Last week we spent some time feasting on Paul’s words to the Roman Christians regarding the
lavishness of God’s love and grace in Romans 5. This week our epistle reading jumps ahead to the
6th Chapter of Romans, where Paul reminds us that this grace means a bit more than being home
free, and using our freedom to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it.
Some of you may have heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German theologian who was jailed
and later executed by the Nazis toward the end of WWII. Bonhoeffer coined a phrase that has come
into common usage among Christians. That phrase is “cheap grace.” Among other things,
Bonhoeffer says this faulty notion of grace means justification of sin without justification of the sinner
and preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. It’s grace without discipleship, grace
without the Cross, and really, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Sadly, cheap grace
seems to abound in today’s church.
I think this morning’s reading from Romans stands as an inoculation against cheap grace. St. Paul
is telling us that as wonderful as the gifts of salvation and forgiveness are, we’re being called to go a
step further. He talks about how to begin living a new life of purity. Paul begins today’s passage by
asking, “So what should we say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” And
so as not to leave any confusion after his rhetorical question, Paul answers it himself. He says, “By
no means!” Or in modern vernacular, “No way, Jose!” (Tuton Revised Version) He says, “Do you
not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” And
now that he’s got our attention, he continues by saying, “We’ve been buried with him by baptism into
death…”
This evokes the image that stands out especially in baptism by full immersion. Because when the
candidate is lowered into the water, this symbolizes descending into death and the grave. What
Paul is saying is that a death takes place when we submit ourselves in faith to the waters of
baptism. [And of course, all of what Paul’s talking about is effective whether we’re immersed or
sprinkled. They’re equally valid.]
But here’s where it gets interesting. It may be easy enough for us to see the symbolism of the death
of our old self as we’re lowered into the water, in anticipation of a new self emerging. But it’s actually
even bigger than that. Paul doesn’t just say that we’re baptized into death, but that we’re baptized
into his death—Jesus’ death. This is our first clue here that there’s something deep and even
mystical happening. This talk about being baptized into the death of Jesus may sound odd. But you
see, this is consistent with a basic theme in Paul’s letters. He writes extensively about being “in
Christ.” As a consequence of our faith and the baptism that seals it, we’re actually united with Christ
so that we’re somehow a part of him.
You may notice that when I speak of baptism, I usually use the word “faith” also. This is because
water in and of itself is not what saves us. In the three chapters prior to today’s Romans reading,
Paul emphasizes that salvation is by faith. You see, in the early days of the church, faith and
baptism were inseparable. It was unthinkable to consider one without the other. John Stott writes
that our union with Christ, invisibly effected by faith, is visibly signified and sealed with baptism. So
personal faith is an indispensable part of the picture. It’s these 2 things together, faith and baptism,
that unite us with Christ. In some wonderful and indescribable way we actually share in his identity.
Paul says we’re baptized into his death. And what Jesus accomplished by his death was the full
payment for our sins. So when we’re baptized, we’re fully participating with Christ in that payment.
We’re baptized into Christ’s death, the penalty is paid, and our old self dies with him. Are you with
me so far?
But, like Jesus, we don’t stay buried. We’re not abandoned under the water and left to be satisfied
only that the old self is dead. The payment for our sins is only part of the story. Paul writes, “…just
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of
life. For if we’ve been united with Him in death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might
be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.
But if we’ve died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. The death he died, he died to
sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”
Now, I need to say a word or two about dying to sin. When Paul says we’re dead to sin, it does not
mean that we’re no longer tempted by the sin nature that still lurks within us. In fact, Paul made it
plain that this was a struggle he engaged in daily. It gets the better of us sometimes, and as we
confess our sins, our Lord is faithful to forgive them. What it does mean, is that both the penalty
and the enslaving power of sin are defeated through the death of Jesus, in which we participate by
baptism. Defeat at the hands of sin is no longer inevitable. If the inseparable tandem of faith and
baptism is working in your life, the penalty for your sin has been paid and the addictive power of sin
in your life has been broken. We walk in newness of life. We share in Christ’s death, and we also
share in Christ’s resurrection. And Paul says that “the life Christ lives, he lives to God.”
To help us better understand what it is to be dead to sin and alive to God, it might help to look at
how sin works in our lives if we give it the power to. My New Testament professor at Trinity, Rod
Whitacre, gave us what I find to be a helpful way of seeing this. It has to do with the decisions we
make in response to temptation. There is actually a series of such decisions that can lead us right
from temptation to enslavement. It happens in four stages.
