The Old Man, the New Man, and the Sin Nature
Romans 6:5–7
Romans Lesson #070
August 16, 2012
www.deanbibleministries.org
Paul asks two rhetorical questions that focus the topic. Romans 6:1 NASB “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” That is the topic. What is the believer’s relationship to sin now that he is justified? He answers this with a rhetorical question: [2] “May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” The question then is: What in the world does he mean that we are dead to sin? Because in one sense if we just take that terminology “dead to sin” like we do in almost every-day conversation it would imply that sin is no longer in existence, because that is one of the meanings of death. There have been those over the history of Christianity who have taken this to be a statement sin has gone, and this leads into a view called perfectionism—you, too, can reach a higher plane of spirituality where there is no sin. This is what chapter six is all about: What is your relationship to sin?
He lays the foundation in vv. 3, 4 NASB “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This is foundational here, and baptism has a literal meaning in terms of immersion into something and in terms of the literal act of baptism—water baptism is a physical immersion into water—but it has a connotation or a figurative sense of identification with something. You were entering into something new, a new state or new status.
This is clearly the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It is not talking about water baptism here but it is talking about a spiritual transaction, a spiritual change that takes place. It is not experienced, we don’t feel anything, but it happens to every believer at the instant of salvation. But in understanding this term “baptism with the Spirit, baptism by the Spirit” in the Greek the two phrases “with the Spirit” and “by the Spirit” translate the same identical Greek phrase—EN PNEUMATI. In the Greek it is very clear that this is an instrumental meaning. It is used in Matthew 3:11 where the translation “with,” i.e. by means of or with the instrumentality of the Spirit and fire. In that sense “the one who comes after me, He will baptize you with the Spirit,” who performs the action there? Who does the baptizing? It is Jesus. What is the role of the Spirit? The Spirit in that passage is the instrument that Christ uses to perform that baptism.
When we get over in to 1 Corinthians 12:13 we read: NASB “For by one Spirit …” The English used a different preposition which cause non-Greek-knowing pastors to think that these were two different baptisms by the Holy Spirit—one with and one by; one is at salvation, the other is after salvation. So because of a misunderstanding of Greek they ended up with two different baptisms. The “by one Spirit” in the English of 1 Corinthians 12:13 looks like the one who does the baptizing is the Holy Spirit. In English we express the person who performs the action with the preposition “by.” So English grammar makes it look like the Spirit is the one who is doing the baptism because it is a passive voice construction.
The trouble is Greek uses a different preposition, the preposition HUPO, to indicate the one who performs the action. It is very clear in the Greek that the one who performs the action is going to be designated not by the preposition en, because that still designates the instrument, but by the preposition HUPO. And HUPO is not used with relation to the Spirit in that passage. And since Jesus, the one who performs the action in Matthew 3:11, isn’t mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:13 what we see here is simply a statement that we are all baptized by means of the Spirit; and Paul is focusing just on the baptism by means of the Spirit and he is not talking about who is doing it. Christ uses the Holy Spirit to identify us with His death, burial and resurrection.
The Holy Spirit doesn’t act autonomously. He is an instrument for bringing us into that new life. Part of the symbolic function of baptism—because you are going into water—is a picture of cleansing. We are becoming positionally cleansed of sin at that instant of identification with Christ and that relates to the phrase that we are “dead to sin,” and that power is broken.
Romans chapter six focuses on the believer’s relationship to sin. The basic message of Paul here is that we died to sin. However we want to understand that term “death” there is a monumental significant break that occurs at that instant of salvation in terms of our relationship to sin. However we were related to sin before we were saved we will not ever relate to sin the same way again.
When Paul addresses this he raises the issue in verse 1: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” The question he is asking is: Should a believer continue to sin? And what he means by that and by the way he phrases that is: Should a believer have a somewhat cavalier, licentious or permissive attitude towards sin in his own life? Just because it has been taken care of by grace and just because you confess your sin, should you therefore minimize the significance of the struggle with sin in your own life? The reality that Paul is painting here is that we have a moment-by-moment, day-by-day struggle with sin. It is not something that we have to go all legalistic about but it is something that we have to pay attention to seriously, because of what happened at the cross. The more we understand what happened with that act of baptism where we were identified with the death of Christ, which makes us dead to the sin nature, that is the foundation.
