Freedom from the clutches of sin
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
When Paul says “If we have been united with him . . .” he is using a conditional sentence, but the context makes it clear that the content of this sentence is not hypothetical or “iffy” at all. Hence the sentence could be translated, “Since we have been united with him . . .”
The general emphasis of this section is similar to the previous one, that is, our being united with Christ in death. But there is also an advance in thought. Paul becomes more explicit as to what in us died and how it died. In dying with Christ through Baptism, it was “our old self” that was “crucified.”
Crucifixion was a grim form of execution reserved for the worst criminals. That kind of death was appropriate for the criminals all of us had become by virtue of following the lead of our first parents, Adam and Eve. Our old self—our “old Adam,” as it is often designated—is the evil nature we were born with, which is always inclined only toward evil. It is the sinful human condition God deplored when he made the promise after the flood, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood” (Genesis 8:21). Here in his letter to the Romans, Paul refers to this sinful nature as the “body of sin” that needed to “be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
Verse 7 adds Paul’s rationale for the preceding statement. The translators of the NIV have used a dash to set the verse off as a parenthetical remark. Their translation, “because anyone who has died has been freed from sin” makes it a general statement, true of any deceased person. Death ends any human response to outward stimuli. As such, it is certainly true that a dead person no longer sins.
But an alternate interpretation is possible here. The Greek language had an indefinite pronoun for anyone. That word, however, is not used here. The original simply says, “the one who died has been freed from sin.” That need not be a generalization referring to anyone who has died; it could refer to a specific person, that is, Christ.
Christ’s death is the focus of attention throughout this section and is the enabling cause of the new life in the Christian. Christ’s death, appropriated by the believer through Baptism, is critical to the change that needs to take place if there is to be any new life in the child of God.