Romans 6:6, consider the phrase that confuses more people than any other in Romans 6:6, the body of sin, what is that and what does it mean that it was done away with? The body of sin is your body viewed as sin’s instrument, the hands sin uses, the eyes sin looks through, the tongue sin speaks with, the feet sin walks with. Paul is not saying your body is evil, he is saying that before Christ, your body was a tool sin used freely. Every part of you was available, every appetite had a key, every door in the house was unlocked, sin did not have to break in, it walked in like it owned the place, because in a way it did. Romans 6:6 says that body of sin was done away with and here is where the Greek matters again. The word is katargethe and it does not mean annihilated, it does not mean vaporized, it means rendered powerless, nullified, made inactive.
The way you unplug a machine, the machine is still there, but the power is cut, the way you cut a chain, the chain is still lying there, but it is not attached to you anymore. Your body was not destroyed, you were not erased, but sin’s grip on your body was broken, sin lost its tool. That is the body of sin done away with, its power is gone and that is why Romans 6:6 ends the way it does, so that you would no longer be in bondage to sin. Bondage, that is slave language and Paul does not use it lightly, in the world he lived in, slavery was everywhere, historians estimate that in the great cities of the empire, slaves made up a huge part of the population.
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.
The way you unplug a machine, the machine is still there, but the power is cut, the way you cut a chain, the chain is still lying there, but it is not attached to you anymore. Your body was not destroyed, you were not erased, but sin’s grip on your body was broken, sin lost its tool. That is the body of sin done away with, its power is gone and that is why Romans 6:6 ends the way it does, so that you would no longer be in bondage to sin. Bondage, that is slave language and Paul does not use it lightly, in the world he lived in, slavery was everywhere, historians estimate that in the great cities of the empire, slaves made up a huge part of the population.
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.