The Abiding Life: Why We Cannot Live the Christian Life by Trying —Romans 6:1–4
A life no longer driven by striving, but grounded in union with Christ.
Introduction: When Effort Becomes the Burden
Many sincere believers reach a settled conclusion after years of following Christ, though few say it out loud. The Christian life feels harder than it should.
What begins with joy often settles into a cycle that looks like faithfulness but feels exhausting. Determination gives way to disappointment. Disappointment gives way to rededication. Rededication gives way to discouragement. The problem is not a lack of sincerity. It is not a lack of discipline. It is not a lack of desire to honor God.
The problem is deeper.
We have tried to live a life that was never meant to be lived by us.
For many Christians, especially those trained in frameworks that emphasize surrender, obedience, and perseverance as the proof of salvation, the Christian life subtly becomes something we attempt for God rather than something Christ lives in us and through us. Growth becomes effort. Victory becomes willpower. Holiness becomes pressure. And somewhere beneath all of it is the unspoken fear that if we stop striving, everything will collapse.
Romans 6 opens a door that many believers have never fully walked through. It does not motivate us to try harder. It does something far more unsettling and far more freeing. It announces that the Christian life does not begin with effort at all. It begins with a death that has already occurred.
Paul’s Question and the Real Issue Beneath It
Paul begins Romans 6 with a question that sounds strange until we understand its context.
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?”
Paul is not responding to careless believers who want permission to sin. He is responding to a theological misunderstanding of grace itself. In Romans 5, he has just declared that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. That kind of gospel produces one of two reactions. Either it humbles the heart into worship, or it alarms the conscience into fear.
The objection assumes that grace merely offsets sin. If grace simply cancels penalties while leaving the person unchanged, then continuing in sin would appear to magnify grace. Paul’s response is immediate and forceful.
“By no means.”
And then he explains why the objection misunderstands everything.
“How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say believers should die to sin. He does not say they must die to sin. He does not issue a command at all. He states a fact.
We died.
Death Before Instruction
This is where Romans 6 departs sharply from many common discipleship frameworks. Paul does not begin sanctification with exhortation. He begins with identity. Before he ever tells believers how to live, he tells them what has already happened to them.
The death Paul speaks of is not metaphorical. It is not emotional. It is not experiential in the sense of something we felt or noticed. It is judicial, spiritual, and covenantal. It is rooted in union.
Paul assumes that something decisive occurred when we came to Christ. That event was not merely forgiveness. It was participation.
“Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
Baptism here is not primarily about water. It is about placement. To be baptized into Christ means to be placed into Him by God. It is union language. God did not merely forgive sinners who believed. He joined them to His Son.
This is the point that often unsettles believers shaped by Lordship frameworks. If death to sin is already complete, where does obedience fit? If identity precedes effort, what motivates holiness?
Paul’s answer is not behavioral. It is ontological.
Union, Not Improvement
Paul continues.
“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.”
Burial confirms death. It signals finality. God did not reform the old self. He did not rehabilitate it. He did not strengthen it. He ended it.
The old self, who we were in Adam, the person who lived independently from God, was not retrained. That person was crucified with Christ. The authority sin exercised over that identity ended because the identity itself ended.
This is where many believers stumble. The flesh still tugs. Old patterns still surface. Temptations still appear. And so we assume nothing truly changed. But Paul is not describing the disappearance of impulses. He is describing the removal of authority.
Sin no longer reigns because the person it ruled no longer exists.
This distinction is essential. Romans 6 is not denying struggle. Romans 7 will address struggle explicitly. What Romans 6 denies is ownership. Sin no longer defines, commands, or governs the believer’s life because the believer’s life is now bound up with Christ.
This is not moral improvement. It is a new identity born from union.
Resurrection and the Source of the New Life
Paul does not stop at death.
“…in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
The resurrection is not simply proof that Christ conquered death. It is the means by which His life becomes ours. Newness of life does not mean a better version of the old self. It means participation in Christ’s risen life.
This is where the abiding life begins.
The Christian life is not you trying to imitate Jesus. It is Jesus expressing His life through you. The resurrection life that raised Christ now dwells in the believer through the Spirit. Sanctification is not the strengthening of self-effort. It is the outworking of shared life.
This reframes obedience entirely. Obedience is no longer the means of securing life. It is the fruit of a life already given.
Why Trying Fails
Trying assumes that the self is still the source. It assumes that effort produces life. It assumes that growth flows from resolve. Romans 6 dismantles all of those assumptions.
You cannot try your way into a life that only Christ can live.
This does not produce passivity. It produces rest. And rest produces availability. And availability allows Christ’s life to be expressed.
Jesus did not say, “Strain harder and produce fruit.” He said, “Abide in Me.” Branches do not generate life. They receive it.
This is why Romans 7 will describe frustration and defeat when believers attempt to live from the self-life, even with good intentions. And this is why Romans 8 will unveil the Spirit-led life as the natural expression of union with Christ.
Assurance Without License
For those trained to fear that grace undermines holiness, Romans 6 offers something far stronger than threat-based motivation. It offers transformation at the level of identity.
When the self-life dies, sin loses its foothold. When Christ becomes life, obedience flows from dependence rather than fear. Grace does not excuse sin. It ends sin’s reign.
Paul will later say that sin shall not have dominion over you, not because you are disciplined enough, but because you are not under law but under grace.
Grace does not loosen holiness. It relocates its source.
Conclusion: From Striving to Abiding
Romans 6:1–4 is the foundation of the abiding life. Everything that follows in Romans 6–8 rests on this truth. You died with Christ. You were buried with Him. You were raised with Him. And now His life is the source of yours.
The Christian life is not difficult. It is impossible for the self-life. But it becomes wonderfully possible when Christ Himself becomes your life.
This series will unfold that reality slowly and carefully. It will explore identity before behavior, union before effort, and rest before obedience. It will expose why striving fails and why yielding works. And it will lead us into the freedom that has been ours all along.
Not by trying.
But by abiding.