6:2 God forbid. {2} How shall we, that are {b} dead to sin, live any longer therein?
(2) The benefits of justification and sanctification are always inseparable joined together, and both of them proceed from Christ by the grace of God: now sanctification is the abolishing of sin, that is, of our natural corruption, whose place is taken by the cleanness and pureness of a reformed nature.
(b) They are said by Paul to be dead to sin, who are made partakers of the power of Christ, so that the natural corruption is dead in them, that is, the power of it is removed, and it does not bring forth its bitter fruits: and on the other hand, they are said to live to sin, who are in the flesh, that is, whom the Spirit of God has not delivered from the slavery of the corruption of nature.
6:2 God forbid. By no means, as in the Revised Version. The answer is emphatic. The thought is abhorrent, and the thing impossible from the very nature of the Christian life. The Christian life begins with a death to sin.
How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer in it? The Revised Version says, Who died to sin. That is correct. The Greek verb apothnesko is in the past tense. A fact is referred to that occurred in the past. Death is a separation. When we severed our relation with sin, we died to it. If we have cut loose from it, how can we continue in it?
6:2 Dead to sin - Freed both from the guilt and from the power of it.
6:1,2 The apostle is very full in pressing the necessity of holiness. He does not explain away the free grace of the gospel, but he shows that connexion between justification and holiness are inseparable. Let the thought be abhorred, of continuing in sin that grace may abound. True believers are dead to sin, therefore they ought not to follow it. No man can at the same time be both dead and alive. He is a fool who, desiring to be dead unto sin, thinks he may live in it.