We need to look at some various terms that come up here, and one of the things we have to do is look at this translation in verse one. What does “in sin” mean? In the Greek text it is interesting that there is no preposition there. One might expect a preposition for clarity but all we have is the noun for sin with the definite article, and it is in the dative case. A dative ending, a locative ending, an instrumental ending all look the same. Basically the exegete has to make a decision which one of those three broad categories it is, and then each one of those broad categories has sub-categories. We can’t look at the text on the basis of an objective word ending what that is
If we were to take this as a locative (location; sometimes it is referred to as a dative of sphere) ending we could translate it: Should we continue in the realm of sin, or in the sphere of sin. That might work. If we are talking about positional truth we are positionally outside of the realm of sin. We are not in darkness anymore but are children of light, and we are to walk as children of light. So there is the distinction there as to whether you are talking about the locative option, whether it is positional or experiential. Then the other option is instrumental, and it would be translated: What shall we say then? Shall we continue to live by means of sin? Both are getting close to the idea and we can capture it without slicing the grammatical baloney too thin by saying that basically the idea here is that Paul is saying: Are we to continue a lifestyle as characterized by our sin nature in order that sin might abound?
The answer is resoundingly, not at all. We are not to continue to live our life with the manifestations of the sin nature. Most of us are saying, wait a minute. I don’t know about your sin nature but mine is pretty active and I don’t know how I can ever live my life apart from certain sins that seem to be my area of weakness and I don’t ever seem to have any control over that. Well Paul doesn’t seem to make any exceptions here, and when he mentions this about sin there are things we ought to identify here because this isn’t the only place Paul talks about it this way.
In Galatians 2:20 he says, NASB “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live…” That is a radical statement because what he is saying is, on the basis of that crucifixion with Christ (baptism of the Holy Spirit) that took place at the instant I was saved I don’t live anymore; it is not about me; it is all about Christ. It’s not about what I want, it’s not about what I don’t get, it’s not about getting my way or not getting my way; it’s all about Christ. “… but Christ lives in me …” Here we are moving into a fellowship aspect. “… and the {life} which I now live in the flesh…” There he is using “flesh” not as the sin nature but the mortal body—and we can’t exclude the overtones of the sin nature. The flesh is corrupt and as long as we are living in the flash we are always going to have that struggle. “… I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” He is not talking about justification there. He is not talking about the fact that he has eternal life; he is talking about phase two living, living on the basis of the faith-rest drill. That’s the foundation. In this section of Galatians he is transitioning from justification to sanctification. Galatians 5:24 NASB “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus …” That is a person who has trusted in Christ. If you have trusted in Christ you are Christ’s, you are owned by Christ (Christ lives in you). And he says, we “… have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Those who have been crucified down crawl down off the cross and walk away. This is a clear statement that the sin nature, the flesh, is dead. What does he mean, it is dead?
Galatians 6:14 NASB “But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” Now he is saying not only am I dead to the sin nature, I’m dead to the world. We have to make that a reality, but that is what happens at the cross, this death that happens, and we have to understand that.
What is really important to understand is what Paul means by sin. The noun “sin” is used 25 times in Romans 6, 7, and 8. It is the word HAMARTIA which has the idea of missing the mark. The verb is used one time in Romans 6:15 NASB “What then? Shall we sin [verb] …” There he is talking about committing acts of sin. In all of the other places where the noun is used it is used to refer to this sinful nature, a sinful disposition. In terms of this passage what we are talking about by sin nature is a constitutional defect that entered into the human nature of every single person at the instant Adam disobeyed God. And it had a corrupting effect throughout his entire immaterial and material nature. The result of it is that he is totally separated from God, and that state is called spiritual death.
In Romans 6:12, 13 sin is pictured as a ruling tyrant (This fits the idea of a sin nature as opposed to an act of sin) whose human subjects offer themselves to be ruled by the monarch—the sin nature. So here we have a picture of a ruling disposition, it doesn’t fit the idea of an act of sin. NASB “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 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.” Members of unrighteousness refers more to acts of sin but the word “sin” relates to the sin nature. In Romans 6:6, 14, 17, 20 Paul portrays sin as a master who orders slaves to act however the master demands. Thus, sin is viewed as a governing or controlling disposition, not individual acts of sin.
Romans 6:6 NASB “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with {Him,}…” That means the old man is dead. Is your sin nature dead? No. “… in order that our body of sin [sin nature] might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” The old man is dead for the end result of doing away with your body of sin, with the result that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
Romans 6:14 NASB “For sin [sin nature] shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
Romans 6:17 NASB “But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin [as an unbeliever], you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed.”
Then in Romans 7:7, 8 sin produces covetousness. NASB “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COVET.’ But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin {is} dead.’” Sin produced in me all manner of evil. That first sin has to be the sin nature; that is the origin of sin.
