Alive to God
Lesson 11 Notes: Romans 6:12-23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)
Why do you get up each morning? What thought first enters your mind most days? Each phase of adult life drives our focus in specific directions. You might be living to please a boss to get paid or promoted. Perhaps you live to serve your family, friends, or loved ones. Sometimes we work toward specific goals or events. Our choices and behaviors testify to our priorities, needs, and sense of purpose. The choices we make also demonstrate our character—how we view ourselves and others. Sometimes who we imagine ourselves to be does not align with how we spend our time and energy. What might your life’s focus reveal about you? Is it possible that the way we live reveals not just who we are but whose we are?
In Romans 6 Paul answered that question with a resounding, “Yes!” Paul presented the shocking reality that how we live reveals not merely what we value and prioritize but to whom we belong. Belonging to a family, group, or culture charts a life’s course, creating some opportunities and limiting others. But all people are born under sin’s power—enslaved and unable to escape. In Christ, believers died to sin’s mastery and now live for God. God’s grace makes believers eternally right with Him and frees them to live holy lives. Believers belong to God, reaping the eternal rewards of living for righteousness.
So far in our study, we have joined Paul and first-century Christians in marveling at the majestic truths woven into God’s multifaceted salvation plan. Through faith in Christ, sinners are justified—declared not guilty—and reconciled to God. By grace, believers enjoy union with Christ, peace with God, a new identity, and victory over sin’s power. Chapter 6 concludes with a call to action for all who are now eternally alive to God.
Know Your Condition – Romans 6:12-14
Salvation’s truths describe inspiring new conditions for living. Paul first commanded believers to count themselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.1 Paul next offered all readers practical instruction about living for God.
“Therefore” emphasizes Paul’s transition as he exhorted believers to accept a new reality—being dead to sin and alive to God. He presented four commands that capture the reasonable responses of people now dead to sin. Through reliance on Christ’s resurrection power and the Holy Spirit’s enabling, believers can joyfully embrace these commands. Two negative commands balance two positive commands to capture what the Holy Spirit empowers believers to stop doing and start doing.
These commands marshal resistance against sin’s tyrannical reign in our bodies. Paul’s previous reference in Romans 6:6 to “the body ruled by sin” helps us understand the physical component of these four steps. Our natural bodies are biased toward sin and the temporary pleasure sin can provide. Before salvation, sinful patterns of behavior characterize life. After salvation, believers can offer every part of themselves to God. The term “offer” is like offering a sacrifice—an act of worship—an idea that will be proclaimed further in Romans 12. We can choose to stop (or “put off”) sinful beliefs and behavior, then start (or “put on”) Christ’s character and actions.2
Paul expressed believers’ responsibility to join their will with Christ’s power to resist obeying sin’s evil desires and live differently—as instruments of righteousness instead of wickedness. In chapter 3, Paul argued that under sin, no one understands or seeks God.3 In Christ and alive to God, believers begin offering their minds and hearts to God. Thoughts of revenge, anger, and malice can be replaced with new thoughts about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy.4 Love for God and others overcomes love for self, yielding to God-focused Bible study, worship, prayer, and prioritization of others.
Mind and heart transformation flows into expressions of faith with every part of a believer’s body. The appropriate expression of faith for people “who have been brought from death to life” is to surrender their bodies as instruments placed in God’s hands. Rather than offer God their self-motivated good deeds, believers offer God their eyes, ears, mouths, hands, and feet to do His bidding. Knowing that what we see and hear influences our lives, people alive to God choose to watch and listen to that which honors God and aligns with His truth.5 Though the tongue is untamable by human effort, those in Christ surrender their mouths to Him, committing to speak praise, truth, encouragement, and the good news.6 People belonging to God use their hands to work with integrity and generosity and their feet to carry the gospel wherever God leads.7 In the world, God wields His people as pleasing instruments of His righteousness, goodness, justice, mercy, and love. This characterizes a new life united with Christ in a resurrection like His—fully alive to God.8
Gripped by the knowledge that believers are united to Christ, Paul declared, “Sin shall no longer be your master.” Jesus’s triumph gives grace the last word in every Christ-follower’s life. Until God unites Christians to Jesus through faith, they are powerless to escape sin’s relentless increase and constant condemnation. On the cross, Jesus died to sin and broke its power over us.9 Now, believers live under the power of new life and grace forever. They no longer live under the law, where sin flourishes alongside human imperfection.10 The law encourages behavior change but also reveals human inability to keep the law wholeheartedly apart from Christ.
