Introduction
One time when I was sharing the gospel with someone, after walking them through the gist of the whole Bible, this person looked at me and said, “I think I believe everything you just told me.” And I said, “Great. Then surrender your life to Christ and become a Christian.” To which he responded, “I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to give up my sin.” And while I was deeply grieved over that, I appreciated the honesty. But that’s the tragedy of sin—it convinces us that holding onto death is freedom. But the gospel says real freedom is found only in dying with Christ, and thus dying to sin. That’s exactly what Paul shows us in Romans 6.
But I wonder, do you want to give up your sin? Do you want to see the rule and reign of Christ impact every area of your life? Or are you still seeking to hold on to some areas? Are you still trying to compartmentalize your faith? Are you mistaking sin and death for freedom? So many professing Christians are fine with a privatized Christianity that is regulated to their “heart”, but they struggle with bringing every area of life into joyful submission to the Lordship of Christ. But that’s exactly what we are called to do.
Last week we saw that our baptism is an objective covenantal reality that is meant to lead us into newness of life. Our baptism, and our covenantal union with the person and work of Christ is something we know objectively; and in light of that objective reality we are to fight sin, pursue holiness, and live for the glory of King Jesus. But what does that look like? How do we do that? Well, that’s what Paul is going to lay out today. So look with me at Romans 6:5-11.
Context
Up to this point in Romans, Paul has made it clear that all humanity stands guilty before God, and that justification comes only through faith in Jesus Christ. He’s shown that those united to Christ are no longer under the reign of sin and death but under the reign of grace. After declaring that grace abounds where sin once abounded, Paul anticipated the objection that such grace might lead to license—and he crushed it by pointing to our baptism. Baptism, he says, is not a mere symbol but the covenantal means by which God marks us off as those who have died with Christ and been raised with Him. It’s an objective reality—a fact we know, not because of how we feel, but because of what God has done. In our passage today, Paul presses deeper into that truth, showing that this union with Christ in His death and resurrection is the very foundation for our new life of obedience.
Romans 6:5-11
In verse 5 Paul says, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” What Paul is doing here is stressing verse 4. After pointing us to our union with Christ in and through our baptism, in verse 4 Paul calls us to walk, or to live in newness of life, a new life of obedience. And here in verse 5 Paul is saying that we can and we must do this because if we have been united with Jesus in His death for sin, we therefore must also be raised with Him in His resurrection. To be sure, there is a future aspect to this. We will one day be given new resurrected bodies that will never sin and never die… But even now we have already been made new creations in Christ who have been raised to newness of life with Christ; and that’s Paul’s point here. Because we are in union with Christ we must go where He leads us. And where He leads us is newness of life.
That’s what Paul means by resurrection here. The Christian life is a life between two resurrections. There’s an already/not yet aspect to this. We have already been made alive with Christ because of His resurrection and our union with Him. But we have not yet be given new resurrected bodies, but that Day is coming. And until that Day we must live each day in light of the reality of our baptism, and the fact that we, with Christ, have died to sin and been raised to newness of life.
We’re entering into the holidays, which is one of my favorite times of year. And my Amazon account knows that, and so it keeps recommending one of my favorite movies to watch during the holidays—It’s a Wonderful Life. There’s a scene in that movie where we hear how George Bailey served at home during the war while his brother and friends went overseas. And it says he wept on D-Day when the battle raged, and he rejoiced on V-Day when the victory was announced. But he had to live through that long, hard stretch between the invasion and the triumph—between D-Day and V-Day—serving faithfully where he was.
That’s exactly where we live as Christians. As I have noted before, D-Day has already come—the cross and resurrection of Jesus were God’s invasion of this fallen world. Sin’s power was broken, death was dealt a mortal wound, and the outcome of the war was decided. But V-Day—the final victory when Christ returns, every enemy is fully and finally put under His feet, and death itself is destroyed—is still ahead of us.
So we live in that tension. We still see the scars of battle, we still fight sin, and we still weep at the losses—but we fight as those who already know how the story ends. Christ has landed on the beaches of this world, and the victory is sure. We live between D-Day and V-Day—between the cross and the crown—rejoicing even through tears, because the war is already won. So what does that mean when temptation comes knocking? It means you fight not as a condemned sinner but as a freed soldier. You fight with victory already behind you.
