This post is the first of a category of studies on phrases embedded in verses in Scripture. So we begin here with a brief consideration of the category of language known as phrases. And subject phrase of this post, from within Rom 6:13, is a precious one, too easily skipped over in one’s reading.
What is a Phrase?
The framework of the Bible is multilayered. Going from ‘top’ to ‘bottom’ we have:
- Bible (aka The Holy Bible)
- Testaments (OT and NT)
- Books (39 in the OT and 27 in the NT)
- Chapters
- Pericopes (aka Lectionaries or Sections)
- Paragraphs
- Verses (which are, approximately, Sentences)
- Phrases (and Clauses)
- Words
- Jots and Tittles
At Level 7 above, a sentence is that unit of language that expresses a “whole thought.” In both English and Koine such whole thought in most-frequently in its most basic form Subject-Verb-Object (known as SVO) expressed in manifold varieties and complexities.
A Phrase is the level just above Level 9: a single word (e.g. “world”), paired words (“the world”), or an expanded titling of worlds (“Lord Jesus Christ” and articulated forms “The Christ”). But a Phrase is not a Sentence because it is missing some necessary element of the SVO structure, or is in some other sense incomplete. So Words (9) and Phrases (8) are the building blocks of Sentences.
In the richness of Scripture, which is God’s Revelation to us, meaning can be found at every Level. The common focus for finding meaning, the process of exegesis, is commonly at the Level of Sentences (which are often verses). For glosses of Scripture, ‘meaning,’ such as it is, comes from some generalities at Level 4–a specific chapter–or at Level 5, some sweeping generalities of the ‘spirit’ of, say, the the whole NT or much of it.
And, so, Phrases are often scanned and neglected except insofar that add to the meaning of the Sentence in which they reside, because they are not fully developed in themselves.
But, being incomplete is not being meritless, as our present example from Rom 6:13 will show.
First, the Context of Rom 6:13
Only briefly, Rom Ch 6 is about an essential “positional truth,” namely that we are in a real sense joined with Christ in His death, a death to sin and judgment, by and in His resurrection from death, and into a new kind of life, eternal life, life as with God. The NT word used to express such positional relationship is “baptism.” Being “baptized” with Christ is having become identified with, positioned within, made into a regenerated being, alive to God, all by the Work of The Lord Jesus Christ in His Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Glorification. More on baptism later in this post.
And, so, we find these notable Phrases within Sentences in the first 12 verses of Rom Ch 6 (all NASB95):
- all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death (vs 3)
- we have been buried with Him through baptism into death (4)
- we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death (5)
- our old self was crucified with Him (6)
- we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him (8)
Rom Ch 6 then leads us in vs. 11-13 to certain necessary and essential conclusions shown by four key verbs which are all in the imperative (command) form (highlighted below):
- consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (11)
- do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts (12)
- do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness (13)
- present yourselves to God (13)
In English we miss the drama of these four (highlighted) imperative verbs. In the original Koine Greek mss for Romans 6:1-13, there are 25 distinct Koine verbs expressed 39 times. Of these, 22 of the 25 verbs, expressed 35 of 39 times, occur in the first 10 verses of Rom 6 in a particular verb form known as the “indicative” Mood, signifying their context being statement of fact, i.e. the condition of reality. One might say that such indicative Mood is the ‘normal’ form of verbs, telling us the reader what has, is, or will be taking place.
But beginning at vs 11, as shown in the above four bullet list, we find three verbs expressed four times in the “imperative” Mood, the form that expresses command-instruction, as “do (or don’t do) THIS!” It is these four verbs that capstone the passage having the effect of teaching (1) given all the statements of reality (indicative Mood) that begins the chapter, (2) these concluding commands are the necessary, logical ‘so what’ of the passage.
Preparatory to such conclusions, and commands, are many verbs, of the SVO structure, necessary to lead to and support these conclusive commands.
Now the Phrase in Rom 6:13 “…as from death living…”
First let us look at Rom 6:13 whole:
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God
Romans 6:13 (NASB95; shown highlights are mine of the imperative verbs and of our study phrase)
Our phrase of interest in this post is translated by NASB95 “as those alive from the dead.” For smoothness of reading, the NASB translators used six words in English for four succinct words in the Koine mss.
