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Charles Hodge doesn't quite get to justification as deliverdict here, but he comes close:
"[Paul] had just said that the believer cannot continue to serve sin. He here [in 6:7] gives the reason: for he who has died (with Christ) is justified, and therefore free from sin, free from its dominion. This is the great evangelical truth which underlies the apostle's whole doctrine of sanctification. The natural reason assumes that acceptance with a holy and just God must be founded on character, that men must be holy in order to be justified. The gospel reverses this, and teaches that God accepts the ungodly; that we must be justified in order to become holy. This is what Paul here assumes as known to his readers. As justification is the necessary means, and antecedent to holiness, he that is justified become holy; he cannot live in sin. And he who is dead, i.e., with Christ (for it is only his death that secures justification,) is justified from sin. To be justified from sin means to be delivered from sin by justification. And that deliverance is twofold; judicial deliverance from its penalty, and subjective deliverance from its power. Both are secured by justification [!]; the former directly, the other consequentially, as a necessary sequence. Cp. Gal. 2:19-20; 6:14; Col. 2:13; 3:3; 1 Pet. 4:1, and other passages in which the sanctification of believers is represented as secured by the death of Christ."
Hodge, Commentary on Romans, 198-99
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 02:23 PM
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