Romans 6:15

Romans 6:15, in plain English

So does being under grace instead of law mean you should go ahead and sin? Absolutely not—that would completely misunderstand how grace actually works.

Why it's here

Paul anticipates another misunderstanding. If grace is what saves us and not law, then maybe we can sin freely? But that's a fundamental misreading of what grace is and what it does.

Who's speaking

Paul

Where it sits in the story

Grace isn't permission to do whatever you want—it's the power to stop wanting to do wrong. True grace actually changes you, not just excuses you.

The scholarly reading

Paul again rejects the antinomian inference: freedom from law's coercion does not entail freedom to sin.

Language and setting

The reiterated objection functions as rhetorical intensification. The repeated μὴ γένοιτο ('God forbid,' 'certainly not') signals Paul's frustration with a persistent misunderstanding. The logic of this objection is seductive: if law provokes sin (7:5), and grace replaces law, does not grace license sin? Paul's answer requires moving beyond simplistic antitheses to understand grace not as permissiveness but as the eschatological reign of God's transforming power.

Voice

Paul

Significance

This objection has haunted Christianity from Paul onward: Antinomianism, Antipelagian theology, and even later Calvinist debates about antinomianism all circle around this question. Paul's strategy is not philosophical argument but appeal to transformed experience and participatory logic.

13Do not present the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and present the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness.

14For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not!

16Do you not know that when you offer yourselves as obedient slaves, you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness?

17But thanks be to God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were committed.

Read all of Romans 6 — Baptism is a burial and a resurrection. The old self is drowned; the new self walks in freedom. Sin's contract has been torn up.