Romans 6:6 means, then the Christian life becomes a war against your own skin, you start to hate the body God gave you, you start to think the way out is to punish it, starve it, silence it. You start to believe that the flesh you live in is a trap you have to escape, that God is embarrassed by the body he made. But the Greek does not say that, Paul uses a different word for body, the body of sin, he calls it, but the old self is a different word entirely, the old self is not your body.

The second wrong answer is that Romans 6:6 is a command to crucify yourself morally, kill your sinful nature by sheer effort, white knuckles, gritted teeth and if that is what the verse means, then the Christian life is a self-improvement project you are failing at. You wake up every morning with the same list of things to kill and you go to bed every night with the same list still there. You measure your week by how many temptations you survived and you fall asleep ashamed of the ones you did not. You wonder why everyone else seems to have it together and you do not. That is not the gospel, that is exhaustion with a Bible verse attached.

Consider the actual word, the old self, in Greek it is palaios anthropos, the old man, the old person and here is what that means, it is not your body, it is not your personality, it is not your memories, it is who you were before Christ. The whole person, the way you were wired, the way you thought, the way you wanted, the way you lived, defined by sin. Paul uses the same contrast in his other letters, in Ephesians 4:22-24, he writes about putting off the old man and putting on the new man, in Colossians 3:9-10 the same language and in 2 Corinthians 5:1-17, so the old self is not a part of you that needs surgery, it is the whole person you were before you were united to Christ. The person who was in Adam, the person who was under sin’s dominion and here is the news that changes everything, that person is dead, not dying, not on the way out, dead, because of what happened on a hill outside Jerusalem.

Why don't you actually post Romans 6:6.
I don't have the New Testament memorized yet...working on it full time.

And THEN
maybe tell what YOU think it means...
that might get the conversation going.
(if anyone is interested).

 

[newnature]

Why don't you actually post Romans 6:6.
I don't have the New Testament memorized yet...working on it full time.

And THEN
maybe tell what YOU think it means...
that might get the conversation going.
(if anyone is interested).

Greek Concordance: ἀπαρνησάσθω (aparnēsasthō) -- 2 Occurrences

 

[GodsGrace]

Greek Concordance: ἀπαρνησάσθω (aparnēsasthō) -- 2 Occurrences

Romans 6:1-7
1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.


The positive might work better.
What does being dead to sin mean?

I'd say that it means that we are no longer slaves to our sin nature.
Exactly as verse 6 states.

 

[newnature]

Romans 6:1-7
1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.


The positive might work better.
What does being dead to sin mean?

I'd say that it means that we are no longer slaves to our sin nature.
Exactly as verse 6 states.

A slave had no rights, a slave had no future of their own, a slave’s whole life belonged to somebody else, the master set the schedule, the master decided what was allowed, the master collected what was owed, the master could walk into any room and take whatever he wanted and Paul says, that is what sin was doing to you, it owned you, it set your schedule, it told you what you could and could not do, it collected what it was owed, it made you believe you had no other option, that this was just who you were, that the door was locked from the outside and there was no key and then on the cross, the ownership changed.

 

[newnature]

Romans 6:1-7
1What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7for he who has died is freed from sin.


The positive might work better.
What does being dead to sin mean?

I'd say that it means that we are no longer slaves to our sin nature.
Exactly as verse 6 states.

Paul ties Romans 6:6 to something you can actually see, baptism, in Romans 6:3-4, he writes that you were buried with Christ through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead, you also might walk in newness of life. Consider what happens in baptism, you go down into the water, for a moment, you are under, everything goes quiet, the noise of the room disappears, the arguments in your head go silent, it is a picture of a burial and then you come up out of the water into the air alive. The water runs off your face, the light hits your eyes, the room comes back into focus and you are not the same, that is not a ritual you perform to become something, it is a picture of what already happened to you. Romans 6:6, you went down with him, you came up with him and the person who went down is not the person who came up, Paul says it plainly in Romans 6:5, united, you are not a spectator at the cross, you are not a fan of the resurrection, you are not someone who read about it and approved of it, you are united to him, his death is yours, his life is yours. Feel the weight of that, the old self, the whole person you were under sin in Adam was crucified with Christ, it is finished, it is done, it happened.

