Week 41 Romans 6
Let’s say a guy decides to follow the Lord. One legitimate question he can ask is: where do I go from here? And one useful piece of advice Paul offers is: consider (yourself) to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Maybe the guy never gave much thought to sin. It’s maybe a bit of a surprise for him to learn that his normal condition is an in-built & functional commitment to sin. But now that he’s following Christ he’s been somehow freed from that automatic preference.
It’s possible that in a lot of ways the guy feels pretty much the same as before. But he has gained is a brand new capability. Now he can test out his capacity to consider (himself) to be dead to sin. In his pre-conversion life his devotion to sin was involuntary & unthinking. But under the influence of Christ he gains discriminability. He can call-a-spade-a-spade.
It’s not like he’s in-actual-fact so dead to sin that he can’t do sin. He retains his ability to revisit his old master. Going back to being alive-to-sin is always an option.
But the thing is that even though sin is still in the mix the guy can now mentally recalibrate – or as Paul says consider (or reckon or believe or think to himself or understand) – and act so as not to sin. Dead by choice to the wiles of his old master.
Note: quote from Romans 6:11 (LSB)