A believer’s union with Christ through faith in Him permanently transfers control from sin’s power to God’s unmatched grace through the Spirit.11 Under grace, believers are free to serve God from the heart, fulfill His purpose, and live righteous lives.12
Two groups opposed Paul on this point. Jewish traditionalists were committed to law-keeping as a way to keep relating to God and attain or preserve salvation and righteousness. Meanwhile, antinomians (from the Greek for “against law”) rejected the law for salvation or as a guide for moral conduct. One group advocated legalistic moralism and the other advocated complete freedom—even license—to sin. The gospel’s glorious truth resolutely stands against both errors: Jesus delivered believers from the law’s penalty and condemnation. In Him, they can freely obey God from the heart, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Sin’s mastery crumbles before God’s grace toward sinners.
Know Your Master – Romans 6:15-18
Paul had recently asked, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?”13 In other words, if we are justified by grace, does that mean we can live however we want? This question challenges any misunderstanding of the gospel that might excuse old yet ongoing sinful habits, lifestyles, or patterns. Most basically, Paul expressed curiosity about how much life change believers might experience in Christ. In response, Paul explained that a believer’s identity and quality of life are completely new.
With a believer’s new identity settled, commands given, and an encouraging promise shared, Paul asked a slightly different rhetorical question: “Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?” Paul seems to shift from addressing how much a believer’s life patterns might change to wondering about even one sinful act. Should someone dead to sin and living as God’s instrument of righteousness ever sin at all? His answer still resonates: “By no means!” Sin is not compatible with a life that Christ redeems. Mercifully, Paul continued helping believers understand their new lives, yielded to the control of grace rather than sin and external laws. The transforming force of grace shapes new desires and empowers new life that excludes sin.
Without exception, Paul declared, “You are slaves of the one you obey.” Apart from Christ, sin controls people, demanding they yield their bodies to wicked thoughts, words, and actions. At their best, unbelievers can follow some moral standards, but they cannot obey God from the heart.14 The unsaved obey sin and are powerless against it.15 Without God’s help, no one escapes the grasp of sin—an evil slave driver. Living under the reign of grace means choosing freedom and righteousness instead of returning to bondage.16
While the analogy of slavery may be uncomfortable for today’s readers, slavery permeated Jewish history17 and Roman culture; approximately one-third of those in the church of Rome were enslaved themselves. For Paul’s original readers, his example illustrated ownership and control. Paul did not condone slavery; he put slave traders in the same category as parent killers and the sexually immoral.18 He taught the equality of all believers, whether slaves or free, who belong to Christ.19
Slavery to sin always leads to death. Adam and Eve believed Satan’s lie that minimized sin’s consequences rather than God’s truth that sin leads to death.20 What happened when they ate the fruit that God forbade? They died. Their unbroken fellowship with God died, and they hid from Him. Their personalities and relationships began to die; they lied and shifted blame to one another. Eventually, their bodies died, for God said, “Dust you are and to dust you will return.”21
Paul commanded believers not to offer their bodies to sin as instruments of wickedness because sin still leads to death. For believers and unbelievers alike, sin causes death in our relationships, bodies, and future opportunities, to name a few examples. Sin can also cause believers to lose sight of their hope in Christ, minimizing joy, freedom, and delight in God. Enslaved to sin, unbelievers ultimately experience the second death—eternal, conscious torment and separation from God.22
“But thanks be to God,” Paul exclaimed, “that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance.” Jesus has redeemed believers from sin’s enslavement, tyranny, and eternal consequences.
