Thus far we have dealt with some of the “big words” of the gospel: righteousness, justification, redemption, propitiation, reconciliation, and substitution. Each facet flashing out a different colored light giving us added nuances of the gospel that help us better understand the great love, mercy, and grace of God in our salvation. All of these deal with imputed righteousness—the very righteousness of God credited to us who are “in Christ”.
In Romans 6 through & Paul, without leaving the gospel, nevertheless moves the primary focus from imputed righteousness—the righteousness of Christ credited to our account—to imparted righteousness—the righteousness of Christ worked out in our lives by the agency of the Holy Spirit. He applies gospel realities to the life experience. Paul has shown that Christ is our Substitute—He did it for us. In chapter 6 he shows that Christ is our Representative—we did it “in Christ”; “it” being the work of Christ. Just like David’s victory over the giant Goliath was Israel’s victory, because David represented all Israel,1 in the same way Christ’s victory is our victory. If you are into sports, when your team wins you shout out, “We won”! The team’s victory is counted to be your victory. Notice how Paul brings out the truth of representation in the first part of Romans 6.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be!How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore 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. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection (Rom. 6:1-5).
Paul states that we were baptized into Christ’s death, we were buried “with Him through baptism into death”. We were also raised from the dead “in Christ”. The goal of being incorporated into Christ is “that we too might walk in newness of life.” Paul continues:
Knowing 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; for he who has died is freed from sin (Rom. 6:6-7).
Look carefully at the above text. In context who died? Was it Christ or was it believers—you and me? The context application is that our “old self” (often called the “flesh”) was crucified with Christ. “Was crucified”, is aorist passive meaning it happened at a point of time and it was God’s work, not ours. But there is more good news! We no longer are slaves to sin! For we who died “with Christ” have been “freed from sin”—perfect passive. This Greek tense tells us that we were freed from sin at a point in time and the “free-from-sin” condition remains. We live in the ongoing state of freedom from sin! Read it again!
Some of us will immediately start to argue with Paul. “Paul, that is not true in my life. I still fall short of God’s ideal.” But freedom from your sin and mine is God’s work. Remember this statement is perfect passive. Christ did it for us and we did it “in Him”.
I believe that every Christian wants to be more holy, more obedient, and have more of the fruit of good works flowing from his/her life.2 We may disagree, however, on two points: First, is the righteousness of sanctification (personal righteousness) part of the believer’s right standing before God? Some teach that the gospel not only includes justification by faith, but it also includes the personal righteousness of sanctification. This, I believe is a counterfeit gospel. The first chapters of this book have given more than sufficient evidence to show that the saving gospel is God’s work of grace “for us” which results in God’s work of grace “in us” , but that internal righteousness is never the basis for our right standing with God.
Second, sometimes discipleship seems to leave faith and grace behind and moves in the direction of prescribed works. Just what these works are varies from one discipler to another. Too often the focus is taken off Christ and placed back on personal behavior. “Now that you are a Christian, don’t you think you should quit smoking? And did you know that Christians should not get drunk? In fact, it would be best if you were a teetotaler. The Bible teaches tithing; therefore you should start paying a tenth of your income to the church. You should also control your temper and keep your kids “under control”. Many disciplers promote some version of the Christian disciplines such as fasting, silence, meditation, Bible reading, witnessing, service, Bible memorization, and the list goes on.
Most of these things are or may be good. The problem comes when we begin to measure our spiritual growth by our overcoming and our performance of these activities. There is a tendency to move from the “done of the gospel”, to the “do, or don’t do” of these disciplines. Often discouragement comes in and shuts down Christian growth, the very thing these discipleship programs were designed to foster.
Acceptance before God does not depend on personal righteousness.
Paul’s teaching in the Epistles has been a real help to me, especially the book of Romans. One day when studying Romans 6:11 I found that this verse was the first verse in Romans where the reader was told to do something. Previous to this Paul had given a thorough foundation for the need of the gospel and the theological underpinning of the gospel—
God’s work in Christ for us. Up to this point in Romans he has discussed: gentiles, moralists, Jews, wrath, sin, law, a righteousness apart from law, justification, redemption, propitiation, the Old Testament witness to justification by faith through the examples of Abraham and David, the results of justification, reconciliation, a comparison of Adam and Christ, and substitution.
The Path to Holiness
Chapters 6-8 describe the path to holiness and it is a “gospel path”, not a “works path”. It is a “grace path” not a “law path”, it is a “Spirit path” not a “flesh path”. All this springs from our being incorporated “in” or “with” Christ and understanding what it means for Christ to be our Representative.
