Responding to Grace
6/18/25 Bible Thought (Romans 6)
If God’s grace is so boundless and amazing, and if His mercy will atone for all of our sins, then does it matter how we live? This is the question that Paul handles in Romans 6.
For, in the present, grace reigns as sin once reigned! (Rom. 5:21).
Just as sin once ran the show and brought about its consequences, now we enjoy grace! So, with this in mind, surely continual sin is no big deal, as God’s grace is sufficient for it…Right? Wrong.
As we saw in chapter 2, God’s kindness is meant to lead us to repentance, not to presumptuous living (Rom. 2:4). God’s grace isn’t there for us to justify our sin, but to empower us to overcome.
In Romans 6, Paul opens with a hypothetical question and response,
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Rom. 6:1-2).
Here, Paul uses some of the strongest language possible in the original Greek to say, “May it never happen!!” If your understanding of grace leads you to believe that you should live a lawless life to magnify His grace, you’ve missed the point entirely and have it all backwards!
No, rather the believer in Jesus Christ has been crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20) and as such they are dead to sin (Rom. 6:2).
The believer, when baptized, undergoes a burial. Their old self dies with Christ, and they are raised out of the water in the likeness of Christ’s resurrection. This is so that we might walk in “newness of life” (Rom. 6:4). As we saw yesterday, the believer in Jesus Christ is no longer “in Adam” and their former sin nature but is now “in Christ.”
As Paul would say in another place,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).
For those in Christ, there’s a new life to be lived. Just as the reign of sin and death has been consumed by life in Jesus Christ, so the believer likewise has a new life. No longer are we enslaved to sin, we have the power to overcome and a way out of temptation (see 1 Cor. 10:13).
As such, Paul offers a string of four commands that ought to be the believer’s response to grace.
Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God (v11).
Don’t let sin reign in your mortal bodies (v12).
Don’t present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness (v13).
Present yourselves to God and your members as instruments for righteousness (v13b).
We don’t sin that grace may abound; instead, by means of that grace we obey God’s commands. We submit our lives to Him. We live as the new creations we are.
If we’ve truly experienced God’s grace, it comes with a change, not only in what we do, but what we want to do (see Phil. 2:13). Yet, we still have to do it! Paul explains our new standing in Christ and all of its benefits and then offers commands. He shares the truth and then puts the ball in our court.
Those who are redeemed have had the prison gates busted open wide, the only question is: Will we walk out?