How Shall we Live?
RO65-01

Justification

A Free Gift

Any attempt to receive absolute righteousness via some action on your part of human doing, whether of your good works or of the ritualistic nature of some religious ritual, will so contaminate the process that you will not be saved. So, I again must remind you that everybody who has ever done anything in any way whatsoever to add to the merits of Jesus Christ is doomed for all eternity to hell. Pity those people. Do not seek to keep cordial relationships with them at the expense of their souls, or at the expense of you failing to say to them, "Your water baptism has driven you right into hell; your mass of the Lord's Supper has driven you right into hell; your human good has driven you right into hell; or, your seeking to live up to some standard of the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule is driving you right into hell. You must come and abandon yourself to what Christ has provided, or you do not have justification.

The apostle Paul has made that clear. He has stripped away every feature of human effort in Romans 5, and the message is there. Only the most determined, deliberate, negative volition type of person could be blind to what Romans 5 has said. His explanation is clear. All human doing is excluded as the ground of justification: no good works; no religious rituals; no self-crucifixion or penance; and, no ecclesiastical bestowments either. Your church does not convey it. The hands of some priest does not convey this justification. There is no human element involved.

The unbeliever's human viewpoint rejects Paul's free grace salvation principle. And he attacks it by suggesting that if that is true (what Paul is saying), then a Christian should live under the control of the old sin nature so that evil will abound, and consequently, grace will super-abound. You will remember that Paul said, "The more the old sin nature expresses itself with evil, in the form of human good and sins, the more the grace of God engulfs it, and floods it, and washes it out."

So, an objector says, "I don't believe in this free grace salvation business. I don't believe in this grace reigning so that a person once saved is save forever (once saved; always saved). I just don't believe in that sort of thing. I don't believe what you're saying, Paul. And if what you say is true, then we ought to just live like the devil. We ought to let the old sin nature have its way. We ought to let it control because we'll just enjoy so much more of the grace of God.

That's where Paul begins Romans 6. He begins with this objection. This objector has clearly understood what Paul has said – that justification is not based on anything a sinner may do or not do. Yet vast numbers of church people in denominations raise the same objection today against free grace salvation. They don't say it in so many words, but in their practice and in their teaching, they're raising the same objection. These people would hesitate to attack the apostle Paul. The president of the United States doesn't mind saying that he doesn't agree with the apostle Paul, meaning that the apostle Paul was wrong in what he thought about women. But most people do not have that much gall, and they would hesitate to attack the apostle Paul directly and openly. So, they do it unobtrusively.

However, the practical effect is that they're saying the same thing that this objector says: "If what we do doesn't make any difference relative to salvation, then we'll just live any way we want to live.

So, Romans 6 begins by asking, "All right, what conclusions can we rightly draw from the fact that grace now reigns over the life of the believer as sin once reigned over the life of the believer? What conclusions may we properly draw from this principle of grace apart from human doing?"

Well, one false conclusion is that the Christian should let the old sin nature control his life with evil, because then grace can be more abundant. It'll cover it all. Today we take up Paul's answer to that objection.

In verse 2, he begins with the word, "God forbid." We need to look at what is actually in the Greek Bible. It looks like this: "me genoito." You have probably learned by now that the word for God in the Greek is "theos." Your King James Version translates this phrase "me genoito" as "God forbid." And yet the word "God" is not even in there. The translation is not a bad translation because what you have here is a Greek idiom. A Greek idiom is a phrase that does not mean what the words literally say. If we say, "We're going to have a drink on the house," that does not mean that you're going to climb up on top of the house and have a drink. That's what the words literally mean. But you understand that that's an idiom, which means you're going to have a drink at the expense of the establishment. This is a Greek idiom of that nature, and you have to understand what this Greek idiom is saying to catch the first response that the apostle Paul gives to the idea that the old sin nature should be given free reign in your life.

This first word "me" is the Greek negative. And it is the negative which is used with the particular mood that we have of this verb, which is the optative mood. The verb is "ginomai." "Ginomai" means "to become" or "to be." So, this phrase is literally saying, "Let it not be." The idea expressed is a strong abhorrence of something. So, to convey the idea of the idiom – not the words of the idiom, but to convey the idea of the idiom, we may translate it something like: "May it never be;" "May such a thing never occur;" or, "God forbid." That does convey the idea of abhorrence. A modern expression in our day would go something like: "Perish the thought." It is a strong rejection of an idea.

