77: Dead To Sin

For much of my Christian life, I tried to “die to sin.” Have you ever tried to do that? If so, then perhaps you know that it’s impossible! But we’ve said it many times: “I’m dying to that sin!” But the more we declare that we’re finished with that sin and will never do it again, the more we seem to struggle with it. If you have tried unsuccessfully to die to sin like I did, there is good news!

For he who has died has been freed from sin. (Romans 6:7)¹

Trying to die does not work because you are trying to do something that has already been done. For example, imagine how frustrating it would be to try to sit in this chair while you are already sitting in this chair! All we need to do is to have our eyes opened to the fact that we are dead to sin already.

Two grammar points on being “dead”:

1. The word “died”² is in the Greek aorist verb tense which means that it’s a one-point-in-time action, never to be repeated. When we died, we died for good. It will never be repeated again.
2. In the book of Romans the word “sin” is used forty-eight times. Forty of those times the word is used as a noun, “hamartia”³, and only eight of those times is it the verb, “harmartano.”⁴ In Romans 6, “sin” is a verb ONLY ONCE, and that’s in Romans 6:15. For instance in Romans 6:7 which says, “For he who has died has been freed from sin,” the word sin is a noun. Many of us have thought this verse meant that we were freed from “sinnING” (the verb). Consequently, we’ve been discouraged because we have been trying to be dead to sinnING, and we have failed miserably. At some point most individuals will do what I did and cry out, “What is wrong with me?!”

I have discovered that all those years I spent trying to die to sin, there was nothing wrong with me. There was something wrong with what I was believing about it. Victory over sinnING doesn’t come from working on one’s behavior. It comes from knowing we have been freed from sin (the noun). If we know the truth, it will set us free!

(from pages 134-135 of Unveiling Jesus)

Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!

Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.

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¹Scripture taken from the New King James Version®.  Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.  Used by permission.
²G599 (apothnēskō), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, website: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=G599&t=KJV, accessed 5-23-14
³G226 (hamartia), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, website: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=G266&t=KJV, accessed 5-23-14
⁴G264 (hamartanō), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, website: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=G264&t=KJV, accessed 5-23-14″