What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
1. What then shall we say? Throughout this chapter the Apostle proves, that they who imagine that gratuitous righteousness is given us by him, apart from newness of life, shamefully rend Christ asunder: nay, he goes further, and refers to this objection, — that there seems in this case to be an opportunity for the display of grace, if men continued fixed in sin.
To use the doctrine of grace as license for sin is to abuse it utterly and reject it with abhorrence. Any opinion that opens a door to practical immorality, however plausible its appeal to free grace, contradicts the truth as it is in Jesus. Sanctification consists in two things: mortification, dying to sin, and vivification, living to righteousness.
AI summary
Commenting on Romans 6:1-23
What shall we say then?.... The apostle here obviates an objection he saw would be made against the doctrine he had advanced, concerning the aboundings of the grace of God in such persons and places, where sin had abounded; which if true, might some persons say, then it will be most fit and proper to continue in a sinful course of life, to give up...