Remember the faith of Abraham. His faith and trust were focused on God’s promise and God’s power to fulfill His own promise. He had no faith in his ability to fulfill God’s promise. So it is for those of us who follow the faith of Abraham. We accept God’s word, even when He says that we live in the ongoing state of freedom from sin!
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God (Rom. 6:8-10).
In verse 11, as mentioned before, we come to the first admonition or instruction in the book of Romans and what is it?
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Justification is God’s acquittal of all the sin we have done, are doing, or will do, and sanctification—the path to holiness—is believing what God has declared about the person who is “in Christ”. We are to see ourselves as God declares us to be. “In Christ” we are free from sin. So the first step down the right path to holiness is to consider ourselves to be dead to sin. This truth is worth another read.
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Paul admonishes us to “present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead”3 and then in the next verse he says:
For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace (Rom. 6:14).
There are many well intentioned teachers, and I used to be one of them, who will immediately add to what Paul has just said. They will reword the above to ” …you are not under the condemnation of the law, but the law stills serves as a guide to measure Christian living.”
In other words many disciplers would say that the path to holiness is by following the law which is to regulate Christian behavior. But this is not Paul’s path to holiness.
Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness (Rom. 6:18).
Both verbs “having been freed…” and “you became…” are aorist passive. This indicates that
these events happened at the very moment of saving faith and it was God’s work that freed us from sin and made us slaves of righteousness.
Romans 6 ends with,
The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 6:23).
Wages are earned. A gift is not. Paul feels that it is so important to know that eternal life is free that he is redundant—“free gift”. Perhaps someone might feel they could earn a gift, or that the gift was not totally free. The only gift I could think of that would not be free would be something like a wife buying a Christmas present for her husband, but using his credit card for the purchase! Paul on many occasions is redundant when it comes to the freeness of the gospel. He wants to drive home his “free-gift” theology.
We come now to several major insights regarding the path to holiness springing from the truth of representation. In Romans 7:1-3 Paul tells how a person is free to marry another person if his/her spouse dies. Then Paul applies this illustration.
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God (Rom 7:4).
In Romans 6 Paul showed that we were crucified, we died, we were buried, and raised to newness of life in Christ. Thus we are free from sin and we are to consider ourselves free from sin.
Now, in these verses Paul states that we were made to die to the law through the [dead] body of Christ, so that we might be joined to the resurrected Christ “that we might bear fruit for God.” Underline in your thinking what Paul has just said. We bear fruit for God when our relationship with the law is ended. That happened when we were incorporated with Christ in his death. Paul explains why the law is not to be the focus of the Christian’s attention.
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death (Rom. 7:4-5).
We must not leave this verse without a full understanding of what it says and does not say. Does this verse teach that focusing on the law is the path to victory and holiness? No, rather what it says is that our sinful passions are aroused by the law and these sinful passions bear fruit for death—the wrong path to holiness. The next verse gives the right path to holiness”. Remember the words, “but now”, are to tell us that a major change has taken place.
But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter (Rom. 7:6).
There can be no misunderstanding of what Paul means here. We are released from the law as a method to achieve holiness. That is the consistent teaching of Paul.
Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin (Rom. 3:20).
But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested (Rom. 3:21).
For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law (Rom. 3:28).
For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified; for the Law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no violation (Rom. 4:14-15).
But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed (Gal. 3:23).
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law (1 Cor. 15:56).
The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Rom. 5:20).
For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace (Rom. 6:14).
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10:4).
Romans 7:5-6 are key verses in finding the right path to holiness. These two verses serve as outline headings for the next two sections of this letter to the Romans.
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death (Rom. 7:5).
Romans 7:5 is illustrated in Romans 7:14-25. If we focus on our personal behavior as a means of achieving holiness, our attention will not be on Christ seated at the Father’s right hand. Rather, our focus will be on our own behavior evaluated by the law.
We are not saying that God’s moral principles no longer apply. God’s eternal moral principles interpreted by the Spirit to the circumstances of life continue to have a function in the Christian life. They are imbedded in our conscience and therefore serve to (1) stop us from doing wrong, (2) prompt us in evaluating truth and error, and (3) urge us to do what is right. The important point for most of us who grew up on law is that we never measure our acceptance with God based upon our personal behavior as measured by the law. Scripture is clear that this side of the second coming we will always fall short of God’s ideal.
