Romans 6:15-23

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that, if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you who were slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted and that you, having been set free from sin, have become enslaved to righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness, leading to even more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, leading to sanctification.

When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sermon Text

 Good to see everyone back after our, admittedly, dour service last week. We looked at sin, its dehumanizing and deadly effects, and I promised you all that we would look beyond sin this week to something a bit more hopeful. This week I want to point out the most powerful thing I can about God’s grace. The grace which we receive from Christ, through his death and resurrection and our faith in the same, does not just save us from death and hell and sin, but frees us to do good and to be good in ways we never could be alone.

Protestants are not good at talking about “doing good.” We are a tradition that has focused in on the fact that we are saved through faith alone, we had a reformation and several wars about that fact! Yet, if we are being truthful about the work of God in our hearts, then I do not think we can look at our Spiritual Health without considering the goodness we learn to do. That goodness may be in spiritual matters – prayer and scriptural study and affection toward God – but it must also be in more worldly signs of goodness too – prayer and service toward and beside others and affection for our fellow human beings.

To be a Christian is to be a person who realizes that they can only truly be saved through faith in Christ. To live as a Christian is to, having acknowledged our dependency on Christ, invest ourselves in the life of Christ such that we begin to resemble the savior who first called us. The life of a Christian can be a static thing, clinging only to as much grace and growth as might save us from hell. However, if we truly want to experience the fullness of God’s mercy, then we must take “the more excellent way,” of a pious life.[1]

Paul uses a metaphor out of his own world to describe the way in which Christ allows us to be freed from sin and equipped for good works. He says that in the same way that a slave is completely subservient to their master, so is a Christian completely subservient to Christ’s example and rule of life. The slavery we once had to sin, such that it controlled our every desire and action, is now a slavery to Christ, such that we are freed to do all good through the perfectly good God we call our master.

We may bristle under the language of “slave,” to describe our role in serving Jesus, but Jesus uses the same language in the Gospels.[2] I will not paint you an overly generous picture of Roman Slavery to suggest it was much better than American Chattel slavery. Our discomfort at the term was probably shared with the first Christians in Rome who read Paul’s words. It is an uncomfortable idea to think that we, free people that we are in most respects of life, should be called “slaves,” and by God no less.

What I would like to put forward, however, is that this kind of absolute service we render to Jesus and the mastery that Jesus shows us is only called “slavery,” because no earthly parallel truly exists. To give ourselves entirely to Christ, to have every breath be filled with the fullness of God, that is freedom itself. That Christ looks to this metaphor, and that so does Paul, perhaps is more an indictment on our own world that on Christ’s words. We cannot imagine giving ourselves completely to anything without “ownership,” being part of the equation. I think that is why “marriage,” is the other metaphor used to describe our faith. It again fails to address all aspects of our life with Christ, failing in different ways to the other metaphor, but all the same it approaches the right idea.

Our service to Christ is another thing only made possible through the grace we receive by faith. We are given the spiritual strength we need to develop our skills in holiness. Praying without ceasing, forgiving as we have been forgiven, honoring all people and all life as sacred, and serving all people and our God with all our hearts are all marks of a holy life. Yet, if we are to summarize what that holiness looks like, we just need to see it in terms of “love.” When we are unsure the way to move forward, we can ask ourselves the simple question, “Would the thing I am doing allow me to better love others and to love God?” If the answer is yes, then we move forward in holiness.

1 Corinthians 13 is usually the verse you will hear quoted talking about love, and almost always recounting romantic love (usually at a wedding.) Today though, I want you to apply it to your actions toward God and others. Are we being patient? Giving people time and taking time to work? Are we being kind? Not just good, not just right, but also kind? Are we shunning all envy? Pride? Boastfulness? How long of a list have we kept of the wrongs others have done? Do we have a kind of heart that, “… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

To grow in holiness takes intention. As we discussed last week when we looked at avoiding sin, we must intentionally seek to do good. Have you made yourself available to serve? Have you taken time, more than once, to pray for others? To read the scriptures? Have you practiced loving your enemies? I can ask more question! The simple thing we have to ask is, are we willing to be perfected in love? Christ has given us Grace that we might be made whole. I would ask that all of us devote ourselves, intentionally, to letting the grace of God lead us into life, and life abundant. – Amen

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[1] John Wesley. “The More Excellent Way.” Available at: https://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-89-the-more-excellent-way/

[2] Luke 17:7-10

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

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[1] 1 John 1:9

Romans 5:12-19

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— for sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of Adam, who is a pattern of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many. And the gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so through the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Sermon Text

It’s hard to talk about Sin, because a lot of our language around it is insufficient. Sin is a thing we do or a thing we have, but neither of those descriptions really tell the whole story.