When temptation knocks on the door, our first mistake is to answer the door. That’s problem
number one. We give attention to the temptation. We begin, however briefly, to dwell on it. We
contemplate being its host, and rationalize our flirtation with it. We tell ourselves things like “she
deserves a piece of my mind.” Or we stay glued to the TV as less than wholesome scenes are
shoveled in our direction. The tempter says, “Don’t touch that dial!” But temptation knocks and we
answer the door.
Then, in the second stage, we invite temptation in. We may give ourselves an excuse or justification
to indulge in the sin. We may fantasize how much better we’ll feel if we give in to the temptation and
do what our lower nature wants us to do. We give temptation attention that it doesn’t deserve. We
invite into our homes the oily, smooth-talking purveyor of false joy, and now we’re in trouble.
In the third stage, we give in and participate willingly in sin. We listen and are won over by
temptation. We cross the line into actually doing something or saying something we know to be
wrong. And we all know what happens when we start getting used to giving in. It becomes easier
and easier to give in. An old rabbinical proverb says, “Commit a sin twice and it will not seem a
crime.” And it also becomes harder and harder to stop. We become desensitized to the sin.
This leads to the fourth and final stage, addiction. This is where we actually give up control and
become actively enslaved to sin. Our oily, smooth-talking guest now has taken over the house.
Here evil is multiplied. People are hurt. Relationships are broken. Health may even deteriorate. I
saw this most clearly in my years of work in the field of alcoholism and chemical dependency. Lives
are literally destroyed. There’s an A.A. slogan that says, “The man takes a drink, then the drink
takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” I can think of many other sins that can overpower and
eventually enslave us in a similar way.
But the thing is, for the Christian, all of this is preventable. There’s a solution, and it goes back to
the original knock on the door. It’s a solution that St. Paul gives us in our Romans reading.
Remember, Paul has said that our old self was crucified in him so that we might no longer be
enslaved to sin. And that we have died and will live in Christ. And that “the death he died, he died
to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” And that death has no dominion over him.
But then comes the clincher. Because after informing or reminding us of all of this, Paul writes, “So
you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In this sentence
the Greek word for “dead” is nekrous, the word from which we get “necrotic.” It means “like a
corpse.” Dead, gone, and unresponsive. So when St. Paul is exhorting us to consider ourselves
dead to sin, he’s saying “respond to temptation in exactly the way a corpse would.” Namely, ! Let
temptation have the same effect on you as it would a dead body, or even a rock. Don’t respond to it!
And here’s something crucially important to remember. To consider yourself dead to sin is to see
yourself as dead to sin. And this is not make-believe. This is not pretending you’re something that
you’re not. It’s not pumping up your faith to believe something you really don’t believe. It’s not like
that bumper sticker that says, “Visualize world peace,” in the hope that visualizing it will somehow
bring it about. Paul has just spent several colorful and mildly complex sentences telling us a fact, an
objective reality about our death of the old self and our new life in Christ. It’s not a matter of
imagining it, but realizing it! Jesus has done the work! He’s already broken the power of sin in our
lives by his death, resurrection, and indwelling Spirit.
I remember when Michele and I were first married, how both of us had to occasionally pinch
ourselves as a reminder. We both felt at first like we were playing house or something. There was a
lag time before the reality of our marriage sank in completely and fully transformed our mindset from
one of being single. And one way that I used to remind myself was simply by looking down at my
wedding ring. It returned me to the objective reality of what had happened. We were really married,
and we had the license and the rings to prove it. It’s a little like that with baptism.
When we forget about our blessed status as forgiven people, and our responsibilities to live a new,
resurrection life, a life of obedience to Jesus, it helps simply to remind ourselves that we’re saved by
the blood of Christ, born again, sealed in baptism, and indwelt by the Spirit of almighty God himself,
who, if we allow him to, will exert the power to defend us from temptation and deliver us from evil.
We’re called to be as one dead to sin and to do as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: “Brothers [and
sisters], whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about these things. Whatever
you’ve learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me— put it into practice. And the God of
peace will be with you.”
Our effort to come into line with God’s standards is a lifelong one. There are a lot of ups and
downs. And only One has ever done it perfectly so far. But in our gratitude for Jesus’ gift of
salvation to us, may we literally hunger to think, speak, and act in the way He wants us to. And most
of all, let us stake a claim to the victory that He’s already won for us, and in His strength,
progressively die to our old nature and awaken to a life lived in the way it was meant to be lived.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
lavishness of God’s love and grace in Romans 5. This week our epistle reading jumps ahead to the
6th Chapter of Romans, where Paul reminds us that this grace means a bit more than being home
free, and using our freedom to do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it.