When we read Romans 7:14-25 we will note that Paul uses “I” about 23 times. He uses “law” and “sin” a number of times and the “Spirit” is not even mentioned once. There is no victory in this section. Rather, Paul states that he is “sold into bondage to sin”; “I do the very thing I hate”; “sin dwells in me”; “I practice the very evil that I do not want”; I am “a prisoner of the law of sin”. He ends this section with this cry.
Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin (Rom. 7:24-25).
This method of grappling with the sinful nature which all Christians still have is an illustration of what Paul said earlier.
For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death (Rom. 7:4-5).
Scholars have interpreted Romans 7:14-25 a number of ways. Some believe Paul is expressing his pre-Christian life. However, he uses present tense verbs in referring to his experience. Others understand this section to be a description of the conflict between our two natures: our sin nature from Adam and our new spirit nature in Christ. While this is certainly true, it does not totally solve the problem of the apparent contradiction of what Paul has just taught in Romans 3-6 as well as in his other epistles. He has just proved that in Christ we died to sin and are free from sin.4
I personally believe Paul is illustrating what the results will be if one chooses a “path to holiness” that is based on personal attempts to measure up to all the dictates of the law.
This will be the experience of a Christian who takes his focus off Christ, who does not understand representation, and “in” or “with” Christ truth, and is working on self-discipline and forced obedience.
Romans 7:6 is the key verse for the right path to holiness. This truth is repeated in Paul’s epistles several times.
But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter (Rom. 7:5-6).
Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law (Gal. 3:25 NIV).
But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law (Gal. 5:18).
This truth will be illustrated in Romans 8. Paul has now shown that the path to holiness is not the path of the law, for law only arouses sin. In Romans 8, Paul immediately moves to “in-Christ” truth. He shows that this is the valid path to holiness which becomes evident in the first few verses.
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4).
Here we see a sharp contrast to Romans 7:14-25. Instead of defeat, there is immediate victory. Our eyes are removed from our own behavior and are focused on the victory Christ has already gained for us. And if we are “in Christ” His victory is ours because He is our Representative. The law can no longer condemn, even if we fall into temptation and sin because the law’s ability to condemn stopped at the tomb. Paul has previously shown that we were crucified with Christ and we were buried with him. When we forget this and start seeking victory over sin by way of the law, it will be failure. When we move our focus away from our behavior to our position “in Christ” at the Father’s right hand, the result is that,
The requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit (Rom. 8:1-4).
This is real “gospel transformation.” Here we find a great paradox. Those who set out to live a life of holiness by careful discipline, measuring their behavior by the dictates of the law, fail to keep the law, and often become discouraged. Sometimes they pull down the standard of holiness to their level or become perfectionistic, proud, and judgmental.
On the other hand those who understand and apply “in-Christ” truth and set their mind on the many declarations made to believers and walk according to the Spirit, achieve a measure of personal holiness—obedience to God’s moral principles.
Those who focus on their own personal behavior trying to measure up to the dictates of the law are very much like the Jews of Paul’s day. While the context is different, the theology is the same.
What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, attained righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith; but Israel, pursuing a law of righteousness, did not arrive at that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as though it were by works. They stumbled over the stumbling stone, just as it is written, “BEHOLD, I LAY IN ZION A STONE OF STUMBLING AND A ROCK OF OFFENSE, AND HE WHO BELIEVES IN HIM WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED” (Rom. 9:30-33).
Many law-focused people are afraid to look away from their own behavior. They say they are justified by faith, but then, they immediately want to be sanctified (made holy) by keeping the law. The law was not designed to make one holy. Rather the law was designed to arouse and point out sin.
For not knowing about God’s righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Rom. 10:3-4).
I have often said that when the gospel is presented in its clarity there is room for misunderstanding. And that is the case here. Some might assume that there is nothing we have to do in sanctification other than know who we are “in Christ”. However, in sanctification there is cooperation between the work of the Holy Spirit and our own will. This will be addressed in future chapters.
Endnotes
- 1 Sam. 17:4–52.
- If this is not your desire then you need to go back to chapter 2 and pray that God will give you repentance and saving faith.
- Rom. 6:13.
- See Rom. 6:1-7.
- 9. Representation—I Did It “In Him” - May 14, 2026
- 8. Abraham: Prototype of Saving Faith - May 7, 2026
- 7. Substitution—He Did It For Me! - April 30, 2026