NOTES for Rom 6:15-16

Apparently, in the Church in general, and in the Roman church in particular, there were people then who were sure that sin posed no threat to a Christian: after all, it only emphasizes and sets off the action of God's grace in a person's life, so there is nothing to fear in sin.

At the same time, they thought that since a Christian by definition already belongs to the Kingdom, no sin can harm him or separate him from the Kingdom: God is stronger than the evil in which the world lies, and Christ has finally defeated the evil of this world and the devil himself, so that evil now does not truly exist at all. And if that is so, then a Christian has no reason to fear this illusion or to think of sin as something real and effective.

Paul understands perfectly well that until the world and the human person are fully transformed, sin will have power over a person to the extent that the person himself is still the same as before. The struggle is not yet over: Christ has defeated the evil of the world, but each person will still have to defeat that same evil in himself, even though with His help. And until this is done, there can be no talk of a person being invulnerable to sin.

That means the path of righteousness remains the path of righteousness even in the Kingdom; it remains the path of opposition to sin, which seeks to rob the Christian of the life of the Kingdom in which he has come to share. This threat is not illusory; it is completely real. And it is real every second, every instant of human existence. The whole life of a Christian becomes a choice between sin and the Kingdom. And this is an ongoing choice, not simply one made once and for all. It is a choice that will have to be confirmed. Or not confirmed - but then one will have to forget both the Kingdom and salvation.

Continuing his reflections on sin and righteousness, Paul again and again draws his readers' attention to the fact that the difference between the world where sin reigns and the Kingdom, where sin no longer has a place, is absolute. The apostle also turns to the image of the two ways, traditional for the Torah and for the Bible as a whole, immediately emphasizing that in this case he is reasoning "in human terms" (vv. 16-21).

The qualification is entirely natural: after all, it makes sense to speak about choosing a way as the Torah speaks about it only in relation to the pre-Christian world, when this choice remains precisely and only the choice of a way. For a particular person, of course, it was absolutely important, since it determined that person's eternal destiny, but that time was still only a time of self-determination in our fallen world. The Kingdom still lay ahead; its history had not yet begun. It was only being revealed from afar as part of that plan for the world which God would accomplish through the Messiah-Christ whom He sent. Now the matter was no longer the choice of a way into the Kingdom, but the choice of the Kingdom itself, which had come into the world.

With such a choice, the very thought of the possibility of "sinning under grace" (v. 15) was not so much inadmissible as simply absurd. Such a thought could occur only to those who did not understand at all what the Kingdom is and what had changed in the world after the coming of the Savior. Grace, it appears, seemed to them to be a special gift of God that could magically neutralize the consequences of all the sins they had committed, so that now, as it seemed to them, they could sin as much as they wanted and with complete impunity. The thought that the authority of the Torah no longer applied to them was apparently understood by them to mean that now everything was permitted to them.

But the apostle, it appears, has something completely different in mind. He says that now the choice is not between two ways, but between the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness, on the one hand, and death, as the opposite of the Kingdom, on the other (v. 23). The choice of righteousness now means precisely the choice of the Kingdom, and those who have chosen it are being sanctified even now, and when they reach the fullness of the Kingdom, they receive eternal life (v. 22). And they are freed from the authority of the Torah not because one can sin in the Kingdom without regard for the commandment, but because now, having been sanctified, they are by definition already free from the sin with which they previously had to struggle.

Yesterday we read the Apostle’s words that before rising with Christ, we must die with Him, so that our sin might also die. By dying with Him, we become free from sin. And Baptism gives us this freedom. But for what purpose is it given to us? So that we may return to lawlessness? It seems obvious that it is not. Yet human nature is such that, alas, it is impossible to preserve the whiteness of our baptismal garments. And then we gradually begin to forget the grace bestowed upon us.

Paul, however, calls us who have received new life to give it to God and become “slaves of righteousness.” For He alone knows our true purpose; He alone knows the one path by which we can pass from sin to righteousness.

This is another of the Apostle’s paradoxes, for he so loves to speak of the Christian’s true freedom and of acting according to the “conviction of one’s own mind.” Yet in the words we read today, it becomes clear that our true freedom consists precisely in submitting our weak human will to God. God alone can lead us from death to life, because He Himself is true Life.