Romans 6

¹³ ...present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 

Reading Romans 6:1-13, I think I understand this to be the main thought:

We must die, just as Jesus died, if we are to live spiritually. We are dependent on Him for salvation from ourselves and the penalty of death we are born with. We die to this nature and because of this, we do not live for ourselves or to fulfill our own agendas and lusts, we are complete property of Christ now and we are to be an extension of His hands here on earth. This means that in the future we have the hope to be able to live with Him in other ways, because we won't be living by our own power and sinful bodies that will never be holy enough to enter the presence of God, but rather through Christ. Physical death is not really a threat because we have the promise of spiritual life in the future and are already "dead," or not living for ourselves in the first place.

We see in verse 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. This reminds me of something we looked at in chapter 3 verse 20: For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.

The law is created to cope with and reveal to us what sin is- how to avoid it, how to redeem oneself from it. Grace is the balance to that, focusing on how to LIVE without the preoccupying fear of every little thing bringing wrath down on our heads. If we are not to sin, even under grace, we must look to the law to learn what sin is... but we are dead to sin, so while the law teaches us what to do or not do, grace then helps us implement those actions in life through Christ. Grace gives us the freedom to live the law without being bound to inescapable death. We are already dead, so our punishment is already paid. Now, without the fear of death, we can keep the spirit that was behind the law to begin with.

I think this is illustrated further in Paul's comparison of sin to slavery in verse 19:

Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin.

So life without the law leads us deeper into sin, and life with the law still shows how sinful we are. However, life under grace is already dead to sin, and thus, free from the power of sin and able to better “do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life.” So how do we know what things to do that lead to holiness and eternal life? If we are only under grace, we have the freedom from penalty, but not instruction into righteousness. Is it then that the law instructs us on the nature of God and if we can find the “why” behind the law and live that then we will learn to be righteous. This is where the Spirit of God helps us determine the meaning behind the law, the motivations of God, and how to not be legalistic but to apply it to our lives in the millions of nuances that are not spelled out letter by letter in the Bible. 

More of this is answered in Chapter 7.

Romans 5:1-20

2 Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory...⁸ But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. ⁹ And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. ¹⁰ For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. ¹¹ So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

This is the simple gospel: God made a way to balance out the law, (which required OUR death,) with the substitution of Jesus. He didn’t stop at this gross unfairness to himself, though, because He was holy and triumphed over death- providing us with a way to attain eternal life through Jesus. Before, where we were enemies of God because of our unrighteousness, now we can go into the presence of God through the blood of Jesus- and more. Not only do we gain atonement, we gain his friendship! He prepared this way for us at extreme cost to Himself before having any assurance that we would even choose to accept it… and He, as is His character, went further than mere redemption and made a way for relationship.

Can you imagine being the friend of God? Abraham was known for his faith earlier in Romans, and now for his friendship. It also brings to mind the words from James: 2:23 "And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God."

So that our friendship with God is reliant upon our faith in Him and acceptance of the way He made for us follows this same pattern: faith in God leads to friendship with God.

¹⁴ Still, everyone died—from the time of Adam to the time of Moses—even those who did not disobey an explicit commandment of God, as Adam did. Now Adam is a symbol, a representation of Christ, who was yet to come.

So Adam chose the knowledge of good and evil over obedience and brought death to all, perhaps as foreshadowing of the law- which brings knowledge, showing us what sin is, but does not bring redemption. Jesus chose extreme obedience and made a way for everyone to have eternal life. He, through the law, came and fulfilled the law leaving us with not only knowledge of what is sin, but with the power of a life-giving relationship with the ability to overcome sin. If He was, as John described, “the Word made flesh that dwelt among us,” perhaps the same words spoken by God to create the law in the first place were all wrapped up in His human body… but alive! Now we can have a relationship with the Word, it’s not just tablets of stone! What a parallel. 

Romans 5 1-11 Joy

I see a series of situations that produce joy or rejoicing according to Paul in the first part of the 5th chapter of Romans: He begins with:
² Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.
So, first he introduced how we can have joy when we look to our future with God.

And then continues the theme of joy with:

³ We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. ⁴ And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. ⁵ And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

Problems & Trials = endurance = strong character = hope of salvation (because of the Holy Spirit filling our hearts with his love) = JOY!

What stands out to me is how problems and trials are not separate from God's love, they are actually part of the equation of SHOWING us how much God loves us. Second, then, we can rejoice in our current trials.

¹¹ So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

And then, third, we can rejoice in what God has done for us in the past.

I think Paul has covered every tense here... and of course they all work together. Our joy in what Jesus did to makes us reconciled with God helps us to have joy in our trials because we know that they are helping us joyfully look to the future where they will produce glory... 
Goodness Paul. I think I get the point!