 

[GodsGrace]

A slave had no rights, a slave had no future of their own, a slave’s whole life belonged to somebody else, the master set the schedule, the master decided what was allowed, the master collected what was owed, the master could walk into any room and take whatever he wanted and Paul says, that is what sin was doing to you, it owned you, it set your schedule, it told you what you could and could not do, it collected what it was owed, it made you believe you had no other option, that this was just who you were, that the door was locked from the outside and there was no key and then on the cross, the ownership changed.

Great post!

 

[GodsGrace]

Paul ties Romans 6:6 to something you can actually see, baptism, in Romans 6:3-4, he writes that you were buried with Christ through baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead, you also might walk in newness of life. Consider what happens in baptism, you go down into the water, for a moment, you are under, everything goes quiet, the noise of the room disappears, the arguments in your head go silent, it is a picture of a burial and then you come up out of the water into the air alive. The water runs off your face, the light hits your eyes, the room comes back into focus and you are not the same, that is not a ritual you perform to become something, it is a picture of what already happened to you. Romans 6:6, you went down with him, you came up with him and the person who went down is not the person who came up, Paul says it plainly in Romans 6:5, united, you are not a spectator at the cross, you are not a fan of the resurrection, you are not someone who read about it and approved of it, you are united to him, his death is yours, his life is yours. Feel the weight of that, the old self, the whole person you were under sin in Adam was crucified with Christ, it is finished, it is done, it happened.

You're a poet NN

I don't think this belongs in Apologetics...
maybe DEVOTIONALS or something similar.

OR
Put it in Theology...learning about God.

 

[newnature]

You're a poet NN

I don't think this belongs in Apologetics...
maybe DEVOTIONALS or something similar.

OR
Put it in Theology...learning about God.

Consider where Romans 6:6 takes you, because the old self did not die of old age, it was crucified and the word Paul uses tells you exactly who did it. Imagine it is the middle of the afternoon and the sky has gone dark, on the middle cross hangs a man who did nothing wrong. The crowd has mostly gone quiet, the soldiers are bored, the religious leaders are satisfied, the sun is hidden and the air has gone strange and heavy and then that man on the middle cross breathes out his last breath. Now, here is the detail most people never see, when that man on the middle cross died, you were there, not physically, but in him. This is the great mystery of the Christian life, union with Christ, the way a branch is in a vine, the way a body part belongs to a body, the way a child carries the family name, you were in Christ when he died.

 

[pwg_jonathan]

The slave picture is the part that hits me. A lot of people read Romans 6 as a rule to try harder, but Paul frames it as ownership changing hands. Verse 11 is where it lands for me: count yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's a position you live from, not a performance.

 

[newnature]

Why don't you actually post Romans 6:6.
I don't have the New Testament memorized yet...working on it full time.

And THEN
maybe tell what YOU think it means...
that might get the conversation going.
(if anyone is interested).

Here is the order that most people get backwards, Paul does not say stop sinning so that you can become dead to sin, he says the opposite, you are dead to sin, so stop sinning, the declaration comes first, the command comes after. Romans 6:1-10 are all declaration, what is true, what happened, what is finished and then starting in verse 11, the commands begin, reckon, do not let sin reign, present yourselves to God, the order is the message. You do not become free by trying, you are free and you live out of the freedom that is already yours, it is the difference between a prisoner working to earn his release and a freed man walking out of an open door, the prisoner works, the freed man walks.

 

[GodsGrace]

Here is the order that most people get backwards, Paul does not say stop sinning so that you can become dead to sin, he says the opposite, you are dead to sin, so stop sinning, the declaration comes first, the command comes after. Romans 6:1-10 are all declaration, what is true, what happened, what is finished and then starting in verse 11, the commands begin, reckon, do not let sin reign, present yourselves to God, the order is the message. You do not become free by trying, you are free and you live out of the freedom that is already yours, it is the difference between a prisoner working to earn his release and a freed man walking out of an open door, the prisoner works, the freed man walks.

I very much agree with everything you've posted.
The problem with Christianity today is that some will read the above and believe what you're saying is that they do not need to do anything to retain their justification.
It's that word EARN.
It's that word WORKS.

