Romans 6:1-11
1 Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
What Do You Do with the Knowledge of God’s Grace?
My dad used to tell a story about growing up in Detroit and playing baseball in the empty lot next to his house with the neighbor kids. This was back in the ‘50s; it was a different time. Every one of those kids was Christian. Every one of those families went to church. But you never would have guessed it by watching those baseball games. You never would have dreamed that 10-year-olds could know so many 4-letter words.
They swore like sailors, and it bothered my dad and his brothers, so they asked them about it: “You’re Christians, aren’t you? How can talk that way?”
And they would say, “It’s no big deal. I’ll just confess my sins on Sunday. God will forgive me.”
God’s grace is amazing, isn’t it? Just before the words we just read from Romans 6, the Apostle Paul wrote, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more.” Now, I don’t know if my dad’s 10-year-old neighbors could quote this passage, but they understood the concept.
They knew that no matter how bad their sin was, God’s grace was greater. They knew that no matter what trouble they got in during the week, they could come to church and hear the pastor say what I said to you today, “As a called servant of Christ and by his authority, I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Even 10-year-olds can understand a concept like unlimited, unconditional love and forgiveness – God’s grace is amazing!
Those 10-year-olds may have understood grace, but what they failed to understand was what Christians do with God’s grace. It is true that where sin increases, grace increases all the more. God promises that no matter how many sins you commit, they will always be forgiven in Christ.
The question is, what do you do with that knowledge? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? It’s almost a pious thought, isn’t it? It almost means that we’re putting ultimate trust in Jesus to forgive, but it communicates something entirely different.
What those 10-year-olds were doing was not finding comfort in God’s forgiveness; they were using God’s grace as a license to commit sin.
Peter talks about this in his second letter. He says, “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than to have known it and then to turn their backs on the sacred command that was passed on to them. Of them the proverbs are true: ‘A dog returns to its vomit,’ and, ‘A sow that is washed returns to her wallowing in the mud.’”
That’s how God sees us when we return to our sin even though we know his forgiveness and love. It’s Friday night and the beer is flowing. You know that you’ve already had enough. You know that drunkenness is a sin, but you minimize it. “Oh, it’s just a little thing. If God sacrificed his Son to save me, he’s not going to keep me out of heaven because I had a good time on a Friday night, right?”
You’re home alone. You’re bored or you can’t sleep. You know how easy it would be to flip your phone on secret mode. No one would ever know the kinds of websites you visit. Sure, you did it yesterday, but God forgave you for that, and he’ll forgive you for this too.
I could go on. Do we wallow in sins of the heart? Do we revel in rooting around in the mud? I don’t know that it’s said enough, but when you become a Christian your life doesn’t suddenly become squeaky clean. There are habits that are hard to break, rituals that you keep finding yourself returning to, like a dog to its vomit or a pig to its sty.
“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means!” Paul says. “We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
If someone is dead to you, you’re done with them. Paul says that we died to sin. That means that we should be done with it. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But this is more than just an expression. It is the reality of God’s grace to you. Paul is not issuing a command to you with these words. He’s announcing what God has done for you.
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
When you were baptized, God performed a miracle for you. God buried you with Jesus.
Paul says that baptism is the way that God connects us to the crucifixion, death, and burial of Jesus. Because of your baptism, it’s as if you were the one hanging on a cross and dying for your sin. Because of your baptism, it’s as if yours was the lifeless body laid in a grave. Because of your baptism, all the work that Jesus did on your behalf becomes yours.
Now, because you’ve been baptized and connected to Christ’s death, you can say with confidence that every one of your sins has already been paid for. Now, because you’ve been baptized and buried with Christ, you can say that you have died to sin. It is not your master anymore. It can’t condemn you anymore, because Jesus has already been condemned for you.
Baptism connects you to the death of Jesus, your Savior, and Paul wants you to think of that death whenever you remember your baptism.
A while back, I was talking with Doug Shoults about the construction of our baptismal font. It’s kind of a big deal here, right? You literally have to walk around it any time you walk into the building. But Doug admitted to me one regret he had was that it ended up kind of looking like a coffin.
I hadn’t noticed it until he mentioned it, but when he did, the lightbulb went off. Of course, it should look like a coffin, because of these words from Romans 6. Baptism buries us with Jesus. It’s as if we fill that coffin-shaped font with all our sins and then bury them in Jesus’ grave.
It’s been a couple years since my grandma died, but I can still remember her burial. After the committal was over and most of the people went home, my family stayed behind until her coffin was lowered into the vault and the heavy machinery was done pushing dirt back into the hole. It had been so surreal thinking that Grandma was gone. Seeing her body in the casket during the visitation the day before almost made me believe that she could have just sat right up and started talking to us again. But when the backhoe drove away, that was it. We would never see Grandma again. There’s something so final about a burial.
And that’s the way that we can think about our baptisms. We are dead to sin. We are done with it. We have buried it with Christ, never to see it again, because of what God has done for us in baptism.
But that’s just half the story. That’s just the grace part of the gospel. Paul goes on to say, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” What are you going to do now that you know that your sins have been buried with Christ in baptism? What are you going to do with the grace that God gives you? Are you going to go that baseball field and swear up a storm with a bunch of 10-year-olds?
By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? We were buried with him through baptism so that we may live a new life. We have been set free from sin, so that we can live to God.
Over the next several weeks we’re going to explore different, specific ways that we can live to God and what that looks like in practice, but today we read the very first instruction that Paul included in his whole letter to the Romans: count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The first step in our attempts to leave sin in Jesus’ grave is to rethink our identity. I am not what I do. I am not defined by what I have done in the past. I am dead to sin. That life is over. Done. And it’s not because of what I have done. It’s because of what God has done for me, which means that my condition doesn’t depend on my conviction. My status before God doesn’t depend on my strength. I am saved by God through Word and sacrament. I’m buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him to new life, so that my new life is defined by Christ.
One commentator pictured the Christian being in Christ just like a fish in water. His is the air we breathe. It’s foreign for us to fill our lungs with lies or foul language. It’s unnatural for us to go back and engage in the sinful habits we had before. Instead, our identity – dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ – is the launching point for all our thinking, planning, speaking, doing.
Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus, and learn that his life-giving gospel is not a license to keep sinning but the freedom from sin. His grace forgives us and his sacrament of baptism connects us to Jesus’ death and resurrection, so that we can put sin in the rear-view mirror and focus on serving God by what we do with the grace he gives.
Remember your baptism and use it to die to sin every day and live to God by what you think, do and say. Amen.