Other translations of this phrase from Rom 6:11 express it as:
- as those who have been brought from death to life (ESV, NIV)
- as those who are alive from the dead (LEB, NET; KJV has it “those that”)
- as those alive from the dead (LSB, NASB95; whereas NASB had “are” as LEB, NET)
- as they that live of dead men (WYC)
- as living out of the dead (YLT)
As we will see, it is the YLT (Young’s Literal Translation), as is customary the case, that has it most-closely expressed to the original, with WYC (Wycliffe translation) very similarly succinctly worded, and the LSB / NASB95 next in literalness.
Koine mss: “…as from death living…“
The Koine mss gives our study phrase in four words as:
ως εκ νεκρων ζωντας where
- ως, transliterated “hos,” means as
- εκ, “ek” from which we get “ex,” means from or out of
- νεκρων, lemma “nekros,” means death (a state of being, i.e., a corpse)
- ζωντας, lemma “zoe,” means life primarily spiritual life (contra “bios” physical life)
(There is an interesting textual variant here with ως, “as,” which is from the “critical text” used by most modern translations. The details are not essential for our purposes, but I’ve included a brief discussion in the end note to this post).
First let us consider “ex” (Koine εκ) “death” (nekros). What can we gain from considering what “ex-death” might fully suggest? We do know what ex-husband / -wife means: a change of opposition of a certain state of being, formerly married, presently non-married (in the eyes of civil law and ordinary discourse). We can think of an ex-convict, namely that person convicted of a crime, then imprisoned for a specified term, and finally released from prison having paid his penalty. Also we could express a former slave as an ex-slave, a former citizen of Nation X as ex-citizen of X, and similarly of any other transformation of some form of being.
What is special about our phrase from Rom 6:13 is the context of the “ex-,” namely “death” (or the being of a “corpse”). There can be no greater dramatic “ex-” than that of “out of” the state of death. This day, 333,000 people in the world will die–going irreversibly and finally from living to corpse. We can imagine their funeral to be held in a few days. Emerging out of none of those funerals, not a single one, will be an “ex-corpse” walking out the door and joining the funeral party for lunch or some festivity. Of the more than 8 billion people alive today, as with the several billions who preceded us, none will be ex-death to life, in the customary, physical sense of meaning of “death” and “life.”
The immediate context of reference in Rom 6:13 for “ex-death” and “living” is of course Rom Ch 6 as to Jesus Christ Who was both our example but more importantly our cause of action (work) by which we can, and should, consider ourselves as having been positioned / identified into His Very Being, and state change.
Additionally, there are multiple OT references that give us by prophetic weight a referent. First there is the Exodus. The word we know as “exodus” is a compound of two Koine words: ex (again, our “out of” word) plus “hodos” which is the Koine word for “road” such as Jesus saying “I am the way (literally, road, “hodos”)” in John 14:6. And, so, “exodus” means literally the “road (or way) out.” Out of what? Egypt? Of course. But the essential nature was not just out of a geographical location, or even a nation-state, or of a place of vile idolatrous worship, but out of an imprisoned condition, namely that of slavery.
One can think of other OT “out of…” predecessor events: Noah and the Ark’s inhabitants out of God’s Judgment upon the antediluvian civilization, Abraham and family out of the idolatrous civilization of the Mesopotamian River Valley Culture, and again out of Egypt as a family, the return of the Jews out of slavery / capture to Babylon (which in turn been conquered by Persia), and most-importantly Jesus Christ bringing His Elect out of slavery to the Law and from under the Condemnation of God.
Finally, let us turn to the Koine lemma “zoe” which is in the verb form of a participle, ζωντας (zontas), meaning “living.” (Participles are verbs formed, in our present case, as adjectives describing our true condition in Rom 6:13). Not all who exited Egypt came out alive: recall that the Patriarch Joseph ‘came out’ only as bones. Further we know that a mixed multitude (Ex 12:38) exited Egypt which reference likely means that some were not part of God’s Elect.
Our present study phrase makes clear, with just four words, that we can, and should, recognize and present ourselves to God Himself “as ex (out from) death living.” Under the requirements of The Law, and all the manifold practices of The Religion Industry (TRI) of its day–the teachings and activities of the Scribes, Pharisees, Lawyers, and Priests–the recipients of this Epistle, and us, were formerly corpses but most-notably now truly living in the sense of connectedness to God, having a kind of life that is eternal and able to dwell in the presence of God.