We all have lust patterns, and that is the driver in the sin nature. And it can move us in different directions. Those are the trends. Some have a majority trend in one direction such as asceticism and legalism; other people have a trend in the other direction. But most of us have major trends and minor trends. Most of us major in one trend or the other and we minor in the opposite because we are very contradictory. The core of that lust pattern is, it is all about me. So when we trend toward legalism and asceticism it leads to a moral degeneracy. The classic example are the Pharisees—very moral overtly, but there is an arrogance towards God in that they think they can be good enough to qualify for God’s approval. The licentious ones are all the tax collectors and prostitutes and partiers that Jesus would associate with. The reason Jesus went with them is because it is a lot easier to convince the licentious crowd that they are sinners than the legalistic crowd. It is very difficult to convince arrogant, legalistic people that they are sinners; they just don’t want to accept that.
We also produce morality from our sin nature. Morality isn’t the same as spirituality. Then we have personal sins that we all commit. It all comes out of the sin nature. We are born spiritually dead, this is what controls us from the moment we are born, and so from the time we are born until the time we trust in Christ this is the only option. This was the tyrant in your life and you couldn’t do anything that didn’t come from your sin nature no matter how good it was, how nice it was, how sweet and glorious it was; it came right out of your nasty, black sin nature.
The second thing we want to see here is that as Paul depicts the spiritual struggles of the believer with the sin nature, i.e. this disposition to sin. He dramatizes it in this passage by personifying it. Personification of something that is a non-person, a physical thing, an immaterial thing, is just another figure of speech like an anthropomorphism, an anthropopathism, or something like that. You are taking something abstract and are trying to communicate to people in such a way that it is going to wake them up and it is not going to be a sort of academic treatise. It is going to personify and dramatize what the sin nature is. And it is the master, the slave master, the slave owner. Romans 6:19 NASB “I am speaking in human terms …” He is just using a figure of speech to help us to understand and to dramatize the whole point.
The sin nature is spoken of as sin, as the body of sin, and it is viewed as either a master—it was our master before salvation—or a potential master after salvation. While the individual believer or individual person is viewed as a slave prior to salvation, or is a potential slave, what we see here is that every time we sin (we are not conscious of this) what we have said in the thinking of our soul is: I’m more comfortable being a slave to the tyranny of the sin nature than I am walking by the Holy Spirit. Any time we sin what we are basically saying in our soul is: I want to be a slave of the sin nature.
This idea of master and slave is something that we should understand in light of the context or the culture at that particular time. Under Roman law a master is someone who is in the legal position of authority. The slave had to do whatever the master said he had to do. The slave, on the other hand, is an individual who has no individual rights but is legally bound to obey the authority of the master. The imagery that Paul uses here is that when we got saved that legally binding authority of the sin nature ended. But we just want to trot back and act like that is it. We hear stories every now and then related to Jews from the former Soviet Union, from Ukraine and Russia who have gone to Israel where all of a sudden they have all this freedom, but they are not comfortable. Eastern Europeans who have come to the US or Western Europe like the East Germans when the wall came down, don’t know how to handle freedom. They were much more comfortable with a government that told them what to do and how to do everything, and living in fear, because that was their whole frame of reference. They didn’t know how to live in a different environment.
That is what happens with a lot of Christians. Rather than studying the Word where they can learn how to live in the new life that we have in Christ they are more comfortable with all of their old habits and sin nature patterns. They would rather run back and let the sin nature control their life because they have a sense that somehow that worked, rather than taking the risk to do something different and walk in total dependence upon the Holy Spirit—like Peter out on the waves trying to walk on the water. It is threatening to trust and ignore our whole background and experience, but that is what Paul is getting at here.
For the non-Christian they are born with only one nature, the sin nature, that sinful disposition. We are all born that way. That is the controlling factor in our lives. If you got saved when you were twenty or thirty or forty it is so much harder. That is why it is important to get the gospel to children.
We see allusions to this in Romans 6:6 NASB “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with {Him,} in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” This is amazing; Paul thinks that we should quit sinning! We shouldn’t be a slave to that sin nature anymore. [16] “Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone {as} slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?” It is our choice. Are we going to be a slave to Christ or are we going to be a slave to the sin nature. We are never independent. At every nanosecond in our lives we are choosing to either be a slave to Christ or a slave to the sin nature; we are never just doing what we want to do.
