(Verse 8.) Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live together with Him. It is plain that those who have crucified the flesh (Galatians 5:24), that is, the world with its vices and lusts, die to the world, and die with Christ, and are conformed to the eternal and saving life, so that they may be found worthy to be made like the glory of Christ. The flesh, that is, the body, is crucified in this way: if its desires are trampled down, desires which, since sin abides in it, are produced from the transgression of the first man, where they began. For the devil is crucified in the flesh, since it is he who deceives through the flesh. “Flesh”, then, is sometimes understood as the world, that is, the elements; sometimes as the body of man; or as the soul itself when it follows the vices of the body.

(Verses 9–10.) Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died to sin, He died once: but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. He shows the security of eternity in the resurrection of the Saviour, to which it is given us to come if we strive after a better life. For he who lives to God by doing good truly lives, because he has eternal life.

(Verse 11.) Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus our Lord. He speaks thus to teach that we cannot die to sin and live to God in any other way than by placing all our hope in Christ, whom he calls our Lord: so that nothing of the Law avails for laying hold of salvation in the age to come, since then one lives to God in no other way than through Christ.

(Verse 12.) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey its lusts. The body is mortal by reason of Adam’s transgression, but through faith in Christ it is believed that it will become immortal. And so that we may come to this promise, he says that we must not obey sin, lest it reign in our mortal body; and it reigns when it commands. But if it does not reign, this body will not be seen to be mortal, since it is in the hope of eternity. He did not call the body mortal on account of its dissolution, but on account of the punishment of Gehenna, so that he is called mortal who is to be sent into Gehenna; because those who obey sin do not escape the second death of hell, from which the Saviour has delivered those who believe in Him. In saying “mortal body”, then, he meant the whole man; because those who obey sin will be called mortal. For the soul, it says, that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4) — that is, the whole man; for no one will be judged without the body.

(Verse 13.) Neither yield ye your members as weapons of iniquity unto sin. He shows that the devil fights against us with our own darts; for an occasion is given him through our sins, so that, when God forsakes us, he receives power to make sport of us and to put us to death. And so we ought to keep our members from every work of iniquity, so that our enemy, found unarmed, may be brought into subjection. And he did not say, “Yield your bodies”, but “your members”; for it is with the members as servants that one goes astray, not with the whole body. But yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead. By death he means ignorance and unbelief together with an evil life; for life is to know God through Christ. For since no one takes the beginning of life without a parent, and all things have arisen to life from God through Christ, therefore he who does not know that God is the parent of all through Christ is not said to have life; that is, he is regarded as though he did not exist. For he denies his own existence when he thinks that he exists without God as his parent. Ignorance, then, and a shameful life are death; for these vices acquire death — not this death which is common to all, but the death of Gehenna, as I have recalled above. And so the knowledge of God our parent, together with a holy manner of life, is life — not this life which is subject to its setting, but that of the age to come, which is called eternal. “Therefore,” he says, “yield yourselves unto God, by knowing whom you have advanced towards salvation, so that, renouncing a dishonourable life, you may be alive from the dead.” And your members as weapons of righteousness unto God. He wants us to govern our conduct with such restraint that, our deeds serving the righteousness of God and not the righteousness of the world (for the righteousness of the world is without faith in Christ, and without that there is not life but death), we may furnish it with weapons to defend us. And when we furnish it with weapons by good works, we make ourselves worthy to be helped by it; for the righteousness of God disdains the unworthy. For where the righteousness of God is, there the Holy Spirit dwells, to help our weakness. For just as we furnish weapons to sin when we do evil, so we furnish them to righteousness when we live rightly, keeping our members from every foulness.

(Verse 14.) For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. He says that if we walk according to the precepts he gives, sin cannot have dominion over us; for it has dominion over those who sin. For when we walk as he commands, we are not under the Law; and if we do not sin, we are not under the Law but under grace. But if we sin, we are brought back under the Law, and sin will begin to have dominion over us; because whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin (John 8:34). And he must be under the Law so long as he has not received remission; for by the authority of the Law sin makes the sinner guilty. And so, to him who has been given remission, and who guards himself so as not to sin from then on, sin will not have dominion, nor is he under the Law. For the authority of the Law ceases in respect of one who has been set free from sin; for those whom the Law holds guilty have been handed over to it by sin. He, then, who has been stripped of his sins cannot be under the Law.