Visual Image of a Surprised “as out-of death living”
The imagery we might conceive of this precious jewel of a phrase can be too painful for some to consider. If it is helpful, below are some forms of the idea.
Catastrophic Earthquake
Earthquakes that occur in high density populated regions, especially where building codes or the keeping of them, did not properly account for such phenomena. The result can be horrific scenes of collapsed buildings into rubble. In the immediate aftermath there is a search for survivors, which often has limited success. At some point the search moves from “rescue” to “recovery, ” meaning no survivors can be expected to exist. But, then, imagine the circumstance, where lifting out of the rubble comes a man alive for whom such was an inconceivable event. He walks up to you and, says, simply, “I am alive, though you surely thought me to be dead.”
Post 9-11 New York City, the Pentagon, and the Shanksville PA Crash site
Again, this may be too painful a consideration for some, but imagine as parallel to the above. All hope of any possibility of survival, or further survivors, out walks one. We, and he himself, had been thought to be, and was, as ‘good as dead,’ but was now “living” standing before us.
POW (Prisoners of War)
In the aftermath of the Viet Nam War, there was a concerted effort to locate and release U.S. military personnel who had become POWs of North Viet Nam. There were a limited number of such men who streamed back to the particular joy and surprise of family, friends. But after some time, such stream stopped. Yet it was believed there could still be others perhaps in far remote situations even as escapees in hiding, unaware that the war was over. Again, imagine that many decades after the announced release, after all hope was lost of another survivor, a man walks into our awareness who we had resigned to be dead, yet there he is before us, living.
Lost at Sea
We can imagine a shipwreck of a private sailing vessel, lost at sea, with no survivor. Or a fallen-overboard and lost at sea individual from some cruise or merchant vessel. Search parties are launched. But after some point in time, all hope is lost. Then, shockingly, the survivor appears out of the surf of some beach or walking on some island. (This was the storyline of a Hollywood movie: “Cast Away” starring Tom Hanks).
Aircraft Crash
Crashes of commercial aircraft are very rare events. So when they occur it is news. The immediate question is whether there were survivors. In extreme circumstances, there are none, such as the 2021 Indonesian flight MH370 that was, apparently, lost at sea…all occupants and the airplane itself.
In some dozen instances there has been a complete destruction of an airplane with the death of all passengers and crew but for a single survivor; a four year old girl named Cecelia Crocker is one well-known example. When she was found alive, as the only survivor, it was, as if, she had come to life out of death.
One of the great test pilots of the 20th Century was Chuck Yeager. He, like many, even most, test pilots had adverse outcomes during high risk test flights. In a Hollywood movie version, one such adverse outcome was an out of control catastrophic desert crash, and flames of immolation. As the movie scene had it, those who rushed to the scene saw only the horror of black smoke, heat of flames, and mechanical carnage. The observers are standing in shock, horror, silence, unable and unwilling to process what they know to be true: no one, not even the great pilot Yeager could have survived. Then, barely discernible in the smoke someone sees a figure, that appears to be moving. And it is Yeager, as out from death living. There is a brief YouTube clip of the movie’s scene.
False Determination of Dead
A particularly horrific occurrence is that of a false determination of death. In a mass causality context the chaotic circumstances of separating the dead from the living it has happened that a survivor was misidentified as having perished. The next of kin is then notified per standard practice but with a false statement of death. After some time of checking and re-checking the dead and living the error is caught and the person who had been mis-identified then telephones home to say “I am alive” to the shock and complete joy of the hearer.
Alive out-from Real Death
The above examples though illustrative of the “out-of death living” experience do not capture the essence of our phrase in Romans 6:13. These examples share the common limitation that there had been no real death from which “the living” emerged. All these examples were of individuals incorrectly believed, or were reported, to be dead and, though may have been gravely injured and even declared as “dead,” were never actually dead.
Such metaphorical parallel could be what is meant by the phrase we are studying from Romans 6:13. But I think there is an underlying reality that stems from the entirety of Romans Ch 6 and other NT texts.
What is Death and Life in the Scriptures?
Briefly, let us consider what must be one of the biggest issues of the Bible, and life, namely: death. The opening chapters of the Bible, Genesis Ch 1 – 3, show us the reality of Creation that comes from non-Being into “life” of Being, and propagating derived “life” (Being) through the astonishing process–we sometimes use the term “miracle”–of procreation. That prefix “pro” comes from Latin for the idea “comes forth” that gives us the idea of life which can itself carry forward life to what we term as a next generation. There are more than eight billion humans alive on the planet at this time, and uncountable numbers of all other life forms, and we all got ‘here’ by such generation-by-generation means.
