Romans 6:10

For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(10) But it is not possible that the life of Christ should fail. Death has lost all its power over Him. The death which He died, He died to sin. It was the last sacrifice which He made to sin, and one that freed Him from its dominion for ever. He died to it once for all, and His death did not need to be, and could not be, repeated. On the other hand, His life is assured, because it is wholly dependent upon God.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

6:3-10 Baptism teaches the necessity of dying to sin, and being as it were buried from all ungodly and unholy pursuits, and of rising to walk with God in newness of life. Unholy professors may have had the outward sign of a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness, but they never passed from the family of Satan to that of God. The corrupt nature, called the old man, because derived from our first father Adam, is crucified with Christ, in every true believer, by the grace derived from the cross. It is weakened and in a dying state, though it yet struggles for life, and even for victory. But the whole body of sin, whatever is not according to the holy law of God, must be done away, so that the believer may no more be the slave of sin, but live to God, and find happiness in his service.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

For in that he died - For in respect to the design of his death.

He died unto sin - His death had respect to sin. The design of his death was to destroy sin; to make an atonement for it, and thus to put it away. As his death was designed to effect this, so it follows that Christians being baptized into his death, and having it as their object to destroy sin, should not indulge in it. The whole force of the motive; therefore, drawn from the death of Christ, is to induce Christians to forsake sin; compare 2 Corinthians 5:15, "And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth, live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them and rose again."

Once - ἐφάπαξ ephapax. Once only; once for all. This is an adverb denying a repetition (Schleusner), and implies that it will not be done again; compare Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 10:10. The argument of the apostle rests much on this, that his death was once for all; that it would not be repeated.

In that he liveth - The object, the design of his living. He aims with his living power to promote the glory of God.

Unto God - He seeks to promote his glory. The argument of Paul is this: Christians by their profession are united to him. They are bound to imitate him. As he now lives only to advance the glory of God; as all his mighty power, now that he is raised from the dead, and elevated to his throne in heaven, is exerted to promote his glory; so should their powers, being raised from the death of sin, be exerted to promote the glory of God.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

10. For in that he died, he died unto—that is, in obedience to the claims of

sin once—for all.

but in that he liveth, he liveth unto—in obedience to the claims of God.

God—There never, indeed, was a time when Christ did not "live unto God." But in the days of His flesh He did so under the continual burden of sin "laid on Him" (Isa 53:6; 2Co 5:21); whereas, now that He has "put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself," He "liveth unto God," the acquitted and accepted Surety, unchallenged and unclouded by the claims of sin.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

For when he died unto sin, i.e. to take away sin, he died but once; see Hebrews 9:28, and Romans 10:10,14; but when he rose again from the dead, he lived with God for ever an immortal, endless life. By this phrase is expressed that eternal and indissoluble union which the Son hath with the Father.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For in that he died,.... The death of Christ was settled and agreed to in the covenant and council of peace; it was spoken of by the prophets, and typified by sacrifices; Christ came into the world in order to die, and actually did die the death of the cross; in which the great love of God and Christ is expressed to us; and which is a fundamental article of the Christian faith: and when he died,

he died unto sin once: he died to that, which we by nature are dead in, and could never make atonement for; which he himself never lived in, and which men naturally love to in; and which had he not died for, we must have died for to all eternity; and he died not for any sin of his own, or of angels, nor for the sins of every man, but for the sins of his people; it may be rendered, he died in sin: in the likeness of sinful flesh, in which he was sent; having as a surety sin laid on him, and bore by him, and for which he was wounded, bruised, and died: or rather to sin; that is, to make atonement for it, procure the pardon of it, take it away, and utterly abolish it: and this he did "once"; this is observed, in reference to the repeated sacrifices of the old law, which could never expiate or remove sin; and to show, that Christ's dying once was enough, his sacrifice was fully satisfactory to the law and justice of God:

but in that he liveth: which must be understood, not of his life as God, but as man; and that not on earth, but in heaven; where he lives with God, at the right hand of God, and by him, by the power of God: and

he liveth unto God; to his glory, and to make intercession for us.

Geneva Study Bible

For in that he died, he died unto sin {m} once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto {n} God.

(m) Once for all.

