Freedom in Christ

• v1: Why would anyone worry that Christianity invites acquiescence of lawlessness?
• v4: What logic in Christianity forbids a truce with sin?
  • v4 describes the way how Christians pursue holiness as ‘walking in newness of life’. How does that differ from Pharisaic holiness?
  • v3, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus…”: Where do believers learn this? cf v17 [Instruction in elementary Christian doctrine]

• vv5-6: What condition so unites the believer to Christ that ‘newness of life’ (renewal from within) is guaranteed?
  • Paul taught that when Jesus died on the cross, in some sense “our old man” (gr. anthropos*) was crucified with Him: How can we know that this is true? cf v17**
• v7: How does such dying ‘free’ us (lit. justify, declare righteous) from sin? [The death penalty kills the body that sinned, v6, and thus atones for the guilt of sin, Ro 3:25]
• vv10-11: How does this elementary instruction in the Christian faith change what believers think of themselves?

• v12: Being made alive to God, the Christian will find himself at war: With whom, and where does that battle unfold? [Let not sin remain as the king of your heart]
• vv13-14: What is the objective of that war?
  • Hint: How does it differ from the struggle of those under the law? Hint: Who get‘s the glory for victory? [see Leader’s Note]

• v16: Why is sin compared to a “slave master”?
  • Read Jn 8:31-37. To whom was Jesus talking at the time?
  • Why did Jesus tell Jews who had (!) ‘believed’ in him (v31, cf Jn 6:65-66) that they were seeking to kill him (v37)?
• vv17-18: How do you expect such ‘obedience from the heart’ to manifest?
  • v18: Why can the heart not be freely autonomous? Why must it have God and His righteousness as a ‘new slave master’? =>

• vv19-21: What happens if man wants to be free from God? v20
• How do vv22-23 explain this paradox that in order to be free of sin, we must become ‘slaves’ of God?
  • Hint: How did Paul define here what freedom actually is? [Freedom from the dominion of sin, i.e. from its power]
• Read again Jn 8:34. Why can such freedom only be found ‘if the Son sets us free’?

• A concept called ‘No-Lordship salvation’ claims that people can be saved by believing in Jesus without obeying him as their Lord. How does Ro 6 debunk this as nonsense?
  • Hint: What sort of ‘salvation’ would this be, and why does it fall short of what salvation means in Ro 6?
• Overall, what do you hear as the tone of this chapter: Is Ro 6 for you a rallying call that you must submit to God’s commandments, like it or not [ = the 11th commandment]? Or is it for you a promise that in Christ you will find the freedom from the power of sin?
• If our freedom so depends on Jesus, what can we do to be set free by Him? cf Jn 8:31-32

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* NASB, NIV, ESV, and several other modern translations render the Greek expression “our old man” (or mankind) as our old “self” – as if Paul shared contemporary notions that repentance requires the creation of a new “self”, or perhaps a new social “identity”. By contrast, for Paul, our “old man” is the natural mankind in which we all share by our natural descent, and which is spiritually dead because of sin (Ro 8:10), unlike Christ and his body of which we became members by repentance and faith in Him – not to destroy in this one New Man any God-given social identities (Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and freeman, etc.), but to unite them by declaring them all invalid as a criteria for excluding anyone, cf Eph 2:15-4:26.

** From the Christian doctrine that “we who were baptised into His dead died and were buried with Him”, Ro 6:4, Col 2:12 – i.e. that in His crucifixion and burial, His body actually represented those who become members of that body by faith in Him. In the same manner as his resurrection body now represents them “in the heavenly {places}”, Eph 2:5-6.