Exposition on select Bible passages: Romans 6:6
[Romans 6] Verse 6: Coming to know this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we might no longer be in slave service to sin.
The word translated “coming to know,” means, in the Greek, coming into knowledge ,—a discriminating apprenhension of facts. See note below.134
Our old man—This is our old selves, as we were in and from Adam. It is contrasted with the new man (Col. 3:9, 10)—which is what we are and have in Christ. The word our indicates that what is said, is said of and to all those who are in Christ. The expression “our old man,” of course is a federal one, as also is “the new man.” The “old man,” therefore, is not Adam personally, any more than the “new man” is Christ personally. Also, we must not confuse the “old man” with “the flesh.” Adam begat a son in his own likeness. This son of Adam, as all since, was according to Adam,—for he was in Adam; possessed of a “natural” mind, feelings, tastes, desires,—all apart from God. He was his father repeated. Cain is a picture before us of the meaning of the words, “the old man.” Moreover, since man’s activities were carried on in and through the body, he is now morally “after the flesh.” Inasmuch as his spirit was now dead to God, sin controlled him both spirit and soul, through the body. And thus we read a little later, in the Sixth of Genesis, upon the recounting of the horrible lust and violence that filled the earth, God’s statement:
“In their going astray, they are flesh!” (R. V. margin.)
What a fearful travesty of one created in the image of God, and into whose Divinely formed body God had breathed the spirit of life, so that he was “spirit and soul and body” (I Thess. 5:23); and with his innocent spirit able to speak with his Creator! with his unfallen soul-faculties, and with body in blessed harmony.
When we are told, for instance, in Colossians, that we have put off the old man, we know that we are being addressed as new creatures in Christ, and that the old man represents all we naturally were,—desires, lusts, ambitions, hopes, judgments: looked at as a whole federally: we used to be that—now we have put that off. We recognize it again in the words
“Put away as concerning your former manner of life the old man” (Eph. 4:22).
1. First, then, our old man was crucified (Romans 6:6). That is a Divine announcement of fact.
2. Those in Christ have put off the old man.
3. He still exists, for “the old man waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit” (Eph. 4:22).
4. He is to be put away as belonging to our former manner of life: for we are in Christ and are “new creatures; old things are passed away; behold they are become new” (II Cor. 5:17).
Now as regards the flesh:
1. While our old man has been crucified, by God, with Christ at the cross,—the federal thing was done; yet of the flesh we read,
“They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof” (Gal. 5:24).
2. The flesh has passions and lusts.
3. It has a mind directly at enmity with God.
4. As we shall see in Chapter Seven, the flesh is the manifestation of sin in the as yet unredeemed body. “Our old man,” therefore, is the large term, the all-inclusive one—of all that we were federally from Adam. The flesh, however, we shall find to be that manifestation of sin in our members with which we are in conscious inward conflict, against which only the Holy Spirit indwelling us effectively wars. Our bodies are not the root of sin, but do not yet share, as do our spirits, the redemption that is in Christ. And as for our souls (our faculties of perception, reason, imagination, and our sensibilities),—our souls are being renewed by the indwelling Holy Spirit. Not so the body. “The flesh,” which is sin entrenched in the body, is unchangeably evil, and will war against us till Christ comes. Only the Holy Spirit has power over “the flesh” (Chapter 8:1).
134 The Greek word for “know” (gignōskō) here, means to get to know, come in the knowledge of, become acquainted with the fact. It is an entirely different word from the one translated “knowing” in verse 9 (eidō), meaning “a clear and purely mental conception, in contrast both to conjecture and to knowledge derived from others” (Thayer). In this latter verse the fact spoken of is a matter of common knowledge. We, by God’s word here, come to know (verse 6) that our old man was crucified with Christ; whereas we know as a necessary thing that Christ, being raised, dieth no more (verse 9). This is not a fact we “come to know,” as in the matter of our vital connection with His death, verse 6. The manner in which we “come to know” our old man was crucified is by faith in God’s testimony to fact!