(n) With God.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Romans 6:10. Proof of the θάνατος αὐτοῦ οὐκέτι κυριεύει.[1426]

ὃ γὰρ ἀπέθανε] ὃ is in any case the accusative of the object. But whether Paul conceived it as: for as to what concerns His death (see Vigerus, ed. Herm. p. 34; Frotscher and Breitenbach, a[1427] Xen. Hier. 6, 12; Matthiae, p. 1063), or what, i.e. the death which He died (so Rückert, Fritzsche, de Wette, Philippi; see Bernhardy, p. 106 f.; comp on Galatians 2:20) cannot be determined, since both renderings suit the correct interpretation of what follows. Yet the latter, analogous to the expression θάνατον θανεῖν, is to be preferred as the more simple, and as uniform with Galatians 2:20.

τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ἀπέθ.] the relation of the dative is to be determined from νεκροὺς τῇ ἁμ. in Romans 6:11; therefore it can be nothing else than what is contained in ἀπεθάν. τῇ ἁμ. in Romans 6:2 (comp Hofmann), namely: he is dead to sin (dative of reference), i.e. His dying concerned sin; and indeed so that the latter (namely the sin of the world, conceived as power) has now, after He has suffered death on account of it, become without influence upon Him and has no more power over Him; He submitted Himself to its power in His death, but through that death He has died to its power.[1430] So also have we (Romans 6:11) to esteem ourselves as dead to sin (νεκροὺς τῇ ἁμ.), as rescued from its grasp through our ethical death with Christ, in such measure that we are released from and rid of the influence of this power antagonistic to God. The close accordance of this view of τῇ ἁμ. ἀπέθ. with the context (according to Romans 6:11; Romans 6:2) is decisive against the ex planations of the dative deviating from it, such as: ad expianda peccata (Pareus, Piscator, Grotius, Michaelis, and others including Olshausen); or: ad expianda tollendaque peccata (Koppe, Flatt, Reiche, Fritzsche, Philippi); or: in order to destroy the power of sin (Chrysostom, Beza, Calvin, Bengel, and others, including Ewald and Umbreit). Rückert, Köllner, and de Wette wish to abide by an indefinite reference of the death of Jesus to sin as the remote object; but this simply explains nothing, and leaves only a formal parallelism remaining.

ἐφάπαξ] for once, with emphasis, excluding repetition, once for all. Comp Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 10:10; Lucian, Dem. euc. 21.

ζῇ τ. Θεῷ] vivit Deo, namely so, that now in His estate of exaltation, after He has through His death died to the power of sin, His life belongs to God, i. e. stands to God in the relation of being dependent on, and of being determined by, Him. The contrast to the preceding yields the excluding sense. Christ’s earthly life, namely, was also a ζῆν τῷ Θεῷ, but was at the same time exposed to the death-power of human sin, which is now no longer the case, inasmuch as His life rescued from death is wholly determined by the fellowship with God. This latter portion of the verse belongs also to the proof of Romans 6:9, since it is in fact just the (exclusive) belonging to God of Christ’s life, that makes it certain that death reigns no longer over Him; as ζῶν τῷ Θεῷ he can no longer be παθητός (Acts 26:23), which He previously was, until in obedience to God ἐξ ἀσθενείας He was crucified (2 Corinthians 13:4).

[1426] Not a parenthetical intervening clause (Hofmann), which is appropriate neither to the essential importance of the sentence in the train of thought, nor to the application which it receives in ver. 11.