(Verse 15.) What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. Since the Law is from God, he put the question to himself, lest it should be raised against him: “If the Law is from God,” he says, “why ought we not to be under the Law?” This he clears up, and teaches that it is with the will of God, who is the author of the Law, that we have been set free by Christ from under the Law. For although the Law was rightly given — it was given both to show to be guilty before God those who had sinned before the Law, and to be a source of fear so that men should not sin thereafter — yet because the human race, through the feebleness of its weakness, could not restrain itself from sins, and was made liable to the death of hell, God, moved by the kindness of His clemency, with which He has always come to the help of the human race, provided through Christ a way by which a remedy might be given to those already despaired of: so that, having received the remission of sins and been rescued from the Law which held them liable, and having been relieved and restored, they might, with God helping them through faith, fight against the vices by which they had formerly been subdued. And so we have not sinned as though despising the Law of God; rather, we have followed through Christ the providence, as it were, of God Himself.

(Verse 16.) Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? Now, so that we may not profess one thing and do another, and, while we are called servants of God, be found by our deeds to be servants of the devil, he warns us beforehand and declares that we are the servants of him whose will we fulfil in our works; and that it does no small harm to confess God as Lord and to serve the devil by our deeds. For long ago God marked this and accused it, saying: This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me (Isaiah 29:13). And the Lord says in the Gospel: No man can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24). And in the law it is said: God is not mocked (Galatians 6:7).

(Verses 17–18.) But thanks be to God, that whereas ye were the servants of sin, ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine into which ye were delivered. By believing in Christ we have been made servants of righteousness. For we are called the servants of him whom we obey. And since it is right to obey Christ (for He Himself is righteousness, and what He commands is righteous), he therefore says that we have been made servants of righteousness from the heart, not from the law; from the will, not from fear; so that our profession may come forth from the judgement of the mind. For we were led to faith by nature, not by the law — by nature, in which, as in a form of doctrine, we were made by the command of God who fashioned nature. For we have it in our nature to know by whom, and through whom, and in whom we were created. The form of doctrine, then, is that into which the Creator has delivered us by nature; this is what he said above: They are a law unto themselves (Romans 2:14), since they see that what they believe belongs to their own nature; so that what the Law and the prophets proclaimed to the Jews concerning Christ, the Gentiles may trust from the heart. Hence he gives thanks to the Lord that, when we were the servants of sin, we obeyed from the heart by believing in Christ, so as to serve God not through the law of Moses but through the law of nature.

(Verse 19.) I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. In mentioning the infirmity of the flesh he indicates that he is asking less of man than is fitting in the worship of God. Then he adds: For as ye have yielded your members to serve uncleanness and iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members to serve righteousness unto sanctification. To take away from us any cause to fear coming to the faith, as though it might seem unbearable and harsh to us, he has commanded us to serve God in the same measure in which we formerly served the devil; though certainly God ought to be served more readily than the devil, since here salvation is wrought, there damnation. Yet the spiritual physician asks no more of us than this, weighing our infirmity, lest we flee from the commandments as burdensome and remain in death. Hence the Lord says: Take my yoke upon you… for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:29–30).

(Verses 20–21.) For when ye were the servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. It is plain that he who is free from God is the servant of sin; for when he sins he departs from God and comes under sin. What kind of fruits, then, are those of sin, which we lived in, and are now put to shame by as we learn a good life, because we once lived shamefully? And not only this, but the creed of the pagans too is shameful and foul — above all the one devised in Phrygia, in which, unless an unclean man is present, the rite is dumb and the religion grows numb! Behold a freedom full of stains and bound to filth, whose work has a shameful wage: the end of which is death. By “end” he meant the close of life and of deeds, which is followed either by death or by life. But in this place death is twofold; for one passes from death to death.

(Verse 22.) But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end everlasting life. That is: if, having received the remission of sins, we strive after good deeds, we shall acquire holiness, and we shall have as our end, that is, our departure, everlasting life; for from this death, which he called the end, we shall pass over to the life which is without end.

(Verse 23.) For the wages of sin is death. He calls death the gain of sin, because death came through sin; and so those who from now on keep themselves from sins receive eternal life as their pay, because those who do not sin are strangers to the second death. But the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. For as those who follow sin acquire death, so those who follow the grace of God, that is, faith in Christ, which forgives sins, will have eternal life; so that they may rejoice to be dissolved for a time, knowing that they will attain to that life which is free of all weariness and has no succession. Holy Simeon longed for it and asked to be dissolved from here (Luke 2:29), so as to depart in peace, that is, into the life which suffers no disquiet. And he testifies that this gift has been given us by God through Christ our Lord, so that we may give thanks to God the Father through no other than through His Son.