In this episode, we unpack Romans 6:15-7:6 and answer one of Christianity’s most misunderstood questions: If grace covers all sin, why not keep sinning? Paul answers, we don’t need the threat of the Law to keep us from sinning. We have a deterrent. Sin always produces death, not only the eventual end of life, but futility, corruption and evil we experience right now.
Why Understanding Sin Matters
Most Americans, including evangelicals, believe all people are basically good.
The 2025 Ligonier Ministries State of Theology survey found that 64% of evangelicals agree with the statement, “Everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God.”
Plus, 53% agree with the statement, “Everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”
That’s not what the Bible teaches, and it makes us spiritually blind. If we believe we are basically good, we will not see any reason to need a Savior.
That is a devastating misunderstanding of the gospel, and it is exactly what I addressed in Chapter 1 of Start Strong.
A right understanding of sin is the first step to real hope. Unless we see how deep the problem goes, the solution will not seem necessary or beautiful.
The passage we will unpack today is from Paul’s letter to the Romans. I had a hard time picking which passage to study because so many deal with the nature of sin. In the end, I chose Romans 6:15-7:6.
Orienting to Romans
Paul wrote this letter to the church in Rome. It is unique among Paul’s letters because he had not visited Rome before writing it. The letter is not a response to a specific situation. It is an introduction to Paul and his gospel.
In the first four chapters, Paul explains the gospel: We are justified by faith in Jesus Christ, not by keeping the law.
Then in Chapter 5, one of my favorite passages, Paul answers the question, so what? He talks about the results of the gospel and why it is such good news. I expect we will look at that passage when we get to Chapter 14.
In Chapters 6-8, Paul answers objections to his gospel. Think of these chapters like the Q&A after a lecture, except the questions come from Paul’s opponents. They aim to discredit his message: if your gospel is true, then this outrageous thing must also be true. Since that cannot be true, your gospel must be wrong.
For more detail: Romans: Justification by Faith
Objection 1: No Law = More sin = More Grace (Romans 6:1-14)
The first objection is, “Shall we sin that grace might increase?” The reasoning of Paul’s opponents goes like this:
- Our primary objective is to glorify God.
- God is glorified when He is given the opportunity to demonstrate His grace.
- Paul claims that God forgives our sins, regardless of whether we keep the Law. Justification is part of the gift of grace.
- The more sinfulness God forgives, the more grace He can demonstrate.
- Therefore, we should keep sinning so that God can show His grace. God will benefit if we pursue evil.
- We know that cannot be true. So, Paul, neither is your gospel.
Paul says no. Grace includes more than forgiveness. Part of the gift of grace is that we no longer want to sin. One of the core convictions of saving faith is grieving over our sin and longing to be free of it. Why would we continue to pursue what we hate and no longer want to do?
To continue in sin would make a mockery of God’s grace. It rejects the part of the gift that frees us from slavery to our desire to sin.
Why Grace Doesn’t Permit Sin (Romans 6:15-23)
Romans 6:15: What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!
The second question begins in Romans 6:15. The critique runs like this: Okay, Paul, maybe we should not keep chasing sin, but your gospel eliminates the one effective incentive to avoid it. The Law says, “Do this and live; do not do this and die.” If there are no legal consequences to sin, because your gospel removes the Law, than your gospel is a license to sin.
Paul’s critics assumed that without the law’s threats, then the door is wide open to sin. In their minds, fear is the only real deterrent.
Paul’s answer is forceful: By no means.
Paul’s Answer Summarized
Paul argues, there is still a powerful incentive to avoid sin: death.
In Romans 6:16-23 Paul says that when we sin, we experience death. He does not mean physical death or eternal separation from God. He means a quality in our present daily life.
Every time we give in to sin, we experience negative consequences, which the Bible calls death or one of its synonyms like futility, decay or corruption. Sin always produces some kind of death right now: loss, bitterness, grief, sorrow, tragedy, evil, hostility, strife, frustration, and anger. If we want to experience life, we must turn away from what kills it: sin
Paul also points out that the Law was never an effective deterrent. The Law told us what was right and wrong, but it could not change our hearts. It often stirred up rebellion. Tell a child not to touch the cookie jar, and the jar becomes the most fascinating object in the room. The Law exposes sin, but it cannot stop it.
