“Well, if God’s going to forgive me no matter what I do, then why not just keep on sinning?” If that question hasn’t ever occurred to you, you probably haven’t come to grips with just how radical God’s grace really is. For the fact is that all who trust in Christ are justified, declared righteous in God’s sight, solely because of His sacrifice. That means we no longer need to fear the anger of God (5:9), no matter what we do or leave undone.

But if God’s free grace is radically different from the legalistic self-help philosophies offered by all the rest of the religions of the world, the reason for a Christian’s pursuit of holiness is also radically different from the guilt trips peddled by so many so-called gospel preachers. For the real reason that Christians should no longer go on sinning is because we are connected to Christ: the shocking reality is that we are one with Christ.

After all, that’s really what it means to have the Holy Spirit given to us (5:5): it means that Christ is living not only with us but within us. That’s what Paul means when he says that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus (6:3) and united with Him (6:5). So, if by trusting in Christ we become one with Him, that means we died with Him on the cross. And that in turn means that our old sinful self died with Him too, the sinful nature we inherited from Adam that compelled us to sin (6:6). Simply put, those in Christ don’t have to sin anymore: sin no longer has the power to control us (6:14).

But more than that, we should not even want to sin anymore. That’s because we haven’t just died with Christ. Because of our union with Him, we have also risen from the dead with Him. That means we are already resurrected to a new kind of life (6:4), a life lived not for ourselves but for the glory of God and for the good of others (6:11). We thus pursue holiness not because we have to, but because we want to.

So, does it make any sense for someone who has been given the Spirit of Christ to go on living in rebellion against Him? Does it make any sense for someone who has been joined to Christ by faith to keep pushing Him away? Does it make any sense for someone who has become alive to act as if he is still dead? As Paul says, may it never be!

Romans 6:1-14 (NASB)

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.