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Rom 6:1–2. What then shall we say? The Apostle proposes an objection to himself, to which he seemed in some way to have given occasion, by teaching that through the mercy of God and the merits of Christ Jesus grace abounded where sin had abounded, and that sinners are justified freely, without any regard to works or to faith preceding those works. Shall we remain in sin that grace may abound? Shall we judge that we must persevere in sin, or again serve sin, after our calling, after baptism, after our justification, so that God may more fully commend the power of his grace in us and exercise his mercy toward us again with greater glory? God forbid! The inference is absurd and detestable. For just as it is absurd to wish to be sick so that the art and skill of the physician may shine forth more clearly, so it is the height of madness to wish still to sin so that the mercy and grace of God may be more highly commended. For we who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it?
Here “sin” is taken in the dative, not the ablative case, as in Galatians 2:19, “to have died to the Law,” that is, no longer to live according to the Law; it is a metaphorical expression. For just as one is said to be dead who no longer has the functions and operations of life which he formerly had, so those who have been freed from sin through the grace of Christ are said to be dead to sin, because sin in them has been extinguished and completely destroyed; it now has no operations, nor any commerce with them, just as the living have no commerce with the dead. We who have died to sin, how shall we still live in it? It is certainly unworthy that we should again serve sin after death and resurrection.
Rom 6:3. Or do you not know that all we who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Baptism is the baptism of the baptized person himself. All who in baptism have given their name to Christ and have been grafted into his image and into his mystical body, by our baptism represented the death and burial of Christ: immersed and, as it were, buried beneath the water. And what the death of Christ was to sin living and reigning in him, that baptism is to sin in us. All who have been baptized according to the institution of Christ Jesus, and professing the faith and doctrine of Christ, have been baptized by the power of his death and in faith in his death and resurrection. From this passage it is shown that infants who are baptized in Christ die to sin; but to what sin do they die, if not to that which they contracted by being born, as St. Augustine teaches against Julian and elsewhere.
Rom 5:4. For we have been buried with him by baptism into death. By the very rite of baptism, namely the immersion of our body into the water, we expressed the burial of Christ, so that through baptism we might die to sin, that is, that sin might be extinguished in us by the power of holy baptism derived from the death of Christ. So that, just as Christ rose from the dead by the glory of the Father—that is, by the power of his divinity, which is the same as the Father’s—so we also might walk in newness of life. Thus, just as Christ by the power of the Father and his own rose to a glorious and immortal life, so we also, after we have emerged from the waters of baptism, should establish a new life.
Rom 6:5. For if we have been made planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be of his resurrection. For if we have been grafted into Christ, like branches into a vine, through baptism, which is the likeness of his death, and thus have been made sharers in his death (cf. Colossians 2:14), dying to sins, then also in the likeness of his resurrection in baptism—where the bond that was against us was blotted out—we must be sharers in that same resurrection, so as to walk in newness of life and to be conformed in spirit to Christ rising again.
Rom 6:6. Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified together with him. For we are certain that the old age and corruption of sin have been taken away by the death of Christ, its stain wiped away, its guilt abolished, its fuel mortified (cf. Colossians 2:14). So that the body of sin may be destroyed, that is, that the mass and heap of evil works, every kind of sin, the habit of sinning—which, as St. Augustine says, is like a certain structure made up of many vices as though they were members—may be destroyed in us, so that we may no longer serve sin by giving consent to depraved desires and by carrying out in action what they suggest.
Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified together with him—in a typical sense. For the crucifixion of the old man was signified in the cross of the Lord, just as the renewal of the new man was signified in his resurrection. For concerning the old man, whose likeness Christ bore, the handwriting that was against us was nailed to the cross (cf. Deuteronomy 21:23; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13; Romans; Isaiah 53:6).
Christ hanging on the cross bore what was said by Moses: “Cursed by God is everyone who hangs on a tree.” For this reason he is said to have been made sin for us and made a curse, and that God laid on him the iniquity of us all, and he shall bear our iniquities.
