“Wanted: Dead or Alive!” Posters like this were common in the old West. If your picture was on such a poster, you were in big trouble. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter to the authorities. Either way they would pay the reward money to the bounty hunter who could bring you in.
There is a similar poster hanging in God’s mind with your picture and mine. The poster says: “Wanted: Dead and Alive!” It means that God wants to see the old man in us with its sinful deeds and desires dead, while the new man, that part of a Christian which loves God, to be very much alive (Alfonso Espinosa). The “bounty hunter” who will make us dead and alive is the Holy Spirit. And no, he doesn’t use a pair of six-shooters to make it happen. He uses baptism, a watery tomb & womb.
Listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say about baptism in Romans 6:1-7. “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We 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 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin” (Romans 6:1-7).
Throughout our sermon series on baptism we’ve been reminded that this sacrament is not just a ceremony. Something really happens when water is applied and God’s name is spoken. The Apostle Paul assures us of this again when he tells us that we have been baptized into Christ’s death (Romans 6:3). What he means is that baptism connects us to everything Christ did and endured. It’s like being given shares in a company like Google. Although you might not be an employee of that company, or have ever set foot in that company’s headquarters, as a shareholder you’re affected by that company’s ups and downs. If their stock goes up, your wealth increases. If their stock goes down, your wealth decreases. In a similar way baptism connects us to Christ so that even though we’ve never seen him, we share in what he did and accomplished.
But what good is it to share in Christ’s death? Have you ever heard of people faking their own death? Just recently there was the story of John Darwin, the British man who supposedly drowned while canoeing near his home. He was presumed dead for five years until he gave himself up in London last December admitting that he was very much alive and had been living in Panama. Why did he fake his own death? To escape his debts and to collect on a life-insurance policy to begin a new life.
Baptism is better than faking your own death. In baptism we died with Christ, says Paul. As a result, one debt we could never pay has been taken care of. Paul speaks about that debt when he wrote, “…the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). Yes, we owe God our life because of sin. For example we ought to love God above all things, but we show how we love X-Box more when we’d rather be playing that than sitting down for the family devotion. We ought to be pure like God, but pure thoughts are often the farthest thing from our mind when we see a beautiful girl or a hard-bodied guy. We ought to thank and praise God, but while our tongue flaps out the right words when singing a hymn or offering a prayer, our mind is grumbling about a bodily ache or about someone we think is a pain in our life. Committing any sin even once earns the death sentence. And there’s no way to bribe God from carrying out the sentence. God is just. He does everything by the book.
But before we despair listen to the Apostle Paul: “…don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?..[now] anyone who has died has been freed (another acceptable translation : “justified,” “declared not guilty”) from sin” (Romans 6:3, 7). At the baptismal font we died with Christ; we really did. Therefore the debt we owed God for our sins has been paid. Do you see why baptism is better than faking your own death? When John Darwin “drowned” he was freed from his debts but he really wasn’t able to live it up. Every day for five years he lived in fear that someone would discover his secret. When he was lonely he couldn’t pick up the phone and call his sons. When his wife started seeing someone else he couldn’t intervene…not without ending the charade and owning up to his debts. Baptism is better than faking your own death because there’s nothing fake about it! In baptism we were united to Christ who served our death sentence. Therefore we are truly free from all spiritual debts, and we’re very much alive to tell about it. Isn’t this sacrament awesome? Thank God for this watery tomb we call baptism!
But now when some hear that through baptism they’ve been freed from sin’s debt, they see this as a green light to sin. Hey, if your rich uncle has paid your debts and promised to continue to do so, why not run up a huge tab at the nearest shopping mall? Paul anticipated this response and so he wrote to the Roman Christians: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?… 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin” (Romans 6:1, 2, 6).
The font is a watery tomb that not only marks the death of our debt to God; it marks the death of our sinful nature’s hold on us. You see before we came to faith we were slaves to sin, says Jesus (John 8:34). We could do nothing but take orders from our sinful nature and obey them (Romans 8:8). But thanks to baptism, says Paul, our relationship with sinful nature is dead – not ought to be dead; it is dead. That’s a fact. The Holy Spirit killed that relationship, and the font marks its burial site. The burial site of my sinful nature’s hold on me is in Tsuchiura, Japan where I was baptized as an infant. Where’s the burial site of your sinful nature’s hold on you?
But if our relationship with the sinful nature has been drowned in baptism, and it has been, why do we still flirt with the sinful nature? Why do we often give free reign to our sinful emotions? When our brother does something dumb we laugh. We rub it in. We keep reminding him of it until he’s in tears. When someone has been unkind to us we lash out at them and don’t stop until we feel they have been humiliated. It should not be that way, Brothers and Sisters! A baptized believer will be as eager to sin, as a cat is to swim. Paul put it this way in the verses after our text: “12Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master” (Romans 6:12-14a).
In these verses Paul makes it clear that the font is not just a watery tomb; it’s a watery womb! When our relationship with the sinful nature died in baptism, a new relationship with Jesus was born. At our baptism the Holy Spirit offered us as a bride to Christ, to live with and for him. (Ever wonder why a baptismal gown looks so much like a wedding gown?) Oh no, not everything will be perfect in this new relationship. That’s because even though its power has been broken in baptism, the sinful nature is still in the habit of issuing commands. But to obey those commands is foolish, as foolish as it would be for the U.S. military to obey orders from former president Bill Clinton. He’s no longer the Commander and Chief. Neither is our sinful nature. Our new man is in control now and baptism will help us remember that and keep it that way. Martin Luther said in the fourth part of his explanation of baptism: “[Baptism] means that our Old Adam with his evil deeds and desires should be drowned by daily contrition and repentance, and die, and that day by day a new man should arise, as from the dead, to live in the presence of God in righteousness and purity now and forever.”
Luther reminds us that baptism is our Holy Week event (Gaylin Schmeling). Just as Jesus died and rose again in Jerusalem, part of us died and rose again in baptism. We are to relive this event daily by drowning the sinful nature’s voice through genuine sorrow over every sin we commit, and by remembering that in baptism a new man arose giving us the power to say “No” to future temptation. This is why we should say: “I am baptized” not “I was baptized.” Your baptism was an event in the past, yes, but it has an ongoing effect in your life. It’s like the refugee from of a war-torn country becoming a citizen of this country. The benefits of his becoming a Canadian continue long after the event where he was given his citizenship papers. So why not get our your baptismal certificate and put it somewhere you’ll see it everyday. Be reminded: “I am baptized.” My sin has been cancelled. My sinful nature broken. I’ll live like it.
It’s a good thing we’ve had four sermons on baptism. There is so much more to this sacrament than meets the eye, or can be covered in twenty minutes. Today, I want you to remember that poster with your picture God has hanging in his mind. The one that says: “Wanted: Dead and Alive!” We’ve become that through baptism for at the font our sinful nature’s hold on us died and a new attitude was born. We can be certain of this because the Holy Spirit was at work in baptism, that watery tomb & womb. Amen.
