Pastor Garrett Conner-

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Graham:"...even before we believed..."

In fact, even before we believed, His Spirit was already working in us, convicting us of sin and drawing us to God. After we believed, His Spirit didn’t stop working; He came to live permanently within us! The Bible says, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ” (Romans 8:9). If you know Christ, you don’t need to beg for the Holy Spirit to come into your life; He is already there—whether you “feel” His presence or not. Don’t confuse the Holy Spirit with an emotional feeling or a particular type of spiritual experience. Instead, accept by faith what God promised:When you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to live within you. The Bible says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Billy Graham, The Journey: Living by Faith in an Uncertain World (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007).

Dever: "...our selfishness hurts others..."

James knows that so much of our relationship with God will be shown by our relationships with other people. As a Christian, my primary obligation in this life is not to myself. It is to God and to the body of Christ. You and I must realize that our selfishness hurts others , and that God will judge us for it. Really, we are to use ourselves for others. We must learn to cherish the opportunity of living in peace through valuing each other. I have been in more than one church meeting where someone has made sharp comments about what he or she wants, or what must happen in the church for them to be satisfied; and I have feared how little that person must know of Christ. What but a loss of perspective and a lack of love for Christ and his body could lead to that sort of talk? Our Christianity, if it is to live up to its name, must affect other people in a loving and godly way. What does it mean to say we are followers of Jesus Christ, who literally gave his life for others, if we do not li

Schreiner: " In other words, unbelievers are slaves to sin in that they always desire to carry out the dictates of their master."

Rom 6 v 19 19 I am using a human analogy because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you offered the parts of yourselves as slaves to impurity, and to greater and greater lawlessness, so now offer them as slaves to righteousness, which results in sanctification. This verse opens an interesting window on the Pauline conception of slavery to sin. Unbelievers are totally subservient to sin as a power that exerts authority over their lives, but the slavery envisioned is not coercion. People don’t submit to sin against their will. Rather, they “freely” and spontaneously choose to sin. In other words, unbelievers are slaves to sin in that they always desire to carry out the dictates of their master. This does not mean that those with addictions (e.g., to alcohol, pornography, or gambling) never wish to be freed. It means that the desire for these things is ultimately greater than the desire to be freed from them. Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, ed. Robert W. Yarbrough and Joshua W.

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

There are, in fact, two quite distinct ways in which the New Testament speaks of crucifixion in relation to holiness. The first is our death to sin through identification with Christ; the second is our death to self through imitation of Christ. On the one hand, we have been crucified with Christ. But on the other we have crucified (decisively repudiated) our sinful nature with all its desires, so that every day we renew this attitude by taking up our cross and following Christ to crucifixion. The first is a legal death, a death to the penalty of sin; the second is a moral death, a death to the power of sin. The first belongs to the past, and is unique and unrepeatable; the second belongs to the present, and is repeatable, even continuous. I died to sin (in Christ) once; I die to self (like Christ) daily. It is with the first of these two deaths that Romans 6 is chiefly concerned, although the first is with a view to the second, and the second cannot take place without the first. J

Barnhouse: This is why men fear physical death.

When Adam sinned, he stepped from the halls of light into a chamber of darkness. Though he was physically alive, spiritual life was gone. When the moment came for him to face God, he fled in terror to hide among the trees. He feared to meet the One who had given him all things, and whom he had disobeyed. Sin had done its work. Man had broken fellowship with his Creator, and feared to face Him. This is why men fear physical death. Written in our very being is the fact that physical death ends delay. The God who has been wronged must be faced. The reckoning day has come. Some men profess to believe that death ends all, but the majority are honest enough to admit that something lies beyond, and they are afraid of it. Epicurus expressed the thought of the former group in his letter to Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Grace: Romans 5:12–21 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1959), 31.

Fesko: "Adam is the universal federal and covenantal head for the entire human race."

Rom 5 v 13- 14 (CSB) 13 In fact, sin was in the world before the law, but sin is not charged to a person’s account when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam’s transgression. He is a type of the Coming One. "Paul proves his point regarding the imputation of Adam’s sin by surveying the landscape of redemptive history and dividing it into three sections: Adam Adam ➔ Moses Moses ➔ Present day It is easy to understand why Adam died and why people after the revelation of the Mosaic law died: They all transgressed expressly revealed commandments of God. God explicitly told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge lest God punish him with death. And Israel, like Adam in his state in the garden, received expressly revealed commands from God, who threatened them with death for violating them (e.g., Ex. 21:15–17). But what about the people who lived and died between Adam and Moses? On what basis did th

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