This is Paul's favorite way of expressing strong abhorrence. This phrase "me genoito," just exactly like that, appears 15 times in the New Testament. The apostle Paul uses the 14 of those 15. This is a favorite expression when he wants to say, "Absolutely no" – "absolutely unthinkable." When it is a very strong way of rejecting an idea, he resorts to this little phrase. And it is expressing his abhorrence that the old sin nature should be given free control and expression in the believer's life, since grace is always greater than any expression of evil from the old sin nature. He is saying, "No, no, 1,000 times no."

This happens to be in the aorist tense, and that means that it's the rejection of an idea once and for all. The aorist sense is a point action. Once for all is the idea. It's in the middle voice, but it has an active meaning, which means the idea itself of such dominance by the old sin nature is dismissed.

This is in what we call the optative mood. We have many times had the indicative mood, and we have had the subjunctive mood. The indicative mood is a statement of fact; the subjunctive is a potential; and, the optative is even a weaker potential. It's a contingency. Its way down the line, and we rarely have it. It is very much use in classical Greek, but very rarely used in the New Testament. So, it is significant when it does crop up. It's a strong possibility – a contingency situation. It doesn't definitely anticipate an action. It just represents it as conceivable. And when you add the negative, as Paul does here, Paul is saying, "This is not even conceivable." So he uses this rare optative mood in this peculiar little idiom that says, "No, this is absolutely not conceivable – what you're suggesting, that the implications of grace reigning means that you can go out and live any sinful style of life that you want to.

So, Paul's strong expression is used here to try to jolt the objector out of the false inference that he has drawn in a way that he'll understand. Paul abhors the thought.

This is a distortion of divine grace that you probably have run into yourself. The very fact here that someone would suggest that the logical implication of Paul's teaching about the superabundance of God's grace was that one should give free reign to his old sin nature, reveals a total lack of understanding on the part of that person of what Paul has said about justification by faith through grace. Paul in no way suggested that a Christian should continue living under control of the old sin nature. Paul has in no way suggested that we should follow a lifestyle of evil. Paul has not said that it doesn't make any difference how a Christian lives. Such a suggestion, in verse 1, which this objector raised, reveals that he has not grasped the implications of the doctrine of the believer's union with Jesus Christ.

So, Paul right away recognizes that this person does not know what he's talking about because he has not understood what Paul has explained. Only someone who is on deliberate, willful, negative volition to divine viewpoint would suggest that Paul had taught that the purpose of grace was to allow us to continue under the reign of the old sin nature. Anybody who had paid attention would have noticed very clearly that Paul said, in Romans 5:21, that as the old sin nature had reigned unto death (the old sin nature reigned for the purpose of bringing death), even so, might grace reign for what purpose? So, we could live like the devil? It is so that grace might reign through absolute righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

Now, you have to be willfully stupid and willfully rebellious to listen to that verse where Paul said that the purpose of the reign of grace is to bring you into a lifestyle of absolute righteousness, and to turn around and say that what Paul is teaching is that grace is such that you can live unto sin. The purpose of grace, Paul has indicated, was to free the believer from the bondage of the old sin nature and all of its evil. Any person who claims that Paul's teaching about grace means free reign of the old sin nature is thereby revealing that he's lost. And I say that again to you.

Anybody who suggests that Paul's teaching about the reign of grace means that a person can live under the domination of the old sin nature without any concern shows that he's lost. He would never raise that question against free grace – only if he believes that his works mean something to God. And that's the first thing you and I have to get over – that our words mean something to God. You and I are always running around thinking how we're going to bring glory to the Lord by what we do. The only glory that's going to come to the Lord is by what He puts into us, and what He does through us.

So, the grace of God close to the sinner in superabundance because of something that God has done. Now, what has God done that makes the grace of God flow?

