Posted: 10/05/07
BaptistWay Bible Series for October 14
It’s a new way of life
• Romans 6:1-19
Christ Church, Rockwall
In his long poem “For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” American poet W. H. Auden gives voice to King Herod after the Magi announce forgiveness and grace have been given to human beings through the gift of Christ. High and mighty Herod quips: “Every corner-boy will congratulate himself: ‘I’m such a sinner that God had to come down in person to save me. I must be a devil of a fellow.’ Every crook will argue: ‘I like committing crimes, God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged.’”
The audacity Auden accentuates through Herod’s voice parodies the Apostle Paul’s argument to the Romans. Paul picks up on his previous parallel of Adam in Genesis to Jesus in the Gospels. If by one man’s disobedience (Adam) all people were made sinners and by one man’s obedience (Jesus) all people would be made righteous, then wherever sin is great, grace is greater (5:19-20). Said a different way, more sin means even more grace. No matter how much sin dominates and devastates a person’s life, God’s grace always trumps the tyranny of sin, because Christ dominates sin by virtue of his death and conquers death by virtue of his resurrection.
As you might imagine, Paul cautions using this gospel of grace as an excuse to live any way one pleases. Thus is the reason for his rhetorical question, “Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound (v. 1)? He answers with an emphatic, “By no means!” (v. 2). Once a person experiences God’s grace, the notion of doing whatever he pleases is contrary to the desire grace stirs up.
To want and will to continue in sin because of God’s grace is a logical impossibility though it remains an existential possibility. Logically, what clear-headed person exploits someone he truly loves by repeatedly causing hurt and harm to the one he knows will end up forgiving him anyway? Surely any caring parent, loving spouse or faithful friend will not seek deliberately to take advantage of the one they love. In this way, grace is not a license to licentiousness. Grace is a reason for righteousness.
Yet in terms of the ways we live our lives, baptism does not prevent people from being greedy, practicing racism (even if inadvertent) or living in fear of people who are different from them. The practical effects of baptism don’t always bring about the absolute reversals of the brokenness that plagues us all. Being baptized doesn’t prevent a corporate CEO from cooking the company’s books. It doesn’t make people immune to being unfaithful to their spouses. Divorce rates remain about the same whether a person is an evangelical Christian or whether a person never darkens the door of a church.
Though we may or may not share these particular experiences, what Christians don’t at least have days where they don’t think like Christians, feel like Christians or even act like Christians? But whoever said our relationship to God depends on such specific conditions?
According to Paul’s instruction to the Romans, Jesus died to sin once for all (v. 10). Neither Jesus nor Paul teaches us to don our spiritual poker faces and hedge our bets on a self-attained righteousness. Certainly there is no such thing as “do-it-yourself discipleship” in this passage of Scripture.
We could never become smart enough, old enough, holy enough or perfect enough to achieve the conditions for righteousness God has made possible through the death and resurrection of Christ. The basis of our relationship to God is that Christ accomplished on behalf of human beings what they had never been able to accomplish alone. The only thing left for a person to do is to identify one’s entire life with what Christ has done on behalf of the human race.
Baptism signifies the ultimate public act of solidarity with the one who has created the conditions for righteousness rather than sin to dominate one’s life.
The act of baptism enacts the rhythm of the righteousness Paul talks about. When we are baptized, we are buried with Christ by baptism into his death so that we might be united with him in a resurrection like his (vv. 4-5). Truly, the death we die with Christ demands daily funerals. As Vanderbilt professor and preacher Brad Braxton wisely asks: “What do we need to lay to rest today? What do we need to bury at this very hour? Do we need to bury a bad attitude, jealousy, animosity, an unforgiving spirit, doubt, a sense of shame or feelings of inadequacy?”
And since we are under grace, we rise from our water graves to be instruments of righteousness rather than instruments of wickedness. We cannot ultimately undo the promises we make in baptism any more than Christ will reverse the resurrection. Willingness to give ourselves in baptism indicates trust in what Christ has done for us. Because of what Christ did even before we ever knew we needed him, we, too, are now dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (v. 11). Braxton continues: “In Christ, funerals are always penultimate. Death is but a comma in salvation’s story. The resurrection is the final exclamation point!”
Therefore, no longer can we define the gospel of grace as the freedom to rebel against the God who loves us. On the contrary, the gospel of grace grants us freedom to embrace the joy of a love that buries our temptations to make gods of our sins and raises new possibilities to trust the God who will never let us go. Thanks be to God in Christ.
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