Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Romans 6:16 - 6:16

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Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Romans 6:16 - 6:16


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

16–23. These verses answer the question put in Rom 6:15. The complexity of the passage is due to the fact that S. Paul wishes to explain that the Christian life is subject to law, but that the subjection differs from that of the Jew both in the character of the law and the nature of the subjection. (1) This new law is not a code of precepts but GOD’s righteousness revealed in the life of Christ: the life of Christ is the model to which the Christian life must conform. And that, not merely because it is an external standard, but because the living Christ is the source, and naturally therefore determines the character, of the Christian life. This thought gets full and fearless expression in Rom 8:2, ὁ νομος τοῦ πνεύματος τῆς ζωῆς ἐν Χρ. Ἰ.: but by that time the true place and character of preceptual law have been expounded, and there is no longer danger of confusion. (2) The nature of the subjection corresponds to the nature of the law: it is a whole-hearted self-surrender to GOD and to the life which embodies and reproduces, in those who so offer themselves, His righteousness. ὑπακοή here is very closely allied to πίστις, and might almost be described as ‘faith in action’; cf. πίστις δι' ἀγάπης ἐνεργουμένη, Gal 5:6.

It is this complexity of the subject which occasions the inaccurate antithesis in Rom 6:16; the parenthetic explanation of Rom 6:19-21, and the multiplication of phrase (ὑπακοῆς, δικαιοσύνης … τύπον … θεῷ (22)).