The Holiness and the Integrity of God

Now the place that grace comes from is the absolute holiness of God – the integrity of God. That's what produces grace. It is not the old sin nature. So, this person made a great mistake if he thinks that the more he sends, the more he's going to produce grace. His sinning doesn't produce grace. It is God in His Holiness producing grace because His integrity has been preserved by Jesus Christ on the cross. And your sinning or not sinning is in no way affecting the integrity of God. Your sinning or not signing is in no way going to affect the grace of God. All that Paul has said is that because the holiness of God has been so preserved by what Christ has done in dying for the sins of the world, that His grace can flow now in superabundance. And no matter what the old sin nature does, it cannot affect that one way or another. The old sin nature does not produce the grace of God to you, and it does not hinder the grace of God to you.

So, separate, in your thinking, old sin nature and grace. That is a human viewpoint concept, and that's the mistake that the objector was making here. You should thoroughly understand that holiness of God (the integrity of God) is the source of the grace that comes to you. Grace is free to function, in other words, because divine integrity relative to human evil has been preserved by Jesus Christ. Grace is not the product of the old sin nature functioning. The old sin nature produces only condemnation, and Paul has made that very clear.

So, the real issue in salvation is not how evil one is with his sins and his human good, but rather the holiness of God. Grace is not associated with your sin nature's production. It is associated with the holiness of God.

So, the holiness of God is not preserved by your human conduct. Is God going to be disgraced by something you do? You think so, don't you? Have you ever been told that you're going to do something that's going to disgrace the Lord? That's another joke. Boy, I'll tell you, human arrogance is so big that we even think that God's reputation is dependent upon us. Just tell yourself your name, and say, "Sam Jones, God's reputation is dependent upon you." Tell yourself that right now. Doesn't that make you feel good? Doesn't that make you feel oozy and warm? That's the old sin nature encouraging you. Don't kid yourself. The only thing that God's reputation is dependent upon is right here, folks – His integrity preserved through Jesus Christ.

So, don't you go around thinking, because you live in some wonderful way, that the Lord is going to be glorified by you. The only thing that glorifies God is that He can take a sinner, such as you and I are, with all of our frailties and all of our failures that constantly occur, and He can still keep us in the royal family of God. Now that is something. That is bringing glory to Himself. And it isn't anything that you and I do, even when we behave ourselves. It is only because the Holy Spirit is doing it for us. It is no credit to us at all. It is the Holy Spirit who is functioning in our lives to make us compatible to the holiness of God.

So, get away from the notion that you're in some way honoring and glorifying God by how you live. It's all to your blessing. It is the holiness of God that brings the grace of God that produces the blessings of God. And we aren't involved in the process except as recipients.

The eternal life which the grace of God gives on the basis of divine integrity cannot ever be lost by the sin nature. It is protected by absolute righteousness and perfect justice. The old sin nature can in no way affect the eternal life which grace, based on divine integrity, has provided.

God's Integrity will Always be Intact

That's not true on a human realm. Our integrity goes up and down. You've all heard the phrase: "Every man has his price." Do you know what that means? "Every man has his price" means that, at some point, your integrity can be compromised. Your integrity, at some point, will be compromised, no matter how moral you may be, and what I stand you may take for righteousness. If the advantage is great enough and appealing enough to your old sin nature, you will compromise your integrity to gain an advantage: "Every man has his price." That is the way of saying that we are mutable in contrast to God's immutability.

So, neither human sins nor human good coming out of the old sin nature have any effect on the integrity of God, and thus cannot affect the grace of God, and thus cannot affect the blessings of God, starting with salvation, and everything else that follows through. Grace is not related to your sinning or not sending. Grace is not related to your old sin nature. It is related to the fact that God is true to Himself. And everything flows from that.

So, this person (this question) comes up in Romans 6:1, and says, "Why don't we let the old sin nature have full control so that grace can abound?" Paul begins by saying, "Perish the thought, God forbid. Absolutely not. That is not what I've said. That is not the implications of what I said – that we should live under the control of the sin nature."

Then he proceeds to state the rebuttal. He will state the rebuttal here in verse 2, to and then he will take verse 3-14 to explain what he has said. Then in verse 15, he brings up a second objection, and he will explain that one in the remainder of the chapter.

