Romans 6: Finding Freedom from Sin

by | Posted March 31st at 8:56pm

Romans 6 addresses the believer’s freedom from sin’s dominion through union with Christ, contrasting life under the Law with life under grace. The New Covenant offers every believer the power of grace in Christ’s work on the cross. It liberates believers from sin’s dominion and empowers holiness. Grace effectively breaks sin’s power.

The gift of amazing grace is central to Romans 6 through 7. Remembering that Jesus’ death revealed God the Father’s love for us is especially important. Central to this love is the power of the Holy Spirit, which brings us to and regenerates our will to gratefully and trustingly abandon our lives unto God’s grace. Believers must fully surrender to the Holy Spirit’s ongoing direction, rejecting legalistic efforts to overcome sin through the Law.

The Law’s purpose is to reveal sin’s power (Romans 7:7–13), but it cannot liberate from sin’s dominion. True freedom comes through identification with Christ’s death and resurrection, which render believers “dead to sin” and “alive to God” (Romans 6:11). Believers must fully surrender to the Holy Spirit’s direction and enter an abiding relationship with Christ. This union with Christ enables a transformative reliance on grace rather than self-effort, avoiding the fatal “error” of legalism.

The New Covenant vs. The Old Covenant

The superiority of the new covenant over the old, contrasting their outcomes:

Life vs. Death: The old covenant (Law) is a “ministry of death” (2 Corinthians 3:7), condemning sinners, while the new covenant imparts spiritual life through the Spirit, emphasizing its superiority over the old (Romans 6:4, 6:13).

Righteousness vs. Condemnation: The Law exposes sin but cannot produce righteousness; grace empowers believers to live righteously (Romans 6:14–18).

Slavery to God vs. Sin: Under grace, believers are liberated from sin’s mastery and become “slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:18–22). Sanctification unto holiness is entirely the effect of Justification by faith in Christ, not its cause. “Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.” (Romans 6:19 NLT)

Salvation rejoices with moral law: Christians are not released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law. Salvation results in a “miracle of transformation” and inevitably produces practical righteousness. Grace is not a license for sin but a motivation for obedience, as allegorized in Paul’s definition of being married to another spouse once the first is dead — meaning consider yourself dead to the law’s jurisdiction over your soul, now that you are in Christ, you are his cherished bride in a new moral order — the new covenant foundation. I like the way that the New Living Translation puts this truth:

Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the law—don’t you know that the law applies only while a person is living? For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of marriage no longer apply to her. So while her husband is alive, she would be committing adultery if she married another man. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not commit adultery when she remarries. So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit. (Romans 7:1-6 NLT)

To carry the allegory further: You are now protected under Christ’s loving watch-care as your Great “I am” Bridegroom.

Key Comparisons

Law’s Role	Reveals sin’s power but cannot save.	It brings condemnation, contrasting with grace: the forgiveness of sin.
Grace’s Function	Enables surrender to the Spirit, leading to a rejection of legalism for Spirit-led living. Where sin abounded, grace “super abounded.”	As per Romans 7, Christ provides for the inevitability of practical righteousness and obedience to His Word as a result of true salvation.
Union with Christ	Emphasizes experiential death to sin and the unified life in Christ’s Spirit.	Romans 6 focuses on the union in Christ’s resurrection power, the objective doctrinal truth and its practical outworking.
Practical Outcome	God’s grace is comprehensive, abundant, and capable of covering even the greatest sins.	Replaces old covenant rituals with new life. Grace breaks sin’s power, and true salvation results in a changed life.

The Transformative Power of the Holy Spirit

Decisive Break with Sin: Romans 6:2 notes, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” as a declaration that believers have experienced a definitive break with sin through their union with Christ’s death and resurrection. This is not a process but a completed event with ongoing effects. Believers are no longer under sin’s dominion because their “old man” was crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6).¹

Freedom from Sin’s Authority: Sin no longer has authority over believers. Using the analogy of emancipation, compare this freedom to slaves being declared free from their masters. Although believers may still feel the pull of sin due to old habits, they are no longer obligated to obey it because they have been set free through Christ.

Grace Empowers Transformation: Grace does not merely forgive sins, but he also transforms lives (Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18). God’s grace gives believers both the desire and the ability to live righteously, making it unthinkable for them to continue living in habitual sin as they did before salvation.

Sin’s Incompatibility with New Life: Continuing in sin is incompatible with the new life in Christ (Romans 6:4). We must reject any notion that grace permits ongoing sinful behaviour, emphasizing that genuine conversion results in a changed relationship with sin and a new identity in Christ.

