Romans 6:1 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

ROMANS CHAPTER 6 Romans 6:1-13 Though justified by grace, we may not live in sin; since the very figure of baptism requireth us to die with Christ unto sin, that we may lead a new life of holiness unto God. Romans 6:14-20 The dispensation of grace freeth us from the dominion of sin; but we are still the servants of sin, if we obey it; therefore being freed from sin, we are bound unto holiness. Romans 6:21-23 The end and wages of sin is death; but the fruit of holiness through God's grace is eternal life. Another anticipation; this Epistle abounds therewith. The apostle here prevents an objection, which might be occasioned, either by the foregoing doctrine in general, concerning justification by the free grace of God, and by a righteousness imputed to us; or by what he said more particularly in the close of the foregoing chapter, that where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Some might hence infer, that there was no need then of inherent righteousness, that persons might abide and abound in sin, that so grace might be the more exalted in the forgiveness thereof. The apostle Jude speaks, Judges 1:4, of some that made this ill improvement of the grace of God. Those that draw such inferences from the premises, they put a false construction upon the apostle's doctrine, and a paralogism or fallacy upon themselves. They make the apostle's words more general than he meant or intended them: for the abounding of sin is not the occasion of the abounding of grace in all, but only in some, even in those who confess and forsake their sins. And they apply that to the time to come which the apostle only uttered of the time past. The abounding of sin in men before their conversion and calling, doth commend and exalt the abundant grace of God, in the forgiveness thereof; but not so if sin abound in them after they are converted and called. He propounds this objection by way of interrogation, partly to show his dislike that his doctrine should be so perverted, and partly to show the peace of his own conscience, that he was far from such a thought.