5. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
6. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
7. For he that is dead is freed from sin.
8. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:
9. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
death hath no more dominion over him.
10. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
11. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:5-11)
Paul is a remarkable writer; his style seems cramped and very technical;
it is a highly rabbinical approach. Behind his cautious and meticulous wording, however, there is a sledge-hammer power. Men prefer to go to Paul for selected verses to vindicate themselves; a systematic study of Paul is devastating to most theologies.
Paul begins by stating that, because we have been planted together in the death of Christ, our vicarious sacrifice, we are also alive in terms of His resurrection (v. 5). We now have, because of our death in Christ, a new life, a life which shares in the results of the resurrection. This means we have a victory over sin, guilt and death.
The purpose of Christ’s birth, life, atonement, death, and resurrection is to end the life of Adam in us, i.e., our bondage to sin, guilt, and death.
Whatever man does in Adam is a reproduction and repetition of that fallen nature. In Romans 8:2, Paul calls this “the law of sin and death.” The whole of human life under Adam is governed by that iron law. The religion, politics, sociology, and total life of the humanity of Adam is governed by that law, the fact of sin, and the guilt and death sin results in. The purpose of our deliverance, says Paul, is to destroy that bondage so that “henceforth we should not serve sin” (v. 6).
Death is a great dividing point. We are born into the humanity of Adam, and in Christ we die to that race, to be reborn into a new mankind, the humanity of Christ. This has a great consequence, “For he that is dead is freed from sin” (v. 7). By this fact, a new force enters history, one not bound by sin nor by its consequences, guilt and death. Rather, righteousness or justice and life now govern and motivate us.
In vv. 8-9, Paul states the logical conclusion: to be dead with Christ means to be alive with Him, and this requires an amazing conclusion.
Christ having been resurrected has overcome the power and hold of death
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and can die no more; “death hath no more dominion over him” (v. 9). His death is the death of death for us.
Death is a decisive fact. For the humanity of Adam, it is the ugly end of all its hopes and plans; it is a standing offense to all its dreams of a humanistic paradise. For us in Christ, death is no less a decisive fact, but a very different one. First, we die to sin, i.e., we are judicially dead in Christ’s death, our sin-bearer, and we are resurrected or regenerated in Him.
Second, we die physically at the end of our life here to enter into heaven.
Third, with the resurrection of the body at the end of history, we see the total death of death, and the fullness of life and justice.
It is important now for us to analyze what Paul is telling us. He gives us with great clarity and power the sociology of justification by faith. He also tells us what the alternative to this is; it is the sociology of sin. The humanity of Adam is fallen, and it has a will to sin summed up in Genesis 3:5, the will of every man, and his nature, is to be his own god determining good and evil for himself and thus being his own law-maker. The motive force in the humanity of Adam is thus sin, and this sin is to play god, to control other men and things. This means that the purpose of religion in Adam’s world is the control of man and nature, and this too becomes the purpose of humanistic science. True education leads a person into growth under God and in knowledge of the reality of God’s creation. Humanistic education aims at controlling people in order to establish a realm in which the masses are ruled by philosopher kings. Any humanistic educational program will thus be a menace to freedom under God. Its goals will be manipulation and control.
The politics of Adam will be no different, only more potent in its applications. In 1915, Franklin Hichborn described such politics in his study of “The System.” He dealt specifically with the details of “the system”
in San Francisco, the interlock between politics, capital, labor, and crime to control the civil order and its peoples. During the 1940s and 1950s, I had personal experience with “the system” in two states, and its details were told to me by some honest officials who worked vainly against it. To cite a specific example, I was told of the method used against a “problem” person who posed a threat to “the system.” A careful check on his home made it possible for men to enter it when no one was there. Every aspect of every room was carefully photographed in color. The man was later told quietly to drop his proceedings, otherwise two homosexuals were prepared to testify that, on a given night, when his wife and children were elsewhere, they had been there to engage in homosexual acts with him. They would be able (from the photographs) to describe the house in detail. The two homosexuals were men who some time before had been caught molesting very young boys. Their confessions had been gained in exchange for immunity from prosecution on the condition that they would subsequently
ROMANS 6:5-11 91 be ready to testify as instructed. These proceedings came “from above,” and all the police knew was that no prosecution ensued. The same kind of pressure was used in other cases by using prostitutes, under-age girl delinquents, and so on. On occasion, such tactics are also used against churchmen by “the system,” as I know from experience. The net result is to either compel surrender by any person who threatens the system, or to isolate them and make them ineffective. The press, incidentally, is often a part of “the system.”
Something like this may have been at work in the Watergate scandal. Jim Hougan, in Secret Agenda (1984) alleges, and with considerable evidence at points, that, behind Watergate was prostitution and blackmail, and the attempt to gain control of key files for such purposes.
On every level of politics, “the system” operates by using sin as the instrument of control. If the controlled man plays the game and does as he is told, he can be made into a “great statesman” and one of the controllers.
Evidence of the operation of “the system” has been found in antiquity, going back to the times of Abraham and Moses.
Attempts at reforming “the system” are futile as long as the people are children of Adam. However great the facade of loving virtue and justice, such men are dedicated to playing god, and, whether it be the sexual realm, or the religious, the economic, educational, or political, the results are the same. Paul calls this “the law of sin and death” as against “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:2).
Paul declares that “the just shall live by faith” (Rom. 1:17). Their motivating force is not the will to be gods (Gen. 3:5), but to seek first the Kingdom of God and the justice thereof (Matt. 6:33). Their faith propels them into the world as “more than conquerors” (Rom. 8:37). The politics of justification is the politics of justice under God and according to His law.
Whereas the politics of sin is the politics of death, the sociology of justification, of the Kingdom of God, is compared to Christ’s resurrection.
In every realm, we are told by Paul, the goal is to establish the implications of our great liberation in Christ: “death hath no more dominion over Him”
(Rom. 6:9), and therefore no dominion over us because we are in Christ.
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