The Book of Romans continues to unfold as Paul weaves together a picture to explain “Everything we wanted to know about the Gospel but were afraid to ask.” He has told us who needs the gospel… all of us whether Jew or Gentile. He’s outlined how the gospel comes to us, through faith in Jesus Christ, in His death, His resurrection and the forgiveness that comes as God makes us right with Himself.
He gives the example of Abraham as a man justified by his faith, not by his works. He tells us that the results of faith are inward peace and a sense of reconciliation with God. Now in Chapters 6 and 7 he seeks to explain how it works, how to apply the gospel to our lives. First he gives us an example of how not to do it followed by his view of what our relation to sin should be.
Romans 6:1 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
There were those who had accused Paul of making too much of grace… as though because God could forgive us whatever we do it made it all right to do whatever we want. Paul begins by kicking that one out the window by pointing out that when we commit our lives to God we are not saying “O.K. that is so nice I’m forgiven and I’ll try hard never to sin again”. Rather he explains that Christian conversion was far deeper, far more radical. He paints it this way: “We have died to sin.”
For Paul the person who seeks to be a disciple is one committed not just to a change in habits but to a different kind of life. He has died to one kind of life and has been born to another. Receiving the gospel should be a totally transforming experience. Matthew Henry, the great commentator of old, describes it this way:-
“Thus must we be dead to sin, obey it, observe it, regard it, fulfill its will no more … be as indifference to the pleasures and delights of sin as a man that is dying is to his former life. He that is dead is separated from his former company, converse, business, enjoyments, employments, is not what he was, does not what he did, has not what he had. Death makes a mighty change; such a change doth sanctification make in the soul, it cuts off all correspondence with sin.”
To illustrate how Christ’s death relates to our dying to sin Paul uses the sacrament of adult baptism… and in particular baptism by full immersion, a practice that was familiar to the Roman church as a sign of being received into the household of faith. He speaks of how at baptism we are “baptized into Christ Jesus”.
That little word “into” is important here. It indicates identification with Jesus and in particular in the acts of Jesus life… His sinless life, His atoning death, His resurrection from the dead. Paul has been posing the question “How can we be right with God?” and has given us the answer, “Well… we can’t be right, God has to make us right by putting the rightness of Christ over our lives”.
So we may ask “How can we die to sin?” or even “How can we be raised to life?” and again the answer is “Well… we can’t die to sin or raise ourselves to new life, God has to make these things happen by applying to our life, (if you like over-shadowing our life) with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Paul explains that this overshadowing of our lives with the life of Christ is exactly what baptism communicates to us.
4 Therefore we have been 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 too might walk in newness of life. 5 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. 6 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. 7 For whoever has died is freed from sin. 8 But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Listen to how Eugene Petersen transliterates this in “The Message”
[4] When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. [5] Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country. [6] Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: [7] [8] If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. [9] We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. [10] When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. [11] From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did. “
I particularly like the way Eugene puts verse 10: “When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us.” All of this is pointing us back to Paul’s over-riding argument, that salvation is not something we can earn for our self through our works or deeds, but something we have to receive through faith in Jesus Christ. What we cannot do for ourselves, through Grace, God offers to achieve for us.
That places an obligation upon our lives. That we respond in thankfulness and actively seek to live a renewed life, not because such will earn us a better place in God’s affections, but because as children of God that’s how we should live. Let us look at the next verses 12 -14:
12 Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13 No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, 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. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
To apply the life of Christ to the life that we live we are urged to ‘present’ ourselves to God. The Greek word Paul uses for ‘present’ is pari,sthmi (paristemi) which means “to ‘place beside’, to ‘stand by or to appear before” or to ‘place oneself at another’s disposal.’
Rather like a soldier will report for duty or a volunteer to lend a hand to a new venture we are urged to voluntarily come before God in the manner of the hymn we often sing saying “Here I am Lord”… to present ourselves as wholly available for service, body, soul and spirit. Verse 13 “Present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.”
