Romans 6.7 has proved problematic
in a number of ways, with the result that interpreters and translators often
end up obscuring the meaning of this short clause complex: ‘For the one who is
dead is justified from sin’ (Rom. 6.7). Often interpreters understand the sense
of the lexeme ‘justified’ as indicating being freed (from sin) (Cranfield
1975-79: 1, 311). This may well be the consequence of what Paul is saying.
However, the sense of the argument moves in a slightly different direction.
Paul has been talking of death and life and the role of sin and slavery. Here
he says that the one who is dead, that is, the one who is dead to sin in light
of being crucified with Christ (Rom. 6.6), as he has suggested in Rom. 6.2
above, is one who is justified so as to be apart from or independent of or even
free from sin. This is, in effect, a recapitulation of the argument that he
made regarding Abraham in Rom. 3.21-4.25. The follower of Christ, who is dead
to sin through identification with the death of Christ, is one who is justified
or ‘righteoused’ apart from sin, that is, the person is no longer subject to
sin. (Stanley E. Porter, The Letter to the Romans: A Linguistic and Literary
Commentary [New Testament Monographs 37; Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix
Press, 2015], 135)
