🌿 Romans 6 Through Two Lenses: A Grace-Centered Reflection

Grace does not begin with our striving. It begins with His presence breaking through.

There is a certain stillness that falls on the heart when Romans 6 is opened before us. It is one of Scripture’s great declarations of identity. We were buried with Christ. We were raised with Him. We are no longer slaves to sin. We live in a newness that flows from His life within. Yet how these verses are interpreted varies across the Body of Christ, and it is not uncommon to find that one passage becomes a window into very different theological worlds.

In my recent four-part John Wesley series on YouTube, and in the companion posts here at Rooted in Christ Journal, we explored Romans 6 through a Wesleyan lens: the heart cleansed in love, the believer freed from the dominion of sin, and Christ Himself as the living source of holiness. That framework has shaped my own theological journey for many years.

Not long ago, while visiting a local congregation, I listened to a sermon on Romans 6:1–14 that revealed a very different frame of theology. The pastor was warm, faithful, and sincere, yet the message carried contours that did not belong to the Wesleyan stream I had been revisiting, but to another tradition. The sermon unfolded in the cadence of a Reformed, Calvinistic approach, often described as Lordship Salvation. It spoke often of holiness, yet the holiness envisioned was not the radiant heart-love that Wesley described, nor the Spirit-filled purity that early holiness preachers proclaimed. It resembled instead the moral earnestness of the Puritans and the careful guardedness of modern Reformed voices.

The emphasis fell often upon the absolute holiness of God, the depth of sin, and the weight of divine justice. These truths are sacred and true. Yet their arrangement in the sermon was not the pattern of Wesleyan holiness, where love stands at the center, nor the pattern of the deeper-life tradition, where union with Christ is the fountainhead of transformation. Rather, the message presented sanctification as an ongoing battle with an indwelling sin nature that will never be fully conquered in this life. We must, it was said, flee from sin, resist the devil, strip away the grave clothes, cast off rebellion, and take up spiritual labor as the means by which we honor God. Grace in this view provides divine assistance, enabling a determined believer to press forward.

This approach is familiar to any who have walked among Reformed teachers. It is the language of “God empowers; we labor,” of mortification and effort, of exhortation and resolve. There is earnestness in it, and there is sincerity, and many believers have grown through this tradition. Yet it is distinct from Wesleyan theology, where the heart can be cleansed from inward sin, where love can reign unmixed, where the Spirit fills and renews the inner life. It is also distinct from the theology of abiding in Christ, where Christ is not merely the source of assistance but the very life by which we live. In the message I heard, Romans 6 did not appear as a declaration of identity but as a summons to greater exertion. “Dying to sin” did not speak of union with Christ in His death, nor of liberation from sin’s dominion because we have been grafted into His triumph. Instead, it spoke of a moral obligation: we must stop sinning because God commands it.

In that framework, grace becomes a divine influence that urges us onward. The Spirit equips us for the fight and gives us power so that we can choose righteousness. Yet grace is not seen as the indwelling presence of Christ Himself, living through us as our sufficiency. The sermon did not speak of “Christ who is your life” from Colossians 3:4, nor “Christ in you, the hope of glory” from Colossians 1:27, nor the quiet miracle of “I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me” from Galatians 2:20. It offered instead a form of partnership. God provides the power; we supply the effort. The victory is shared between divine aid and human exertion.

This is not a criticism of the pastor, nor a dismissal of her devotion. She offered what she sincerely believed the text to say. Yet the theological stream from which she preached was unmistakable. It was Reformed. It was shaped by the interpretive lens of MacArthur and by the assumptions of Lordship Salvation. It carried the conviction that genuine conversion must be proven through disciplined obedience, and the belief that the believer will always struggle deeply with indwelling sin in thought, word, and deed until the moment of glorification.

To one shaped by Wesleyan–Arminian theology, or to one who has come to treasure the abiding life of Christ within, this interpretive shape can feel foreign. Wesley spoke of entire sanctification as “love excluding sin,” a work of grace that transforms the heart. Early holiness preachers spoke of freedom from the root of sin, not freedom from temptation but from inward rebellion. And those who walk in the abiding life have come to know sanctification as the expression of Christ’s indwelling presence: His patience for our impatience, His purity for our weakness, His gentleness for our self-effort, His victory for our struggle. Romans 6, in this light, is not a summons to try harder. It is a revelation of who we are in Him. We have died with Christ. We have been raised with Him. We are freed from sin’s dominion because sin cannot reign where Christ lives.

This is the difference.
Not a small difference.
Not an abstract difference.
A difference of center.

In the sermon I heard, the center was effort aided by grace.
In the abiding life, the center is Christ living His life in us and through us.

In Reformed sanctification, “you must resist” stands at the center.
In Wesleyan and deeper-life sanctification, “Christ is your Life” stands at the center.

One sees grace as divine assistance.
The other sees grace as divine indwelling.

One sees Romans 6 as moral exhortation.
The other sees Romans 6 as revelation.

One sees indwelling sin as a life-long prison.
The other sees the cross as a decisive liberation.

One sees holiness as human diligence.
The other sees holiness as Christ’s own nature expressed through surrendered hearts.

And so, when I listened, I sensed the dissonance. The message was sincere, but the lens was different. The sermon came from a stream that emphasizes depravity, struggle, and striving. My heart rests in the stream that emphasizes love, freedom, and Christ within. It is not a longing for a denominational past, but for a theological center where holiness flows from union with Christ rather than from effort joined to grace.

None of this diminishes the pastor’s devotion or her faithfulness. It simply clarifies the theological texture of the message. Sometimes believers use the same words but mean very different things. Sometimes they begin at the same verse but walk in different directions.

Romans 6 is vast enough to hold both interpretations, yet only one of them matches the heart that has come awake to the abiding life of Christ. Only one of them rests in the truth that “our old self was crucified with Him” so that “we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Only one of them hears the echo of Galatians 2:20 and senses the living Christ rising to express Himself within us moment by moment. Only one of them recognizes that victory is not a reward for our striving but the overflow of His life.

And so we honor the pastor. We honor her sincerity. We honor her labor in the Word. At the same time, we acknowledge this simple truth: the theological stream was Reformed, the reading of Romans 6 was Calvinistic, and the approach to sanctification reflected the tone of Lordship Salvation rather than the music of Wesleyan grace or the quiet rest of the abiding life.

Knowing this frees the heart from confusion. It lets us appreciate what is good without forcing ourselves into a theological home that is not our own. It lets us receive what we can, while resting deeply in the stream where Christ has already met us.

For those who live in the light of the indwelling Christ, the text of Romans 6 sings a different song. It sings of union. It sings of freedom. It sings of a life not sustained by effort but expressed by grace. And it whispers again and again that sanctification is not us living for Him; it is Christ living in us, the hope of glory.

May our hearts stay anchored in that life, and may His sufficiency be the melody beneath every step we take.