The objection assumes fear is the only thing that keeps us from evil. That is wrong on two counts.
- Fear of losing our inheritance never made us holy; it only made us afraid.
- There is a far more reliable incentive: death itself. Sin and death are cause and effect. If you drop something, it falls. Live in sin, and death follows.
Avoiding that kind of death is what first drove us to God. We turned to Him because we wanted life, not death. The same truth keeps us close to Him. Where sin grows, death grows. Where grace reigns, life flourishes.
Now let’s look at the details.
What Paul Means by ‘Death’
Death in the New Testament means more than when our hearts stop. It is a kind of existence where things naturally and inevitably fall apart.
Life, or eternal life, is the opposite. It is the kind of existence where things grow stronger, richer, and more whole.
If Paul meant death only as final separation from God, his argument would not make sense, because our inheritance is secure in Christ. He must mean a kind of death we taste in this life.
This death is the slow unraveling of what we care about. Our bodies age. Relationships strain. Joy leaks away. Left alone, relationships drift toward alienation.
The physical world calls this entropy. Spiritually, the same principle applies. Human relationships, left unattended, move toward hostility, resentment, and bitterness. That is why we see war, strife, divorce, betrayal, and cruelty. It is natural to us.
That tendency to decay is what Scripture means by death. It is spiritual entropy. Death is what turns a potentially beautiful life sour.
The biggest problem wee need to solve is death.
More: What are Life & Death in the New Testament?
You Obey Your Master
15What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? – Romans 6:15-16
The one you obey becomes your master. The kind of life you experience is determined by what master you obey.
Sin always leads to death, and obedience that springs from faith leads to life.
Our inheritance is secure by faith alone. Salvation is not at risk. But sin still brings death into our daily experience. We live in a world marked by sin, death, futility, and corruption.
The only way to avoid death in our present experience is to avoid sin. The only way to taste the life to come is to pursue righteousness.
Whoever you obey will determine the quality of your life. Sin produces death. Holiness produces life.
Paul is not talking about obedience to the Law here. The Law cannot produce life because it cannot change our sinful natures. The obedience he means flows from trusting God and longing for His holiness.
Freed From Sin, Slaves of Righteousness
17But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. – Romans 6:17-19
You were once slaves of sin. You were helpless, trapped, unable to change your evil ways.
Then God stepped in, saved you, forgave you, and gave you a new heart. You obeyed from the heart. You believed. You trusted Jesus. In that moment, God became your master, and you became a slave of righteousness.
“Obedient from the heart” is key. Paul is not describing external rule-keeping. God changed your heart so that you want to follow Him.
So why does Paul say, “Stop presenting yourselves as slaves to sin”?
When you came to faith, on the one hand, nothing about you changed. You are still you, with the same weaknesses and strengths. On the other hand, everything changed. You now have the possibility of overcoming those weaknesses in a new way. Sin is no longer your master. God is your master. He is teaching you how to follow Him.
God has made a permanent claim on your life. Your direction and destiny have changed. Yet you still face choices. This side of heaven, you still wrestle with temptation.
“I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations” means that, because we have not yet received our full inheritance and sin is still part of our reality, we need encouragement to pursue the truth.
Your destination is settled. God has bought your ticket. But along the way, you still choose which paths to take.
Present yourselves as slaves to righteousness. You are not earning salvation. You are learning to live in line with the truth.
In every temptation, ask: which master will I serve right now? Sin, which brings death, or righteousness, which brings life?
When you stumble, grace is there. As you grow, you will see the pattern more clearly: sin leads to death, righteousness leads to life.
The Fruit of Sin and the Gift of Life
20For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:20-23
“You were free in regard to righteousness” is almost tongue-in-cheek. It’s like saying, “You were righteousness-free” (like gluten-free). Righteousness made no demands on you, and you could not live it out.
What was the benefit of that life? Death. The fruit of that life was death. Sin promised freedom but delivered corruption.
Before faith, you felt the weariness, frustration, and emptiness of life without God. That longing for life drew you toward Him.
We do not need the law to motivate us. We already know what sin brings. We have lived it.