Paul rejoiced that the reign of grace gives believers new power to obey God wholeheartedly. Before they chose to sin, Adam and Eve obeyed God this way. After they sinned, they and all humanity lost that ability. On the cross, Jesus rescued believers from sin’s deadly destruction. Along with a new heart and life in Jesus Christ, God gives believers a new freedom to obey Him. Believers might not obey automatically, instantaneously, or flawlessly, but they live in loving dependence on His powerful grace and the Holy Spirit.
Paul thanked and exalted God for empowering believers through the Holy Spirit to increasingly resist and hate sin. Wholehearted obedience to God begins with belief in Jesus, the one He sent to redeem humanity through His death and resurrection.23 As people accept the truth of God’s grace in Christ, God frees them to turn every desire and ability toward Him alone, anticipating the day when sin’s destruction will end.
Jesus purchased believers for God; He is their new master.24 Some might ask, “How can we be free if we become slaves of God?” Paul’s slavery analogy highlights that no one is autonomous. As created beings, we all serve someone or something—sin, the harsh taskmaster, or Jesus, who offers a light yoke to all the weary and burdened.25 He promises rest—real, lasting freedom.
True freedom means being who God has made us to be—people who bring Him glory by loving, enjoying, and freely obeying Him. Jesus described freedom in Him this way: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”26 He went on to explain the same truth Paul conveyed: “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ... If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”27 A righteous life—lived in the light of truth by the power of the Holy Spirit—leads to freedom. Anything less is slavery.
Freed to Belong
“Redemption,” a word borrowed from the commercial world, means to buy out of slavery. Redemption of sin-enslaved people carries a steep cost, which cannot be paid with currency like silver or gold.1 On the cross, Jesus paid redemption’s price with His shed blood. In Romans 3, when Paul used the term “redemption” to explain a shimmering facet of salvation, he linked Christ’s eternally sufficient work with Old Testament accounts of God’s redemptive relationship with Israel.2 God has appointed Jesus as humanity’s eternal Redeemer.3
Redeemed people do not belong to themselves. The one who pays the redemption price owns what has been redeemed. Jesus “purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.”4 Those who accept Jesus’s redemption and liberation from sin’s bondage receive the privilege of belonging to God. The Holy Spirit of God indwells the redeemed, producing the most intimate relationship possible on earth and proving God’s ownership.5
Sin deceptively leads people to believe that the benefits of personal autonomy exceed the joys of belonging to God. Those who accept this lie believe they are free to live as they please while their will remains sedated and enslaved to sin. Giving undue authority and priority to personal pleasure, they underestimate the cost of their sin. This repeats the sin of Adam in thinking one can be independent of God and not accountable to Him. The illusion of autonomy robs people of the joy and peace that Jesus offers through His blood-bought redemption from sin.
In contrast to autonomy, holiness characterizes everything and everyone belonging to God. Set apart for Him, holy people enjoy the Spirit’s power, which enables them to honor God with their thoughts, choices, and behaviors. Those who dedicate their lives to God as Redeemer and Master experience liberty from shame and regret today and will live with Him forever. The momentary pleasure sin offers can never compare with God’s gracious gifts for the redeemed—righteousness, holiness, and eternal life.
Know Your Destiny – Romans 6:19-23
As Romans 6 concludes, Paul reinforced his previous teaching with one final summary designed to strengthen the weak. He further explained the commands he offered in verses 11-13. Believers alive to God live under the reign of grace, led and motivated by righteousness. As they give their bodies to righteousness, they are transformed.
God’s redeeming grace, available to believers through union with Christ and the Holy Spirit, enables even the weakest believers to love God and choose righteousness over wickedness. All people serve either sin or God. Not to serve God results in slavery to “ever-increasing wickedness.” The myth of neutral ground gives way to the truth that people cannot contain or limit impurity when they offer themselves to sin. Sin promises freedom, but all who serve sin find themselves in chains. Conversely, believers who offer themselves “as slaves to righteousness” find themselves led to holiness.
