There’s a debate that’s been around for as long as the gospel has been proclaimed and that’s over the question "Does it matter if we sin, now that we know Christ’s forgiveness?"
Should we punish ourselves when we succumb to temptation? Does the righteousness we now have because we believe in Jesus Christ mean that the way we behave doesn’t matter any more?
At the end of last week’s passage, in Rom 5:20 we discovered that where sin increased grace abounded all the more. So you might well ask, doesn’t that mean that if I sin a bit more, God’s grace will just increase a bit more? Grace is a good thing, so if my sin means that grace increases, isn’t that actually a good thing?
That of course is the question that Paul poses at the beginning of ch 6: "What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?" He understands where the question is coming from, but his answer comes back quickly: "By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?" The whole point of the good news is that we’re no longer under sin’s power. So how can we continue to obey our sinful desires?
Let me take you back to the diagram we saw last week. Although we continue in Adam’s line for a while, our true life is now in Christ’s line. We have died to sin. Although, as we’ll see in a few weeks time, our bodies are still bound by the weakness of Adam, we’ve now been raised to life in Christ.
In fact the life we live now is contingent on both a past and a future reality. So when Paul talks about us dying to sin there’s a past, a present and a future aspect to it.
The Past.
He says "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" There are in fact 2 events in the past which are important for us. The first, of course, is Jesus death on the cross. In Jesus’ death sin was destroyed once and for all, death was defeated and we were brought into a new relationship with God. The reign of sin over humanity was overcome at that moment when Jesus Christ, the sinless one, took on himself the punishment due to all of humanity. The second event of the past was our coming to faith, signified by our baptism. Again death is involved but this time it’s our death. That’s what baptism is all about. Baptism symbolises death, death to sin. It symbolises the fact that we’ve been incorporated into the death of Christ. As a result we’re now living outside the realm of sin as we’ll see in a moment.
The Future
There’s also a sense in which our dying to sin awaits a future fulfilment. There will come a day when we’ll die to sin finally and irreversibly just as Christ has done. That is, on the day when we die physically, finally and irreversibly. And having died we’ll be raised again, at Christ’s return, to eternal life, with a new body no longer subject to temptation and sin. Again this new birth, this resurrection, is symbolised in baptism by our coming back up from the water.
So the past reality is Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf, the future reality is our own resurrection, and in the meantime we stand in between, in a place between two realms, the realm of sin and the realm of righteousness in Christ.
The Present
And so we’re faced by a present question and a present imperative. Will we make the death to sin marked by our Baptism a present reality in our daily living? Will we die to sin daily and hourly as an active choice of life? Will we be constantly putting to death our sinful natures and rising to newness of life in obedience to God?
You see the difficulty we face is this. The past act of Christ is complete. We’ve taken hold of it by faith, we’ve been sealed in it by baptism, but the final reality is still in the future. We still live in that place between death and resurrection. We still live our lives in our old body. But Christ has died so we can be freed from the enslavement that goes with that body. He says "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."
The possibility is there for us to obey God in a way that was never possible before we were raised to new life. But we still have to take hold of that reality. We need to put the old body to death, to bury it. Someone once said that life is change, that the only sort of organism that doesn’t experience change is one that’s dead. Well it’s equally true that for fallen human beings, our present life means bondage to sin. And the only way to escape that bondage is to die. Solzhenitzen once described death as the ultimate freedom. Similarly, Paul uses the idea of burial in v4 to indicate the finality of our release from that bondage.
A funeral and the burial or cremation that goes with it is a vital part in the process of mourning isn’t it? It provides a sense of finality that’s important in coming to terms with loss. You often hear about people who have been lost and assumed dead but their bodies are never found. And their families find it so hard to come to terms with their grief. It’s only when the body is found and they can have a funeral and the person is buried or cremated that they can finally begin to deal with their loss and move on. So for us, our dying and being buried with Christ means we’re finally freed from the power of sin. That’s what happened to Jesus when he died. He was freed from the power of sin and death. That’s why he rose again, because death had no hold over him. And he takes us into his death so we too can be freed from the power of sin and death. But we need to take hold of that fact. We need to make it a daily reality in our lives.
Similarly our future hope of being raised with Christ begs the question will we begin now to live our lives as though we were in God’s presence already? He says: "the life he lives, he lives to God." And we’re drawn into that life by the presence of the Holy Spirit. So how are we who are in Christ Jesus to put sin to death in our lives and begin now to live our lives to God?
