What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—  because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

In the early 1900s, the Russian monk Gregory Rasputin lived out and taught the dangerous idea of spiritual salvation gained through repeated experiences of sin and repentance. He believed that because those who sin the most require more of God's forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin without restraint experiences more of God’s grace when they repent (for the moment) than an ordinary sinner would. Because of this very flawed belief, Rasputin lived an immoral lifestyle, notorious for sin, and became known for teaching other eager disciples that this cycle was the only true path to salvation. Rasputin's idea was not novel and was alive and well in the early church as well. Many groups called themselves Christians but had simply adopted a mixed religiosity of mystic Judaism or Greek paganism and mixed it into a compromised form of Christianity, which was not Christianity at all. The Nicolaitians and Gnostic libertines of Paul's day are two examples of this: calling themselves Christians but living an extremely open and compromised lifestyle in which they participated in idol worship and pagan festivals, engaged in sexual immorality, and promoted pagan teaching. They would later go along with the idolatry of making sacrifices to and worshipping the Roman emperor in what would be known as the imperial cult.

Paul addresses this continuing dilemma in today's passage. He had previously introduced the idea that where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20). He now wonders if someone might take this truth to imply that it doesn’t matter if a Christian lives a life of sin because God will always overcome great sin with greater grace. After all, if God loves sinners, then why worry about sin? If God gives grace to sinners, then why not sin more and receive more grace? Some people might think that their job is to sin and God’s job is to forgive, so they will gladly do their job, and God will do His job. This is an extreme example of the abuse of grace and the idea behind Paul’s question, “Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound?” If God’s salvation and approval are given based on faith instead of works, won’t a person just say “I believe” and then live any way they please? From a purely natural or secular viewpoint, grace is dangerous and easily abused. This is why many people don’t really teach or believe in grace and instead emphasize living by the truth of the law. They believe that if you tell people God saves and accepts them apart from what they deserve, then they will have no motive to be obedient. In their opinion, you simply can’t keep people on the straight and narrow without a threat from God hanging over their heads. If people believe their position in Jesus is settled because of what Jesus did, then is the motivation for holy living gone? This problem of grace was present in Paul's day and also in our own. But it's really not a grace problem at all; it's a sin problem. Paul uses today's passage to explain how to push back against this flawed thinking and make a case for grace.

All people want salvation because we were all born with eternity in our hearts. We all know we need something, but the problem is that we want salvation on our own terms. We wish to approach God and set the ground rules for how the interactions will go when, in reality, we are powerless and hold no leverage in any interaction with God. This abuse of grace would be a major issue in the early church that Paul, other disciples, and church fathers would have to address for hundreds of years. For Paul, the idea that anyone might continue in sin and that grace may abound is unthinkable. When we are born again in Christ, our relationship with sin is permanently changed. We have died to sin and should not live any longer in it. The old man, the self that is patterned after Adam and deeply ingrained in rebellion against God and His commands, has died. The law is unable to deal with the old man because it can only show the old man what the righteous standard of God is. The law tries to reform the old man, but Grace understands that the old man can never be reformed. He must be put to death, and for the believer, that old man dies with Jesus on the cross. The crucifixion of the old man is something God did for us. None of us nailed the old man to the cross. Jesus did it, and we are told to consider it fully done and finished. In place of the old man, God gives the believer a new man, a new self, and a new spirit that is obedient, in alignment, and pleasing to God. The New Testament describes the new man for us as one created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness (Ephesians 4:24) according to the image of Him who created him (Colossians 3:10). God uses the death of the old man, the sinful nature, to liberate us from the bonds of sin. A dead man can no longer have authority over us, so we should not allow him to. Two other places in the New Testament that mention the old man (Eph 4:22 and Col 3:9) both remind us to consider him dead and gone. We don’t battle the old man. We simply reckon him dead. But we may ask: If the old man is dead, why do I feel a pull and desire to sin inside of me? Paul explains that these desires come from the flesh, which is distinct and different from the old man. It’s hard to precisely describe the flesh; some have called it “the screen onto which the inner man is displayed." Our inner being has desires, impulses, and passions, which are played out in our mind, in our will, and in our emotions, but it is the flesh that acts out what is inside. The flesh is a problem in the battle against sin because it has been expertly trained in sinful habits by three sources. First, the old man, before he was crucified with Christ, trained, imprinted, and engrained himself in the flesh. Second, the fallen world system, in its spirit of rebellion against God, can have a continuing influence on the flesh. Finally, the devil and his minions seek to tempt and influence the flesh towards sin. With the old man dead, what do we now do with the flesh? God calls us, in participation with Him, to actively do day by day with the flesh just what He has already done with the old man – to crucify it and make it also dead to sin (Galatians 5:24). In this way, the Grace of God has much power in our lives, not to be abused, but to give us strength to tear down strongholds and resist the pull of sin. No matter what the battle, victory can only be found in Jesus!