Grace is the motivation for holiness: Rather than seeing grace as a license to sin, it is the very reason believers should not continue in sin. Believers have “died to sin” and “now live in Christ”; therefore, they cannot continue living in it. (Galatians 2:20)

Responsible Co-operative Sanctification: Justification by Faith in Jesus Christ is intended to progressively produce Sanctification by Faith, making these two concepts inseparable. Justification and sanctification are two essential, interconnected aspects of salvation, with justification serving as the necessary precursor and ongoing foundation for the sanctification process. (1 Peter 1:2, Romans 12:2. Hebrews 12:14, 1 Corinthians 1:30)

Believers cannot conscionably continue in sin because their union with a Holy Spirit-led life in Christ has decisively broken sin’s power over them, and grace enables them to live transformed lives characterized by righteousness rather than habitual sin.

The Holy Spirit confirms righteous living or convicts when we err and commit sin insofar as we have a healthy operative conscience informed ongoingly by the Word of God. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

We mustn’t compromise with false teachers of doctrine: “Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared…” (1 Timothy 4:1-2 ESV)

Despising the riches of God’s grace is “the blackest of all sins” (Hebrews 6:6), emphasizing the seriousness of rejecting or misusing God’s gracious offer of salvation and transformation. Grace in Romans 6 is not permission for sin but the powerful means by which believers are freed from sin’s dominion and enabled to live in righteousness.

Relationship between Justification and Sanctification

Distinct but Inseparable: Justification and sanctification are distinct graces but inseparable in the believer’s experience. Faith is the foundation. Sanctification is by faith alone. Sanctification is not a subjective activity we progress into but an objective declaration we receive by faith. Both justification and sanctification are graces of union with Christ through faith. Sanctification, like justification, is received by faith rather than achieved through works. Faith is not something we do but a gift from God created within us as we hear the promise of Christ.

Sanctification, like justification, is received by faith rather than achieved through works. Sanctification is not a subjective activity we progress into but an objective declaration we receive by faith. Mixing any type of legalism with sanctification is a denial of the whole truth. Believers must never hold to any code of law that turns their acts of Christian living into efforts of character instead of fruits of grace. ²

Sanctification is separate from justification, though both are rooted in the believer’s union with Christ. It is progressive in nature—sanctification is an ongoing process throughout the believer’s life, often referred to as “progressive sanctification.” Walking with Christ is a lifelong journey. Sanctification continues until death when believers receive their glorified bodies and become fully transformed into the likeness of Christ. The process of sanctification is never fully complete before death due to the ongoing presence of sin in the believer’s life. The gradual nature of sanctification is the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in revealing and removing sin in the believer’s life until death. This remains a faith-based process, and while recognizing sanctification as gradual — it is received by faith rather than achieved through works or human effort. Transformation through union with Christ proceeds as that sanctification flows from the believer’s union with Christ, established by faith rather than self-effort or law-keeping.

Dependence on God’s grace conjoins with the believer’s faith rather than on human works or effort

Order of Salvation: It is essential to maintain the proper order, with justification preceding sanctification. “Never put the cart before the horse,” — justification must come before sanctification. Faith initiates justification. Faith connects us to Christ: Sanctification flows from our union with Christ, which is established by faith. Our faith in Christ is passive as we receive his finished justification. Moreover, that same faith actively embraces the call to holiness that Christ energizes through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

Justification is Foundational: Justification is the foundation upon which sanctification is built. Sanctification is impossible without first being justified when you are gifted with the Spirit to lead you into all truth.

Grace-Driven Process: Both justification and sanctification are seen as works of God’s grace. Justification is an instantaneous declaration of righteousness, while sanctification is an ongoing process of growth in holiness. Faith opposes works-based sanctification. Guard against turning sanctification into a work—it remains in the realm of faith, just like justification. Reject the notion of sanctification as a partnership between God and man. Insist emphatically that transformative holiness is Christ’s work alone received by faith via His Spirit. Our good works without such preceding faith are dead, with the danger of living yet under the theological bondage error of remaining in the old covenant law.

Faith looks to Christ, not self. Faith in sanctification means resting in the finished work of Christ rather than focusing on our own efforts or progress. This faith-based approach allows believers to “rest in its already finished work” rather than striving to earn or work their way into sanctification. Faith is the essential means believers receive and experience sanctification, emphasizing its dependence on Christ’s work rather than human effort. ³

Motivation for Holiness: The assurance of justification provides the psychological and spiritual motivation for sanctification. Knowing one is accepted by God through Christ’s righteousness frees the believer to pursue holiness out of love and gratitude rather than fear or obligation.

Simultaneous Graces: While maintaining their distinctiveness, justification and sanctification co-occur at the moment of salvation, with sanctification continuing as a lifelong process.

Transformative Power: Justification changes one’s legal status before God and initiates a transformative process (sanctification) in the believer’s life.

^{1 John MacArthur}

^{2 Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse}

^{3 Ibid}

Article posted by Glen R. Jackman, founder of GraceProclaimed.org

Glen has optimized his eldership role to teach the full scope of the New Covenant of Jesus Christ without boundaries.
You can read his testimony.