Now, the freedom from sin and the holiness you craved are not only possible, they are your destiny. Why go back to the death and despair you begged to escape when life is now within reach?
The incentive to avoid sin is not fear of losing your inheritance. You cannot lose it. The incentive is the nature of reality itself. Every time we sin, we taste death. Every time we choose righteousness, we taste the life to come.
The Law’s Failure to Stop Sin
1Or do you not know, brothers, for I am speaking to those who know the law, that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. 3Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress. – Romans 7:1-3
Paul uses marriage law to make a point. As long as the husband lives, the law binds his wife to him. If he dies, she is released and free to marry another.
He applies that structure to our spiritual story. Under the Mosaic Law, I was effectively bound to my sin. The law told me what righteousness required, but the only resource I had was my sinful self. The law explained the demands but could not give me the ability to meet them. It could not change my heart.
That legal pressure kept me tied to the person who could not be holy: me.
When I place my faith in Jesus, a “death” occurs that changes the legal situation. The bond that tied me to the old slave-of-sin is broken. I died to that “marriage” to my old self. I am now free to marry another.
Released From the Law to Belong to Christ
4Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to Him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. 5For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. 6But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. — Romans 7:4-6
Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, we have been released from our “marriage” to the law so that we can belong to Christ. The purpose is that we may bear fruit for God.
When we were under the law, it kept telling us what righteousness required, but it gave us no power to achieve it. It bound us to our sinfulness.
The Law said, “Do this and you will live. Prove your worth. Make yourself holy.” The harder I tried, the more I discovered how deeply sinful I was. The law exposed sin. It did not cure it. It often aroused sinful passions by making them obvious.
What Paul Means by “Flesh”
When Paul says ‘flesh,’ he means everything we are apart from God: our own willpower, strength, and resources, without divine help. It is me, apart from any divine intervention.
When I try to keep the law in my flesh, I fail because I am a sinful person. The only fruit that life produces is death.
If we want different fruit, we must belong to Someone else. The death of Jesus freed us from the old covenant that said, “You do it on your own.”
We are no longer under that contract. Now we are under a new one. In the new covenant, God says, “I will make you the kind of person who loves holiness and righteousness, and I will give you the heart to follow Me.”
Being released from the Law does not mean the Law is irrelevant. God has not changed His mind about good and evil. The moral standards of the Law still describe righteousness perfectly.
What changed is the contract. We are no longer required to produce holiness on our own to earn life. Because of our faith in Jesus, God gives us a new heart and begins producing holiness within us.
That is why Paul contrasts two ways of serving God: the old way of the written code and the new way of the Spirit. The old way means trying to obey through sheer human effort. The new way means living with all of God’s resources available to us through the Holy Spirit.
Under the old covenant, we were on our own. Under the new covenant, the Spirit of God works in us to bring about the life and righteousness we could never achieve ourselves.
See: 09 Romans 6:15-7:6 Grace and the Law
Summary
Romans 6:15-7:6 answers the question, ‘If grace covers all sin, why not keep sinning?’
- The objection Paul answers is this: if the gospel is all grace and our inheritance is secure, then shouldn’t we keep sinning so God has more to forgive? Absolutely not. There is still a very real incentive, and it is called death.
- Sin brings death now: brokenness, shame, emptiness, and the slow unraveling of what is good. The wages of sin are always death. If you want to be free from that decay and taste real life, the path is salvation through faith.
- The Law was never an effective deterrent. The Law did not stop sin. It exposed it. It showed how high the standard is and how far short we fall. But it gave no power to be holy. It proved we could not do it on our own.
- Grace is not an invitation to sin. Grace frees us from our slavery to sin and gives us a longing for holiness.
Key Takeaways:
- Grace doesn’t permit sin. It changes your heart so you no longer want to sin.
- Sin always produces death in some form of futility and decay you experience now.
- The Law couldn’t stop sin; it exposed it. Only the Spirit can transform you from the inside out.
Please listen to the podcast for more detail and explanation.
Next: Why Can’t You Just Try Harder to Be Good?
Series: Start Strong: A New Believer’s Podcast
Resources: Start Strong Book, Workbook, Discussion Questions, Lesson Plans
Photo by Sergei Lisovskiy on Unsplash
Season 27, Episode 1
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