Romans 6:1-14
What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a 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, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
Sermon Text
Last week we talked about the fact that Christ’s life, his perfect and immense humanity, was enough to swallow up all of death. Sin has no claim on our lives anymore because Christ has freed us completely from it. No matter the sin, we are freed to be able to go forward and change our life, to be born again in the truest sense of the word. Through faith, with Christ’s purifying Spirit, in all things we are able to know a life that is free from guilt, full of joy, and that reflects the grace that God has shown us in every part of our life.
The grace we are offered, however, is not an excuse for us to live life however we please. We are bound by the freedom we are given. There is a great contradiction within our faith, that by being freed we are restricted. We are restricted in the sense that, having been freed from death, we now have the opportunity to choose life. Being freed from sin, we can be holy. Being freed from all that is bad, we can choose to do all the good we can. We are freed, not for the sake of freedom, but for the joyful obedience that faith allows us.
We often see sin in terms of a sickness, something that we inherited that makes us do the wrong thing. That is partly true, but misses the point that we can, through God’s help, no longer consciously sin. Likewise, when we see sin as just a matter of following rules, then we tend to see our infractions as something Jesus will just take care of, balancing the scales through his righteousness. The reality, however, as we discussed last week, is that sin is death and death can and will find its way into our life if we give into sin. Not a physical death or sickness, not usually, but a death of the divine image within us, a degradation of all that makes us truly human. Death, having been chased away from our souls, may only enter back in with an invitation, and we must be willing to say “No,” when the shade crouching at the door asks to come in.
Paul uses baptism to explain what Christ has done for us. In faith, we who are baptized are not just washed with water, but joined to Christ through death. Christ who died physically for us, allows us to die to our sinful nature through faith, as shown in the grace of baptism. When we sin after having been joined to Christ, we do so as people who have been freed from sin and then have made the choice to enter back into its clutches. For, as we joined Christ in death through baptism, so Christ has allowed us to know regeneration through the Spirit. We are no longer who we once were, we are made new through Jesus. As Christ was resurrected, so now we have the hope of resurrection through faith.
This means that we not only can, but must work to free ourselves from the chains of sin that we keep placing back on ourselves. We can sit talk all we want about being born again, but if we do not show that through the cultivation of good and the banishing of evil, then we are only just talking. We need to try to be better, to try and put away sin, because if we do not we will always find a way to excuse it instead.
I had an ethics professor who always told us, “A lot goes wrong in your life before you find yourself knocking on a motel door.” In that example, what she wanted us to see was that making little excuses can lead to big consequences. The almost absent-minded flirtation, the conversations we have that we suddenly find ourselves hiding from our partners, the emotional investment into someone we ought not to be invested in. Her choice of an obvious wrong, adultery, was intentional. She wanted us to understand that no person is above sinning, and sinning grievously. If we do not monitor ourselves, if we do not take even the “small,” transgressions we commit seriously, we will allow more and more egregious ones to enter in.
I hope we can see how easily we fall into the trap of saying, “Well, this is just a little sin.” “I’m just angry at this person because they deserve it.” “I spent more than I should have because I was up for an upgrade anyway.” “I never planned it this way, things just happened.” We get lost before we know it in a sea of choices that make it so that we have sinned more greatly, and to our greater detriment, than we ever imagined, because we knew Jesus had our back and that all would be taken care of at the end of it. “Surely this little bad choice wasn’t really that bad.”
A cheap grace that does not hold us accountable will always become an excuse to do what is wrong, because it is easier or more satisfying in the moment. If we truly wish to be people who can fully enjoy the benefits of our salvation, we need to let go of the idea that sin is ever going to do anything but destroy us. Slowly, sneakily, it will find its way inside our hearts and break them down into nothing. We will make small concessions, until the foundation we need to keep is broken away. We will excuse great evil because we let little ones fill our hearts.
So what is our cure? Next week we’ll talk about developing good habits to replace bad ones, but first let’s figure out how we can get rid of bad ones. Firstly, acknowledge that they exist. Secondly, confess them to God if they are personal, and to the person they have hurt if they involve others. Thirdly, seek to make right any wrong you have caused. Finally, having done all things to repair what is broken, put in place whatever protection you need not to sin again. If you cannot be strong, then be smart and avoid temptation. If you cannot avoid the temptation then steel your nerve. In all things, find support where you need it to make it through.
And if we do fall? If we fail? “God is faithful to forgive us.”[1] This is not a call for us to feel so ashamed we are paralyzed. This is an earnest request that we take sin seriously. Sin has no power over us, except the power we give it. Christ made sure we can live well, let us commit to working toward that good life. – Amen
[1] 1 John 1:9
Teach us to Number our Days 