And, we all die.
Death is no metaphor. Those opening chapters of Genesis give us its genesis: violating God’s prohibition of eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge off good and evil will cause, and has caused death, by the verb form of the ominous warning, namely: “dying you will die.”
Thus, our present reality, and that of everyone since The Fall, is having two Beings, one alive, even procreativity so, and yet at the same time, within the same plane of reality, dying with certainty to completed (telos) state of being, dead.
Everyone you and I have seen and heard, including ourselves the observer, is really both living and dead. Prisoners under the sentence of capital punishment are known as “dead men walking” because of such twin reality of being. We are each living in union with our ‘twin,’ death. Given the brevity of ‘life-span,’ it is our ‘twin’ who not only ultimately takes over, but ‘rules’ as it were, eternally.
Positional Truth
A foundational truth regarding the Work of Jesus Christ on the Cross is that of Being our Substitute. There is no deeper idea, both amazing and thrilling, than this. What the Scriptures teach is not that Jesus was some moral exemplar, a model we should emulate. We are instead granted the true, complete knowledge of the greatest possible Good and the greatest possible Evil having united upon another ‘tree,’ the Cross, a new Eden, whereby a great, not fully comprehensible, exchange occurred namely that we who brought the one ‘thing’ that is ours–sin–became that which Christ took upon Himself with the one ‘thing’ that was redemptively essential–the Grace of Substitution–bringing to eternal life with God we who were condemned to eternal separation from God.
Two important NT words of doctrine stem from this: Baptism, and The Gospel. “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3, NIV). The underlying principle of “baptism” / “baptize” is central to the Work of Christ and our own born-again being. Some form of the word occurs nearly 100 times in the NT, including (these from the NIV):
- having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2:12)
- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; (Eph 4:5)
- for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (Gal. 3:27)
And “The Gospel”–which means, literally, Good News–is the proclaimed reality of the positional truth of our Being the undeserved object of Christ’s Substitutionary Work. Like “baptism” / “baptize,” the word “Gospel” occurs nearly 100 times in the NT, a dozen times in the Epistle to the Romans, including:
- Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God— (Rom 1:1)
- the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures (1:2)
- God, whom I serve in my spirit in preaching the gospel of his Son, is my witness how constantly I remember you I1:9)
- That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are in Rome. (1:15)
- For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. (1:16)
- For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.” (1:17)
- This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. (2:16)
- As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies for your sake; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, (11:28)
- to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. (15:16)
- by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. (15:19)
- It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. (15:20)
- Now to him who is able to establish you in accordance with my gospel, the message I proclaim about Jesus Christ, in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past, (16:25)
A brief sidebar: there is a reference to the four biographical narratives of the life of Jesus Christ–known by their author’s name: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John–as being the “Gospel(s)” as contrasted with the “Epistles” (i.e. letters that follow the “Gospels” and the Book known as “Acts”). This is misleading. The very word “gospel” occurs just 2x in Matthew, 5x in Mark, none in Luke, and only once in John. Yet the word “gospel” occurs 84 times throughout the remaining 16 Books of the NT, ending at: Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. (Rev 14:6, NIV).
One final point on the inexhaustible reality of the positional, substitutionary work of Jesus Christ comes from another seemingly simple phrase spread through the Epistles, namely: “in Christ.” Such phrase occurs, also, nearly 100 times in the NT, in 15 Books succeeding the four biographical books (Matt through John). To fully develop the significance of “in Christ” requires another post and a much deeper digging. But, briefly, such expression is a Koine (Greek) dative case. Such dative cases sometimes designate simply an indirect object (John hit the ball to Joe, where “the ball” is the direct object of the verb “hit” and Joe is the indirect object). But Koine datives can locative references in space or time and more notably references to agency / instrumentality. Being “in Christ” has the great, deep significance both locationally, as to where we truly have our Being, and to the agency / instrumentality, namely Positional Substitution, by which we became such Being with New Life.
And, So, How Should We Conceive Ourselves as Being: out-from Death Living?
