Sermon: "The Resurrection & Sin"

4th in the "The Resurrection" series.
Delivered April 29, 2007 by Rev. John Schmidt.
Other sermons in this series - 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5

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I am going to read now from the Book of Romans, Chapter 6. It's page 799 in the pew Bible. Romans, Chapter 6 and I am going to read Verses 1 to 14.

"What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 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. If we have been united with him like this in his death, 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 done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin- because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. 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. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 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. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace."

Let's pray. God we thank you for this your word and we pray now that as we think about it together you will open our eyes, open our hearts and that we will respond to you with the obedience that comes through faith. For we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.

I have an announcement to make. I struggle with sin. Now there is a lot of people in here that are saying, "Okay John, give us some new news. We knew that already. We have been in committee meetings with you." I struggle with sin. If there were any shortcuts to a pure, selfless, loving life in total control of who I am and what I said; if there were any shortcut to that I would have snapped it up now, because I have been looking for it for 35 years. And certainly if it were an easy shortcut I would have gone for it. I want an easy, decisive shortcut to making myself the person that God wants me to be. Instead though I found myself in a long battle; sometimes making progress, sometimes letting myself down, letting God down and letting the people around me down.

Now I had this idea when I first became a Christian that I was going to cycle through weaknesses and God was going to deal with each of them in my life. Now I was humble enough to realize that there was some work that needed to be done in my life, but I had this idea that it would happen fairly quickly. So in my mind year one God would deal with the way I handled my sexuality. Then year two, since that was now under control, that some other weakness that had been hiding in my life was going to pop up, so maybe it would be gambling. So year two I would have to struggle with gambling and in that year I would get it under control. Then year three I would deal with anger. Then year four I would deal with pride, because I did such a good job in year one, two and three. And at some point within just a few years we would get to the point that it would just be maintenance. You know, I was basically together and then it was just holding it and sharing it with others.

Now that misconception of the Christian life lasted for about one month in my early Christian life. I realized that I was in the struggle of my life when it came to sin. And there was a huge tension when I went into scripture, because when I went into the scripture, I found passages like today. What does it say in Verse 2? It says, "We died to sin." Verse 14, "For sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace." I have died to sin. Sin has died. They crucified with Christ. Now I don't know about you, but I expect dead things to be still, to be quiet, to not move, to have no power. That is what I expect of dead things. Road kill; that's what I want. But instead, what I found sin, instead of being dead that way it was more like Night of the Living Dead where there was a zombie of sin around me all the time; everywhere I turned around. If I were in an argument with my parents, sin was right there. If I saw a beautiful woman, sin was right there. If I tried to pray, sin was there. And as I looked into the scripture, I started to see that even in the lives of the people who wrote the New Testament that they also had their struggles with imperfection, with selfishness, anger and disbelief; all of the things that we call sin. Because that is what sin is. Sin is all of those things. It's the God complex in us that wants to run life as if it all revolves around us to keep God distant, to keep ourselves in the center and to make decisions that are good for us even if it hurts other people, to make our own definition of reality and morality. That's what sin is. And I saw that not only did I continue to struggle with that, but so did the people who wrote the very words that we are reading in scripture.

So what did they mean when they wrote what we read today? That is what I would like to think about for a little while together. This section begins with a question. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Paul uses questions in the Book of Romans to move his letter forward. The beginning of chapter one, the beginning of chapter four, the beginning of chapter six and several times in-between Paul uses a critical question to move his argument forward so that people will understand what he is saying. He tries to anticipate what their questions will be, what they would be saying back to him if they were actually in some kind of discussion. So he has been talking about grace and forgiveness. In Jesus Christ we are uniquely forgiven. We have been brought away from the condemnation of the law, been brought into the embrace of grace, but does that mean then that we can go on sinning so that grace might even increase and God would even get more glory, because he's got more to forgive. Paul responds to this in Verse 2, "By no means". Now that is not a surprise. That part does not surprise us that all of this talk about grace does not mean that we should sin.

Where the surprise comes up is the reason Paul gives that we shouldn't sin. The very next words; "We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?" In all of this grace in what God has done one of the things that has happened is we have died in our relationship with sin. There is a lot of words that come up in this section that describe what has happened in our relationship with the resurrected Jesus Christ and that is why we are looking at this this week, is because we are in a series on the resurrection and this week we are looking at the resurrection and sin.

Several things come up; talking about how Jesus' death and resurrection impacts us. It says that we are baptized into his death. We are buried with him. We are crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. It talks about the power of his resurrection. It says we are united with him in resurrection and we have been raised to a new life. Something has happened in Jesus' death and resurrection that directly affects us. Otherwise, what we are saying is that here Paul is just getting a figure of speech. He is just trying to encourage us by using big grandiose language, but it actually has no truth behind it. That is not what I believe and that is not what the scripture teaches.

