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What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
Verse 1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He puts and rejects the same objection as before. Calmet. 3 verse 7. And having set forth in the last chapter the grace and advantages by Christ’s coming, he now exhorts them to avoid sinning, and live in the grace of God. Witham.
May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
Verse 2. Dead to sin, and so forth We are then dead to sin when we neither live in sin by serving it, nor sin lives in us by reigning; in this case, how can we still live in it by yielding to its desires? Saint Augustine (c. vi. de spiritu et litera) thus explains the passage: when grace has caused us to die to sin; if we live again in it, we must be exceedingly ungrateful to grace. Estius.
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Verse 3. and so forth We … are baptized in his death. Greek, unto his death. The apostle here alludes to the manner of administering the sacrament of baptism, which was then done by immersion or by plunging the person baptized under the water, in which he finds a resemblance of Christ’s death and burial under ground, and of his resurrection to an immortal life. So must we after baptism rise to lead a quite different life: having been also, when we were baptized and made Christians, planted as branches ingrafted in Christ, let us endeavour to bring forth the fruits of a virtuous life. Witham.—Old man … body of sin. Our corrupt state, subject to sin and concupiscence, coming to us from Adam, is called our old man, as our state, reformed in and by Christ, is called the new man. And the vices and sins which then ruled in us, are named the body of sin. Challoner.—The old and sinful man we must look upon as crucified with him, and the body of sin, or our sinful body, destroyed. We must look upon ourselves as dead to sin, and that we must sin no more, as Christ being once risen, dies no more. Witham.
We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Verse 7. He that is dead is justified from sin. [1] Some translate, is freed from sin: this is true; but perhaps it is better to retain the word justified, which is observed to be a law-word used in courts of justice, where to be justified is to be acquitted, so that a man cannot be questioned again on that account; and so are sinners, when their sins are forgiven. Witham.
But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him,
knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him!
For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
Verse 10. For in that he died to sin. But the sense must be for sins, or to destroy other men’s sins, he himself being incapable of sinning. Witham.
Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
Verse 12. Let not sin, therefore, reign, and so forth He compares sin and justice to two kings, or generals, under one of which every man fights in this world. Sin is the tyrant, under which fight the wicked, and make their minds and their members the instruments, or arms of iniquity to sin, when they follow and yield to their disorderly lusts. But he exhorts them to live so as to make the powers of their souls, and their members, instruments or arms of justice to God, to fight under God, their lawful king, and under the banner of his justice. Witham.
Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.
Verse 14. You are not under the law of Moses, as some of you were before: but now you are all under grace, or the law of grace, where you may find pardon for your sins. But take care not to abuse this grace of pardon offered you, nor multiply your sins, and defer your conversion, as some may do, by presuming, that after all, by the merits of Christ, you can find pardon. This, says Tertullian, is the greatest ingratitude, to continue wicked, because God is good. Reflect that you make yourselves servants of him whom you obey. By yielding to your passions, you become slaves to sin. If you keep your obedience to the law of Christ, and to his doctrine, the form of which you have delivered to you by the gospel, you are the happy servants of justice, and the servants of God, who is justice itself. Witham.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness?
But thanks be to God that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered.
Verse 17. Thanks be to God, and so forth He thanks God, not because they had been in sin, but because after having been so long under the slavery of sin, they had now been converted from their heart, and with their whole strength gave themselves to that form of doctrine to which they had been conducted by the gospel. He returns God thanks for their obedience to the faith, because this obedience of the human will is the work and gift of God, that so no one may glory in his sight. Ephes. 2. Estius.
Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification.
Verse 19. I speak a human thing, [2] or I am proposing to you what is according to human strength and ability assisted by the grace of God, with a due regard to the weakness and infirmity of your flesh. The sense, according to Saint John Chrysostom is this, that the apostle having told them they must be dead to sin, lead a new life, and so forth he now encourages them to it, by telling them, that what is required of them is not above their human strength, as it is assisted by those graces which God offers them, and which they have received. Where we may observe that these words, I speak a human thing, are not the same, nor to be taken in the same sense, as cap. 3:6 when he said, I speak after a human way, or I speak like men. Witham.—What I ask of you, Christian Romans, is, that you so earnestly labour for your sanctification as to improve daily in virtue, as formerly you plunged every day deeper and deeper into vice. Menochius.
For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
Verse 20–22. You were free from justice; that is, says Saint John Chrysostom you lived as no ways subject to justice, nor obedient to the law and precepts of God: an unhappy freedom, a miserable liberty, worse than the greatest slavery, the end of which is death, eternal death: of which sins with great reason you are now ashamed, when you are become the servants of God, and obedient to him, for which you will receive the fruit and reward of everlasting life in heaven. Witham.
What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
Verse 20–22. You were free from justice; that is, says Saint John Chrysostom you lived as no ways subject to justice, nor obedient to the law and precepts of God: an unhappy freedom, a miserable liberty, worse than the greatest slavery, the end of which is death, eternal death: of which sins with great reason you are now ashamed, when you are become the servants of God, and obedient to him, for which you will receive the fruit and reward of everlasting life in heaven. Witham.
But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life.
Verse 20–22. You were free from justice; that is, says Saint John Chrysostom you lived as no ways subject to justice, nor obedient to the law and precepts of God: an unhappy freedom, a miserable liberty, worse than the greatest slavery, the end of which is death, eternal death: of which sins with great reason you are now ashamed, when you are become the servants of God, and obedient to him, for which you will receive the fruit and reward of everlasting life in heaven. Witham.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Verse 23. For the wages, which the tyrant sin gives to his soldiers and slaves, is eternal death; but the wages, the pay, the reward, which God gives to those that fight under him, is everlasting life; which, though a reward of our past labours, as it is often called in the Scriptures, is still a grace, [3] or free gift; because if our works are good, or deserve a reward in heaven, it is God’s grace that makes them deserve it. For, as Saint Augustine says, when God crowns our works, he crowns his own gifts. Witham.