If you're reading from the King James Bible, the translation is not too good, but we'll work from that, and we'll straighten it out. He says, "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer in it?" The word "how" is the Greek interrogative adverb "pos." This introduces a question by Paul which is designed to show the absurdity of the objection raised in verse 1. It is an absurd objection. He's going to point out an inherent contradiction which shows this challenge to free grace salvation to be completely false. There's an inherent contradiction. The person who raises this question has ignored a contradiction in his very remark that he has made. He has drawn a wrong, logical relationship.

How Shall We Live?

The word "live" here means "control." How shall we exist under a control of something? That is the idea. "How shall we that are:" The word "that are" is very significant. It's "hostis" in the Greek. "Hostis" means "whoever." It's what we call an indefinite relative pronoun. However, in this case, it has the meaning of "who." The word, however, adds something. It does mean "who," but here is the beauty of the Greek language again. You can't get this from English. The word "who" is stressing a quality. There is a quality idea which is being stressed so that we would convey this factor by saying, "We who are such as," or "We, the very ones, who." What it is doing is stressing the unique position of the believer which the objector here, raising this question in verse 1, does not understand. He does not understand that the believer has a unique position with God. Consequently, the question that this person raised is illogical. It's a contradiction of a Christian position with God. It has an inherent inconsistency.

So, Paul is stressing that inconsistency by, first of all, calling attention to the fact that we are a certain breed of humanity. In the Greek Bible, this is the word that stands right at the beginning of this sentence. You come to verse 2 in the Greek Bible, and the first word you hit is "hostis." Now, when that happens in Greek, that is the Greek way of saying, "Here's the important idea in this sentence. It's just a signpost. It's a finger that's pointing and saying, "Here's where it's at – right there."

So, right away, we have to look at that word and say, "Hey, we can't just let that pass like it does here in English. The English doesn't convey this at all. This conveys something very important that we must observe. The idea here is w. "How shall we, being what we are?" We'd have to use several words in English to get the idea across of what "hostis" means. When a Greek reads that first word in the sentence – a word that emphasizes a quality factor, now that's telling us something. That's going to explain a lot.

Well, what's the quality? Dead ("apothnesko"). We (the kind of people) – we who are such as those who are dead. The word "dead" means separation. That's the first thing to notice here. This is separation from something. Here it is to be free from something. It's in the aorist tense.

Now, again, "aorist" means a point. We illustrate it by just a point action. Whenever the Greek Bible uses this tense, it tells us that it is looking at something just as a point event – not something that continues over a period of time. Furthermore, the aorist tense conveys the idea, therefore, as something that's once for all. It's a point once for all things. It's a never-to-be-repeated thing.

So, here is a reference to a definite action, and aorist has the implications of the past. In the English, when we talk about tenses, we talk about present tense, and past tense, and future time, and so on. But that's different in the Greek. The Greek has that factor of time: it's now; it was before; and, it's in the future. But that's secondary. The main thing about a Greek tense tells you what kind of action. And anytime you hear the word "aorist," you know that it's a point action. It is doing a thing as a whole, and as a once-for-all situation.

So, all of these are very significant, and this one particularly as the present tense. That's telling us that here is something that is a definite action which happened in the past. Therefore, we have to translate that by the word "died." We, who are such as those who have died:" "We who died." We are such as those who died. And it does not mean "are dead," which we have in the authorized King James Version here: "How shall we, who are such that are dead." "Are dead" sounds like you're emphasizing your present condition, rather than the past events. So, "are dead" is a bad translation.

Nor can we say "have died." It doesn't mean "have died," because "have died" connotes a process, like you have gradually become more and more dead until finally you came to the point, after much struggle and effort, where you are now in a "have died" position. Do you see what the implication is going to be there? The first thing some joker is going to come up with – he's going to look at that English translation "have died," and he's going to say, "You see, you can become sinless. You can come to a point where you have died to sin, and you are no longer sinning." So, "have died" is bad. You cannot translate this as "are dead." That sounds like emphasizing the present. But that's not what the aorist tense means. Aorist is something that happened in the past. And it is not "have died," because that sounds like some process that you have completed.

You were Placed into Christ

You Died

You Died to the Old Sin Nature

So, what this verse is telling us is that Paul says, "My answer to your objection, friend, is first of all, that, back at a point in time when you received Christ as Savior, you died to the old sin nature. Therefore, the old sin nature no longer possesses any sovereign authority over you. The power of the old sin nature is broken in the life of a believer. The Christian is no longer a slave to the old sin nature – forced to do its evil.

