Romans 6:6-11, Commentary
Nov 15th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 2 Comments |
[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6: Intro, 1-5, 6-11, 12-14, 15-18 ]
6 We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
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6:6-7– I think “self” is a bad translation here. It’s “anthropos.” “Our old man.” But the point is the same, so it’s no big deal.
Verse 7 explains verse 6. Why are Paul’s listeners “no longer . . . enslaved to sin”? Because they have been “crucified with” Jesus — they have died — and “whoever has died is freed from sin” (compare 1 Peter 4:1-3).
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Now, the connection between dying and being freed from sin is not obvious to me. And perhaps another thing that isn’t obvious to me is that Paul’s listeners were ever “slaves” of sin in the first place.
Evidently, however, Paul’s listeners were slaves to sin, and no longer are, because they were put to death with Jesus. Or, rather, their old men were put to death with Jesus (or, perhaps “old humankind” was put to death for them?).
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Now, usually when I read this kind of thing, I have to take it as a exhortative metaphor. Paul’s readers weren’t really crucified, but they should pretend to have been, because if they pretend it, it will help them live correctly.
But what if Paul doesn’t mean it as a metaphor? What if he really means that they were all crucified when Christ was?
What if he isn’t just saying, “Hey everybody, let’s all think about ourselves as if we had been crucified when Jesus was?” What if, instead, thinks they all really were crucified back in 30/33 AD, because, somehow, they have all entered into all of Jesus’ states of being?
In other words, while I find the ontology that holds communities and countries to be entities in themselves to be utterly bizarre, maybe the ontology it takes to understand Jesus, His work, and our relation to Him and His work, needs to be more bizarre than I’m used to.
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6:8– Here Paul repeats the point that if you enter the state of Christ, you get the whole package. You’re crucified, but you’re also raised.
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6:9– Now Paul suddenly claims that Jesus’ death was an overcoming of death itself, rather than of sin. Jesus’ death not only frees one from sin, but frees one from death.
But why?
For the answer, you have to go back to 5:12. Death is the consequence of sin (since sin is cutting oneself off from the source of life). Therefore, to become free from sin is to become free from that which kills you.
And with nothing around to kill you, you live forever. In dying, Jesus ended the dominion of death (on which, see 5:15).
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But why?
And how did it work?
And what does that mean?
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In other words, how did Jesus’ death constitute entering freedom from sin, and therefore ceasing to suffer the effects of sin?
Why was His death an escape?
Here’s one possible answer:
Jesus is now free from sin, because He has paid the penalty for sin — which is death — and therefore God has released Him from prison. He “did the time,” as it were, and now God has let Him go.
The problem with this is that it portrays things as fundamentally being legal, when Paul’s entire point in Romans has been that the Law is not fundamental. Righteousness was possible before the Law came, and sin’s consequence was death before the Law came!
God didn’t sentence everyone to death for sinning (or for Adam’s sin). Sinning — which everyone follows Adam in doing — kills everyone.
People aren’t ruled by death (the word for “dominion” in the current verse is “kurieuei” — “to be lord of”) because God put death in charge, but because the natural, automatic consequence of sin is death.
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The only way, therefore, that Jesus’ death would free Him from death, would be for it to free Him from sin. His death would have to mean that He would stop sinning — even though He never sinned in the first place.
More than that, His death would have to mean that He had somehow gotten reconnected to God again, after being cut off from God by the sin He never committed.
In other words, His death would have to somehow reconnect Him to God again.
But how?
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Jesus dies because He has, as it were, been “baptized into” everyone — entering their present perfect tenses (their states of being), just as we can enter His.
He claimed all our sins as His own, and died as a consequence (He died on the cross, but the cross wasn’t what killed Him), just as we can claim His death and resurrection as our own, and live as a consequence.
But why would Jesus’ death-as-a-result-of-sin be any different from everyone else’s deaths-as-a-result-of-sin? Why did His death lead to life, when everyone else’s deaths lead to staying dead?
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Was it because the sins that killed Him weren’t really His sins? Since He was just “faking” (as it were) that they were His, did they not kill Him as permanently as they kill everyone else?
Or was it because the sins that killed Him were sins He had taken on, and therefore sins He could drop — after letting them “run their course” (i.e., kill Him). Maybe that’s what Micah 7:19 (and Isaiah 43:25) and Psalm 103:12 are talking about.
Our sins didn’t “stick” to Jesus, as it were, and therefore washed off?
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Actually, there may be something to that. Since Jesus voluntarily took our sins on, He could voluntarily put them down. Where would they go? Into the proverbial sea, infinitely far away, forever forgotten.
And with them gone, nothing stood between Him and God anymore. Life began to flow again. And that would either result in His resurrection, or would at least mean that upon His resurrection, He would never die again.
Maybe?
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6:10-11– Whatever the ontological underpinnings of the process, Paul’s listeners are to recognize what has happened. Since they are all “in Christ,” what is true of Him is true of them; specifically, they are “dead to sin and alive to God.”
Thus, Paul’s theory that his listeners are all fundamentally united, not divided by ethnicity, should lead them to live like Christ, not to reject the Law and begin to sin.
So the objection to Paul’s theory — that it encourages sin– is patently false, Paul is arguing.
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As a side note, the word translated “once for all” is “ephapax” (you English majors out there may recognize “hapax” from “hapax legomenon“).
Etymologically, “ephapax” is “upon once.” Perhaps, “once upon a time” would be more clear than “once for all.” Rendering it “once for all” leaves one wondering, “once for all time or for all people“?
In fact, I don’t see why they didn’t just translate it “once.” (That’s what the KJV [but not NKJV], ASV [but not NASV], Douay-Rheims, WBT, and YLT; see also the Hebrew Names Version, NCV, NIRV, and WEB, which have “one time,” rather than “once,” or some variation thereon. For a comprehensive list, see here.)
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[ Romans 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6: Intro, 1-5, 6-11, 12-14, 15-18 ]
“Jesus dies because He has, as it were, been “baptized into” everyone — entering their present perfect tenses (their states of being), just as we can enter His.”
Beautiful and incredible. Thank you.
:-D You are most welcome.