A Good Death

May it never be!  How shall we who have died to sin still live in it?  Romans 6:2  NASB

Died – Let’s talk about death.  Not a pleasant topic, but an inevitable one.  In Greek thought, death (thanatos) is a natural process that happens to all living entities.  While there is a certain type of immortality possible to those whose deeds live on in memory, death itself is simply the inevitable consequence of living.  The only real objective to life is to die a good death, a death worthy of remembering.  Socrates, Hector, Achilles and others demonstrate this objective.  This Greek idea still has enormous effect on our culture.

But it isn’t biblical.  In the Bible, death is not natural.  Death is associated with sin.  Death is the terrible waste of life.  Even the death of martyrs is not extolled as something to be sought after.  Death is the exact opposite of God’s passion for life.  It is an enemy wherever it is found, even on the cross.  Death is the result of deliberate, responsible choice.  It is not an accident of nature.

In this verse, Paul uses the compound verb apothanesko.  The compound attaches apo to the standard verb, indicating the sense of being carried away from, being separated from life.  “We who have died” does not simply mean “We expired.”  It means that we have been removed from, separated from something.  In Paul’s usage, we have been separated from sin (hatah).   The gap between us and disobedience is as wide as the gap between life and death.

So if we have been separated from sin in the same way that death separates us from life, then obviously sin has no more authority, no control, no influence on us.  Dead men don’t respond (unless Yeshua speaks to them).  Paul’s point is that technically and in reality, the working of the yetzer ha’ra has been erased.  From YHWH’s perspective, the yetzer ha’ra has been fully domesticated to the yetzer ha’tov.

There remains only one problem.  We don’t see things the way God does.  We still respond, perhaps out of force of habit, perhaps from addiction, perhaps without consideration, to the influences that governed our lives for years.  But Paul asks us to think before we act.  He asks us to acknowledge that Yeshua’s actions have released us from this power over us.  He pleads that we no longer submit ourselves to our past patterns of behavior.

“Ah,” you say, “What he says is true but it’s so hard to do?”  So, what did you expect?  Milk and honey?  Leaving Egypt behind, in thought and deed, took 40 years in the wilderness.  Did you think you could just jump on the next jet from Cairo?

Topical Index:  sin, died, thanatos, yetzer ha’ra, Romans 6:2