Romans 6:1-11 (p. 1754)
Int.: You may want to think twice about eating seafood that is imported from China.
There are widespread reports that seafood raised or processed in China is unsafe for consumption.
Like in the U.S., most seafood that comes from China is raised in ponds. When I was young I had an uncle who raised trout in ponds to sell to people. Those trout ponds were filled with crystal clear water that flowed year-round from artesian wells. Most fish and shrimp raising ponds in the U.S. are equally clean.
Things are quite different in China, however. Since neither the Chinese government nor the seafood industry there has purity standards to be met, there is no incentive to raise or process seafood in sanitary conditions. Investigators of the Chinese seafood industry report that many, if not most, of the fish and shrimp ponds in China are literally septic ponds filled with sewage. It is not unusual to also find industrial wastes flowing into those ponds. The result is food that is unfit for consumption. And unlike with our domestic seafood industry, our government does almost no inspections of seafood imported from other countries.
So if you are concerned about the safety of what you put into your body, you will want to check the seafoods you buy and be sure that they originate in the U. S. or Canada.
St. Paul talks about something similar in our sermon text this morning.
Paul is not talking about where your seafood is raised, but where your soul is raised. He warns us that you cannot allow your life to become a cesspool of sin and still be a wholesome child of God. Those who choose to ignore God’s will and his word and to live in sin against his regulations and commands are as unfit for the kingdom of God as fish raised in sewage and chemical wastes are unfit for your diner table.
Just listen to what Paul told the Corinthian Christians, “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) Some Christians were that before they repented of their pagan lifestyles and turned to Christ, but we can never go back to such sins and still be Christians on the road to eternal life with God.
In spite of God’s clear and unequivocal statements to the contrary, many people today are convinced that they can embrace sins in their lives and still be Christians. They can ignore God’s will and commands; they can reject God’s word and directives for their lives; they can refuse to live for their Maker and Redeemer and live only for themselves, and still go to heaven when they leave this world. My friends, that is not Christianity, that is pure pagan fantasy. As St. Paul tells us in our text, when we put our trust in Christ Jesus as our Savior from sin,
WE ARE UNITED WITH CHRIST.
I. We Have Been United With Christ In Dying To Sin.
Jesus Christ, of course, never sinned, so he himself did not die to sin.
But Jesus took upon himself the guilt and the punishment of our sins. That is why he gave up his life on the cross as the sacrifice that paid for our sins and purchased their forgiveness. It was our sinfulness that he died for, and the crimes against God and mankind that we committed that he paid the penalty for. Think of the Old Testament sacrifices for sins that were brought to God’s temple: not a single one of those animals that were sacrificed died because of its own wrongdoing. Every last one of those millions and millions of sacrifices died for the crimes of the person who brought it to the temple and then confessed his or her sins upon it. The animals died in the place of the sinner to save the sinner from the death that sin brings upon us.
Calvary was not the first time that Jesus took our place under God’s law. Do you remember Christ’s baptism? When Jesus came to be baptized by John, at first John refused to baptize him. He told Jesus, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” (Matthew 3:14) But when Jesus told John, “It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness,” then John consented and baptized Jesus. But what did Jesus mean by, “It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness”? Simply that he was taking your place and mind, and John’s also. Yes, John needed to be baptized for repentance of his sins, but Jesus was baptized in his place and did the repenting for him. Christ was baptized for us as well as for John, as a sign of repentance from sins.
Now we are united with Christ in his death as the payment for our sins that were forgiven through baptism.
“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,” St. Paul says in our text. And Paul adds, “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.”
Just think about that – we were united with Christ in his crucifixion and death through our baptism. What Paul is referring to is that baptism is how we made Jesus our sacrifice for sins before God. That is when we confessed our sins and placed them all upon Jesus, so that his death became the sacrifice that freed us from sin before God. In remembrance of our baptismal covenant with God, we now confess our sins to God every week in church, and perhaps every day at home, and we place those sins upon Jesus, “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” as John the Baptist called Jesus. Perhaps you have never thought of your baptism in those terms before – as the washing away of sins from your soul and pouring the filth and the guilt of those sins upon Jesus. In Jesus’ baptism, he took up those sins that you washed away in your baptism so that he could pay for them on his cross.