In verse 6 Paul says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Paul will later say in verse 23, “The wages of sin is death.” And indeed, this is what the Law tells us. Sin leads to death. But in and through death, especially the death of Christ, the grip of sin is broken. Christ provides victory over sin, guilt, and death itself in and through His death and resurrection. Through the person and work of Christ our bondage to sin, guilt, and death, our life in Adam, is done away with. If we are in union with Christ we are no longer enslaved to sin because Christ took our sin, and the whole of who we were in Adam, into the grave with Him, and He came out again victorious.
As I explained last week, Jesus is our covenant head and representative. That means what He does, we do, because we are in Him. He didn’t simply step in as a random substitute, like a player tagging in while we watch from the sidelines; He acted as our covenant representative—our head who carried us in Himself. Just as Adam acted for us and brought us into sin and death, Christ acted for us and brought us into righteousness and life. His obedience, His death, and His resurrection are ours because He is our rightful representative. In Him we have lived, died, and risen again—He stood in our place because we were in Him even as we were once in Adam.
As Paul says in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” That’s the reality for every Christian. And though the ESV says we live by faith in the Son of God, and that’s true, Galatians 2:20 could also be translated, we live by, in, and through the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved us and gave Himself for us. It is our union with Jesus in His life, death, and resurrection that enables us to die to sin and walk in newness of life.
Paul says we were crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would not be slaves to sin. The “body of sin” is the whole of our old humanity—our minds and motives, our habits and hands, our words and wallets, our loves and labors. It includes our private life and our public life—what we do when no one’s watching and what we display for all to see. From your paycheck to your prayer life, from your family to your future plans, from the way you speak to the way you scroll—everything that was once under sin’s tyranny has been crucified with Christ. Nothing is left outside His redeeming claim. And notice that Paul says that this is all something that we know. You might not feel it, you might not see it, but you should know it because the Word of God declares it.
In Verse 7 Paul says, “For one who has died has been set free from sin.” And what he’s speaking of here is the old self, the body of sin… Not our mere physical body, but the whole of who we are and the whole of our lives. In Adam our whole life—all that we were, all that we had, and all that we did—was in bondage to sin. But now, in Christ, our whole life—all that we are, all that we have, and all that we do—is set free, dead to sin and alive in Christ Jesus. Now it’s all of life for all of Christ because Christ gave His life for us.
As we have seen, in and through Adam sin reigned through death. And every aspect of this broken world has been tainted by death. As I have pointed out, the culture of the world is a culture of death. And ultimately that’s because the culture was engulfed in sin. But so it was for us in Adam. Our whole lives were marked by sin. But now, in Christ, our whole lives are to be marked by freedom from sin, and thus faithfulness in Christ.
Notice what Paul says in Romans 6:8-10. He says, “8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.” Notice that language of dominion. That word should bring something to mind.
In Genesis 1:27-28 we’re told, “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” But of course Adam and Eve fell into sin, and failed to properly exercise dominion. But where Adam failed Jesus succeeds.
Years ago when I was working through these ideas I read a book by Joel Beeke, and in it he said that though it’s true that Jesus is the new and true better Adam who sets us free from sin, thus enabling us to fight sin and live holy lives for God’s glory, Jesus doesn’t fully set us on the right path until after He returns and we have resurrected bodies. And by that he meant that we would not be able to take dominion over any area of our lives, except for our personal sin, until after Jesus fully and finally made us new in the resurrection. And we could read this passage that way.
The language here does indeed point us to the future… We will also live with Him. But because Christ has died for sin, gone into the grave, and come out the other side victorious, He will never die again… And therefore sin and death and all of their effects no longer have any dominion over Him. For He died for sin once and for all, and now He lives at the right hand of the Father to God and for God as our Lord, as our Savior, and as our Mediator who ever intercedes for us. Because He lived the perfect obedient life, died the sacrificial wrath absorbing death, and rose again in a justifying and death defeating resurrection, God bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, and gave Him all authority in heaven and on earth. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords, to the glory of God the Father. He now has total dominion. And we must remember that we are in Him.
