Romans 6:6

“ Understanding this, that our old man has been crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. ”

Why introduce abruptly the notion of subjective knowledge into a relation which Romans 6:5 seemed to have laid down as objectively necessary? This phenomenon is the more remarkable because it is reproduced in Romans 6:9 in the εἰδότες, knowing that, and even in the λογίζεσθε, reckon that (Romans 6:11). Meyer thinks that the believer's subjective experience is cited here to confirm the moral bond indicated in Romans 6:5 as necessary in itself: “We shall certainly be partakers..., a fact besides which we cannot doubt, for we know that”...This appendix so understood has all the effect of an excrescence. Philippi, on the contrary, finds a consequence to be drawn indicated by this participle: “ And thus (in proportion as the we shall be of 5b is realized in us) we shall know experimentally that”...But the present participle does not naturally express a relation of consequence. There would rather have been needed καὶ γνωσόμεθα, and thus we shall know. Hofmann paraphrases: “And we shall make the experience that that has really happened to us, and happened in order that”...We do not see much difference between this meaning and that of Philippi whom this author criticises. The relation between the participle understanding, and the verb we shall be (Romans 6:5 b), is rather that of a moral condition, a means. As Gess puts it: “Our participation in Christ's resurrection does not take place in the way of a physical and natural process. That such a result may take place, there is needed a moral co-operation on the part of the believer.” And this co-operation of course supposes a knowledge, knowledge of the way (Romans 6:6) and of the end (Romans 6:8). The believer understands that the final object which God has in view in crucifying his old man (Romans 6:6) is to realize in him the life of the Risen One (Romans 6:8-9), and he enters actively into the divine thought. Thereby only can this be realized. This notion of subjective knowledge, expressed by the words: understanding this, was contained in the previous ἵνα, in order that, of Romans 6:4: “We were buried with Him with the aim of rising with Him, understanding that”...The whole piece, beginning with the or know ye not that of Romans 6:3, transports us into the inmost consciousness of the believer, as it has been formed in the school and through the personal assimilation of the death of Christ. The believer knows certainly that he is called to die, but to die in order to live again.

The expression: our old man, denotes human nature such as it has been made by the sin of him in whom originally it was wholly concentrated, fallen Adam reappearing in every human ego that comes into the world under the sway of the preponderance of self-love, which was determined by the primitive transgression. This corrupted nature bears the name of old only from the viewpoint of the believer who already possesses a renewed nature.

This old man has been crucified so far as the believer is concerned in the very person of Christ crucified. The apostle does not say that He has been killed. He may exist still, but like one crucified, whose activity is paralyzed. Up to the solemn hour of believing, sin puts on the behavior of triumphant independence, or presents itself to us as an excusable weakness. The instant we contemplate it in Christ crucified, we see it as a malefactor condemned and capitally punished by the justice of God; and its sentence of death pronounced in our conscience is the same to it within us as the cross was to Christ not an immediate death certainly, but the reduction of it to powerlessness.

The purpose of this moral execution, included in the very fact of faith, is the destruction of the body of sin. There ought to be a complete difference between this second fact indicated as the aim and the foregoing one. What the apostle calls the body of sin, cannot therefore be identical with what he calls our old man. Must we, with several, understand the body in the strict sense of the word, the apostle seeing in it the principle of evil in our human nature? But the sequel proves that he does not at all regard sin as inherent in the body and inseparable from it; for in Romans 6:13 he claims the body and its members for the service of God, and represents them as under obligation to become instruments of righteousness. It is the same in 2 Corinthians 4:10-12, where the life of Jesus is spoken of as displaying itself in the body, the mortal flesh of believers, which has become the organ of this heavenly life. So far is the apostle from regarding our bodily nature as the cause of sin, that in 2 Corinthians 7:1 he contrasts the defilements of the spirit with those of the flesh. And herein he is perfectly at one with the Lord, who, Matthew 15:19, declares that “ from the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies.” The very fact of the real incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, as taught by Paul, Romans 8:3 (see on the passage), suffices to refute the opinion which would hold the body to be the principle of sin. These considerations have led several commentators (Calv., Olsh., J. Müller, Philippi, Baur, Hodge) to understand the word body here in a figurative sense. According to them, it denotes sin itself as a heavy mass, or even as an organism, a system of evil dispositions, which keeps the soul under its yoke. The complement of sin they take as a genitive of apposition. One can easily understand in this sense how Paul should demand the destruction of this body of sin, that is to say, of sin itself. But it is impossible to harmonize this meaning with Romans 6:12-13, in which Paul, applying our passage, evidently speaks of the holy consecration of the body, taking the term in its strict sense. Besides, it would be difficult to escape from a tautology between this and the preceding proposition. There remains a third explanation found with varying shades in Meyer, Hofm., etc. It regards the genitive of sin as a complement of property or quality: the body so far as it serves as an instrument of sin in human life. This meaning is certainly the one which corresponds best with the thought of the apostle. Only, to understand the genitive of sin, we must add the idea: that from our birth there exists between our body and our sinful will that intimate relation whereby the two elements are placed in mutual dependence. This relation is not a simple accident; it belongs to the fallen state into which our soul itself has come.

The verb καταργεῖν, which we translate by destroy, strictly signifies: to deprive of the power of action; and hence to make needless or useless, as in Luke 13:7; Romans 3:3; or to annul bring to an end, destroy, as in 1 Corinthians 13:8; 1 Corinthians 13:10; 1 Corinthians 6:13; Ephesians 2:15, etc. Neither the meaning: to render inactive, nor to destroy, could be applied to the body, if we had to understand thereby the physical organism in itself. But the apostle has no thought here of recommending bodily asceticism to believers. It is not of the body as such that he is speaking; it is of the body so far as it is an instrument in the service of sin. Of the body in this special relation, he declares that it should be reduced to inaction, or even destroyed. It is obvious that in this application the two meanings of the word καταργεῖν amount nearly to the same. But the translation destroyed probably renders the thought best. A body, that of sin, is destroyed that another may take its place, the body which is an instrument of righteousness (Romans 6:13).

In the third proposition, which expresses the final aim of this inward labor, the apostle introduces a third subject: we, ἡμᾶς, a term which denotes the entire moral personality independently of the question whether it is or is not under the dominion of sin. This third subject differs wholly from that of the first proposition: the old man, as well as from that of the second: the body of sin. The old man is crucified by faith in Christ's crucifixion; the body of sin is destroyed, because in consequence of the crucifixion of the old man the corrupt will which formerly used the body for its own satisfaction is paralyzed, and so can dispose of it no more. And the ego, the true I, the moral personality in its essence, is thus set free at once, both from the power of the old nature and of the body its instrument, and can consequently consecrate this last to a wholly new use. The apostle illustrates the truth of this moral situation by an example taken from common life.