John Calvin Commentary Romans 6:2

"God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?" — Romans 6:2 (ASV)

By no means. To some, the Apostle seems to have only intended to indignantly rebuke such outrageous madness; but it appears from other places that he commonly used an answer of this kind, even while engaging in a long argument, as indeed he does here, for he proceeds carefully to disprove the alleged slander. He, however, first rejects it with an indignant negative, in order to impress upon his readers that nothing can be more inconsistent than that the grace of Christ, the restorer of our righteousness, should nourish our vices.

Who have died to sin, etc. This is an argument derived from an opposing principle: “He who sins certainly lives to sin; we have died to sin through the grace of Christ; therefore, it is false that what abolishes sin gives strength to it.” The truth of the matter is this: the faithful are never reconciled to God without the gift of regeneration; indeed, we are justified to this end—that we may afterward serve God in holiness of life.

Indeed, Christ does not cleanse us by His blood, nor make God propitious to us by His expiation, in any other way than by making us sharers in His Spirit, who renews us to a holy life. It would then be a most strange inversion of God’s work if sin were to gather strength because of the grace offered to us in Christ; for medicine does not feed the disease it destroys.

We must further bear in mind what I have already mentioned—that Paul does not state here what God finds us to be when He calls us to a union with His Son, but what we ought to be after He has had mercy on us and has freely adopted us. For by an adverb denoting the future, he shows what kind of change should follow righteousness.