New Testiment Studies

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be dis-annulled that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin’ Romans 6:6

The Apostle then brings in his second argument, which is, ‘that henceforth we should not serve sin’. That is simply another way of saying that ‘henceforth we should no longer be the slaves of sin’. He does not just mean that we should no longer commit acts of sin; he says that we should no longer be the slaves of sin. He is looking at the matter in general. Man in Adam is a slave of sin; he has no freedom. The natural man, the sinful man, has no freedom; he is the slave of sin. Man is always a slave; he is either the slave of Adam or he is ‘the bond-slave of the Lord Jesus Christ’. The business of redemption is to deliver us from the slavery of sin. The Christian is no longer the slave of sin, but, alas, he still often allows it to rule in his body. It remains in his body, and he allows it far too often to rule him and to govern him. He should not do so, and there is no excuse for his doing so. That is why the Apostle has written this sixth chapter. And that is why he will say in verses 12 and 13, ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God’.

I trust that the distinction between ‘the old man’ and ‘the body of sin’ is clear. It is most important. That is why I have contended so much against the idea that the ‘old man’ means the ‘old nature’, and that the ‘old man’ and ‘the body of sin’ are one and the same thing. If you believe that, you will still be in bondage. This can be seen clearly in what some of the commentators write. For instance, one says, ‘Now that we are Christians we have to oppose the old man’. What nonsense! You do not have to ‘oppose’ the old man, because the old man was crucified with Christ. Indeed the Apostle goes on to tell us that he not only died with Him but was even buried. Do you go on opposing someone who has been buried in a grave? That is the kind of muddle you get into if you do not keep these terms distinct and separate, and have them clearly in your mind.

Or take another statement, ‘We gradually die to the old man’. Again, what nonsense! ‘We gradually die to the old man’ — the ‘old man’ who is already dead and who is gone once and for ever!

Another writes about ‘Our gradual deliverance from the dying man!’ But Paul has not only told us that the old man died once and for ever, but that the old man has already been buried. Remember how he emphasized that point. ‘Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death’. It is a very wrong procedure to bury somebody who is only in a state of dying! If the old man is still ‘the dying old man’ it is a monstrous crime to bury him! Paul says, You do not die to that old man; the old man is not going through a process of dying; he has died, and he has been buried, he has gone once and for ever, he is finished. You are a new man in Christ. How monstrous, therefore, to talk about ‘being delivered gradually from the dying old man’!

Even the great Abraham Kuyper could actually write like this, ‘God’s child remains the old man’s grave-digger until the hour of his own departure!’ But I repeat, Paul says that the ‘old man’ was not only crucified with Christ, not only died with Christ, but was buried with Christ. Abraham Kuyper is trying to dig the grave of one who has already been buried! If you are not clear about this, and are still trying to kill the old man, or trying to bury him, you will continue in bondage, and you will be unhappy. The one way to release and deliverance is to realize that we died to sin, that the old man died to sin once and for ever with Christ in His death. The ‘old man’ does not mean the old nature; it is ‘the body of sin’ that means that. The old man has not to be killed, you need not dig a grave for him, he has already been buried in it. When Christ was buried in His grave the ‘old man’ was with Him in it. In verses 8, 9 and 10 Paul will remind us of the same thing again.

Let me close by quoting the Heidelberg Catechism. It asks in the forty-third question, ‘What then are further results of the death of Christ?’ And here is the answer: ‘That by virtue of His death our old man is crucified and buried with Him.’ That is better! ‘Our old man is crucified and buried with Him, that so the corrupt inclinations of the flesh...‘ The Heidelberg Catechism rightly draws a distinction between ‘the old man’ and ‘the flesh’. ‘The old man is crucified and buried with Him, that so the corrupt inclinations of the flesh may no more reign in us.’ The ‘old man’ is not ‘the flesh’, he is not the ‘corrupt nature’; the old man is the Adamic nature, the old humanity. The ‘flesh’ is ‘the body of sin’, the body in which sin tends to tyrannize still, the body in which sin yet remains. But I am given a guarantee that under the reign of grace even the body shall be delivered; but until the day of the glorification of the body I am told this:

‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof’. In other words, the way to deal with sin in the body, in the flesh, is to realize the truth about yourself even now. Realize the truth of what is possible to you in your body even here and now; but look forward at the same time to the final glorious truth of your glorification, which will include the final emancipation of your body also. Then the whole man - spirit, soul and body — will be entirely and perfectly delivered from the reign and the tyranny and the rule of sin.

For he that is dead is freed from sin. Romans 6:7

To understand this verse properly we must read with it verse 6. The word ‘For’ at the beginning obviously connects it with what the Apostle has just been saying: ‘Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that (in order that) the body of sin might be dis-annulled (put out of operation) that henceforth we should not be slaves to sin (or serve sin as slaves)’. Then comes this statement, ‘For he that is dead is freed from sin’.