OK, here's a human being. He's got a body. He's got 46 chromosomes in each cell. That's if everything's right, and everything's normal. Then all of a sudden he notices something wrong in some part of his body. He goes to the doctor, and the doctor says, "Your cells have rebelled against the authority of the physical structure of your body. And instead of 46 chromosomes, you've got 56 (or 106). They've just gone berserk, and you have cancer. Your cells are out of control – out of the body's authority. If that continues and it cannot be reversed, the result will be death.

Now what effect will that lack of authority on the part of the cancer cell have against your body once it's dead? How often had you heard a person say, "Well, he suffered a lot? He's dead now. He's over his suffering?" What kind of impression would you make if you'd say, "Oh, no, he's suffering? Look at him. Look at him in the casket. You can see he's in pain. The stuff is still eating at him." You'd say, "That's dumb. If he's dead, the connection is broken, and the influence is gone." Now, get the connection.

Paul is saying, "The problem with your statement, friend, about the old sin nature being able to influence you, is that you are dead to the old sin nature. You died. The old sin nature can no longer create stimuli to which you must respond. Now the old sin nature will give you stimuli, and he'll say, "Hey, hey, come here. Come here." You know how it is – you military men who have been in foreign fields. You know how it is. You're walking down the streets of some foreign port, and all the appeals that the procurers are running up and down the street, coming up to you and saying, "Hey, marine. Hey, marine. Hey, hey." And they're offering you all kinds of goodies that are available. That's the old sin nature.

However, they have no authority over you. You have to say, "Yes," and become a carnal believer. But before you are a Christian, any stimuli the old sin nature gives you, you're a helpless victim. And you can try with self-will hold back for a while, and say, "No, I'm not going to do this." Then you're going to be sucked in. You just think about how many times that has been your experience in the unsaved days.

You know, it's almost time for New Year's resolutions. All the idiots are coming, so that a month from now, they can make New Year's resolutions. That's a poor individual recognizing that the old sin nature dominates him. He's not dead to it. He's responding to all the stimuli of the old sin nature. So, he says, "This is bad. This is not the way it should be. His conscience condemns him. So, he says, "I'm going to take an oath – a New Year's resolution. I'm not going to respond to the stimuli of the old sin nature anymore.

Then we make fun about the New Year's resolutions being broken. Why? Because he's so alive to the old sin nature, he can't do anything but respond to it. So, Paul says, "When you say a Christian can just go ahead and live under the control of the old sin nature, and respond to it stimuli, you've made a big mistake because the Christian is dead to the old sin nature. He has died to that disease, and that disease cannot have any effect upon him. He is no longer enslaved to the stimuli of the old sin nature, and therefore, he is not to live under its domination.

That's what he adds at the end. How can he live? He's dead to the old sin nature. How can he live any longer? It's the word "eti," meaning "still" or "yet." The next word is "en" ("in"), giving location. Next it says, "It" ("autos" in Greek)> It's referring to what? To the old sin nature. The old sin nature no longer is the Christian's sphere of existence.

So, we translate this in this way: "We, who are such as died to the sin nature, how shall we live in it?" Paul is saying that it is logically impossible to say that dying to a thing means living in it. That's what it amounts to. And that's what the objector is saying. Dying to a thing means living in it. How can a Christian who, by the fact of his salvation, died to the old sin nature be controlled by it? Death terminates the control of the disease. A believer cannot be dead and living with respect to something at the same time. Death and life cannot coexist at the same time in the same place.

Paul's basic premise in Romans 6 is that a Christian died to his old sin nature authority when he was saved. And once a person is physically dead, he ceases to respond to all stimuli. And once a Christian is dead to the old sin nature, he is no longer enslaved to the stimuli of the old sin nature. Now he may obey it, and choose to step out of the inner circle of fellowship, and to become carnal. But he does that by choice. He does not do that by enslavement.

The HICEE Technique

I'm not going to give you the answer. You'll have to keep coming back until you find out. But right off the bat, those verses right there, boy, that's the core of water baptism for a lot of people. And I'm telling you right now that the Greeks say that's how you get related to the benefits of the death of Christ – through baptism. How are we going to interpret what that means?