Something really has happened in Jesus Christ that affects us directly, because we are united with him. The Bible talks a lot about us being joined to Jesus Christ, of us being in union with him. One of the things that it means is that in certain critical ways Christ and the church are not two in God's eye, but one. That in God's eyes there are certain things that are true of Jesus Christ, that God views as being entirely true of us as well, because of him. So just as Adam was a representative of the human race, Jesus Christ is a representative of the human race. And so one of the things is that he is a representative of humanity whose obeying God in a proper relationship with God in perfection and he represents us in that. The life he lived is a life he lived on our behalf. He is the representative of what humanity was intended to be. He suffered in place of humanity. Humanity because of our disobedience, we have incurred the right anger of God. God is right to be angry for us pushing away reality, as it should have been and choosing a way of life that puts him distant and mistreats one another.

And so Jesus took upon himself the punishment that rightly goes to people who have done that and he takes our place. He is the resurrected one; the human who has conquered sin and death by the grace of God and will never have to face those anymore. He lives now; God and yet perfect human as well. The human who is beyond death, who's in the very presence of God. Jesus is seen in visions by the prophets and apostles as being in a body. He ascended in a body and the angels that were there said this Jesus will come back the same way you saw him leave and part of that picture is that he comes back in a body. And so Jesus, this human representative stands for us, embraces all of us in who he is. And so that means that as Jesus Christ has conquered sin, conquered death, conquered Satan and all the spiritual powers that we talked about in a prior week, the fact that he has done this entirely and forever and for all of us, it means that he has embraced us in that as our representative. We are in union with him. In God's eyes we are united with him and through the Holy Spirit he lives in us. We are in him and he is in us.

So what does that mean? That means that there are things that are true of Christ in entirety, in fullness that are also true for us, but in a derived fashion and in an incomplete fashion. For example, a parent can do an excellent job and get a huge promotion, make all kinds of extra money, that work, that success, that promotion is the parents and yet the children of that family experience a change in life because of that promotion. Let's assume that it's a good change. They get a bigger car or a better bedroom or something like that, because of something that's true for their parents there is a spillover that they experience, but its not complete, it's not the same experience. Jesus Christ is experiencing some things in totality that we experience in part as we have a relationship with him. For example, he is in the very presence of God the Father, in perfect fellowship in the Godhead. We share in that fellowship. In fact, that is what Jesus prays for in John 17. And we experience that fellowship, but we are not in the physical presence of God, nor is it a perfect fellowship, because we can grieve God and push him away. Jesus Christ is beyond all death. Death can do nothing more to Jesus Christ and we share in that victory, but we have to go through death before we inherit it. It's right now incomplete. Jesus Christ shares in a victory over sin and over all evil powers, but we will experience that as we grow in our relationship with him. It's an incomplete experience that deepens as our relationship with Christ deepens.

Now there are specific ways of cooperating with God in this growth and we are going to be looking at a few of these in this passage. But what I want to remind you right now is that these are not abstract principles. This is describing how we respond to God and cooperate in a living relationship with a Savior who is alive now and who has a spiritual union with us. So what does this passage say? Let's go to Verse 9. How do we cooperate?

"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."

This sentence begins; "For we know". There are things we need to know. Verse 6 starts the same way. For we know. Verse 3 starts the same way; "Or don't you know". There are things we need to know to shape our conception of the Christian life. Where do you get your expectations of what it means to be a Christian? Do you get them by diligently looking into the scripture for an explanation of what that's like? Do you get it in part by looking at other Christians and saying, "Well you know, I am a little better than that one and I am not quite as good as that one so I am sort of in the safety zone." Do you look back at your past and say, "This is the way I have always been. These are the things that I have always failed in doing. This defines who I will be as a Christian." Is that how you set your expectations? If so, we are wrong when we do that. We are to look into the scriptures for our expectations; where there are things we need to know and we have no excuse if we are ignorant. We have the scriptures in our language. We give money to translators to translate the scripture into the language of people so they will know as well. And if there are things that are hard to understand, we have a body here that is full of teachers, that the community together, mentors can help us understand. So there are things that we need to know.

Once or twice in my life I have found myself outside of a locked door without my keys in my pocket; actually a lot more than once or twice, but in this particular case, once or twice I have found myself outside of a locked door getting all angry at myself; why did you forget the keys? What a stupid thing to do. I can't get anything done. Now I have done this many times, but once or twice I have actually after a while of being out there and being upset, I have actually tried the door only to find out for some reason it was open. I didn't know it. What doors are open to you in your Christian life and you don't even know it? What promises has God made of things he wants to blast open in life and you don't even know it? You haven't even tried the knob. There are things we need to know.

But the scripture goes on. Let's take a look. Go on to Verse 11.

"In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus."