Holiness characterizes God and His people. When saving faith dawns in a person’s heart, God declares them holy, redeemed, and alive to Him. As believers live for God, He purifies them and increasingly draws their hearts away from wicked desires and habits that characterized their life in Adam.28 Paul exhorts all believers who have died to sin to allow righteousness to lead them toward the Lord who loves them.
In Christ, God redirects a believer’s destiny from death to abundant life.29 Paul reminded his original readers what life was like when they were slaves to sin and free from righteousness. Whether Gentiles with complete disregard for God’s moral law or Jews seeking to prove their worth through works, all were shamefully unable to please God.30 Their behavior may have seemed reasonable for a time, but death is the ultimate fruit of life apart from Christ.
Looking back on life before faith in Christ highlights the complete reversal of condition and destiny that the redeemed enjoy. From the flagrantly immoral to the pridefully self-righteous, all need to be saved from sin’s rule. Apart from redemption and life in Christ, all who read Paul’s letter can recall shameful experiences that resulted in guilt and condemnation. Sin is a cruel master that brings destruction rather than freedom and hope.
Paul quickly moved the believers in Rome from recalling their past slavery to sin to rejoicing over their present slavery to God: “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” God banishes sin’s tyranny of guilt and shame for those who belong to Him. With their eternal destiny secure, Christians grow in holiness from the inside out.
Paul triumphantly concluded, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Sin’s slaves earn their wages—death—with their thoughts, attitudes, choices, and behaviors ruled by sin. God’s slaves could never earn the benefits of salvation and life in Christ, so their reward—eternal life—is freely given by grace alone through faith alone. Paul is not writing to perfect believers; he is writing to believers living under the reign of God’s perfect, loving grace. God’s grace makes believers eternally right with Him and frees them to live holy lives.
Take to Heart
After the command in Romans 6:11, Paul began to unfold the practical matter of sanctification, which will be explored further in the next lesson. Because believers are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, they must stop living for sin and live for God. The way we live reveals not just who we are but whose we are. New identity in Christ includes a new spiritual condition as instruments of righteousness for God alone. God promises believers freedom from sin’s mastery. The redeemed completely belong to God and enjoy the benefits of His reigning grace where sin once oppressed and controlled them. The ongoing temptation to offer parts of their bodies to sin calls believers to active obedience to God. Though every believer was once enslaved to sin, God secured their freedom, which they receive through wholehearted trust in Christ’s death and resurrection on their behalf. In gratitude, Paul rejoiced over the privilege believers have of being freed to become slaves to righteousness.
Throughout Romans 6, Paul motivates believers to live for God rather than for sin. He presented all that Christ has done on their behalf and all that His redemption secures for their eternity. Paul met fumbling believers in their weakness, reminding them of their lives as sin’s slaves compared to the holiness that comes from offering themselves as instruments of righteousness. Believers have been redeemed from sin’s dominion, shame, condemnation, and death. They are freed—redeemed by Jesus—to belong to God, live under grace, and follow the path of righteousness into holiness and eternal life.
Paul’s brief but powerful command for believers to offer themselves as slaves to God and His righteousness reverberates through every area of life. From the five senses to heart attitudes to choices and behaviors, God calls His children to surrender to Christ’s reign of righteousness and grace, which leads to holiness and eternal life. Believers are to count themselves dead to the sin that continuously assaults their eyes and ears. Sin rises almost automatically and tempts believers toward selfishness and autonomy from God in every relationship, circumstance, and season of life. Infinite words cannot summarize all that surrender might involve or the extent of God’s grace that makes obedience possible. Jesus makes obedience to God an option for those who believe. He also enables His children to live for God. Have you accepted faith in Jesus as the way to become alive to God? If so, how will you thank God for the ways He enables you to live for Him?