Some of you may have heard of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He was a German theologian who was jailed
and later executed by the Nazis toward the end of WWII. Bonhoeffer coined a phrase that has come
into common usage among Christians. That phrase is “cheap grace.” Among other things,
Bonhoeffer says this faulty notion of grace means justification of sin without justification of the sinner
and preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. It’s grace without discipleship, grace
without the Cross, and really, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Sadly, cheap grace
seems to abound in today’s church.
I think this morning’s reading from Romans stands as an inoculation against cheap grace. St. Paul
is telling us that as wonderful as the gifts of salvation and forgiveness are, we’re being called to go a
step further. He talks about how to begin living a new life of purity. Paul begins today’s passage by
asking, “So what should we say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?” And
so as not to leave any confusion after his rhetorical question, Paul answers it himself. He says, “By
no means!” Or in modern vernacular, “No way, Jose!” (Tuton Revised Version) He says, “Do you
not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” And
now that he’s got our attention, he continues by saying, “We’ve been buried with him by baptism into
death…”
This evokes the image that stands out especially in baptism by full immersion. Because when the
candidate is lowered into the water, this symbolizes descending into death and the grave. What
Paul is saying is that a death takes place when we submit ourselves in faith to the waters of
baptism. [And of course, all of what Paul’s talking about is effective whether we’re immersed or
sprinkled. They’re equally valid.]
But here’s where it gets interesting. It may be easy enough for us to see the symbolism of the death
of our old self as we’re lowered into the water, in anticipation of a new self emerging. But it’s actually
even bigger than that. Paul doesn’t just say that we’re baptized into death, but that we’re baptized
into his death—Jesus’ death. This is our first clue here that there’s something deep and even
mystical happening. This talk about being baptized into the death of Jesus may sound odd. But you
see, this is consistent with a basic theme in Paul’s letters. He writes extensively about being “in
Christ.” As a consequence of our faith and the baptism that seals it, we’re actually united with Christ
so that we’re somehow a part of him.
You may notice that when I speak of baptism, I usually use the word “faith” also. This is because
water in and of itself is not what saves us. In the three chapters prior to today’s Romans reading,
Paul emphasizes that salvation is by faith. You see, in the early days of the church, faith and
baptism were inseparable. It was unthinkable to consider one without the other. John Stott writes
that our union with Christ, invisibly effected by faith, is visibly signified and sealed with baptism. So
personal faith is an indispensable part of the picture. It’s these 2 things together, faith and baptism,
that unite us with Christ. In some wonderful and indescribable way we actually share in his identity.
Paul says we’re baptized into his death. And what Jesus accomplished by his death was the full
payment for our sins. So when we’re baptized, we’re fully participating with Christ in that payment.
We’re baptized into Christ’s death, the penalty is paid, and our old self dies with him. Are you with
me so far?
But, like Jesus, we don’t stay buried. We’re not abandoned under the water and left to be satisfied
only that the old self is dead. The payment for our sins is only part of the story. Paul writes, “…just
as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of
life. For if we’ve been united with Him in death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a
resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might
be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin.
But if we’ve died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. The death he died, he died to
sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.”
Now, I need to say a word or two about dying to sin. When Paul says we’re dead to sin, it does not
mean that we’re no longer tempted by the sin nature that still lurks within us. In fact, Paul made it
plain that this was a struggle he engaged in daily. It gets the better of us sometimes, and as we
confess our sins, our Lord is faithful to forgive them. What it does mean, is that both the penalty
and the enslaving power of sin are defeated through the death of Jesus, in which we participate by
baptism. Defeat at the hands of sin is no longer inevitable. If the inseparable tandem of faith and
baptism is working in your life, the penalty for your sin has been paid and the addictive power of sin
in your life has been broken. We walk in newness of life. We share in Christ’s death, and we also
share in Christ’s resurrection. And Paul says that “the life Christ lives, he lives to God.”
To help us better understand what it is to be dead to sin and alive to God, it might help to look at
how sin works in our lives if we give it the power to. My New Testament professor at Trinity, Rod
Whitacre, gave us what I find to be a helpful way of seeing this. It has to do with the decisions we
make in response to temptation. There is actually a series of such decisions that can lead us right
from temptation to enslavement. It happens in four stages.