1. Hermeneutics

   First of all, you're going to have to have hermeneutics. Hermeneutics are principles that guide the interpretation of Scripture. And there are certain principles for guiding interpretation.

2. Isagogics

   Second, you must have isagogics. Isagogics has to do with the background of the Scripture; the times in which it was written; the geographic conditions; and, the social conditions, so that we know how to interpret what we are reading in Scripture.

3. Categories

   Thirdly, we must have classification of truth – categories of doctrine. We must bring together everything that God says on a certain subject in order that we can take an individual piece, and then match it up against the overall picture and say, "Now I see how this fits in, and I know how to interpret it. If we don't know the overall picture, we won't know how to interpret a piece. For example, if we don't know the overall basic doctrine of salvation by grace, apart from human works, we won't know how to interpret this business of baptism. Right away, that will give us a clue to a direction we should not take with it.

4. Etymology

   Next (the first "E" here) is etymology. We cannot interpret unless we know how to interpret the meaning of words. That's why God gave us the Greek language – so that we can have a language which is frozen, and we know what the meaning of these words are, and we can know what God the Holy Spirit meant to say. This is what's so ludicrous about the Book of Mormon, which is only in English, and the plates from which it was supposedly translated, which Joseph Smith called "Reform Egyptian," have very wisely been taken back by the angel. Moroni was no moron when he took those plates back. I'll tell you, because if we had those plates, and if it was a real language that we could interpret, we could know whether we have a fake or whether we have a real translation here. Isn't that amazing that the God who gave us the Hebrew for the Old Testament, and the Aramaic for the Old Testament, and gave us the marvels of the Greek language for the New Testament, should suddenly switch gears when he gets to the last big revelation he's supposedly given us in the Book of Mormon, and gives it to us only in English without access to the original to check it for, huh?. Boy, it takes something to be a Mormon. I'll say that for them. So, you have to have etymology (the meaning of words).

5. Exegesis

   Then the final thing (the final "E") is exegesis. We have to take grammatical structures, just like we were doing in the previous session with this aorist tense. That told us worlds about "died," and how to translate it, which we wouldn't know unless we knew that tense. That's exegesis that we did. That's putting it together.

Church members ought to wake up to the loss that they are going to incur for all eternity in terms of the rewards that the Judgment Seat of Christ because they sit in churches which do not function on this HICEE technique. If Christians were ever alerted to it once, there would be such an exodus out of churches that they'd be falling all over themselves to get out, and to find themselves a place where the Word of God is explained on the authority of what God has said – not what man has said.

Erasmus

I'm going to close by reading a paragraph by one of the greatest of the Greek scholars, a man named A. T. Robertson, who wrote a little book called A Minister and his Greek New Testament. He says, "The Greek New Testament, scattered over Europe by the printing press, had produced a spiritual earthquake. The darkness began to vanish from the world when the Greek New Testament was allowed to shed its light. It was vain for men to try to hide that light. Such a scampering the light from the Greek New Testament caused in Europe. It is ever so. Jesus shines in the pages of the Greek New Testament. He shines there still for all who will take the trouble to see. He is the light of the world. No obscurantist can hide that light. No one can afford to neglect that light. The Greek New Testament is still the torchbearer of light and progress for the world.

"It is now over 400 years since the Greek New Testament of Erasmus made such a sensation in Europe. Over 1,000 editions of the Greek New Testament have since been printed. The new light on the language of the Greek New Testament from the papyri discoveries is as romantic as the work of Erasmus. We're just beginning the most wonderful period in the study of the Greek New Testament. Happy are those who are wise enough to use the new means within their grasp to learn the Word of God."

So, we commend you to the Enlightenment of the words of God the Holy Spirit, not the opinions of preachers. And on the basis of the HICEE technique, which takes into account the inspired text of God the Holy Spirit, we're going to interpret the Word of God.

Joseph Smith had the gall to take the King James Version, and to change the translation to fit his new doctrines. Then he published it under the title of the Inspired Version. The inspired version is God the Holy Spirit speaking through the Greek language. And you're going to find that, as we apply that technique to Romans 6, the Scriptures are going to leap off the page, and become alive and powerful in your life, in a dimension of sanctification that you perhaps have not dreamed was possible. Stick with it.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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