Go to Related Reading
About this book

Romans

About this book
Chapter 6

1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase?⁠ 2 Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.⁠ 5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.⁠ 7 (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.) 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he is never going to die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, 13 and do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no mastery over you, because you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Absolutely not! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or obedience resulting in righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed from the heart that pattern of teaching you were entrusted to, 18 and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness.⁠ 19 (I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness. 21 So what benefit did you then reap from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now, freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the payoff of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Texts in conversation

Compare Romans 6:6 and Berakhot 60a

New Testament · Rabbinic

Share:

Summary

In Romans, Paul says that death ends sin’s control, describing the old self being killed so a person can be free from it, similar to a Rabbinic tradition in tractate Berakhot, which describes death as a form of atonement.

Passages

Romans 6:6

New Testament
4 Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. 5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. 6 We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.) 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he is never going to die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.
55–58 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Romans

Berakhot 60a

Rabbinic · Babylonian Talmud
The Sages taught: One who enters a Roman bathhouse, where a fire burns beneath the pool of water used for bathing, and where there is the risk of collapse, says: May it be Your will, O Lord my God, that you save me from this and similar matters, and do not let ruin or iniquity befall me, and if ruin or iniquity does befall me, let my death be atonement for all of my transgressions. Abaye said: One should not say: If ruin befalls me, so as not to open his mouth to Satan and provoke him. As Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said and as it was taught in a baraita in the name of Rabbi Yosei: One should never open his mouth to Satan by raising, at his own initiative, the possibility of mishap or death.
450–550 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Berakhot

References

"... Literally, 'For the one having died has been justified [or "declared innocent"] from the sin.' The deathbed confession in the Siddur includes the words, 'May my death be an atonement for all the sins, iniquities and transgressions of which I have been guilty against you', following the pattern of a prayer in the Talmud (Berakhot 60a) and the Mishna (Sanhedrin 6:2). Yoma 86a also speaks of death as 'finishing' the punishment for sin and quotes Isaiah 22:14, 'Surely this iniquity shall not be atoned for [Hebrew khupar, "covered"] until you die.' [Paul] here is drawing on the Jewish tradition that says an individual's own death atones for his sin. He applies it by affirming that our union with the Messiah and with his death (verses 3-6) means that we have effectively died: in union with the Messiah's death we died, and that atones for our sin ..."
David H. Stern, Jewish New Testament Commentary (Jewish New Testament Publications, 1994), 373.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Your feedback

Romans 6:6 and Berakhot 60a

Leave a comment

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Comments

Glossary

Search the Library