Our phrase of study–“as out-of death living”–is weightier, and much more beautiful, than we ever could have humanly imagined. It is the Gospel Reality that we are called to recognize and act upon. Phrase invites us to envision a version of us, wholly identified with Christ, coming out of death, miraculously, permanently, as living.
Such recognition cannot be over-emphasized. It is contrary to our experience, and natural conception of possible circumstances. We have stories where person A substitutes for person B by undertaking a high-risk, even suicidal, mission with the effect that B survives because, and only because A took his place and so died. But A could only ‘give’ what A had: transient biological life, with some admirable motivation of sacrifice on behalf of B. A ‘bought’ biological time for B; yet, B will himself die, perhaps even in a day or short time. (The thematic ideal of A dying in place of B is a central feature of Charles Dickens’s famous novel Tale of Two Cities).
A particularly humanistic appeal arises in many stories of protagonists (the ‘hero’) facing antagonist(s) (those who oppose the protagonist). A common form of the story, repeated in many movie tropes from love stories to military combat to David vs. Goliath stories of all types, is the sequence of waves / layers of conflict whereby the hero has had to overcome the enemy, or appears to have done so, but the enemy ‘comes back’ ever stronger, more evil, of greater cunning, with more forces, then creating the appearance of certain doom for “good” in the face of “evil.” And it unsettles us, because we’re ‘pulling’ for the hero, and a world in which ‘good’ prevails.
In two hour movies, such multiple appearances of ‘all is lost’ can occur two or three times, as the storyteller plays with the audience’s hopes and expectations. Finally, because it’s entertainment, we can expect by some astounding circumstances the hero will be ‘as though from the dead’ living, standing at the end, having vanquished the last shred of evil. There is even a two thousand year old phrase for this: deus ex machina, literally meaning “god out of the machine” but figuratively meaning that through some surpra-natural forces the story impossibly resolves as we naturally want it to, namely that the hero was good, worthy, victorious, and the world is better because he (or she) had the strength and courage to fight to the end.
It is a human temptation, likely a satanically -nspired one, for us to see ourselves in such heroic self-redemption victories in the central issue of the consequence of The Fall, and certainly of biological death. This is the underlying appeal of the false teaching that Jesus was–in reality–our exemplar, and only that. As such, we are then called to be likewise heroes in our own time and place achieving the same victory. (And in universalistic belief systems, everybody achieves the heroes success, and death is universally overcome).
Our little phrase–as out-of death living–in Rom 6:13 in the context of all of Ch 6, and all of the Epistle to the Romans, and all the NT and even the OT, makes it clear that no one can self-save, under “Law” or any other human principle of heroic achievement.
Sidebar as to the Textual Variant of ως
The so-called “Textus Receptus” (i.e., the received text, a reference to the Koine mss family used to create the KJV translation), which (it is argued) is not as old as the “critical text” family has the first word of our study phrase as ως (hos), as given above in this post.
There exists a slight variant, namely ὡσεὶ (hos-ey). Such variant occurs in the corpus of Koine mss known as the “critical text,” which is used by almost all modern translations including the highly literal translations such as the NASB95, LSB, and others. This variant form “as” means, more literally, “as if,” though the two forms can occur (seemingly) interchangeably.
The “critical text” mss are deemed by scholars of such matters both older and more-reliable, though there are others who hold to the position of greater accuracy of the “Textus Receptus” mss (aka as the “majority text”–though there are multitudinous and passionate distinctions made even of these populations). Perhaps the simplest argument of priority is that the older, more likely the original mss, had the longer form, ὡσεὶ, as the critical text proponents would claim, and the later texts, the Textus Receptus family (which is most of the extant mss) had ‘shortened’ in its various generations of copying to ως.
Whichever was the original form, we can ask the Apostle Paul, or The Lord Himself, when we get on the other side of the veil. (It’s unlikely to be at the top of our list, but we’ll have eternity to get to all of everyone’s list). Until then we can conclude (1) both mean “as,” (2) if ως is the original, it puts, perhaps, more weight on the reality of grasping our “out of death” condition, (3) if ὡσεὶ, suggesting “as if,” then we are recognizing the present reality of our flesh and blood body is still destined for physical death (apart from the Lord’s return before our physical death) so we are claiming a reality that we are “as if” out of literal death living, or (4) both forms are ‘true’–that is the variants are not either/or as to their truth but each expresses the truth, as a kind of binocular vision of it.