More Chocolate Ice Cream, Please
Paul gives
us a great opening statement in Romans 6.
Essentially he asks if we should continue in sin so that by our
ever-increasing sin tally we can show God’s graciousness all the more. And in a twisted human manner, this makes a
lot of sense, right? After all – if I
may make a food analogy – if chocolate ice cream is good, then more chocolate
ice cream is better, right?
Ha! This thought always amuses me. Yes, chocolate ice cream is good. But if I sit down and try to eat a whole
gallon of chocolate ice cream I will reach a point where I no longer value the
chocolate ice cream. No matter how much
ice cream I eat, I will eventually get to a place where I am full or just plain
tired of the taste.
So it is
with God’s grace and forgiveness. God
has an infinite ability to forgive, but He only promises forgiveness to the
contrite in heart and the repentant. If
I continue in my sin without care for God’s ways, it is as if I no longer have
a taste for caring about repentance and forgiveness. Just like too much chocolate leads to an
internal devaluing of chocolate’s appeal, too much sin leads to a devaluing of
God’s grace and forgiveness.
A Better Understanding not an Increase in Opportunity
Then Paul
moves us to another great thought.
Rather than approaching life as though we are free to sin all we want,
what we should be doing is approaching life with the perspective of a new
understanding to humanity. That
understanding is this: just as Jesus died for our sins, so we have died to our
sins; just as Jesus has risen to a new life, so we have risen to a new life in
Christ. This is the point of baptism, and
notice that Paul makes no mention of faith or needing to “believe” that it is
effective when baptism is done. Baptism
is a sign for us that in Christ we are dead to sin and free to live a new
life. Our baptism is a symbol of death
and a proclamation that we believe that just as we rise from this water so to
shall we rise into new life.*
How cool
is it to think about baptism as a reminder of our death to sin. In fact, this is precisely why Martin Luther
encourages us to think about our baptism each and every morning. It is not because this baptism forces God to
save us, but it reminds us of the promise that God can and will save us! Remembering our baptism each and every day
reminds us that because God can save us we can live a new life. Remembering our baptism does just what Paul
talks about here in Romans 6. When we
remember our baptism we remember that we are not to go on sinning but rather we
are to live a new life in Christ.
Slaves To Righteousness
Masterfully,
Paul then transitions us from realizing we are to live a new life to presenting
ourselves to God. Furthermore, Paul
returns us back to an image I blogged about as we began Romans. Paul says we are to present ourselves to God
as tools of righteous – even as slaves to righteousness!
This is
such a huge concept, and I have blogged about it in the past. Furthermore, this is a concept that normally
rubs the typical American (or human) completely the wrong way. In Christ, we are not free. Yes, we are freed from sin. We are freed from the bondage of sin. We are freed from the consequences of
sin. But we are not free in every sense
of the word.
We are
slaves to God. We are slaves to
righteousness. And thanks be to God we
are slaves to the consequences of righteousness: namely eternal life! We are free to do God’s will; but we are not
free to do as we please! When we do as
we please, we are sinning and are putting ourselves back into slavery to sin.
You see,
there are two simple choices: slavery to sin and slavery to God. If we are following God, we are His
slaves. If we are following our own
hearts we are by definition following sin and a slave to it. There is no true “freedom of the human
will.” We may exert “free will to
choose,” but in doing so all we are doing is choosing which master we serve:
God or sin. Of course we have free will,
but we are never our own master.
As proof
of that, think about death. We may be
master over our choices, but how many of us can choose not to die? No, all shall die. So at the very least we can see that this
idea of “free will” is not with respect to our whole life but rather with
respect to the choices we make. I can
choose to serve God or I can choose to serve sin. But I will eventually die whether I exercise
my free will to choose it or not.
I’ve gone
a bit off topic here, so let me try and reign it back it. I absolutely believe in free will – human
beings have the ability to choose which master we will serve {See Joshua 24:15
as an example}. But in that choice we
must know that the wages of sin is death and all who choose to serve sin will
die. That’s all of us to some extent. But we can receive the free gift of eternal
life from God through Jesus Christ. Pay
special attention to the contrast here between “wages” and “gift.” We have all earned the wage of death, but we
can receive the gift of life.
Thanks be
to God! Amen, amen!
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*I do feel the need to
assert here that I am not teaching salvation by baptism. I teach and believe that salvation comes
through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross and only through Jesus’ death on
that cross. This is why I speak of
baptism as a sign. Baptism is a
declaration of God’s promise that He can bring into new life those who truly
belong to Christ. Baptism is an act that
the Christian church professes to practice because Christ commands it and because
it declares our belief in the resurrection to new life.
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