I Wanna Be Free!

Many Christians adopt the view that the life of a disciple of Christ is largely occupied with stamping out all the sin in their life, one by one stripping away all the bad habits, unholy thinking and sinful actions God has condemned in His word. To this end, various psychological strategies are employed, accountability groups are formed, spiritual disciplines enjoined; the believer throws out his t.v. and computer, or cigarettes, or booze, or drugs, or junk food, burns all his inappropriate content magazines, visits a counsellor, learns to understand himself better, maybe screams into a pillow for a bit; the sinful Christian strains to be better, committing fully to change, determining never again to fall into a particular sin; gritting her teeth, hunching her shoulders, she turns to move against the stormy gale of sin she has established in her life, fighting herself tooth-and-nail, staggering under the force of the dust and wind of her sinful desires and fleshly impulses, the devil sticking out his foot of temptation to trip her as she does.

But Paul indicates in the passage above that sin is not dealt with in this way. He explains that sin is merely a symptom of something else, a deeper, hidden problem that cannot ever be remedied by just attacking the symptoms it produces. In Romans 6, Paul lays out a very different route to freedom from sin, a route that is spiritual not psychological, that doesn't just produce a change in behaviour but deepens one's knowledge and experience of God. In fact, at the risk of over-statement, Romans 6 contains, I believe, the "way of escape" from all sin. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

Who or what is our "old self," or our "old man" in the KJV, who has been crucified with Christ? It's the person you were before you were saved and made alive spiritually in Christ. Paul described this person in some detail:

Ephesians 2:1-3
1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

Titus 3:3
3 For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

Colossians 1:21-22
21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him,

Not a pretty picture Paul paints in these passages (sorry about the alliteration). The "old self" is a nasty piece of work, producing sin like a car engine produces exhaust. In these passages, Paul points out several things that define the "old self" in particular:

- spiritually "dead."
- bound under the power of the World, the Flesh, and the devil.
- selfish and contentious.
- hostile toward God. (See also: Romans 8:5-7)

In verse 6, Paul closely associates the "old self" with the "body of sin," that is, our flesh, from which arise various powerful impulses. The "old self," not made spiritually alive in Christ, follows the impulses of the flesh, and, unconstrained by the Spirit, will do so to an inordinate, even destructive, degree whenever possible. This is evident in how many things become addictions for people: inappropriate content, food, sloth, fear, sex, money, drugs, booze, gambling, video gaming, cell phones, shopping, etc. The link between the "old self" and the flesh is so close that in speaking of one, Paul is often also speaking of the other - as is demonstrated in verse 6.

In verse 6, Paul not only establishes the link between the spiritually-unregenerate "old self" and the "body of sin," the flesh, but also declares that the power of both in the believer's life has been broken so that the believer is no longer enslaved to sin. How? By the crucifixion of the "old self" with Christ.

Verses 1-5 of Romans 6 describe the spiritual union of the believer with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection, giving context to Paul's declaration in verse 6. As a result of this union with Christ, the "old self" has been crucified with Christ and the Christian liberated from its flesh-oriented, flesh-bound, sinfulness.

How was this accomplished? Paul doesn't ever say. He offers no details of the mechanics whereby our "old selves" were crucified with Christ. He just asserts it as the fact of the matter which we are to believe.

7 For one who has died has been set free from sin.

Paul is far more concerned with the fact of our freedom from sin's power, than with the precise how of our freedom from it. In verse 7, he repeats that the believer is free from sin: from its penalty but also, as he has explained, from its power. Are you living by faith in the reality of this truth? Are you acting in accord with the fact of your freedom from sin's power? Or do you carry on as one who believes s/he is still very much prisoner to the power of sin, fighting and straining against it every day? Are you walking by faith in your liberty from the penalty of your sin, but remaining bound under the power of sin from which you have also been made free? If you are trusting in the former spiritual reality, why are you not also trusting in the latter?


Here, Paul explains that all believers have been united with Christ such that they are "dead to sin and alive to God" in him. Paul commands - not suggests - that the Roman believers "consider" or "count on" this being so. As with the truth of their salvation, the Christian must "walk by faith, not by sight," (2 Corinthians 5:7) trusting that what God's word says about their freedom from sin's power, the power of the "old self," is true, regardless of feeling or experience.

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.

It's clear in this verse that Paul is not speaking just of the penalty of sin being dissolved by our union with Christ, but that our union with Christ frees us from the "reign" of sin, of our "old self," the ultimate source of all our sin. When we sin, we do, not what we are bound to do, but are letting sin "reign" illegitimately, letting it characterize our thinking and conduct, and causing us, as a result, to obey the passions of the flesh (body) in a way unconstrained by the Holy Spirit.

The flesh, our bodily impulses to eat, or rest, or copulate, are not, in-and-of themselves, sinful. Directed by our "old self" that is at enmity with God, that is not controlled by the Spirit and unable to properly control itself, our natural, God-given, fleshly impulses are indulged in a manner that dishonors the Creator of our flesh and its "passions." The real culprit in our struggle with sin, then, isn't our flesh, our physical bodies and its needs and impulses, but the "old self" in control of our bodies, pursuing fleshly desires apart from God's constraining power and commands.


Vital as it is to know, and by faith live in, all that Paul has laid out to this point in Romans 6, they key to living in victory over sin is in what he wrote in these verses. The born-again believer is to be constantly and consciously submitting to God, presenting (or yielding, in the KJV) himself to God, a vessel or instrument under His control, serving His purposes. As this is so, the believer is filled with the Spirit and transformed, made in practice what he believes by faith is the truth about his union with Christ and freedom from the "old self" and sin.

So, is this how you are walking with God everyday? Maybe you're encountering the identification truths here for the first time. Whatever the case may be, if you are a born-again child of God, you are "dead unto sin and alive unto God through Christ" and never HAVE to sin again. Freed from your "old self," you are always now able to live free of sin, if you choose. Will you?

Bump.