rom 6:6-11

You Can Take This To The Bank:
The Old Man Is Dead
Rom 6:6-11

The next two chapters of Romans are dominated by five major questions:

Rom 6:1-2, Rom 6:15, Rom 7:7, Rom 7:13, Rom 7:24

1. The Journey from Knowing to reckoning
a. Knowing—6:6-10—the things God wants us to know about our salvation
b. Reckoning—an accountant’s term—to put on our account.

2. The Problem of the Christian Life
a. We are not saved, by works—Ep 2:8-9
b. We are not kept saved by our works—1 Pet 1:3-5
c. We to live in grace, by the power of the Holy Spirit—Gal 5:22-24, Eph 5:18-19
d. Yet, The Bible Says,
(1) “if you love me, keep my commandments.”
“without holiness, no one will see God…” 1 John 2:3
1 John 2:4; 1 John 3:22; 1 John 3:24; 1 John 5:2;
1 John 5:3; 2 John 1:6; Rev 12:17; Rev 14:12
Rev 22:14

e. Problems
(1) Yet, there are those who say implicitly that the Christian life is not about conduct.
(2) There are others which say that we are to live perfect, sinless lives.
(3) However, every scripture depicting the Christian life depicts it as being all about obedience.
(4) The Christian is caught between the twin cliffs of legalism and license.
f. Here is the answer
(1) We are saved by Grace through faith in Christ, plus nothing.
(2) This salvation is a total act of God
(3) The maintaining of our salvation is totally a work of God.
(4) And this salvation will result in:
(a) a desire to live Godly
(b) a desire to please the One who has loved us
(c) a need for fellowship with God and His people
(d) a need for His Word in our lives.
(e) A need for prayer
(f) an ability to fight against sin in our life
(g) a love of the things of God
(h) and a hatred of the things of the world.
(i) An expression of at least one spiritual gift

2. What Do We Know? Rom 6:6 “… Knowing this…”,

a. Context—6:1-5—identification with Christ is the key to eternal life.
b. Knowing—ginosko, to know by experience. Present participle—we are the ones knowing
c. The first thing we know is that the old man was crucified with Christ.
(1) This is substitution—none of us were literally on that Cross
(2) What is the Old Man? The old man is the old nature—the sinful self that desired to sin, that loved sin, and that cared nothing for God. The old man is the old self, before Christ.
(3) “Old” here is not the Greek word for old in years (archaios), but instead the word palaios, which refers to something worn out, useless, fit only for the garbage dump.


d. The Old man died on the cross along with our Savior—that our old man is crucified with him,
(1) Is crucified—aorist tense—this is not something that is happening to us gradually, it is not a process. Our old man was crucified, it is a done deal, it has happened. The old man is dead.
(2) Paul uses this type of language in other places: Gal 2:20, Gal 5:24, Col 3:9-10,
(3) In Eph 4:20-24, Paul tells us just that, that we must put off the characteristic habits of the old man so that we can adopt the habits of the new man.
e. As we are about to see, the old man is dead, but his legacy remains, that is the characteristics and habits he left in our bodies. Paul is telling us to put off the old habits and start making new ones.

3. The Body of Sin—that the body of sin might be destroyed,
a. What is the body of sin?
(1) First, it has to do with our literal bodies—look at the attention Paul pays to the body in Romans: Rom 6:12-13, 6:19, Rom 7:4-5, Rom 7:23-24, Rom 8:10-11, Rom 8:13, Rom 8:23
(2) Second, it is not that the bodies themselves are evil. We have to be careful here—some have tried to say that the body and anything physical is inherently evil, and that is not true.
(3) The body is like a dumb animal—it will act in accordance with its training. The problem is that our bodies are used to the reign and rule of sin. The old man is dead—but we still carry his carcass around.
(4) Moreover, the body has potential to be put to God’s service, if we present it to Him and dedicate it to Him—Rom 12:1
(5) The problem is that we must still deal with the physical body that remembers the old man, and we must out off the characteristics of the old man, which are still present in that physical body
(6) Again, I want to be very clear on this, it is not that the body is inherently evil, but our body is subject to habits of sin that the old man enjoyed, and our body must be brought under subjection to righteousness.
(7) Why is it that very small children wear diapers? Because they have not yet been trained to control all their bodily habits. The bodies of those infants are not intentionally obnoxious—but their bodies must be trained to obey good hygiene.
(8) The body of sin, then, is the memory and influence of the old master, sin, and the old, dead self. After all, it is difficult to do much in the way of sin without a body which has appetites for the sin.
(9) What does it mean for the body of sin to be destroyed? “…katargeoô (done away with) literally means “to render inoperative or invalid,” to make something ineffective by removing its power of control. (John Mac Arthur, Jr.)
(10) Destroying the body of sin means to render ineffective the influence of remembered sin by bringing the body under subjection. Rom 6:12-13, 19, Col 3:5, 1 Cor 9:27 But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: ……..