Rom 6:7. For the one who has died to the old life through baptism, by which we die together with Christ, has been justified from sin: his sins have been remitted, he has been transferred to the state of justice, he has been absolved from sins. The expression is taken from forensic courts, where those who were acquitted were said to be “justified,” so that they could no longer be accused of the same crime. The Syriac renders it: “For he who has died has been freed from sin.” Hence it follows that after baptism he should no longer serve it.
Rom 6:8–11. But if we have died with Christ: if we have truly died to sins, just as Christ truly died for their expiation, we believe that we shall also live with Christ, conforming our manner of life in the present to the new life of our Lord, so that in the future we may be sharers in that glorious and immortal life. Knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more: Christ, raised from death, does not die again; death shall no longer have dominion over him—or, according to the force of the Greek text, does not have dominion. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. As far as concerns the death which he underwent for sin—that is, to expiate, destroy, and exhaust our sins—he died once for all; by one death he satisfied for all, and therefore it is not necessary that he die again (cf. 2 Corinthians 13:4). But the life that he lives, now raised from death, he lives to God: he lives by the power of God, living a life worthy of God and endowed with immortality. So also you must consider yourselves dead indeed to sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thus consider yourselves as dead to sin through baptism, but living for God, whom alone you ought to serve—this you have attained through the grace of Christ Jesus, or rather, this is what Christ Jesus our Lord rightly requires of us (cf. St. Augustine, Contra duas Epistolas Pelagianorum, I, c. 13; Sermon 128).
Rom 6:12. Therefore let not sin reign in your mortal body, so as to obey its concupiscences. Do not, then, allow concupiscence—which remains in the reborn as a combatant, and is called sin and the law of sin because it incites to sin and often entices—to rule over you while you bear a mortal body, which weighs down the soul. Strive that sin, whose dominion has already been lost, may not desire to reign again in you. Lest this happen, do not yield your members to depraved desires that entice to sin; do not consent to unlawful acts.
Rom 6:13. Nor present your members as instruments of iniquity to sin, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of justice to God. Since the Apostle speaks of sin and justice as though they were two kings, each having his own kingdom and lordship, mutually hostile to one another, he mentions the arms of each and teaches the manner of securing victory. Do not present your members to sin in obedience, as weapons and instruments by which it may wage war against you or by which you yourselves may fight to establish its reign by committing iniquitous deeds; but present yourselves to God as living from the dead—devote your whole selves to God and give yourselves to his service, as befits those who by his grace have been raised from the death of sin to a new life—and present your members to God as instruments of justice. Consecrate your members to God, that they may serve and fight, like weapons, for every work of justice and virtue.
Rom 6:14. For sin shall not have dominion over you. The powers of sin are no longer so great as they once were, in the time of the Mosaic Law. For you are not under the Law, but under grace. You are not under the servitude of the Law, which demanded observance yet did not assist in fulfilling its precepts; rather, you have been transferred to the grace of Christ through baptism and faith in Jesus Christ, from whom you should hope for just assistance to resist sin—unless, casting aside the arms of justice, you willingly surrender yourselves to it. A man is under the Law, says St. Augustine, when through the Law he has knowledge of sin, and, not yet aided by the divine Spirit, wishing to live according to the Law, he is overcome and sins knowingly, and being subdued by sin, serves it; for whoever is overcome by another is made his slave (2 Peter 2:19). Thus, by the knowledge of the commandment, sin works in man all concupiscence, with an added heap of transgression, and so what is written is fulfilled: “The Law entered that the offense might abound.” But he is under grace when God looks upon him so that, for the fulfilling of what he commands, he himself is believed to assist; when man begins to be led by the Spirit of God, then concupiscence is desired against the flesh with the stronger power of charity, so that, although there still remains something that resists man—because he is not yet wholly healed of infirmity—yet from faith he lives justly and lives justly insofar as he does not yield to evil concupiscence, being overcome by the delight of justice, and thus advances toward freedom.
