Romans 6:11
Romans 6:1111So you too must count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Read as an exhortation to keep away from sin and to live in a way that pleases Jehovah — a standard the Witness is responsible for maintaining through ongoing effort, meeting attendance and the ministry.
Notice the instruction: consider yourselves dead to sin and living to God. Paul is telling them to reckon something already true, not to achieve something new. He has spent the preceding ten verses saying what happened — you were baptised into Christ's death, buried with him, raised to walk in newness of life. So the command follows the accomplishment. The reckoning is a response to a change already made, not the means of making it. That matters for someone carrying a performance framework. The order in Romans 6 is: this is what God did to you, therefore live like it. The order in a requirements system is: live like it, and God may accept you. Same behaviour, opposite direction, and the difference is the whole of the gospel. It also connects to the earlier verse in the chapter that speaks to baptism: baptised into Christ Jesus, into his death. Not into a movement — into him. That is the same point Paul presses at . Compare , , .