I wrote this commentary many years ago and go back to it periodically. The words in red are from the Bible and words in black are my own. I hope this is helpful to you.
6:1 What does this mean? Are we to keep on sinning so that God will give us more of His loving-favor? 2 No, not at all! We are dead to sin. How then can we keep on living in sin? 3 All of us were baptized to show we belong to Christ. We were baptized first of all to show His death. 4 We were buried in baptism as Christ was buried in death. As Christ was raised from the dead by the great power of God, so we will have new life also. 5 If we have become one with Christ in His death, we will be one with Him in being raised from the dead to new life.
1-2: Jesus’s death on the cross shows us the dreadful seriousness of sin. Jesus paid with his life so we could be forgiven. The availability of God’s grace must not become an excuse for careless living and moral laxness.
1 – parable of the lost son. He received the love and blessings of his father, but the older son who was always there already had the blessings.
2: sin only has the power we believe it does. It no longer controls us unless we let it.
#Section on sanctification: the change God makes is our life as we grow in faith. Ch. 6 explains that believers are free from sin’s control.
4: If we think of our old, sinful life as dead and buried, we have a powerful motive to resist sin. We can consciously choose to treat the desires and temptations of the old nature as if they were dead. Then we can enjoy our wonderful new life with Jesus.
6 We know that our old life, our old sinful self, was nailed to the cross with Christ. And so the power of sin that held us was destroyed. Sin is no longer our boss. 7 When a man is dead, he is free from the power of sin. 8 And if we have died with Christ, we believe we will live with Him also. 9 We know that Christ was raised from the dead. He will never die again. Death has no more power over Him. 10 He died once but now lives. He died to break the power of sin, and the life He now lives is for God. 11 You must do the same thing! Think of yourselves as dead to the power of sin. But now you have new life because of Jesus Christ our Lord. You are living this new life for God.
6, 7: Though we often willingly cooperate with our sinful nature, it is not us, but the sin in us that is evil.
12 So do not let sin have power over your body here on earth. You must not obey the body and let it do what it wants to do. 13 Do not give any part of your body for sinful use. Instead, give yourself to God as a living person who has been raised from the dead. Give every part of your body to God to do what is right. 14 Sin must not have power over you. You are not living by the Law. You have life because of God’s loving-favor.
15 What are we to do then? Are we to sin because we have God’s loving-favor and are not living by the Law? No, not at all! 16 Do you not know that when you give yourself as a servant to be owned by someone, that one becomes your owner? If you give yourself to sin, the end is death. If you give yourself to God, the end is being right with Him. 17 At one time you were held by the power of sin. But now you obey with all your heart the teaching that was given to you. Thank God for this! 18 You were made free from the power of sin. Being right with God has power over you now. 19 I speak with words easy to understand because your human thinking is weak. At one time you gave yourselves over to the power of sin. You kept on sinning all the more. Now give yourselves over to being right with God. Set yourself apart for God-like living and to do His work.
17: To give ourselves fully to God means to love him with all of our hearts, our soul, and our mind. And yet so many of our efforts to know and obey God’s commands can best be described as “half hearted.”
20 When sin had power over your life, you were not right with God. 21 What good did you get from the things you are ashamed of now? Those things bring death. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin. You have become a servant for God. Your life is set apart for God-like living. The end is life that lasts forever. 23 You get what is coming to you when you sin. It is death! But God’s free gift is life that lasts forever. It is given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.
23: Eternal life is a gift from God. consider the foolishness of someone who receives a gift given out of love and then offers to pay it back and more.
God made me
I chose sin
I did not receive the full benefits of him
He found me, he chose me, he rescued me
I committed my life to him
He gave me new life, new nature, and new freedom
I am free from the chains of sin
I am alive in Christ, dead to sin
I have the freedom to choose life/Christ/life freely
Song:
Dear Wormwood – Oh Hellos
“When I was a child, I didn’t hear a single word you said
The things I was afraid of, they were all confined beneath my bed
Childhood innocence, fearlessness
But the years have been long, and you have taught me well to hide away
Hide from the pain, life, opening up to others/God
The things that I believed in, you’ve taught me to call them all escapes
Believed monsters are all external
I know who you are now
Identified the speaker of the lies – wormwood/devil. (lies/reverse of truth: God is chains, sin is freedom)
There before the threshold, I saw a brighter world beyond myself
Freedom’s home, sinless paradise
And in my hour of weakness, you were there to see my courage fail
I believed the lie that weakness meant I was defeated.
For the years have been long, and you have taught me well to sit and wait
Expecting a rescuer to change our life when he was offering his hand outside the boat beside us.
Planning without acting, steadily becoming what I hate
When we don’t pursue God, we fall to the devil’s temptations/his traps.
I know who you are now
I have acknowledged your power over me.
I have always known you, you have always been there in my mind
I thought you were my thoughts, but you were not. I thought you were freedom, but you were death.
But now I understand you, and I will not be part of your designs
I see your tricks. I will not be held in your chains and let you use me to put chains on others.
I know who I am now
And all that you’ve made of me
I recognize the real me and the false me you’ve made me to be.
I know who you are now
And I name you my enemy
I know you mean for my destruction. I declare war.
I know who I am now
I see the good inside of me
I know who I want to be
I see how I want the good to grow inside of me. I want to be more than this devil inside of me
Time to reject the false me & discover the real me