The Believer’s New Relationship With Sin
Rev. Aniekan "Mbomboyo" Okokon ·
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. — Romans 6:14
Two errors sit on either side of this subject. One says that because we are under grace, sin no longer matters. The other says that because we still sin, grace has not really changed us. Romans 6 refuses both. It says something more precise and more freeing: your relationship with sin has changed, because you have died.
Sin is no longer your master
Paul’s picture is slavery. Before Christ, sin was not a habit you had; it was a master you served, and you could not resign. In Christ you died, and a dead slave has no master. Sin can still speak to you. It can no longer command you. "Dominion" is the word — the right to rule. That right was taken from sin at the cross and has not been given back.
Sin is no longer your home
"How can we who died to sin still live in it?" (6:2). Live in it — dwell there, be at home there. A believer may fall into sin, but he cannot settle in it without violence to his own nature. That discomfort you feel when you sin is not the Spirit rejecting you. It is the new creation objecting to foreign territory.
Sin is no longer your identity
Paul tells the Romans to "consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (6:11). Consider — reckon, count it so — because it is so. The believer who says "I am just a sinner saved by grace" has half a sentence. He was a sinner; he is a saint who sometimes sins, and the difference is the whole Gospel.
So what do you do when you sin?
- You do not hide, because hiding is the old master’s trick. You confess, and He is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse (1 John 1:9).
- You do not renegotiate your standing, because it was never based on your record. You have an Advocate with the Father (1 John 2:1).
- You do not agree with the lie that this is who you are. You reckon yourself dead to sin, and you get up.
- You present your members to God as instruments of righteousness (6:13) — the same hands, now offered to a different Master.
Grace does not make sin safe. It makes sin defeated, and the defeated thing has no business ruling a son.