There was a prayer song that I used to hear sung in worship over in Great Britain that said;
“Lord make me an instrument, An instrument of worship.I ‘ll lift up my hands in Your name”
That’s a great image of how to present ourselves before God that God may use us and bless others through our lives. That we consider our lives as a fine tuned instrument that can be played by the Holy Spirit in order to bring Kingdom music to the world! It places on us a responsibility to both care for ourselves (so as we can sound as tuneful as possible) and open our hearts (so God can use us as God chooses).
Paul now returns again to his thought that grace was not an excuse for sin but an imperative to live in a right way before God. He remains concerned that there were those who abused the gift of grace by surrendering themselves to whatever whim or fancy came their way, rather than taking on the mantle of being a disciple. Christ has set us free. But that doesn’t mean all the boundaries have disappeared. On the contrary true freedom can only be exercised where there are boundaries in place.
15 What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 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? 17 But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, 18 and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.
Whatever or whom so ever we give our allegiance to has a direct influence on how we make decisions. Here in the United States at many public functions an oath of allegiance is taken, folk stand together, usually with the stars and stripes flying high and commit themselves to something that is larger than themselves, to being active upholders and observers of the constitution of the United States of America. Such is an act of presenting yourself as a citizen.
Of course if you had been born and raised Chinese and spent your whole life in China then your pledge of allegiance would be to the Chinese nation and the Chinese flag and the Chinese government. If when everybody else in China was pledging their allegiance and suddenly you said… “No, hold on a minute… I’d like to pledge my allegiance to the USA instead of my own country…” then you could be pretty darn sure that you’d be in big trouble!
What we pledge our allegiance to determines how we act. If we pledge our allegiance to our human nature, to our desire to doing whatever, with whomsoever, whenever, however, where ever, then that’s the kind of reckless lifestyle we may end up living and it will inevitably bring trouble. If we on the other hand pledge allegiance to Jesus Christ, then we will seek to live in a way that brings glory to God.
The Christians in Rome had once been those who had an allegiance to living how they pleased. And it had led them towards death, and to becoming deeper and more entangled with the wrath of God. But now they had been ‘entrusted’ with the gospel and were seeking to be obedient to the form of teaching that Jesus Christ had bought to our world.
I think it’s at this point Paul realizes that he is struggling to put into words the thoughts that were racing through his mind. Look at verse 19.
19 I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification.
Again he is hitting his point home…. There was a time when your lives were in gear with the ways of this world, but now you are in gear with God and that experience of seeking and believing and trusting is changing your lives. Sanctifying them. Making them easier for God to use and mold. He continues:-
20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
At the end of the chapter it as though he wants to say, “Think back on how you used to be. Reflect on how you used to live. Where were you headed? Nowhere, except the grave! You look back at some of the things you did and you feel ashamed… you wonder how you could live like that and think it was O.K’
“But now look at your lives! You have a purpose. You are filled with hope! And God is doing so much in your lives. Sanctifying them. Cleaning them up. Reshaping your priorities. And what’s more you are no longer living just to die. Your destiny is eternal life.”
Then he gives us one of those verses that kind of summarize all his thoughts in a few words: “23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We forget so easily that everything has a price on it. What we invest our lives in brings a payback. Invest them in sin and the payback is death. And the problem with sin is that we are all sinners and we have all invested our lives in other ways then God would have us live. Even worse we are so invested in sin that there’s nothing we can do to pay the price for our sins.
But Jesus Christ died that we may be forgiven. “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Such is the core of Paul’s message as he seeks to explain how the gospel works. It works because it is God’s initiative, God’s way of sorting out our lives and our world. As we put our faith in what God can do and is doing in Jesus Christ it transforms us, sanctifies, and takes us places we never even had contemplated before.
That’s Paul’s testimony and I have to say it’s kind of mine as well. As I look back over my life the things I once counted as so important seem to have faded and living my life in the way God requires seems more important than ever it was. And it didn’t just happen over night. It’s been a process and will continue to be a process. And I know that it’s God working that process and that the more I seek to co-operate the better that process goes!
We’ll continue in our next chapter to explore the theme of “How the Gospel works” as in Chapter 7 Paul continues to wrestle with the concepts of law and grace and then at the end of the chapter speaks of how whilst we never quite get past that inner conflict of our will hitting up against God’s will… thankfully Jesus is greater than us all! But that’s next time.