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Scripture for Sunday, November 5: Romans 6:1-11
Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 45
Last week, Rev. Jonker preached about the pervasive problem of guilt in our culture. We saw how Christ's identification with sin on our behalf removes our guilt and clothes us with Christ's righteousness.
This week, Rev. Boven will preach from Romans 6, reminding us why the words "He rose again from the dead" really are great news for us--not only in this life, but also in the life to come.
Do you not know?
As Romans 6 opens, Paul addresses people who might carry his logic of abundant grace too far.
"Shouldn't we continue to sin," they say, "if it's an occasion to showcase God's grace?"
Paul's answer is terse: Absolutely not. The power of sin is dead.
"We died to sin! How could we still live in it into the future?"
"Or didn't you know? Everyone who was baptized into Jesus Christ was 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." (Romans 6:4).
Sin in us has been pronounced dead, gone, and buried through our baptism. Yes--we still occupy a world in which we witness and experience the ramifications and consequences of sin. We still sin because we are sinners.
But our identity is no longer in our sin--the very thing about us that alienates us from God. Our identity is now in Jesus, the one who took our sin and frailty with him to the cross and died to it, once and for all. We live in this new God-given realm and reality.
"[I]n the invisible newness of life whereby the new [person] walks in the glory of God, sin has as little light and air and space as in the glory of God which is manifested in the raising of Jesus from the dead," Karl Barth says in his commentary on this passage.
Sin no longer has power over us. God has drawn us into a new country where sin no longer freely roams and thrives and exerts its will.
Yet there is an inevitable question: If that's so, why don't we experience ourselves as more like Jesus, here and now? If the old is dead and gone and the new has come, where is the outflow of our new identity in Christ?
We long to see ourselves making progress in sanctification. But Barth says that this new identity is a divine reality, and that the glimpses we have of ourselves as we one day shall be is evidence itself of our being-made-new:
"Since the true conformity to Jesus is no human quality or activity [in other words, sheer gift of God], it cannot be either compared or contrasted with [our] experiences or dispositions.... That life of ours which is positively conformed to Jesus is the life which is hid with Christ in God, and which is only 'ours' here and now as the eternal future. This, however, is sufficient for us, for the grace of God [suffices].... Our negative, known, human existence, so little conformed to Jesus, is filled with hope by the positive and secret power of the resurrection" (Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 196).
It is to be taken for granted, a given, a grace, that our fallenness and frailty has already been done away with through Christ's death. That death in the past is the guarantee of our future, entirely reasonable hope: We really are new creatures because of Christ's death and resurrection.
So we lean into the future with our eyes on our Lord, trusting him to make us new, bit by bit, setback by setback, day by day looking toward the One who is faithful to complete his work in us.
Questions for Reflection or Discussion:
1) What encourages you about Christ's resurrection--here and now? In the eternal future?
2) Where in your life do you wish you saw more evidence of Christ living out his resurrected life through you? Talk to him about them.
3) When you exercise your sanctified imagination, in what ways can you imagine being totally freed from sin in the life to come? What will that freedom mean for you?
4) Spend time acknowledging and praising our Resurrected Lord for his once-for-all death and resurrection.
