ROMANS 6:1-2 WE DIED In saving us for Himself, it is plain that first part of our salvation is the fact that God had to be satisfied legally and able to act toward us in grace in a way that is not compromising to His justice. Christ's suffering and death for us has borne the wrath of righteous demands and took our guilt and condemnation away from us. Now God can "be just and the justifier" of them who believe in Jesus. We rejoice in our standing in Christ by His grace.
So now should we keep sinning so that grace may keep on abounding? Because we are free from the restraints of the law, shall we use our freedom for our own purposes even to commit sin? NO! This is the fact that we have been taught. In Christ we have already died to sin. We have died! Christ died for us and so we have been made free from the claims of Adam's sin. The actions of grace on our behalf means there is no work we can do to add anything to the grace of God. For those who are not saved, they may think (or say) the more sinning they do, the more grace they will receive. For believers who are conscious of the tendency to sin that is in them, they often want legal rules of "do's" and "don'ts" to live by. Some even think they are free to commit any sin they want because God's grace takes care of that. That is not evidence of a new creation. The fact being taught here is that something has taken place already. We have already died to sin. That is a past act and fact. It is not something that is going on now. We are not to remain in sin because when we shared in Christ's death, we died to sin. He is our federal head who took our place as representative.
What has really happened is our relationship to sin is over. We have died to sin, not for sin. We can't be living in sin and have died to sin at the same time. That is impossible. This whole teaching has to do with our new relationship with God as a new creation in Christ Jesus; not with our practice of the new life. We have died to the world. We died and now our "life is hid with Christ in God." This is plain that the subject is our standing in Christ as a permanent fact, not the state of my Christian life as a believer. We died to sin in Christ's death - this is a fact. We did not die to sin by practice and experience. We are not sinless perfect people by our experiences.
There are many repeated references to our actual identification with Christ in His death in these first verses of Romans 6. Believers are risen with Christ to life because we died with Christ to sin. It is important to differentiate our relationship to sin, from the presence of sin. The presence of sin in our bodies makes it hard to realize we have died to sin, but we know it is true because God says it and we believe it, and live in the good of it by faith.
It may be hard for us to see how God sees us in Christ. When for our sins our Lord Jesus died, God will not charge us twice. That legal fact does not change, and though we are not perfect; We "have died" and now are risen in Christ with nothing added to it.
The tendency to step aside and do some sin by choice, Is not the issue in these verses for here it is God's voice That says, "You have died, in Christ you are now alive." Our standing in Him is secure in spite of sin we may try to hide.
There is another consideration, when new life dwells within, Even though we at times fail, we do not choose to practice sin. Struggles against our fleshly nature often may take place. But our standing in our Lord we do accept by faith.
It may be hard to grasp, and even harder to explain, That there has been accomplished a victory that is ours in Christ to claim. We are dead to Adam's sin, that action happened long ago. God is the One who in His Word declares that this is so.
We do not sin that grace may abound, No, we live in Christ to God. The bent of life is not to do wrong but to live our life by His Word. Our actual experience may be, we sin, but over this is this wonderful fact That God sees those who by blood are justified by the cross-work of the past.
"Gracious God, I worship Thee this morning as I think of this great accomplished fact and what it means to me. It is foreign to me to want to sin or to try to earn Thy favor by works. I honestly want to live holy, righteous and godly this day by Thy grace given to me. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen."