For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. 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 the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

Paul talks about the grace of God in saving sinners all the time.  Yet neither in Ephesians nor in Galatians nor anywhere else that I remember does he worry about people thinking that the Grace of God might lead them to be content to go on sinning.

And that is not his worry in Romans 6.1 either.  The question is not, “May we continue in sin because we have the grace of justification that allows us to do so with impunity?”  The question is, “Are we supposed to keep sinning to produce more salvation the way God has produced it from the sin of Israel in killing Jesus?”  Thus in Romans 3:

But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

The point is not that God forgives sin but that God used the law to produce the trespass required to bring salvation.  Paul deals with this in Romans 3 and then in Romans 9 by asserting human responsibility and God’s right to arrange all this to fulfill his promise to bring about salvation.

In Romans 6 his point is more that now that it has been done once, we are in a new age.  What God did in Israel through the Law and in Jesus through his obedience is non-repeatable and unnecessary.  Now we are in the abounding grace.  It is impossible to return to sin.

And by the way….

This quotation from Martin Lloyd-Jones is mistaken

The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of this charge being brought against it. There is probably no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this, that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that …because you are saved by grace alone it does not matter at all what you do; you can go on sinning as much as you like… If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding then it is not the gospel… If a man preaches justification by works, no one would ever raise this question… There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of justification by faith only can be dangerous… I say therefore that if our preaching does not expose us to that charge and to that misunderstanding, it is because we are not really preaching the gospel.

How does one get “always” out of Romans 6.1 even if his reading of the meaning of 6.1 was accurate?  Wouldn’t an “always” follow from every Pauline Epistle that explains the Gospel and all the preaching in Acts, at least?  Shouldn’t the point be that sometimes it is possible to get that impression.

Do we care what the Bible says?

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

Adam sinned by seizing forbidden fruit in the middle of the sancturary, in a special, land, in the world (Genesis 2-3).

Once he was cast out there was no way to commit that sin.  It was impossible.  Perhaps attacking the cherubim might count, but we have no such record.

But on Sinai God gave the Law which refers not only to the decalogue but to the Tabernacle that housed the decalogue.  The Tabernacle was placed in a special land in the world.

So now Israel could trespass like Adam had.

The sin “not counted where there is no law” is a relative statement–the equivalent of sinning not like the transgression of Adam.  The sin of the Gentiles were not as serious as the sins that were, as it were, in God’s face.

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

via Passage: Romans 11.17-24 (ESV Bible Online).

This passage deal with apostates from the covenant.  As such, while it was historically about unbelieving Jews and believing Gentiles, it should be applied to the way growing confessional Evangelicals treat denominations now compromised with various forms of liberalism.

Paul is talking to some people about how they have treated N. T. Wright.

whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood through faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

This is a pretty amazing argument.

I would insist that God’s righteousness that obligates him to save his people and fulfill his promise to save the world cannot be divorced from his righteous opposition to sin (though I’m not impressed with the insistence on the divine egotism Piper likes so much).  After all, how can God promise to save from sin if he was not opposed to sin?

But what is amazing is that Piper gets so detailed in arguing for a consistent definition while he actually wants to completely flip definitions within a paragraph.  Here is the text:

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 faith in/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 redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood through faith/faithfulness. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

I have used the ESV with some interpretive options given in italics.  I changed the ESV’s odious paraphrase “to be received by faith” back to “through faith.”  I suspect that Paul is saying that God’s righteousness is demonstrated in the faithfulness of Jesus in providing propitiation and redemption, and that thus “through faithfulness” is a statement that the propitiation came about through God’s or Jesus’ faithfulness.

But here is Piper’s understanding:

But now the righteousness imputed by God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness imputed by God through faith in 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 redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood through faith. This was to show God’s unswerving commitment to uphold his own glory, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his unswerving commitment to uphold his own glory at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Piper’s done great work in the Bible.  This is not an instance of such.

One can’t read Evangelical commentaries on the book of Romans, with few exceptions, without wondering (if one allows oneself to wonder such things) how they can be so confident about conclusions that allegedly follow from arguments that don’t seem to warrant that sort of confidence.

But the answer probably lies in a fundamental Protestant principle.  One finds that Protestants don’t only hold that Romans supports distinctively Protestant beliefs; they host that Romans clearly and plainly supports such beliefs.

Even to justify Protestantism from the content of Paul’s letter to the Romans is not enough.  One must do so in a way that indicates that there are no hard choices and no close calls.  Otherwise, one is subverting the faith.

This is an odd position to be in:

But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.

But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God and know his will and approve what is excellent, because you are instructed from the law; and if you are sure that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of children, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth— you then who teach others, do you not teach yourself? While you preach against stealing, do you covet other people’s belonging in your heart or allow yourself to be unsatisfied with what you have? You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you lust in your heart or have you ever done so even once? You who abhor idols, do you commit idolatry in your heart? You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law. For, as it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”

For circumcision indeed is of value if you obey the law without sinning once, but if you break the law, your circumcision becomes uncircumcision. So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law without sinning once, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision? Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law (all of this being entirely hypothetical and unrelated to, say, Judah’s confession that Tamar was more righteous than him or any other example in the Bible where Gentiles were better than Jews). For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.

Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision? Much in every way. To begin with, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God. What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,

But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come?—as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written:

Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

[Note: the “catena” above comes from First Kings 8.46; Psalm 130.4; 143.2; Proverbs 20.9; Ecclesiasties 7.20]

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

When were “we” weak?  Who is “we”?  When was the death of the son which reconciled us?

When did Christ die for the ungodly?

Is this all a shorthand for saying that we were weak and enemies before our own conversions throughout human history before and after the actual death and resurrection of Christ?

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. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

It is fairly typical to point out that “not under law but under grace” refers to a shift in ages.  We’ve gone from the age of sin and the law to the age of grace and the gospel.  The transition was the death and resurrection of Christ.

So when was “our old Adam/Man/Self (anthropos) crucified with Jesus?  When Jesus was actually crucified?  What is the old Man (singular) that we all possess (plural)?  And what about “the body of sin”?  What is that?  Each person’s body?  Or one corporate body?

ut thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So if Cornelius, or Zacharias and Elizabeth (pretending they lived long enough) or anyone else who was by childhood nurture or by proselytization a believer in God who then heard the Gospel and was baptized, to assume that Paul was not talking about them?  Was he only talking about the experience of converts from apostate Judaism or paganism?

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Does this only happen at conversion or did this happen to the whole world when Jesus died and was raised, when the Temple Veil was torn in two?

I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

When does the Torah come to each individual to make them “die”?  Hasn’t Paul already said that the law came at Sinai (Romans 5), referring to the age previous as being without law?

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Why is there “now” no condemnation?  Now that I am converted?  Now that Jesus has died and risen and ascended and sent the Spirit?  If Paul if referring to something that happened in history (the death of Jesus and his Resurrection by the Spirit), how can we not conclude that the “wretched man” was the Church before that event?