Romans 6:7
For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Truth to Learn
The death of our sin nature freed us from the bondage of sin.
Behind the Words
The word translated “slaves” in the previous verse is the Greek word douleuō, which is the verb form of doulos, meaning “one who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another, his will being altogether consumed in the will of the other. It refers to a person who has no rights of his own, one who exists only as the property of someone else.” Therefore, douleuō means “to be a slave.”
The word translated here as “freed” is the word dikaioō, which means “to justify” or “to declare righteous.” The word is expressed in the perfect tense. As we pointed out a couple verses back, the perfect tense in Greek refers to completed past action with a resultant state of being, where the emphasis is on the resultant state of being. The word following dikaioō, however, is apo, meaning “from.” When used in this way, the word dikaioo refers to our having been “freed from something” with the emphasis on the resultant state of being (we have been and, therefore, are now free from sin).
Meaning Explained
In the previous verse Paul told us that since our old man (our sin nature) was crucified with Christ, we should not serve sin. He is telling us that previously (before our salvation) we were not willingly serving sin but we were under bondage as a slave to sin. We had no choice but to obey our sinful lusts because of our sin nature. That is, we had no free will when it came to deciding whether we would obey our sinful nature or not, we had to!
Now that we have crucified our sin nature, however, we no longer have to be subject to sin. That’s what Paul is saying in the current verse, “he who died (our old man) has been freed from sin.
So, the point that Paul is making is, since our old man was crucified with Christ and is now dead, we are no longer forced to be a slave to our sin nature or to sin. We are now freed from that slavery. Do you see the point? We no longer have to obey our sinful impulses. We now have a choice. That is, we can choose to obey God or to obey our sin nature. Before we were saved we did not have this choice.
Does that mean that we always choose to obey God? Unfortunately, the answer is no. All too often, we choose to obey our sin nature instead of obeying God. That, as Paul taught us in the previous chapter, is where grace comes in. Even though we follow our own desires instead of God’s moral law, we have been declared righteous and we need not fear the wrath of God. But … we should not continue in our sinful ways. Our sin nature has been crucified so we have a free will to choose good over evil.
Application
This entire chapter of Romans is about recognizing that we are freed from the slavery of sin. We have a choice every day whether or not we will voluntarily submit ourselves to God. If we don’t submit to God then we will be submitted to sin, there is no middle ground.
Whom do you want to be submitted to?
In God’s service, for His glory,
Copyright © 2010 Will Krause. All rights reserved.
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