In v11 he moves from explanation to exhortation. He says "You also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." That is we should consider the truth of our present life in Christ Jesus and take it seriously. Set our lives to match the past and present reality under which we live.
So what will that mean for us? What difference will it make to our lives? Well, let me ask you, where are you going to live your life? I don’t mean what suburb, or city, or country. I mean which line are you going to hold to as you live in the tension of the last days? What is it that will rule your life? Sin or God? Mind you, there may be a certain parallel there. You may well decide to live your life in a particular suburb or city or country because they offer certain advantages of environment or opportunities or comfort or safety. Similarly we need to decide where we’ll live our spiritual life. Where is it that will best match who we are in God’s eyes. Where is it that will best enable and equip us to serve the one who’s now our Lord.
You see some people try to live their lives this way. They say, "I’m a Christian now, so I know I’m saved. I’m not worried about whether God loves me or accepts me. I know he does. But I’m not going to change anything in the way I live, or the things I do, or the places I go. I’ll just carry on the way I always have and trust God to look after me." Or they say, "I can’t be perfect anyway. So what if I sin a little? God will forgive me."
So what’s wrong with that sort of attitude? The problem with it is that the place they live their lives, the way they frame their thoughts, the activities that take up their time, aren’t necessarily the places, the thoughts, the activities that God wants them to be involved with or that’ll help them in their future life with him. Too often the things of the past are the things associated with the rule of sin over their lives. And the problem with being satisfied with a little bit of sin in our lives is that even a little is too much. Even a little can corrupt all the bits that are good.
So God says, "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."
Now when he says "Present your members" he means every part of our lives, of our bodies. We can’t separate out parts of our lives that are for God and parts that are reserved for our own use. We have to choose where we live our whole lives. And he gives us 2 choices: we can present our members to sin as instruments of wickedness, or we can present them to God, as those who are now alive, as instruments of righteousness.
So is that possible? Do you feel like you’re able to choose where you live? This is tricky isn’t it? Sometimes we feel unable to live the way we want to. We feel like it’s all too hard. But the picture we’re given here is of the possibility of a new beginning. The picture of death followed by new life is a picture of new beginnings, of second chances. But it isn’t just that we can make new choices. If that’s all it were, then we’d be in the same pickle as before, wouldn’t we? We’d be just as likely to make the wrong choices all over again. That’s what’s wrong with asking someone "If you had the chance to live your life over again would you take it?" Even if you did take it you’d be just as likely to make the same mistakes as you did the first time wouldn’t you? If not even worse mistakes!
But what he’s talking about here in this passage is more than just a second chance at the same old life. It’s actually a new life. But it’s a life that we need to choose to walk in, if you can understand what I mean by that. You see, God has never made people follow him. He doesn’t want his people to act like robots. That’s why it was possible for Adam and Eve to disobey in the first place. Because he wanted their willing obedience.
So now, he raises us to new life in Christ, and at the same time he urges us to choose to walk in that life. So we get these different ways of thinking about that choice. We’re to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. We’re to present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and we’re to present our members to God as instruments of righteousness. There’s to be an active choice on our part about the direction we’ll head, about the lifestyle we’ll choose.
But also, there’s a new freedom given to us to make that choice possible. He finishes the passage by saying: "sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." There’s a sense in which our previous inability to do what was right was limited by the fact that we were subject to law and judgement. That old order was an order limited by the death that was inherited from Adam. But now we live under grace. Jesus’ risen life has freed us from death. We’re liberated by the knowledge that our sins are forgiven. We’re liberated by the knowledge that the resurrection to eternal life awaits us. We’re liberated by the risen life given to us by the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. And that new freedom means that we can make the choice that we’re urged to make here: to live all of our lives in the line of Christ. To present our members to God as instruments of righteousness.
The final statement is this: sin no longer has dominion over us. In other words we’re now free to rebel against sin’s rule and to choose to follow Christ. There’s a sense in which this new way of living is dependent on us choosing to say "Yes" to God, yet at the same time it’s made possible only by God’s grace at work in us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Our choice doesn’t make us worthy, but our choice is necessary if we’re to live Christ’s risen life in the midst of this fallen world and while we’re still in these fallen bodies. Here is the challenge of the gospel. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and in response exercise your will to put to death that which belongs to the old life, presenting your bodies to God as instruments of righteousness.
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