Romans 6:1-11 *
Dear Friends in Christ,
If you were an outlaw on the loose in the old west, chances are that before long your picture would start popping up around the towns and villages with the word “WANTED” underneath it. If you were a particularly notorious outlaw, those posters might say that not only were you wanted, but that you were “WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE.”
Such a phrase suggests an either-or situation. If you were dead, you couldn’t be alive; and if you were alive, you couldn’t be dead. That’s obvious.
However, what would you think if there on your poster it said: WANTED: DEAD AND ALIVE? We’d think that doesn’t make sense because it’s setting up an impossible situation. Which is true…
Unless you are talking about Christians, as the Apostle Paul is in the words of our text this morning. From this section of Scripture we learn that
CHRISTIANS ARE WANTED DEAD AND ALIVE
in the sense that we are to be
1. Dead to sin and at the same time 2. Alive in Christ
As we continue our summer sermon series from the Book of Romans, these two ideas form the basis for what God has to say to us today.
We need to set the stage for the opening verse of our
text. In chapter 5, Paul pointed out
that ever since Adam and Eve’s fall into sin man has been sinful. Long before the Ten Commandments were actually
inscribed by the finger of God on
After they were “published” it became very apparent just how sinful man really was, and is. In fact, the main purpose for which God gave us His Law was for it to act as a mirror. We look at ourselves in the reflection of the Ten Commandments and we see quite clearly that we fail to meet God’s standards. The inevitable conclusion we draw is that if we intend to someday stand before a holy God who demands perfection from us, without intervention we’re sunk. We need a Savior. And that Savior, of course, is Jesus.
Having said that, Paul draws chapter 5 to a close with a beautiful
statement that recognizes the greatness of sin but the even greater-ness of
God’s love: “But where sin increased, grace
(God’s undeserved love for sinners demonstrated in Jesus Christ) increased
all the more.”
This leads us to the opening verse where Paul puts to rest a
faulty deduction that some may draw from this.
For the sake of our instruction he asks these questions: What
shall we say then? Shall we go on
sinning so that grace may increase? In
other words, since God in His grace forgives sins for Jesus’ sake, is it okay
to go on sinning? Should we perhaps
become even greater sinners to showcase the greater-ness of God’s grace? And
his answer: By no means! We died to sin; how
can we live in it any longer?
Paul wants us to know that God’s gracious forgiveness of sins must never be used as a license to sin. Meaning, it is flat-out wrong for the believer to ever purposely plot or engage in some sinful activity with the idea that “I can do this now and get off the hook later by asking God to forgive me.” Such an attitude, Paul tells us, is a terrible misuse of the forgiveness that Christ won for us on the cross.
Rather, says Paul, the effect that God’s grace and forgiveness ought to have on the believer is to move us not to sin. What the believer’s attitude will be is summed up well in this verse of one our Lenten hymns:
Grant that I your passion view with
repentant grieving
Let me not bring shame to you (older
version: nor thee crucify anew) by
unholy living;
How could I refuse to shun ev’ry sinful
pleasure
Since for me God’s only Son suffered
without measure?
The high price of forgiveness moves us to not misuse it by purposeful sinning. Truth is, Paul continues, believers want nothing to do with sin at all, for we died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? The Christian, then, is dead to sin. What exactly that means and how this came about is taken up next as Paul leads us back to our baptism.
Don’t you know that all of us who are 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. Paul talks about our life and our baptism in terms of Christ’s death and resurrection. Let’s take a closer look at how they are all intertwined…
First we will note that we who are baptized (whether as infants or adults makes no difference) into (or “in connection with”) Christ Jesus – meaning through baptism we are brought into an intimate relationship or connection with Christ Jesus so that everything He did for our salvation becomes ours personally – were baptized into his death – meaning we receive the benefits of His death for us, which is the forgiveness of sins, salvation and eternal life.
Paul asks us to think about our baptism. At that time the redeeming work of Christ was applied to us and we became clothed with His righteousness. At our baptism God poured out His grace upon us to make or seal us as His own. That’s why we refer to baptism as a “means” or instrument of God’s grace. That’s also why we can appreciate the statement once made by a Christian king who said that the three handfuls of water applied to his head at the time of his baptism meant more to him than his entire kingdom.