A practical question cuts to the heart of Paul’s teaching: To what or whom do you offer your body? We navigate the world with our eyes, ears, and sense of touch. As we take in our surroundings, we see beauty and tragedy. We hear joy and anger. We feel gentle warmth and jarring discomfort. We cannot stop seeing, hearing, and feeling any more than we can stop breathing, so how do we offer these open channels to God as slaves of righteousness? In view of God’s liberating love, consider the thoughts you entertain, encourage, and share with others. What benefits will you and others reap from the thinking that drives you? If you are dead to sin in Christ, consider your words and actions in response to the world around you. Are you living for God or for yourself? Offering ourselves to God is the first step and where Paul commands believers to begin. God’s grace propels believers forward, as the Holy Spirit teaches each next step, often one at a time. We learn as we look to God’s Word, listen to wise counsel, and extend hands of grace to those around us. How can you offer yourself to God today?
Does Paul’s assertion that sin is more than a misstep or accident offend you? Paul called sin wickedness that increasingly rules over its slaves. Sin is everything in thought, word, and deed that is contrary to God’s will. We naturally resist the idea that sin could rule us; we want to believe we are stronger than that. However, Paul’s words reveal God’s great love for us; He offered Jesus to redeem helpless sinners. What sins have ruled over you in the past or perhaps rule you today? Take heart! Because of His grace, God no longer evaluates believers based on their sin. God’s grace sees believers through Christ’s righteousness, which they share by faith. And even more, as believers become slaves to God, they reap benefits that lead to increasing holiness. If you have offered yourself to God and His righteousness, what stories can you tell of God’s powerful grace capturing your heart and changing your desires and behavior? Offer God your thanks and share your stories of His redeeming power.
God expressed His love for humanity through His gracious gift of new life in Jesus and the indwelling Holy Spirit. This compelling force transforms believers to increasingly walk in holiness out of gratitude to God. As believers love God in return, He captures their attention, affection, and actions. A believer’s wholehearted obedience flows out of love for the One who loved us first. How might the truth of God’s never-failing love for you impact the consistency of your obedience? How might the Lord’s mighty resurrection power He shares with believers impact your exclusive loyalty to Him? How might God’s wisdom in salvation and redemption impact your willingness to obey without argument or resentment? Many vie for our attention and promise a better life. However, only one—Jesus Christ—loves us enough to redeem us and reign over us. Jesus leads us toward abundant life and fellowship with our creator God now and forever.
1. Count yourselves: Romans 6:11
2. Stop and start: Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-10
3. No one seeks God: Romans 3:9-18
4. New thoughts: Philippians 4:8
5. Influence of eyes, ears: Matthew 6:22-23; Mark 4:23-24
6. Surrendered tongue: Ephesians 4:29; James 3:1-12
7. Feet bringing good news: Romans 10:15
8. New life: Romans 6:4-8
9. Sin’s power broken: Romans 6:3-10
10. Sin flourishes: Romans 5:20
11. Abundant grace and life: Romans 5:12-21
12. Free to serve: Revelation 1:5-6
13. Go on sinning: Romans 6:1
14. Cannot obey: Romans 8:7
15. Powerless: Romans 5:6, 8
16. Reign of grace: Romans 5:21; 6:14
17. Jewish slavery: Exodus 1:1-14; Judges 3:7-8, 12-14; 4:1-3; 6:1-6; 10:6-16; 13:1; Jeremiah 25:11-12; Daniel 1:1-4; 9:1-19
18. Slave traders: 1 Timothy 1:9-10
19. Slave or free: 1 Corinthians 12:13; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 6:5-9; Colossians 3:11
20. Satan’s lie: Genesis 2:15–3:6
21. Death from sin: Genesis 3:7-24
22. Second death: Revelation 20:12-15
23. Obedient belief: John 6:28-29
24. Purchased for God: Revelation 5:9; 14:4
25. Light yoke: Matthew 11:28-30
26. Jesus describes freedom: John 8:31-32
27. Slavery and freedom: John 8:34, 36
28. Holy living: Romans 5:17
29. Abundant life: John 10:10
30. All fall short: Romans 3:23
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