Romans 6:20 NASB “For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.” What that basically means is that when you were a slave to sin there was no righteousness in life. No matter how good you think you are all our works of righteousness are as filthy rags, Isaiah 64:6.
What Paul says, however, is that old man is crucified. What is the old man? There are two basic views on this. One is that the old man is a synonym for the sin nature, and that is not it. The other is that the old man is a term for everything you were when you were an unregenerate, spiritually dead sinner. That is the only option it can be. Why? Paul said that the old man was crucified. That means he is dead. He is either dead or he is not, and if you still have a problem with him he is not dead. But he says the old man is dead, so he can’t be talking about the sin nature. The entire context of Romans 6:1-13 is talking about persons, not dispositions. The sin nature may be a disposition, which is what we have said, but the focus all the way through here in Romans 6 is on “we” as a whole person. We were buried with Him in baptism into death, and just as Christ was raised from the dead so we should also walk in newness of life.
The second aspect here is in Romans 6:7 NASB “or he who has died is freed from sin.” What is dying? The old man. He is freed from the power of the sin nature. But we still have a sin nature, don’t we? That first phrase, “he who has died.” Is an aorist participle in the Greek. And the main verb, “has been freed,” really doesn’t mean he has been freed; it is not what he says in the Greek. It doesn’t say “freed” at all. The verb is DIKAIOO—justification. It is the verb to be declared justified. So it should be translated to get it accurate: “For he who has died has been declared justified in relation to sin.” The NASB and the NKJV both get this wrong. That gives whole new sense of what that says. The main verb there is a perfect tense verb, indicating an action that is completely over with. It happened in the past and it is talking about the present results of that completed past action.
You were justified. It happened at a point of time when you trusted in Christ as savior some time in the past. It was completed; we are talking about current results. “He who has died” is an aorist tense. The action of an aorist tense participle precedes the action of a perfect tense verb. Aorist tense come before the action of the verb, present tense is at the same time, and future tense is after the action of the main verb. So what this is saying is, the person “who has died” comes after justification logically. But it is talking about being justified from sin. Not being freed from sin. The person who has died is justified in relationship to sin. What died was the old man.
If the old man is the sin nature then the literal meaning is that the sinful disposition died with Christ, and if that is true then none of us are saved because we are all still sinning.
When Paul applies this to the individual in Romans 6:11 he challenges us to reckon ourselves dead to sin. He said: The old man died, now you have to reckon yourselves dead to sin. The implication of that is that you and I can now reckon ourselves dead to sin, which means we keep on sinning. But if we keep on sinning then the sin nature is not dead. But the old man is dead. These are two different concepts. In Romans 6:2, 11 Paul declares that the believer is dead to sin but not that sin is dead to the believer. We can still sin. The old man is dead but the sin nature is still there.
What happens in spiritual circumcision is you put off the body of the sins of the flesh. Colossians 2:11, 12 NASB “and in Him you were also [spiritually] circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ; having been buried with Him in baptism …” That is the death of the old man. [20] “If you have died [and you did] with Christ …” The old man died at the instant of salvation. Colossians 3:3 NASB “For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” The old man died, not the sin nature.
Colossians 3:5 NASB “Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead [NKJV: ‘put to death’] …” Something died positionally but something is still active and needs to be put to death. What died and what needs to be put to death? [8] “But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, {and} abusive speech from your mouth.” Then in verse 10, because you have put on the new man. That is past tense. When did you put on the new man? You put on the new man at the cross. That removed the old man. If the old man is the sin nature, which it is not, then if you put on the new man at the cross it means you are sinless. It doesn’t fit. We put off the old man and put on the new man at salvation. But we still have this problem with the sin nature.
Colossians 2:11 NASB “and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ … [3:10] put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.” So all of this is to say that what is crucified with Christ is the old man. That is the totality of who we were, our whole identity prior to regeneration is gone. We have a new family, a new identity, we have been sealed with the Spirit, given all the spiritual gifts, we are regenerated, justified, reconciled; we are a totally new person in Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says the old man is gone.
The nature of death. Death is fundamentally a separation. The old man was crucified; we are separated from everything we were before we were saved. There is this wall that is up there and what we want to do is go back. It is like somebody comes here from the old Soviet Union and they just can’t handle the freedom, so they still live like they did when they were behind the wall. But they are not that person anymore; they are not living in that environment anymore, but that is their comfort zone. The old man is gone but we want to go back there because we are just like the Israelites who wanted to go back to the leeks and the garlic of Egypt. That is what that illustrates. They wanted to go back to slavery rather than pushing on to freedom.
Galatians 6:15 NASB “For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”