The verses before said that we died with Christ. Jesus was raised from the dead. He died to sin. In the same way that all of this is true for Jesus Christ in totality he says, "Count yourselves dead to sin." We need to know something, but then we've got to believe it and rely on it. Faith will always be an important part of our Christian life. It's not like we have faith at the beginning that God forgives us and then from then on we kind of just pour on the steam. Faith is important all the way through. There are things that God says are true about us, that we have to believe and then count on it being true. If you tell me that you believe that an elevator is safe and then insists upon walking up eight flights of stairs every time we go to a building, I will wonder if you really believe in a biblical sense whether its safe, because its not a matter of just having something in your mind where you say, "Yeah, yeah I ascent to that. I can, even though I don't fully understand it, I believe it."

Biblical idea of belief involves a moment of commitment where you count on it being true. We count on the fact that Jesus Christ died so that we can be forgiven. And what I find is that a lot of Christians wash out at that point because they believe that and then they try to move on in their Christian life on their own steam. In the same moment we were forgiven, Jesus Christ disarmed principalities and powers. He disarmed the things that can stand against us. He brought us into a new capacity for life. We can't see it in its entirety. It belongs wholly to him, but we can experience it as we count on it being true. So faith is an important response. What do we expect from God? And what do we stretch out in to life? Do we pray to God expecting that we can get on an adventure of actually changing radically inside to become an entirely new kind of person in Christ likeness. Do we believe that? Pray for that? Seek that? Long for that with expectation? That's where faith comes in.

It's not the end. Verse 12 and 13.

"Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 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."

Verses 12 and 13 move to the will. Words like do not let; do not offer. God never bypasses the will. God is sovereign. God works first in us. We receive from God before we have any capacity to respond back, but at some point God looks for the response of our will, because that's one of the things that he wants to redeem. He wants to redeem in us that free capacity in us to respond to him and to draw close willingly and obediently. And so that means again and again we are going to face choices. God is not going to eliminate choices. We can offer or not. That moment before we turn on a computer for all the wrong reasons we have a choice. When we are on that date with a very good friend there is a moment when we can choose whether to go in to the bedroom or not. That instant we are beginning to compose an angry reply to somebody, we have a choice to say it or not. When someone is yelling at us and lying and accusing us of things, we have a choice how to respond. When we are signing our income tax forms we have a choice. When we are about ready to make that impulse purchase that we can't afford we have a choice and God will never take that choice away. We need to know what's true. We need to believe that these victories are possible and then we come to the moment when we have to choose. And how many times have I regretted making the wrong willful choice?

This is wedding season. I have been doing a lot of weddings. And one of the exciting moments in a wedding is when there is the exchange of rings; the couples have just made their commitments to one another and then as part of this service they exchange rings as a sign of that commitment. A ring is a sign of the commitment these people make. It's a sign of a legal reality that happens in the eyes of the state that as they sign those papers, make those commitments, exchange those rings, they are now one in many ways in the eyes of the state. Their property laws change; inheritance laws change. They can now speak for one another in unique ways if they get ill. All kinds of real things change. Legal things that matter and the sign of that is this ring. I have been wearing this ring for over 31 years, all but for a few hours when I have been in the hospital getting tests. A sign of a commitment that Debbie made to me and I made to her. A sign of all those legal realities that happen. But the actual reality that we have experienced is not on all of that paper and not in these rings, but in the commitments we make to one another every day in a relationship. Now I know we have seen movies where someone is married and they pull off their ring, because they want to go in to a bar or go in to another town and appear not to be married. You can be married and have all those things be legally true. You could have made those commitments. You can have the ring and still choose to live as if you are not married. You can choose to fool around. You can choose to have hidden bank accounts and things like that. The same is true in our relationship with God.

There is a legal reality that happened in Jesus Christ; a reality that happened completely in God's eyes. We are now free from sin. The law cannot condemn us. There is no spiritual power that has authority over us. These are all true. The paper has been signed. And we have a symbol of that; a sign, and that is our baptism. As we go down in to baptism and are covered by that water; that water represents the very judgment of God against sin. It represents death and being buried and when we come up out of baptism that is a sign of new life and the water itself is a sign of cleansing. That is our symbol; that is our sign of that reality. But our experience of it is going to depend upon what we do every day in our relationship to Jesus Christ. We are going to bring in to that relationship all the baggage of all of our past and our successes and failures are going to be tempered in part, in great part, by what we know, by what we expect and by what we offer to God. All of us have the same legal realities. All of us have the same sign and symbol. But our experience will differ. Every day, today, we have to choose and that choice is consecration. Remember our verse for the year; "Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you." This passage talks about one aspect, one way of looking at this issue of consecration of making ourselves available to God, of pursuing our relationship with God as the first priority in our lives. There are things we need to know, things we need to expect in faith and there are choices that we are going to have to make. What will those choices be?

Let's pray. God we hold before you all the struggle of what it means to be your disciple and we pray now that you will help us understand and know the right things. We pray that you will strengthen our faith, that we might believe and rely upon these things as being true for us and not just a fairy tale and then we pray for grace as we face choices that you be working in us both to will and then to do what pleases you. For we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

© 2007, Rev. John Schmidt
Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD 21204 410/823-6145
www.centralpc.org