Paul says that because Jesus is alive never to die again, we believe that we will live with Him. And that’s at the heart of all of this. We have a glorious future in front of us. All things will be made new. We will live forever with our great God, in resurrected bodies that are enabled to fully glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Free from sin, death, pain, and sorrow… And freed to truly love and live for Jesus forevermore. But as glorious as all of that is, that’s not Paul’s point. Paul’s point is that this glorious reality to come has a direct effect on us now.
Contrary to what Beeke said, because we are in union with Christ, and because death has no dominion over Jesus, we can now take dominion in this world as God calls us to. We can subdue the earth and have dominion over it, being fruitful and multiplying, not only with physical children, but taking the blessing of God that He has bestowed on us (notice God blessed Adam and Eve and then called them to take dominion)… we take the blessing of God, and what’s true, good, and beautiful, and we multiply it and be fruitful with it and advance it out to the ends of the earth.
Beeke said that the only place we can exercise dominion is over sin, implying that exercising dominion out in the world is harder than that, or that one has nothing to do with the other. But sin is the problem in the world, and sin is our problem. But because Jesus died to sin, once for all, and now lives a life to God, we can actually put our sin to death and take dominion over the whole body of sin. Our whole body politic is now in union with Christ, and now we can embrace that reality and live it out for the glory of Christ. We can take the whole of our lives captive for Christ because He is ours and we are His, and He has put sin to death in and through His death. So you see, Beeke admits too much. If we have the power to fight sin in one area of life, we have the power to fight it in every area of life. And that’s exactly what Paul is calling us to.
In verse 11 he says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” You see, Paul is not calling us to believe a mere future reality. He’s calling us, in light of that future reality, to so believe the gospel that we, right now, consider ourselves—the whole of who we are, all that we have, all that we think, all that we feel, all that we say and all that we do—dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones once pointed out, this is a present reality, not a future hope. Because Christ died to sin and rose to life, we have likewise died to sin and been made alive to God. And this changes everything.
Paul says we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word for consider is logizomai, which means to claim, consider, count, credit, reason, reckon, regard, or think. So to be sure, we must consider the future promises of the gospel, but we must also consider the present gospel reality we find ourselves in, which means we must claim, consider, count, credit, reason, reckon, regard, think, and thus apply all of this to all of ourselves. We must apply this gospel reality to our lives… Right now. Again, this is a present reality, not merely a future hope. And that means that we must take dominion over our reality. We must consider ourselves dead to sin, which means we must stop embracing who we were in Adam, because he’s dead. He was crucified with Christ. We must stop embracing sin and death, and the culture of sin and death that is rampant throughout the world, and instead we must claim, consider, count, credit, reason, reckon, regard, think, and thus apply the gospel reality that tells us that we have been raised to newness of life in Christ, and that we can and we must live like it.
Imagine a man who’s lived his whole life as a slave. Then one day a royal decree is issued—he’s been set free. The papers are signed; the seal is fixed. But the next morning, his old master still shouts orders from across the field. Out of habit, the man starts to obey. Then he stops, remembers who he is, and walks away—because he knows the truth: he’s not a slave anymore.
That’s what Paul means when he says, “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.” Sin may still call your name, but you don’t belong to it. You must learn to think, to reckon, to live in light of what’s already true: you’re free. The Christian life is the daily act of remembering who you are in Christ and refusing to live like you’re still in chains.
The great Reformer Martin Luther said, “When the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is, there I shall be also.’” And what Paul is telling us to do here is similar. When sin and Satan bark orders and seek to lead us astray, we must remind them that we are no longer under their power. We’ve been set free. We’ve been baptized into Christ, and therefore we are free. But we must consider and reckon this reality daily. Which is why Luther also said, “The Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued. For we must keep on drowning the old man, who still lives in our flesh, until he is completely dead.” And in Christ we can and must do this.
