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May 11, 2026

Can’t Lose Salvation—So Why Not Sin?

By Jason Neill

Scripture reading: Romans 6:1-14 

Last week, we discussed the freeness of the gospel. The only condition for receiving God’s free gift is to trust in Christ alone for it. Eternal life is free and permanent. There isn’t anything you can do to make God take back His gift of eternal life. So, a natural question arises: Why not live however I want, since I can’t lose eternal life and I’m under grace?

It isn’t surprising that the apostle Paul addressed this in Romans: “God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant” (Romans 5:20, NLT). The adage goes something like this: God loves to forgive sin; I love to sin—what a wonderful arrangement.

Paul imagines an objector making this claim, then responds: “Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?” (Romans 6:1–2, NLT).

The word “died” should be understood not to mean that we no longer sin, but that sin is no longer our master. We no longer must follow its dictates. It’s like leaving a place of employment, beginning work at a different job, and then having your old boss show up at your new position and try to tell you what to do. As odd as that might seem, you would probably look at him strangely, thinking to yourself, or perhaps even saying out loud, “You aren’t my boss any longer; I don’t have to listen to you.”

The same is true of sin. We no longer have to sin; we have a choice. In fact, Paul goes on in Romans 6:1–14 to explain that we have a new boss: Jesus. We are under His authority, which has liberated us. Increasingly sinning and placing ourselves back under the mastery of sin makes about as much sense as listening to our former boss when he shows up at our new job and tries to tell us what to do. We no longer must sin because we have a new boss.

As Haddon Robinson once said, “Every day you have a decision to make: you can either respond the way you had to in your old nature, or the way you’ve been freed up to in your new nature.”

Discussion Questions

  • In the “old boss” analogy, what are some realistic ways the “old boss” tries to keep giving orders in a believer’s life?
  • What changes when you approach a persistent sin with the mindset “I don’t have to obey this”?
  • Read Romans 6:11. What would it look like this week to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God”?
  • How do passages like Titus 2:11–14 or Galatians 5:13 complement Paul’s logic in Romans 6?