Romanos 6:15

What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

Sinning, persisted in, dethrones the Christ from the heart, as set forth under Romans 6:4; and, far from being an encouragement to sin, grace is the most effective ground ever revealed for the discouragement of it. But Paul here dealt with a slightly different problem from the similar question confronted in Romans 6:1. There it was a question of deliberate continuation in a state of rebellion, and here it is a question of the occasional sinful act, the isolated act of sinning even one time. Wuest translated this place:

What then? shall we sin occasionally, because we are not under law but under grace? Away with the thought![26]

Griffith Thomas spelled out the contrast between this and verse 1, thus:

The wording of the question is seen to differ. "Shall we continue in sin?" (Romans 6:1), "Shall we sin?" (Romans 6:15). ... The former deals with a permanent state; the latter with the isolated act. The apostle had already shown that the justified believer would not be able to continue the life of sin. ... He has now to show that he will not even commit a single act of sin.[27]

In the last analysis, God's children are those who act righteously, and the sons of the evil one are those who act unrighteously. Thus, the CONDUCT of men is the final criterion and determinator of what they are and where they will spend eternity. All of the theories and speculations of people regarding just when or where or how the believer is declared to be justified should never be allowed to obscure or contradict this principle, which extends from the garden of Eden to the great white Throne, and, as Paul had already outlined in this letter (Romans 2:8,9), will comprise the basis of the final judgment itself. The latter half of this present chapter removes any doubt that this is true. Whomever people OBEY, whether Christ or Satan, that one whom they obey is their God. Oh, but we are justified by faith! Indeed yes; but as Dykes put it,

If free justification turns out on trial not to save a man from his sin, but to encourage him in it, then it turns out to be a cheat, like all other gospels or recipes for working deliverance which men have ever concocted or experimented with before Christ and after him![28]

Steele also gave emphatic expression to the same fundamental when he wrote:

Every man belongs to the master whom he WILLINGLY serves, whether sin or righteousness. If we are "obedient slaves" to sin, we are not saved; but if we yield ourselves "obedient slaves" to righteousness, we prove ourselves to be true believers, and therefore truly saved. If a man can live at peace with sin, he has no peace with God. He is not justified. If a man voluntarily sins, on the pretext that he is not under law but grace, it is a proof that the grace of God is not in him.[29]

[26] Kenneth S. Wuest, op. cit., p. 109.

[27] W. H. Griffith Thomas, St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1946), p. 175.

[28] Quoted by J. Exell, op. cit., p. 445.

[29] David N. Steele, op. cit., p. 50.