Rom 6:15–16. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the Law but under grace? God forbid! The Apostle proposes and resolves the objection to himself. Are we therefore to think that we may indulge in vices because we are not under the Law and have remission prepared for us by grace, which the Law did not give? Far be it that we should even think this, or imagine a life of justice to be so conceived. Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, you are slaves of the one whom you obey—either of sin unto death, or of obedience unto justice? Do you not know that whoever hands himself over to another to obey becomes his slave? Yet different wages correspond to different masters. For the one who obeys sin is led by its servitude to the second death, to eternal damnation; but the one who obeys God becomes a happy slave of obedience, because by the habit of obeying his soul is more and more inclined to obedience, and by this salutary obedience, which he gladly renders to the divine commands, he fulfills justice. Obedience is opposed to sin because sin is disobedience to the heavenly commandments.
Rom 6:17–18. But thanks be to God that, though you were slaves of sin, you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were handed over. I give thanks to God that, when you were slaves of sin, his mercy going before you and calling you, you obeyed from the heart the doctrine of the Gospel according to that form and rule into which you were instructed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of justice. Thus, freed from sin, to whose shameful servitude you had been bound, you were transferred to the glorious and sweet servitude of justice—that is, of every virtue.
Rom 6:19. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. What I require of you, do not think it heavy, difficult, or alien to reason and humanity. For I adapt myself to the measure of human weakness and condition, and prescribe to you what is most consonant with reason and suited to human frailty. For just as you presented your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity, so now present your members to serve justice unto sanctification. As you handed over the members of your body to serve fornication or other carnal sins, and injustice conceived in the heart unto iniquity committed in deed, so now at least with equal zeal present your members as instruments for serving the justice proposed in the Gospel, through good works, to accomplish the work of your sanctification, which is the will of God. Tertullian reads: “So now present your members as handmaids of justice.”
Rom 6:20–22. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with respect to justice. When you served sin, you were free from the noble and most desirable servitude of justice—free, I say, with a pernicious freedom, with no bridle of justice restraining you from rushing headlong into every kind of vice. What fruit, then, did you have at that time in those things of which you are now ashamed? What fruit, what advantage, did you then reap from the works of sin which you are now ashamed to have committed? For the end of those things is death. The outcome and wage of those works is death, temporal and eternal; both are deserved by those who do these things. For when the soul separates itself from God, it is fitting that the body be separated from it—that is the first death; and when it chooses for a time to be separated from God for the sake of sinful pleasure, it is fitting that it be separated from him eternally—that is the second death. But now, having been freed from sin and made slaves of God, you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life. Now, freed from the dominion of sin which you served and devoted to God in a willing and blessed servitude, you receive from that servitude the most excellent fruit, namely holiness and purity of life, and you have as your end eternal life. He opposes end to end, life to death—not brief and passing, but immortal and eternal.
Rom 6:23. For the wages of sin is death. Here sin is represented by a prosopopoeia, as a king—or rather a tyrant—who pays wages to his soldiers. The wages, or—as the Greek text has it—the ὀψώνια (rations, pay), of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Greek, τὸ χάρισμα τοῦ Θεοῦ (the gift, or rather the gracious gift, of God). Tertullian uses this term in De Resurrectione carnis c. 47. And this name corresponds most fittingly to wages: for kings are accustomed, besides pay, to give their distinguished soldiers crowns, laurels, and honors. To these gifts the Apostle compares eternal life—not because it is not given to the deserving, but because it far exceeds merits. The Apostle did not wish to call eternal life the wages of justice or the reward of good works, but the gift of God: first, because all dignity and all merit of works come from grace and from God’s good pleasure and promise, not from their own nature; secondly, because the predestination of the elect to eternal life is altogether gratuitous and independent of any foreseen merits, which God himself creates and crowns. Moreover, God bestows eternal life and all the graces that lead to it upon us through the merits of Christ Jesus our Lord. It is fitting to read St. Augustine, especially Enchiridion c. 107 and elsewhere, where he expounds this final verse: “Eternal life itself,” he says, “which is certainly the reward of good works, the Apostle calls the grace of God. For the wages of sin is death; but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Wages are paid as something owed for military service; they are not given as a gift. Therefore he said, ‘the wages of sin is death,’ to show that death is inflicted on sin not undeservedly but as something due. But grace, unless it is gratuitous, is not grace. It must therefore be understood that even the good merits of man are gifts of God, and that when eternal life is rendered for them, nothing other than grace for grace is rendered.”
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