And now, united with Jesus into death, it is as though you were right there on the cross with him, dying as the payment for your sins so that God could consider your debt for sins to be paid in full. And God does consider your debt for sins to be paid in full – not because of anything that you have ever done, but because of what Jesus did for you almost 2,000 years before you were even born! By faith we accept that payment made by our Savior and count it as our own payment to God, just as the Israelites who brought animal sacrifices to the temple during Old Testament times counted the deaths of those animals as their own payment for sins.
So now our sins are forgiven by God – all of them, completely. Because Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for sins, there is nothing more than needs to be done by us, nor anything more that can be done by us. As Paul tells us in our text, “The death he died, he died to sin once for all.” The writer of the epistle to the Hebrew Christians therefore says, “there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.” (Hebrews 10:18) That is precisely why God ensured that there is no more temple, no more altar, no more priesthood, and no more sacrifices for sins. Jesus did it all, and he did it perfectly and completely. Nothing more can be done.
Paul also tells us in our text, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death.” Yes, we both died and were buried with Jesus through our baptisms. As Paul says, this makes us dead to sin, because sin has no claim on a dead body. A dead person is never put on trial for the crimes he or she may have committed when alive, and you can’t punish a dead person for crimes, because death is the ultimate punishment for crimes against man and for sins against God, a punishment imposed by God himself. Dead people also cannot commit sins; they are simply dead. Therefore our union with Christ in his death should make us dead to sinning. That is St. Paul’s point in our text!
But there is more – not only does Paul say that we have been united with Christ in dying to sin, he also says that …
II. We Are United With Christ In Living For God.
St. Paul tells us in our text, “We were … 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.”
And Paul adds, “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.” As Paul says, we were united with Jesus in his crucifixion so that we can be set free from sin. The old self or Old Adam of our human nature is to be killed off, crucified, done away with, so that the person you are inside that sinful body can live freely for God.
The whole point of our baptism is to bring us to God, to make us children of God, filled with the kind of love that exemplifies God’s very being. “God is love” the Bible tells us. (1 John 4:16) God calls on us as his children to love him and to love one another in the same way that he loves us, with an unconditional, self-sacrificing love that overcomes all obstacles to serve those who are the objects of that love.
The word that the New Testament uses almost exclusively for God’s love is the Greek word agaph. That is also the word that God uses in the Bible for the kind of love Christians are to show toward one another. Agaph love is not a feeling inside our hearts, or a relationship that we have with someone else, it is the way we act in our lives. St. John tells us, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” (1 John 4:10-11) Note the action in God’s love for us – “he sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” There is the key to Christian love – doing for God and for other people as God did for us in Christ Jesus. That is why St. Paul tells us in our text, “We too may live a new life.” This living a new life of service to God is loving as Christ loved us.
This new life in Christ is eternal living for God.
Sinful people will die because as the Bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) But Paul tells us in our text, “We know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.” Christ lives forever because he conquered death – now he is its master, death is not his master. Because Jesus has conquered death he is now the Lord of Life.
As the Lord of Life, Jesus gives life to everyone he pleases, and that is to all those who put their trust in him as their Savior and who serve him as their Lord. That is why our text says, “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Just as Jesus now lives forever and cannot be touched by death, so shall we! That is why the New Testament never says that Christians die. Other people die, but Christians “fall asleep” to be awakened again when Christ returns in glory.
St. John was told in his vision of heaven that is recorded in the book of Revelation, “Blessed and holy are those who have part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them.” (Revelation 20:6) “The first resurrection” that is referred to is our being raised to life with Christ in baptism. “The second death” is the eternal dying of hell. Because of baptism and the forgiveness of sins and life of faith in our Savior Jesus Christ that it imparts to us, we are eternally saved from hell and enabled to serve God in lives of love. Because of the great love that exists between Christians and our Savior, the Bible often describes the Church as Christ’s Bride, and Jesus as our Bridegroom. So, just as St. Paul says in our text, by our faith in Jesus that was begun at our baptisms, …
Con.: WE ARE UNITED WITH CHRIST, as people are united in marriage.
We Have Been United With Christ In Dying To Sin.
Now We Are United With Christ In Living For God.