Trinity 6
Rom
6:3-11
7/12/15
No one wants to deal with a person
who is two faced. It is an unpleasant
revelation to learn that when we are with a person they act as if they like us,
but when they are apart from us they are saying negative things about us. Trust is betrayed when we learn that we can’t
take a person at their word and that they aren’t honest with us. We find
ourselves in the uneasy position of having to play a role. Just as the two faced person is friendly with
us, so we need to be friendly when we are around that person. And yet we know the whole time that it is a
sham, and that when the individual goes off elsewhere he or she will run us
down.
As we listen to our epistle lesson
this morning, it is easy to wonder whether Scripture is two faced when it comes
to describing us. On the one hand, what we
hear this morning from the beginning of Romans chapter 6 makes it sound like we
can stop sinning. But by the time you
read further and get into chapter 7, it sounds like we can never avoid sin. So
which one is true? And what does this
mean for how we live life as Christians?
Our text this morning is a response
to what Paul has just said at the end of chapter five. In that chapter he had described how the sin
of Adam brought sin and death to all people.
He writes, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man,
and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” However, the good news is that since the sin
of Adam trapped all people in sin, God responded by sending a second Adam to
undo all of this. Paul says, “But the
free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man's
trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of
that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.”
At the end of chapter 5, the apostle
has described God’s grace like a rising tide that envelopes sin. He says, “Now the law came in to increase the
trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin
reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to
eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
For the person who is troubled by
their sin, there cannot be any better news that this! It is not possible for your sin to outstrip
God’s grace, forgiveness and love. There
is nothing you have done; there is no mistake you have made, that is too big
for God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ.
When Jesus died on the cross he bore every
sin and received God’s judgment against it. This was God’s way of being
just and also justifying the ungodly.
God did not cease to be holy. He did not cease to be a just judge in
dealing with sin. He did in fact condemn
your sin in the flesh. But he did it in
an utterly unexpected way. Earlier in
Romans Paul wrote, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart
from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the
righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For
there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be
received by faith.”
This is the comfort of the
Gospel. Whenever we confess our sin and
believe in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are forgiven. We are justified. We already know the verdict of the Last Day
now. There is no sin too heinous for
God’s forgiveness. The repentant child
molester is forgiven. You are forgiven.
But as long as you are dealing with
sinners, there are problems. And the
problem is that we are tempted to take advantage of this. Paul has just said that God’s grace abounds and
overwhelms sin with forgiveness. And so
in the first two verses of chapter six Paul asks a rhetorical question: “What
shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no
means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
As many of you have heard me say
before, the Christian life does not work
this way: “I like to sin. Gods likes to forgive. This is great!” Paul attacks this idea by going to the
foundational event of your life as a Christian – by going to baptism. He says in our text, “Do you not know that
all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life.”
Paul assumes that, yes, they do know this. He draws upon a common shared belief of first
century Christianity that in baptism a person shares in Jesus Christ’s saving
death. In the water of baptism we died
with Christ. We were buried with Christ. Through baptism we receive the forgiving
work of the cross and so we confess in the Nicene Creed “one baptism for the
forgiveness of sins.”
But notice what Paul does here. The subject at hand for him is not
forgiveness of sins. Instead, he is focused on avoiding sin. His point is
that through baptism we have died to sin
and sin no longer rules us. And his thinking on this is grounded in the Holy
Spirit and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in
order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,
we too might walk in newness of life.”
Now
if you listen carefully to this, you will find that it doesn’t go where we
expect. Paul says that Jesus died and in
baptism we have shared in Jesus’ death.
Then he says that Jesus rose from the dead. We expect him to say that we
too will rise. But instead he says that because of baptism, “we too might walk in
newness of life.” This life is Christ, but it is also the way we live because
of Christ. Only after saying this does
Paul give us what we expect to hear as he goes on in the next verse to say, “For
if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.”