Sin is not the violation of rules; many people sin boldly but never violate any written law in the process. Sin is also not just a condition, a sickness, it is something that we can practice and get good at doing. Sin cannot either just be defined by whether or not something bad comes of something we do. Sin is bigger than that – a spiritual reality as much as it is a physical one. Sin if we are to speak of it honestly, is the spiritual and physical antecedent to death. It is the foundation of decay in a world that was meant to be eternal. In sin, all chaos and pain is allowed to reign in a world that awaits redemption.

The exact nature of sin is less important than its consequences. The most obvious one, as we will discuss a bit more in depth later in our series, is that “the wages of sin are death.” When humanity first disobeyed God sin was given a space in the universe. It was allowed to fester and grow. Nowhere in the Garden of Eden is sin mentioned, because it had not yet been born. Yet, when first humanity worked against God, against the source of life, then that force was allowed to grow. The first use of the term “Sin,” is used to warn Cain that he must put away his jealousy toward Abel. This warning was ignored by Cain, and we are told that from his murder of Abel until the flood, humanity learned nothing but war and violence.

Sin, though not a conscious force, is a pervasive one. It “crouches,” around every corner and seeks to infect everything we touch. The most well-intentioned person can, with just a little twist of their mindset, find themselves doing things that harm the people around them, that diminish their own humanity, all because sin is able to twist their perception of what is good. Sin speaks in our own voice, affirms our own righteousness, and allows us in the name of that supposed goodness, to work against God’s goodness.

Within our scripture, Paul sets down the basis of his argument for how Christ’s sacrifice cleanses us of sin. Scripture does not give one single, coherent explanation of how Christ saves us. The scriptures instead provide several images that, when stacked on top of each other, give us what we need to know about our salvation. Romans, however, is one of the most complete explanations within scripture.

Here, Paul says that sin is more than just a violation of law – whether God’s law or another law – because sin existed before any command of the law was given. Humans were initially told to tend a garden, have children, and not eat from a single tree. If their violation was only in eating the tree, Paul would not be correct. Yet, Cain shows us that humanity developed other patterns of sin almost immediately. Sin, then, is not defined by the letter of the law, but by the evidence of its presence. Sin leads to death, as Cain killing Abel shows, and death is everywhere that sin is.

Sin is not just a thing that kills outright, but one that diminishes. Cain was able to kill his brother because he had been robbed of his love for his brother by sin. When we sin by hating other people, we diminish our humanity by viewing their humanity as lesser. When we lose self-control we lose the fortitude that God gave us to make good and right decisions. Sin does not just kill outright, but by a thousand small cuts it perverts the image of God within us and lets us do more and more inhuman things. To be subject to sin is to follow the path of death. To follow the path of death is to be made lesser with each passing day, until death swallows us up.

If Paul left his argument here, then he would leave us all, not only without hope, but completely without a path forward. If death is this all-consuming thing, then what are we going to do?! The answer is, we can do nothing, not on our own, but Christ can do a great deal in our place.

Paul argues, across his writings, that Jesus was not just a person, but the most human person to ever live. Christ, even more than Adam, embodies what humanity is meant to be. The humanity that Jesus shared with us, as it was perfect, was therefore sufficient to take the place of all humanity. Christ as the perfect human, in contrast with the flawed Adam, came and lived perfectly, died shamefully, and rose triumphantly, so that we could be put back together fully. Sin is an all-consuming reality of the universe, one that eats and destroys and corrupts, so the only thing that could destroy it was an even greater reality beyond the universe, one that gives life, and creates, and purifies.

It is important to establish that, as we said last week, Christ died for us while we were yet sinners. The next step in our understanding needs to then be that Christ died for all sin, in all places, at all times. That means that Christ died for your sins, in their totality. In other words, no sin is so great that Christ could not redeem someone. If you are someone trapped in guilt and lost in grief over something you have done, then you need to know that Jesus has already forgiven that sin. More than that, all of human sin in all time was not too much for Christ to handle, so yours will not be so large or so horrible that Christ cannot forgive, cannot redeem, cannot set you on the right path.

This is not a blank check, as we will talk about more next week. Christ’s all sufficient sacrifice does not mean that we get to sin as much as we want, nor does it give us an excuse to not grow in holiness. I am not telling you that Christ has forgiven all your sins so that you can feel justified to do whatever you want. I am telling you this so you can know that you are free. Free from the ultimate consequence of sin, of death and of decay. You do not have to be held down by guilt, to hold yourself down in the mire because of your wrongdoing. Accept the grace of God to start anew… So that we may grow from the ashes of our sin. – Amen.