By No Means!

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” -Romans 6:1–2

Now we see what profound depths of God’s wisdom and saving grace Paul must plunder in order to make the gospel, so clearly laid out already, understandable to those who willingly slander him. We must keep in view two things Paul has already stated if we are to grasp the depth of what seems to be such crude utterance: by no means! 

First, he says in Romans 3:21-25, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

It is clear as daylight that salvation—justification before God—can only be attained through faith in Jesus Christ because all are sinners and cannot please God by keeping the law. They must receive the gift of grace (unmerited favor) from God that was accomplished by Jesus for us. And the greater the sin, the greater the grace (Cf. Romans 5:18-21).

Second, in Romans 3:7–8, he mentions in passing that he is often slandered as condoning sin so grace can abound. He says, “But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.”

The answer to the suggestion that since where sin abounds, grace much more abounds, we should, therefore, continue in sin so grace will continue to abound (that which Paul had been accused of preaching) is, as was stated previously: by no means! That’s not the way it works. Why?

Because we cannot separate or compartmentalize the work of Christ who imputed his righteousness to us. The work of Christ is not merely justification. It is redemption too. It is sanctification and glorification as well. 

If we have Christ’s righteousness imputed to us as our just standing before God, the only way we could have attained it is by our union with Christ in his death and resurrection. If we died with Christ, we also died to sin. Therefore, we can’t continue in sin that grace may abound because we died to sin and were raised to walk in newness of life in Christ (as we shall soon learn Cf. Romans 6:4).