Dead to Sin’s Guilt and Dominion (Protestant/Evangelical Devotonal)

Email from "The Navigators" | 12/9/2020

[Gamecock]

Dead to Sin’s Guilt and Dominion Today’s Scripture: Romans 6:7

“For one who has died has been set free from sin.”

"What shall we say then?" the apostle Paul asked in Romans 6:1. "Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?" If we’re justified freely by God’s grace through the work of Christ, doesn’t more sin increasingly magnify God’s grace?

"By no means!" responded Paul. "How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (Romans 6:2).

Paul’s response is not an impatient "how could you think such a thing?" Rather, as he demonstrated in the verses that follow, such a practice cannot occur because a fundamental change has occurred in our relationship to sin. The expression Paul uses for this decisive change is, "We died to sin."

What does Paul mean by that? It’s fairly obvious he doesn’t mean we died to the daily committal of sin. If that were true, no honest person could claim to be justified, because we all sin daily. Nor does it mean we died in the sense of being no longer responsive to sin’s temptations, or else Peter’s admonition to abstain from sinful desires (1 Peter 2:11) would be pointless. So what does Paul mean?

Conservative evangelical commentators have generally taken one of two positions in answering this question. Several have held that Paul refers exclusively to the guilt of sin. That is, through our union with Christ in his death, we died to sin’s guilt. Other commentators say that Paul means we died to sin’s reign and dominion in our lives. Because sin no longer exercises absolute dominion over us, we no longer can continue in sin as a predominant way of life. We struggle with sin, and we do sin, but sin no longer is our master.

I believe both views should be brought together.

[Gamecock]

Ping

[metmom]

Good post.

Thanks.