Chris, Jo and Alex are back as a trio for episode seven in the Romans series, opening with a read-through of chapter 6 verses 1–14. They set the scene first: Paul has spent chapters 1–4 establishing the universal problem of sin and the inadequacy of the law to deal with it, and from chapter 5 onwards the vocabulary shifts — Jesus is back on the scene, justification language recedes, and life, freedom and reigning take over as Paul moves into the second act of the argument, heading for the crescendo of chapter 8. The chapter's opening question is a piece of Greco-Roman rhetorical technique Paul loves: anticipating your opponent's refutation and defusing it before it lands, necessary in a letter sent halfway across the known world with Phoebe carrying the delivery instructions. The team disagree amiably over how cynical the objection is: Chris and Alex read it as "why bother caring about right and wrong", Jo suspects someone hearing it as a licence to sin deliberately. The first half works through the death/burial/resurrection imagery, picking up the basileia kingdom-and-ruling-power language from chapter 5: sin isn't merely a catalogue of acts but a structural status, a dominion you're either under or dead to. They dig into baptism as both metaphor and action (down into the water and up out of it) and its resonance with the Exodus and the Red Sea, while insisting it's union with Christ, not the rite itself, that does the work (otherwise chapter 4's argument about faith preceding circumcision collapses). Jo highlights the pile-up of Greek sun- compound verbs: buried with, crucified with, raised with, living with; as the grammatical backbone of Paul's "in Christ" theology and, he argues, of a covenantal reading of Romans. There's a detour into what "the glory of the Father" in verse 4 might mean, including the reading that identifies it with the Spirit, and a discussion of Paul's habit of planting hints early that he unpacks chapters later. The pastoral heart of the episode sits in the sinless perfection debate: is verse 7's "anyone who has died has been set free from sin" a description of present moral reality, or a forensic status held in tension with verse 12's "do not let sin reign in your mortal body"? Jo names the two failure modes he's seen — either whatever I do can't be sin, or if I do sin I have to hide it, breeding hypocrisy and shame. Alex pushes the conversation out of the individualistic weeds and back into Paul's big covenantal categories: a new era for the people of God, not a status report on one person's behaviour. Chris nuances the "forensic" label as also sacramental. Alex's question about where sanctification fits gets a deliberate deferral; Paul starts the thought here and doesn't finish it until chapter 8. The second half takes up verses 15–23 and the antinomian objection's second form: if we're not under law, why is sin a problem? They set the slavery metaphor in its ancient context — a lifelong status attaching to the whole person, ownership of the body, exploitation, being counted among assets — with a recommended side trip to Philemon (and a plug for the podcast's own Philemon episode). The key move is that there's no neutral third state: you're a slave to one master or the other, which Jo links back to Jesus on serving two masters, and to the "freedom to, not freedom from" argument of Galatians. Order matters throughout: you're set free first, and obedience is the response, never the means. They touch on the commentators' storm-in-a-teacup over what "the standard of teaching" refers to, the responsibility-without-autonomy of the doulos, and Douglas Moo's phrase for what's happened: a salvation-historical regime change, which Chris gently contests on the grounds that grace was the operative regime all along — only the instrument changed. The chapter closes with Paul mixing his metaphors on purpose: freedom, wages and fruit. Slaves don't earn wages; free people do — so death is the wage sin honestly pays, while eternal life is precisely not a wage but a free gift. Sanctification finally appears by name in verse 22, closing the loop on Alex's earlier question. Next episode: chapter 7, which Jo bills as the genuinely hard one: who exactly is the "I" wrestling with sin? Resources The Epistle to the Romans - Douglas Moo (NICNT) Romans - Thomas Schreiner (BECNT) Romans - Beverly Roberts Gaventa (NTL) The Epistle to the Romans - Richard Longenecker (NIGTC) The Epistle to the Romans - Leon Morris (PNTC) Big thanks to Tim Whittle for editing and extra production on this podcast. Get more info at Riverlife Church, and find us on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to Bible Streams on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.