Paul continues by saying that just as Christ died and was buried and rose again to new life, the same thing takes place for each of us. When we were baptized, we died to sin – meaning sin has no power to damn us anymore, nor is it the controlling force in our lives. And just as Christ rose to live on the third day, we who believe and are baptized also rise to new life; a life where God is the controlling force and that we gratefully live for Him.
This new life in Christ is developed in the second part of our text: If we have been united with him in his death (through our baptism) we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin – because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Let’s continue with the rest and then we’ll come back and pick up the high points…
Now if we died with
Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from
the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for
all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
And then we read this concluding summary statement: In the
same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
I purposely read this section slowly because it is somewhat difficult to grasp. However, in looking it over there are three points which emerge that we should take note of, all of which fall under the general heading: DEAD TO SIN BUT ALIVE IN CHRIST…
Observation #1:
Sin is dead in the sense that it can no longer inflict its eternal wages
upon us. Later in this chapter of
Romans we find the familiar passage in which we are told “the wages of sin is death.” And the death sin doles out is eternal
death. But it is from this eternal death
we have been rescued because of the work of Christ.
This work becomes ours through baptism and faith; thus we are
referred to as having died with Christ and being united with him in his
death. In other words, through faith
in Christ as our Savior God looks upon us as if we were the ones who died on
the cross at
This is a tremendous blessing and one which we as Christians will readily admit, but at the same time one which we cannot come close to comprehending. Neither heaven nor hell is rooted in our personal experience. None of us have been to either place, so we don’t know firsthand the joy of heaven or the horribleness of hell. If we did, there would be no struggle at all in living lives of grateful thanksgiving.
But what we do know is that each day we come one day closer to meeting our Maker in either our own death or His return to our planet. And it is at that time we will be able to fully understand what we have been given and from what we have been spared.
Observation #2:
Just as sin no longer can inflict its wages upon us eternally, sin also
has no power over us now. Paul says
through Christ we are no longer slaves
to sin, because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Try to visualize sin as a person. Before Christ claimed us as His own, Sin was our master. He led us along a path of destruction, convincing us that things which were harmful to our souls and contrary to the will of God were good. Before Christ, we bought into his lies, listened to him and were led by him. But not any longer. Through baptism and the faith which follows, Christ is our only Master now.
Unfortunately, as we all know, Master Sin relinquished control over us but did not leave the picture completely. Today he still tries to buddy-up and get us to hang out with him. He parades various temptations in front of us that he knows and we know are contrary to the will of our New Master.
But when he comes with these offerings, we have the power to say no. Some of you may remember a popular comedian from years ago named Flip Wilson. A trademark line for one of his characters, after saying or doing something that was obviously wrong, was “the devil made me do it.” Is that true? The fact of the matter is that the devil can’t make us do anything. He’s not our Master. Christ is.
This is not to say with Christ as our Master we’ll never sin again on this earth, because we will. Despite our new life in Christ, we continue to struggle with a sinful nature that remains a part of us. And some struggles we will lose. We may still lose our temper. We may still say unkind things to others, often those closest to us. We may still give in to the temptations of greed or worry or despair or impurity. These things happen.
But when we sin, Paul suggests that we not simply pass ourselves off as victims of something we cannot help. Rather let’s think in terms of lining up behind the wrong Master. And when we do, we need to come before our Real Master in a spirit of confession and repentance, confident of the forgiveness and strength He provides us.
Final observation: Being alive in Christ means that we will not only live with Him for eternity, but that we will also live for him in the present. We are told that the life Christ lived and lives, He lives to God; meaning to the glory of His Father. So it is with us.
Practically speaking, living for God means making His will and His desires as outlined in Scripture central to our decision-making process, and not trying to see how close we can come to doing things in a worldly way and still be considered “Christian.”
It means, in the words of the Apostle James, being not
merely sayers of the Word, but doers – even when doing may involve
ridicule or apparent loss of opportunity.
It means willingly putting Christ and His Word ahead of everything else,
and in doing so carrying out the First Commandment which says: You shall have no other gods…
But ultimately, living for Christ means experiencing the peace of God which passes all understanding and the joy of knowing we are basking in His smile.
Which brings us back to the main emphasis of our text. For old west desperadoes the poster often read: Wanted: Dead or Alive. But the Christian is WANTED: DEAD AND ALIVE. Dead to sin with its power and influence, and alive in Christ. Through the work of Jesus Christ applied to us through baptism and faith, of us this can be said. Amen.