When temptation knocks on the door, our first mistake is to answer the door. That’s problem
number one. We give attention to the temptation. We begin, however briefly, to dwell on it. We
contemplate being its host, and rationalize our flirtation with it. We tell ourselves things like “she
deserves a piece of my mind.” Or we stay glued to the TV as less than wholesome scenes are
shoveled in our direction. The tempter says, “Don’t touch that dial!” But temptation knocks and we
answer the door.
Then, in the second stage, we invite temptation in. We may give ourselves an excuse or justification
to indulge in the sin. We may fantasize how much better we’ll feel if we give in to the temptation and
do what our lower nature wants us to do. We give temptation attention that it doesn’t deserve. We
invite into our homes the oily, smooth-talking purveyor of false joy, and now we’re in trouble.
In the third stage, we give in and participate willingly in sin. We listen and are won over by
temptation. We cross the line into actually doing something or saying something we know to be
wrong. And we all know what happens when we start getting used to giving in. It becomes easier
and easier to give in. An old rabbinical proverb says, “Commit a sin twice and it will not seem a
crime.” And it also becomes harder and harder to stop. We become desensitized to the sin.
This leads to the fourth and final stage, addiction. This is where we actually give up control and
become actively enslaved to sin. Our oily, smooth-talking guest now has taken over the house.
Here evil is multiplied. People are hurt. Relationships are broken. Health may even deteriorate. I
saw this most clearly in my years of work in the field of alcoholism and chemical dependency. Lives
are literally destroyed. There’s an A.A. slogan that says, “The man takes a drink, then the drink
takes a drink, then the drink takes the man.” I can think of many other sins that can overpower and
eventually enslave us in a similar way.
But the thing is, for the Christian, all of this is preventable. There’s a solution, and it goes back to
the original knock on the door. It’s a solution that St. Paul gives us in our Romans reading.
Remember, Paul has said that our old self was crucified in him so that we might no longer be
enslaved to sin. And that we have died and will live in Christ. And that “the death he died, he died
to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” And that death has no dominion over him.
But then comes the clincher. Because after informing or reminding us of all of this, Paul writes, “So
you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In this sentence
the Greek word for “dead” is nekrous, the word from which we get “necrotic.” It means “like a
corpse.” Dead, gone, and unresponsive. So when St. Paul is exhorting us to consider ourselves
dead to sin, he’s saying “respond to temptation in exactly the way a corpse would.” Namely, ! Let
temptation have the same effect on you as it would a dead body, or even a rock. Don’t respond to it!
And here’s something crucially important to remember. To consider yourself dead to sin is to see
yourself as dead to sin. And this is not make-believe. This is not pretending you’re something that
you’re not. It’s not pumping up your faith to believe something you really don’t believe. It’s not like
that bumper sticker that says, “Visualize world peace,” in the hope that visualizing it will somehow
bring it about. Paul has just spent several colorful and mildly complex sentences telling us a fact, an
objective reality about our death of the old self and our new life in Christ. It’s not a matter of
imagining it, but realizing it! Jesus has done the work! He’s already broken the power of sin in our
lives by his death, resurrection, and indwelling Spirit.
I remember when Michele and I were first married, how both of us had to occasionally pinch
ourselves as a reminder. We both felt at first like we were playing house or something. There was a
lag time before the reality of our marriage sank in completely and fully transformed our mindset from
one of being single. And one way that I used to remind myself was simply by looking down at my
wedding ring. It returned me to the objective reality of what had happened. We were really married,
and we had the license and the rings to prove it. It’s a little like that with baptism.
When we forget about our blessed status as forgiven people, and our responsibilities to live a new,
resurrection life, a life of obedience to Jesus, it helps simply to remind ourselves that we’re saved by
the blood of Christ, born again, sealed in baptism, and indwelt by the Spirit of almighty God himself,
who, if we allow him to, will exert the power to defend us from temptation and deliver us from evil.
We’re called to be as one dead to sin and to do as St. Paul wrote to the Philippians: “Brothers [and
sisters], whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely,
whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about these things. Whatever
you’ve learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me— put it into practice. And the God of
peace will be with you.”
Our effort to come into line with God’s standards is a lifelong one. There are a lot of ups and
downs. And only One has ever done it perfectly so far. But in our gratitude for Jesus’ gift of
salvation to us, may we literally hunger to think, speak, and act in the way He wants us to. And most
of all, let us stake a claim to the victory that He’s already won for us, and in His strength,
progressively die to our old nature and awaken to a life lived in the way it was meant to be lived.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Beyond Forgiveness
Romans 6:1b-11
Romans 6:1b-11
June 22, 2008
Fr. Dan Tuton
Fr. Dan Tuton
