For one who has died has been justified from sin (Romans 6.7).

To be “justified” in Paul’s letter to the Romans is to be subjected to courtroom or courtroom-like procedure. This is especially clear in Romans 3 and I won’t reproduce the evidence here. But how is one justified not just from the guilt of sin, but sin itself? Here in Romans 6, the context demands that Paul is addressing why we should no longer “continue..” or “remain in sin.”

One must remember that sin is not only a cause of God’s judgment or wrath, from which we need protection, but it is also a form of God’s wrath on sin. One sins and is punished by being “given up” to more sin. Romans 1.18ff establish this fact. Here is a sample:

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.

Since sin is a judicial punishment, release from sin requires a new judgment. The judge needs to say, “The accused is hereby ruled free from sin,” and bang the gavel down. (In this case, the banging of the gavel is the resurrection of Jesus.) So Jesus’ death and resurrection release us not just from the guilt of sin but also from the power of sin.

Thus Titus 2.11-14:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

We are redeemed (liberated) not just from guilt but from lawlessness. Once we were slaves to lawlessness and now we are God’s special treasure “zealous for good works.” The grace of God “trains us.”

Likewise 1 Peter 1.17-19:

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Sin, in this image, is a network of ancestral ways from which you need to be ransomed, just like the Israelites were released from Egypt at Passover. Jesus died to bring you out of sin and into righteousness, not merely as guilt and and legal standing, but also as a way of sin and a way of righteousness.

This movement applies to world history. As Romans 1.18ff portrays vividly, under God’s wrath the whole world, Jew and Gentile alike, was plunging downward into a dark spiral of apostasy and idolatry. Finally, Jesus stopped it:

But now the God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—God’s righteousness  through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the liberation [or redemption] that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, through faithfulness. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.