If we could just invite them back into the Christian RELIGION so that we all understand that Jesus taught obedience and Paul taught freedom in that obedienc...the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5) we would come a long way in returning to some form of unity.

 

[newnature]

I very much agree with everything you've posted.
The problem with Christianity today is that some will read the above and believe what you're saying is that they do not need to do anything to retain their justification.
It's that word EARN.
It's that word WORKS.

If we could just invite them back into the Christian RELIGION so that we all understand that Jesus taught obedience and Paul taught freedom in that obedienc...the obedience of faith (Romans 1:5) we would come a long way in returning to some form of unity.

In Romans 12:1 Paul says, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. There is the surprise, no animal is placed on the altar, the worshiper is, not dead, living. And before Paul talks about the mind, he talks about the body, that does not mean the body is bad, scripture does not teach contempt for the body, the body belongs to God.

 

[GodsGrace]

In Romans 12:1 Paul says, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. There is the surprise, no animal is placed on the altar, the worshiper is, not dead, living. And before Paul talks about the mind, he talks about the body, that does not mean the body is bad, scripture does not teach contempt for the body, the body belongs to God.

Ephesians 5:2
2And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Hebrews 13:16
16Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Romans 6:13
13Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

 

[newnature]

Ephesians 5:2
2And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Hebrews 13:16
16Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Romans 6:13
13Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

Romans 12:1, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that therefore is not decoration, it is the hinge of the whole passage of Romans 12:2. Paul is not saying, renew your mind so God will finally show mercy, he is saying, because mercy has already come to you in Christ, because grace has reached you before you could climb to it, because condemnation has been answered, because the Spirit gives life, because God has not abandoned his promises, now offer yourself. If Romans 12:2 is cut away from Romans chapters 1 through 11, it shrinks into self-improvement, but Paul does not place renewal on the foundation of human potential, he places it on the mercies of God.

 

[GodsGrace]

Romans 12:1, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that therefore is not decoration, it is the hinge of the whole passage of Romans 12:2. Paul is not saying, renew your mind so God will finally show mercy, he is saying, because mercy has already come to you in Christ, because grace has reached you before you could climb to it, because condemnation has been answered, because the Spirit gives life, because God has not abandoned his promises, now offer yourself. If Romans 12:2 is cut away from Romans chapters 1 through 11, it shrinks into self-improvement, but Paul does not place renewal on the foundation of human potential, he places it on the mercies of God.

Romans 12:1-2 tells us to transform ourselves.

1And so, dear brothers and sisters,a I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.b 2Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

° Paul is telling believers to give their bodies to God.
This is something the believer must do.

° Paul tell believers not to copy the ways of the world.

° He tells believers to ALLOW God to transform us into a new person.

Do you believe we have any part to play in our salvation?

 

[newnature]

Romans 12:1-2 tells us to transform ourselves.

1And so, dear brothers and sisters,a I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.b 2Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

° Paul is telling believers to give their bodies to God.
This is something the believer must do.

° Paul tell believers not to copy the ways of the world.

° He tells believers to ALLOW God to transform us into a new person.

Do you believe we have any part to play in our salvation?

Here is the freedom in that, you are not fighting to become someone else, you are presenting who you already are, alive from the dead, alive to God in Christ Jesus, the old self is dead, the new self is you. And the pull you feel when the old pattern calls, here is the detail that should set you free, you do not negotiate with a corpse, the old self is dead. So, when that voice comes, when the old pattern whispers, when the shame says, this is who you really are, you are not listening to the real you, you are listening to a voice that lost its owner.

 

[GodsGrace]

Here is the freedom in that, you are not fighting to become someone else, you are presenting who you already are, alive from the dead, alive to God in Christ Jesus, the old self is dead, the new self is you. And the pull you feel when the old pattern calls, here is the detail that should set you free, you do not negotiate with a corpse, the old self is dead. So, when that voice comes, when the old pattern whispers, when the shame says, this is who you really are, you are not listening to the real you, you are listening to a voice that lost its owner.

Spiritual language can be difficult.
I believe we agree.
We are not to listen to that old voice, but the new one.
As long as we abide in Christ...we are of Christ...
we are His children and we can rest in the security of His arms.