Romans 6:1

“ What shall we say then? Should we continue in sin, that grace may abound? ”

The meaning of this question: What shall we say then? can only be this: What consequence shall we draw from the preceding? Only the apostle's object is not to draw a true consequence from the previous teaching, but merely to reject a false conclusion which might be deduced by a man still a stranger to the experience of justifying faith. It need not therefore be concluded from this then that the apostle is now passing from the principle to its consequences. In that case he would have said directly: “Shall we then continue”...?

This question is usually connected with the declaration, Romans 5:20: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” But this saying referred solely to the part played by the law in the midst of the Jewish people, while the question here put is of universal application. We should rather be inclined to hold that Paul was alluding to the saying, Romans 5:16. There, he had pointed to all the offences committed by the many sinners, terminating through the act of grace in a sentence of universal justification; and he may well, consequently, ask himself, in the name of those who do not believe in such a divine act, whether believers will not abuse it in the line of the question proposed. But even this connection would still be too narrow. If account is taken of the meaning of the whole previous part, and of the calumnious accusation already expressed Romans 3:8, it will rather be concluded that the question bears on the whole doctrine of justification by grace, chaps. 1-5. As to believers justified in the way described above, it is evident that they will never put this alternative: Shall I sin or shall I not sin? For the seal of holiness has already been impressed on their inner and outer life by the manner of their justification. This is what the apostle proceeds to show while answering the objection suggested.

The reading of the T. R., ἐπιμενοῦμεν, shall we continue? has no critical authority; it probably arises from the preceding ἐροῦμεν. The reading of the Sinait. and of two Byz., ἐπιμένομεν, let us continue! or we continue, expressing either an exhortation or a resolution, would make believers hold a language far too improbable. That of the Alex. and of the Greco-Lats., ἐπιμένωμεν, that we should continue! or should we continue? is the only admissible one. Hofmann takes it in the first of these two senses as a mutual exhortation, and with this view supplies a new: Shall we say? understood before the second question. But this invitation to sin, which believers would thus be made to address to one another, is too improbable a supposition; and the ellipsis of the verb: Shall we say? is arbitrary and superfluous. The second of the two meanings of ἐπιμένωμεν, should we continue? (the deliberative conjugation), is the only natural one: Should we take the resolution of continuing in our old state of sin? The following conjunction: that, corresponds well with this deliberative meaning. It is a calculation: the more sins committed, the more material will grace find on which to display itself. ᾿Επιμένειν, to continue, persevere, in a state to which a decisive circumstance ought to have put an end.

The reply is forcible and summary. A fact has taken place which renders this calculation absolutely impossible.