Paul says that we have been freed from sin, which is one type of deliverance. However, we need to understand what is in view here. The NKJV has a superscript next to the word “freed” in verse 7, and the marginal reference says, “cleared.” This Greek word is translated “justify” or “justified” everywhere else it is used (with one exception). The context here is our justification when we are baptized. We are freed from sin in the sense that sin’s penalty, the death penalty, is no longer hanging over us while we remain in Christ. When we symbolically died at baptism, we were cleared of sin. We were delivered from its claim over us, and we had a new beginning.
That deliverance was the start of a process, but it is not complete. That is why, just a few verses down, in verse 12, Paul also writes that we must not allow sin to reign in our bodies. He wouldn’t write that if sin no longer wielded any power in our lives. In the next chapter, at the end of his famous lament about still serving the law of sin and death, Paul rhetorically asks who will deliver him from his body of death. He was still awaiting a future deliverance. But those eight references to God’s deliverance draw our focus this week to what God has already delivered us from, and subsequently, how we should respond.