[1427] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[1430] Rich. Schmidt, Paul. Christol. p. 55, justly insists that Christ for His own person died to sin, but further on (p. 59), ends in finding an ideal, not a real relation. But He died really to sin, inasmuch as He took upon Himself, in the death of the cross, the curse of the law; after which human sin had now no longer any power over Him. Compare on ver. 3.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Romans 6:10. This is expanded in Romans 6:10. ὃ γὰρ ἀπέθανε, τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ ἀπέθανεν ἐφάπαξ· the ὃ is ‘cognate’ accus. Winer, p. 209. “The death that He died, He died to sin once for all.” The dative τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ must be grammatically the same here as in Romans 6:2; Romans 6:11, but the interpretation required seems different. While He lived, Christ had undoubtedly relations to sin, though sin was foreign to His will and conscience (2 Corinthians 5:21); but after He died these relations ceased; sin could never make Him its victim again as at the Cross. Similarly while we lived (i.e., before we died with Christ), we also had relations to sin; and these relations likewise, different as they were from His, must cease with that death. The difference in the reference of the dative is no doubt an objection to this interpretation, and accordingly the attempt has been made to give the same meaning to dying to sin in Christ’s case as in ours, and indeed to make our dying to sin the effect and reproduction of His. “The language of the Apostle seems to imply that there was something in the mind of Christ in dying for us that was the moral equivalent [italics ours] to that death to sin which takes place in us when we believe in Him, something in its very nature fitted to produce hte change in us.” Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ, p. 100 f. He died, in short, rather than sin—laid down His life rather than violate the will of God; in this sense, which is an ethical one, and points to an experience which can be reproduced in others under His influence, He died to sin. “His death on the Cross was the final triumph of His holiness, over all those desires of the flesh that furnish to man unregenerate the motive power of His life.” But though this gives an ethical meaning to the words in both cases, it does not give exactly the same ethical meaning; a certain disparity remains. It is more in the line of all Paul’s thoughts to say with Holtzmann (N. T. Theol., ii., 118), that Christ by dying paid to sin that tribute to which in virtue of a Divine sentence (κρίμα, Romans 5:16) it could lay claim, and that those therefore who share His death are like Himself absolved from all claims of sin for the future. For ἐφάπαξ, see Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 10:10. The very idea of death is that of a summary, decisive. never-to-be-repeated end. ὃ δὲ ζῇ κ.τ.λ. “The lite that He lives He lives to God”.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

10. in that he died] Lit. that which He died; His dying, in all that it involved. So below, that which He liveth.

unto sin] i.e., as the previous argument shewed, “with reference to the claim of sin;” to meet and cancel it; and therefore so as now to be out of reach of its doom.

once] once for all, “once and for ever.” The word here is not necessary to the argument, but it enforces, by contrast, the continuousness of His life. It also, though less pointedly, suggests the completeness of the atonement, and so the greatness of its results. (On the latter reference see Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 10:10; where “once,” “once for all,” is the same word as that here, in the Gr.).

unto God] i.e. with respect to God; as having obtained (representatively for us) God’s acceptance, and having thus entered on an immortal permanence (representatively for us) of joy and power before Him. (The same phrase, but with different special reference, occurs Luke 20:38.)

Bengel's Gnomen

Romans 6:10. ὃ, in that) This has more force than ὃ, in that.—τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, to sin) The dative of disadvantage, as in Romans 6:11. Sin had been cast upon Christ, but Christ abolished it by His death for us; He truly died.—ἐφάπαξ) This has a stronger meaning in this passage than ἅπαξ. So Hebrews 7:27, and ἅπαξ, 1 Peter 3:18.—ζῇ τῷ Θεῷ) He lives to God, a glorious life derived from God, Romans 6:4 [raised up—by the glory of the Father] full of divine vigour, lasting for ever. For God is the God of the living.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 10. - For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. "Died unto sin" certainly does not mean here, as some have taken it, died by reason of sin, or to atone for sin, but has the sense, elsewhere obvious in this chapter, of ἀποθνήσκειν, followed by a dative, which was explained under ver. 2. Christ was, indeed, never subject to sin, or himself infected with it, as we are; but he "bore the sins of many;" "the Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all." He submitted for us to the condition and penalty of human sin; but, when he died, he threw off its burden, and was done with it for ever (cf. Hebrews 9:28, "Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation"). The purpose of thus describing the permanent life to God of the risen Christ is, of course, to show that the new life of us who are accounted to have risen with Christ must in like manner be permanent and free from sin. "Quo docere vult hanc vitae novitatem tota vila esse Christianis persequendam, Nam si Christi imaginem in se repraesentare debent, hanc perpetuo durare necesse est. Non quod uno momento emoriatur caro in nobis, sicuti nuper diximus: sed quia retrocedere in ea mortificanda non liceat. Si enim in coenum nostrum revolvimur, Christum abnegamus; cujus nisi per vitae novitatem consortes esse non possumus, sicut ipse vitam incorruptibilem agit" (Calvin). The next verse expresses this clearly. Romans 6:10

Vincent's Word Studies

In that He died (ὃ γὰρ ἀπέθανεν)

Lit.. what he died; the death which he died. Compare sin a sin, 1 John 5:16; the life which I live, literally, what I live, Galatians 2:20.

Once (ἐφάπαξ)

More literally, as Rev., in margin, once for all. Compare Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:12; Hebrews 10:10.