b. How is it that we do this? What are the methods?

(1) Well, first of all, this is the subject of much of the next two chapters of Romans.
(2) The short answer is to learn to walk in the Spirit and to follow the Spirit of God in your life, but without some explanation, that sounds like so much religious mumbo-jumbo.
(3) The “how to” follows, but first, we still have some things we must know and put to our account before we can really attack the “how to.”

c. The Goal: No longer Sin’s Servant—that henceforth we should not serve sin.

(1) If you belong to Christ, if you are indeed one of his, Who and What now reigns supreme in your life? Rom 5:

4. The Old Man Is Dead—The Freedom of Death— Rom 6: 7 For he that is dead is freed from sin. There is a certain type of freedom in death.
a. For unbelievers, it is a freedom at a horrible price, but there is a certain amount of freedom.
(1) No more bills or bill collectors.
(2) No more news reports on Monica Lewinski
(3) No more stock market reports.
(4) No more work, no more deadlines.
(5) If you had a habit—alcohol, drugs, tobacco, once dead you are free from that habit.

b. For believers, the freedom is complete—free from all the things that unbelievers are free from, but also free from pain, Free from care, free from worry, Standing in the blessed presence of Jesus, and In that day, redemption complete.

c. And he that is dead is freed from sin!

(1) We have died with Christ, we are under His reign and rule, and sin is no longer our master.
(2) Yes, the Old Man’s carcass is still with us, we must deal with the terrible legacy the old man left behind, but we are not under sin’s dominion.

d. I still have sin, because I am a whole person, body, Soul, and Spirit, and my physical body is used to sinning—the challenge of discipleship is to bring the body under subjection and defeat the sin that lives in it still.

2. If=since—8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

a. If—a first class condition (since) we have died with Him

b. Christ’s Mission Was To Die—8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him:

c. What Christ did NOT come to do:

(1) He did not come to hob knob with the Pharisees and Saducees.
(2) He did not come to form a new social-political movement and give power to the people.
(3) He did not come to overthrow the socio-economic system of His day.
(4) He did not come (that is, His primary mission was NOT) to set an example for us, though He did set many wonderful examples.
(5) His primary mission was not to preach the Truth, though He did preach the Truth.
(6) His primary mission was not to show wondrous signs, though He did show many wondrous signs.
(7) Jesus’ primary mission was to come to Earth to die for our sins. John 1:29, Mat 1:21, Mat 16:21-23, Luke 24:25-27, 1 Pet 1:18-20

5. We Believe
a. A Most Unusual Thing: Death Leads to Life—6:8
(1) We believe a most unusual thing—If( since) we be dead with Christ—we believe that we can be identified with the death of One who died long ago—
(2) We believe, furthermore, that by being identified with His death, we are then Identified with Christ in His life, His resurrection—but only if we are with Him in His death.
(3) Just as He came to die, He came to bring life. John 1:4, 10:10, John 5:24-26, Gal 2:20

b. We Know A Wonderful Thing: The Person and Work Of Christ Frees Us From Sin and Death—9-10

(1) He Died for our sins
(2) He was raised from the dead
(3) He has been restored to His position in Glory.

6. We Must Account This Thing To Be True—6:11

a. WE have to put this to our account, in our minds—we have to understand, know, and count that this is true.
b. As we war with the enemy every day, we need to know who we are in Christ.