In verse 6 and verse 9 Paul says we know these things. In verse 8 he says we believe these things. And in verse 11 he’s saying that we must now apply them and live them out in all of life. There is no mere personal Christianity. As Abraham Kuyper said so well, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” We don’t get to regulate out faith into our heart or our mind. It must take hold of all of life. Death has no dominion over Jesus because He is the resurrected Lord. And because we are in union with Him, now we can and we must take dominion for our resurrected Lord, over every area of life. We must not live as though we were still enslaved, but we must consider ourselves free, and thus live out that freedom in every area of life.
Taking dominion means your work matters—your labor, your art, your parenting, your conversations—all of it participates in Christ’s redeeming reign. Every time you choose truth over deceit, beauty over chaos, faithfulness over compromise, you are extending His resurrection life into a world still marked by death. The way you spend your time, your talent, and your treasure is all an aspect of dominion. You are either taking ground for the Kingdom of Christ, or surrendering it to the kingdom of darkness. But because of Jesus you can take the ground.
Lloyd-Jones says, “The purpose of God is sure and certain. Nothing can stop it… God has set this plan of salvation in process, and neither devils nor hell, nor the whole universe can stop it.” That’s true of God’s plan for the world, but also of His plan for us. So many look out at the brokenness of the world and the evil we see all over the place and they say the promises of God can’t mean what they seem to mean. The gospel cannot be successful in such a world as this. But that is not faith talking. That is doubt and fear.
To us it seems only logical to conclude that we lose down here, and that we are always going to be in a posture of defeat because sin and evil in and of the world seem so powerful. But as Romans 12:2 tells us, we must not be conformed to the ways of this world, but be transformed by the renewal of our minds. That is the renewal that comes in and through God’s Word by the Spirit, and our faith in it. We must believe the promises of God regardless of what we see. And like the promises of God for the world, so we must believe what God’s Word says about us. We must operate by faith, not by what we see or feel, but by what God’s Word has declared. And God’s Word has declared that you are dead to sin and alive to God. So we must believe it and live in light of it, right now. We must consider these things to be true and thus live them out. Believe it and heed it.
Conclusion
So, brothers and sisters, what does this look like for us today? It means that because we are in Christ—because we have died with Him and been raised with Him—we must no longer live like slaves. Sin may still call your name, but you don’t belong to it. You belong to Christ. You’ve been bought with a price. You are free.
Children, this means that when you’re tempted to lie, or to disobey your parents, or to pout and complain, you remember who you are—you’re baptized into Christ. You’re not slaves to sin. You belong to Jesus, and you can live for Him with joy and obedience.
Parents, this means your home is a training ground for holiness. The way you love and correct your children, the way you honor one another in marriage, the way you work and serve—all of it is to be shaped by this gospel reality: you are dead to sin and alive to God. Your words, your habits, your tone, your priorities—all of them must come under the lordship of Christ.
Singles, this means your life is not on hold until something changes. You are alive to God now. Christ is your portion, your purpose, your hope. Live out your freedom in Him right where you are, serving the King with undivided devotion.
Husbands and wives, this means your marriage isn’t a negotiation of rights but a declaration of resurrection. The way you forgive, the way you speak, the way you lay down your life for one another—that’s where the risen Christ is seen in you.
Grandparents, this means your work isn’t finished. The next generations need to see what it looks like to live free—to live as those who have learned to reckon themselves dead to sin and alive to God. Your prayers, your stories, your faithfulness still shape legacies that reach beyond your lifetime.
And for all of us—young or old, married or single, working or retired—the call is the same: Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Stop clinging to the old life. Stop living as though sin still has the final word. You are in Christ, and Christ is risen. His victory is your victory. You can actually win the battle because Christ has already won the war. But when you fail—and you will sometimes—remember that Christ’s death didn’t only break sin’s power; it covered sin’s guilt. You stand in grace even as you grow in holiness.
When we began this morning, I asked: Do you want to give up your sin? The truth is, you can—because you’ve already died to it. Christ has broken its dominion. So now, by faith, live like it’s true. Take every thought captive, every desire, every action, every corner of your life, and bring it under the gracious reign of your risen King.
And remember that our hope, our freedom, our dominion, our very life—are found in Christ alone. We have died with Him, we live with Him, and we will be raised with Him. So now, Church, consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and live for the glory of your risen Lord.