I. The basis of the Apostle's sentiment here is the death of Christ. The death of Christ is the fact. Christ died for our sins. Calvary, its associations, its wonderful mystery and blessedness, were present to the Apostle's mind; and, however progressive spiritually his view might be, he never lost sight of what took place in Jerusalem never lost sight of the Lord in His crucifixion and resurrection. In Christ's death he might be said to die to sin as well as for it, for he had done with sin.
II. In the second place, with this basis of history, we find that there is also a basis of prophecy, it is implied here, at least respecting Christ and His people. Paul saw a grand future for Christ and the Church. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him." In the eighth chapter of this Epistle we have the outburst of the music, but in the sixth chapter we have the undertone in the same strain; for he says, "If we be dead in Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him," and the eighth chapter is but the expansion and development of that sublime idea. There is therefore a basis of prophecy as well as of history.
III. Note the use which the Apostle makes of the past and the future in reference to his spiritual life. He fixes upon the historical fact that Christ died, and died for our sins, and he will not let that for an instant go. But he spiritualises it, and shows its relation to his daily experience. He teaches that between us and Christ there comes an identification and sympathy, through which we feel like Him, and act like Him, and become one with Him, imitating His example, and becoming conformed to His image and His type of life, from a moral power which flows from His death into our life. There is a dying unto sin in the case of all true believers, through their union by faith with Christ, who died so many years ago. So, too, St. Paul makes the resurrection of Christ a moral power in us, so that we rise from the death of sin to the life of righteousness.
J. Stoughton, Penny Pulpit,No. 637, new series.
References: Romans 6:8-11. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ix., No. 503; G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends,p. 120; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 83.