There are people sitting in pews this Sunday who think they are still the person they used to be.
They believe Christ has forgiven them. They believe they are going to heaven when they die. But somewhere in the back of the head, the old self is still treated like the real self. The new identity feels like a costume. The old patterns feel like the truth.
If that is you, Romans 6 is the chapter you need to live in for a while.
It is one of the most underused chapters in the New Testament for the working life of a believer. Most readers skim it because the verbs feel theological and the argument feels dense. But Paul is not writing theology for theology’s sake. He is answering one question, and it is the most pastoral question he can ask.
If grace covers everything, why not keep sinning?
The answer he gives is not behavioral. It is ontological. It is about who you are, not what you do.
How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? (Rom 6:2).
The old you is dead. That is his argument. And the rest of the chapter is a series of pictures showing you why and how.
The Greek That Carries the Weight
Three words do most of the work in Romans 6. Get these and the chapter opens up.
| Greek | Strong’s | Verse | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| sustauroō (συσταυρόω) | G4957 | Rom 6:6 | To be crucified together with |
| synthaptō (συνθάπτω) | G4916 | Rom 6:4 | To be buried together with |
| logizomai (λογίζομαι) | G3049 | Rom 6:11 | To reckon, to count, to consider as fact |
Notice the prefix on the first two. Sun- in Greek means with. Together. Co-. Paul is not saying you have died like Christ died. He is saying you have died with Him. You were not crucified next to Christ. You were crucified inside of Him. Your old self was on that cross because you are in Him, and what happened to Him happened to you.
That is the doctrine of union doing the heavy lifting we talked about last post. Union is not abstract. It is the reason Romans 6 is true of you.
The Picture
Read verses 3 through 6 slowly.
Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Three movements. Three verbs.
Crucified with Him. Buried with Him. Raised with Him.
Notice what Paul does with the old man. That phrase translates ho palaios anthrōpos (G3820 / G444), the old human, the person you used to be before Christ. Paul says that person was crucified. Past tense. Aorist tense in the Greek, which marks a completed action. The old you is not on parole. The old you is in the grave.
Most of us pray as if the old self is still alive and badly behaved. Paul says the old self is a corpse. The struggle is not to kill it. The struggle is to stop treating it like it is still in charge.
The Hard Question
So why does the struggle still feel so real?
Because Paul makes a careful distinction. The old man is dead. But the body of sin is still around. The sin that lived in the old man left fingerprints on the way you think, on the way you respond, on the patterns your body has rehearsed for years. The old self is dead. The muscle memory is not.
This is why he says in verse 6 that the body of sin can be done away with and in verse 12 that we should not let sin reign in the mortal body. Two different things. The reign is over. The skirmishes continue. But the skirmishes are happening on territory that already has a new owner.
If you have ever wondered why a Christian still struggles with the same sins he hates, this is the answer. The old man is dead, but the patterns the old man cut into the wood of your life take time to be sanded out. The reign of sin ended at the cross. The renovation of the house is ongoing.
The Verb That Changes Everything
Then comes verse 11.
Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
That word reckon is logizomai. It is an accounting term. A bookkeeping term. It means to enter something in the ledger as a true fact and to act accordingly. It does not mean try to feel dead to sin. It does not mean hope you are dead to sin. It means count it as true, the way you count the balance in your bank account as true even though you cannot see the money.
This is one of the most practical commands in the New Testament, and most Christians never receive it as a command. They treat verse 11 as theology and skip to verse 12 for the application. But verse 11 is the application. Reckon yourselves dead. Live as if the gospel told the truth about you. Because it did.
Here is what that looks like in actual life.
Temptation comes at you. The familiar pull. The well-worn rut. The voice in your head saying this is who you are. Romans 6:11 says no. Reckon yourselves dead to that. The man who used to belong to that pattern is in the ground. The body that wants to keep walking the rut is the body of someone who already died and was raised in Christ. You are not negotiating with sin from inside a cage. You are walking past it from outside the grave.
That is not positive thinking. That is bookkeeping based on what Christ has already done.
What This Looks Like in a Week
Paul does not leave it abstract. Verses 12 through 14 give you the practical handles.
Do not let sin reign. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness. Present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead. Present your members as instruments of righteousness.
Watch the verb present. It is paristēmi (G3936). It means to place beside, to offer, to put at someone’s disposal. The picture is your body, your hands, your eyes, your tongue, your time, being placed in the service of one master or another. Sin used to own those instruments. It does not anymore. So the practical command is to start handing them over to the new owner. Daily. Hourly, when it comes to that.
This is not striving. This is reckoning. You are not trying to make yourself dead to sin. You are agreeing with the verdict already handed down in Christ.
A Word to the Reader
If you have read this far and you feel the weight of every old pattern that came back this week, hear this.
The pattern is not the man. The pattern is the residue.
The man who lived in those patterns was crucified with Christ. The man who lives now is the new self, hidden with Christ in God. The patterns are not the truth about you. They are the smoke from a fire that has already been put out.
Read Romans 6 every day this week. The whole chapter. Out loud once if you can. Underline every word that ends in with Him. Watch what Paul does with the verbs. Watch where he tells you to reckon.
Then take one place in your life where the old pattern keeps walking back into the room. Speak Romans 6:11 over it. Out loud. I reckon myself dead to this, alive to God in Christ Jesus. Not as a chant. As an entry in the ledger.
The old you is dead. Stop bringing it flowers.
Next post we go to a word that changed the way the first century thought about belonging. Adoption. Not in our modern sense. In the Roman sense, where it took a slave and turned him into an heir. We are headed to Romans 8.
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