Paul connects Jesus’ resurrection
and the fact that Christian live in ways that are dead to sin. The reason for this is the Holy Spirit –
something Paul makes clear in chapter eight as he writes, “If the Spirit of him
who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from
the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who
dwells in you.” The Spirit who raised
Jesus from the dead is in you because of baptism. That same Spirit will give
you a share in Jesus resurrection on the Last Day. Yet the Spirit isn’t just “hanging out” until
that happens. Instead, the Spirit is the
resurrection power of Jesus Christ
already at work in you now.
Paul says that
something big happened in your baptism.
He writes in our text, “We know that our old man was crucified with him
in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no
longer be enslaved to sin.” The apostle says that because of baptism we are no
longer enslaved to sin, and so he concludes our text by saying, “So you also
must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
It all sounds great! But then in the verse right after our text
the apostles writes: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make
you obey its passions.” And this is when
Paul starts to sound two faced. Because
if I have died to sin and am no longer enslaved to sin, why is he having to
tell me, “Don’t let sin rule you”? And before we know it in chapter 7 Paul is
saying (using the pronoun “I” no less!): “For I know that nothing good dwells
in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not
the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do
not want is what I keep on doing.”
Yet it is not Paul who is being two
faced. He is just being honest about our
spiritual condition. Instead, we are the ones who are two faced. We live in the now and the not yet. In Christ we are a new creation through the
work of the Spirit – we are new man. But
until Christ returns, the old man – our sinful fallen condition – still clings
to us as well. And these struggle
against one another.
This is a reality that we must
recognize as Christians. Struggle will be a defining feature of the Christian
life. Because of Jesus and the work of
the Spirit we will find ourselves struggling against sin and its
temptations. If you are going to be a
Christian, you can’t avoid it.
As we think about what Paul says in
our text, and also about the other side of things – the old man still present
within us - I want to leave you with three thoughts. First, recognize that the struggle is a good thing. You sense the struggle
because of the salvation God has given you in Jesus Christ through the work of
the Spirit. In fact, growing and
maturing in faith will probably make us perceive the struggle even more, not
less. The truly frightening thing would be if we didn’t sense it – if we were simply
carried along by sin.
Second, remember what was said
earlier in this sermon. Whenever we
confess our sin and believe in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, we are forgiven. We are justified. There is no sin too heinous for God’s
forgiveness. There will be times when
you fail. There will be times when you fall. The important thing is how we view
that sin. Do we see it as no big deal, or
do we confess it as sin so that we can take comfort in the forgiveness of Jesus
Christ.
And finally, understand that Paul
really means what he says in our text today. The old man is present and we must
contend against him, but the two sides are not
equal. By his death and resurrection Jesus Christ has defeated sin and
death. That same power is now at work in
you through his Spirit. This is what gave you rebirth and made you a new
creation. This is why you are new man.
Because of the Spirit you are on the winning side and so you can win. Your baptism is the continuing source of this
ability to win. It continues to be
nourished through all of the Means of Grace.
Let me leave you with this
illustration to help you think about our life.
The relation of new man and old man is like the St. Louis Cardinals and
the Chicago Cubs this season. This
season – and mind you, the illustration only applies to this season – the two
teams are not equal. The Cardinals are
the better team. Over the course of the
season they will win more games and win the division. That doesn’t mean the
Cubs aren’t a difficult opponent. There
are days when the Cubs sweep the Cardinals in a double header. There are times when a dramatic late inning
homerun is needed just to split the series. But it would be foolish to think
that because those occasions occur the Cardinals should just stop trying. They are better. They are the winning side.
That is how things are for you. The Spirit of the risen Christ is more
powerful than sin. Because you are in
Christ through the work of the Spirit, you
are on the winning side. So take up
the struggle against sin. Find peace in
Christ’s forgiveness on those occasions when you fall. And know that the Spirit
you received in baptism gives you the ability to put to death sin, and to live
as what Christ has made you to be, as you look for the final victory and
transformation when Christ returns.
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