It must be clear by now that almost every single statement in this vital and all-important chapter is pregnant with thought, and of the greatest possible significance to us from the standpoint of our life and living, and our warfare against sin. As we come therefore to this particular verse which has caused a great deal of perplexity to many people, and a good deal of disagreement, it is essential that we should approach it in its context. No one has ever pretended that this is an easy or a simple chapter; but as it is a crucial chapter we must take our time with it. Moreover the argument is so closely woven that if you do not follow one step you cannot possibly follow the next because each one leads on to the next. So it is important that we should be clear about the Apostle’s terms and their meaning, because when he has worked out his argument and laid down his doctrine he will then make a practical appeal to us. Obviously you cannot respond to an appeal if you do not understand the basis of the appeal. As the Apostle Paul himself puts it in writing to the Corinthians, ‘If the trumpet yield an uncertain sound, who shall prepare him for the battle?’ [1 Corinthians 14:8]. If we are not clear about the terms with which we are dealing we shall not he able to follow him when he appeals to us in verse 11 and says, ‘Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God’. The same applies to the exhortations in verses 12 and 13.

The only serious problem or difficulty which is worthy of consideration at this point is often expressed as a query in this way: ‘In the light of your exposition, how do you explain Ephesians 4, verses 22-24 where we read, “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” How do you reconcile that with your exposition of Romans 6:6? For in the Ephesian statement we are exhorted to “put off the old man” and to “put on the new man”; but you tell us that “the old man” was crucified with Christ once and for ever.’ That is a good question, because the same term is used in both places, namely ‘the old man’.

How do we approach this? Let me repeat what I have said before. A good rule with regard to exposition is this; when you find the same word or the same term in different parts of the Bible, always give it the same meaning unless there is some special, overwhelming reason found in the context for not doing so, or unless doing so leads to what is clearly a false theological result. But there are times when there is some such overwhelming reason for not giving a word or a term the usual meaning; and this is one of them. The Apostle in Romans 6:6 says that our old man was crucified; it is something that has happened to him, was done to him, and it was done once and for ever. But in Ephesians 4:22-24 we are exhorted to ‘put off the old man’. Obviously therefore the term cannot mean the same thing in both cases, otherwise the Apostle is contradicting himself. He cannot exhort us to put off something that has been crucified once and for ever, and put away. It is clear that when he says in Ephesians 4:22, ‘That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man’, the ‘old man’ is used as a term to cover the conversation, conduct or behaviour that was characteristic of the old man. What we have to put off is the ‘conversation’ or mode of behaviour of the old man, rather than the old man himself. He says in effect, ‘You have been born again, your old man was crucified with Christ. Do not go on behaving as if the old man was still there. Be what you are, do not be what you no longer are.’ In other words, there is no contradiction between Romans 6:6 and Ephesians 4:22-24. The context makes that abundantly plain and clear. Ephesians 4:22 is concerned about conduct, behaviour; Romans 6:6 is concerned about the old man himself, not his conduct or behaviour.

The teaching of verse 6, then, is that my ‘old man’ was crucified in order that the remaining use of my body by sin might be disannulled, might be rendered ineffective. A good way of translating ‘body of sin’ is to call it ‘the old nature’. The difference between the ‘old man’ and the ‘body of sin’ is the difference between my ‘old self’ and my ‘old nature’. Now that is the very translation adopted by Arthur S. Way, a very good translator of Paul’s Epistles. He translates ‘old man’ by ‘former self’, and ‘body of sin’ by ‘old nature’. That is an excellent translation. What the Apostle asserts is that the whole object of my ‘old man’ being crucified with Christ is that I might be delivered entirely and completely from the slavery of sin, ‘that henceforth we should not be slaves of sin’.

We have not yet reached the stage of application, but as most of us are anxious to go on to the stage of application and to say, ‘Well, how does all this help me?’ — this is the answer. If you do not realize that you yourself are more important than your nature, then obviously you cannot follow the Apostle’s argument. The greatest truth we can ever be told is that our old self has gone. I can deal with my old nature only as I realize that my old self has gone and that I have a new self. This is a most striking and amazing truth. The problem of my old nature becomes much easier once I realise that my old self has gone. My old self, that self that was in Adam, was an utter slave to sin. That self has gone; I have a new self, I am a new man. The moment I realise that I am a new man I am in a better position to deal with this old nature that remains in my body, in what Paul calls my ‘mortal flesh’. We shall find the Apostle saying in chapter 7, ‘It is no more I that do it but sin that dwelleth in me’ (verse 20). Is not that a marvellous thing to be able to say? I am not doing this or that, it is this sin that remains in my members that does so. Sin is no longer in me, it is in my members only. That is the most liberating thing you have ever heard! That is the Apostle’s assertion. This, he says, is the way of salvation. Cannot you realize, he says, that your self, your old self, has gone? Never think of yourself in those terms again.

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