Reading Romans Backwards: A Spirit Creating Peace
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
We have reached the last section of our Reading Romans Backwards series.
Beginning at the end with 12-16
Then backing up to 9-11 and circling back to 1-4, we now end with the centre of the letter, Romans 5-8. And we’ll spend two weeks exploring these chapters. This week, focusing in on 5 and 6.
Romans 12-16 gave us the context for the letter, introducing us to the Strong and the Weak, chapter 9-11 outlined the narrative approach to that context and then chapters 1-4 spoke strongly to the Weak, rebutting their claims of priority or privilege. McKnight sums it up like this,
“Their claim was that ‘if everyone would agree with us and follow the Torah, then we’d be one big happy family.’ Paul’s Abraham-rooted gospel of redemption in Christ by grace through faith is what creates the big happy family, not Torah observance.”
We’ve all thought this, right? If “they” could just do things our way, we’d all get along. But Paul is suggesting something far more radical than mere agreement. Paul, instead, is going to invite these believers (Jewish & Gentile, alike) to follow the way of Christ and to discover that this makes all those other followers into siblings. Family.
Here, drawing on all that has come before, Romans 5-8 will invite us to take a cosmic look at the story that Paul thinks is the only one worth telling. A story that begins with Adam and stretches all the way until the kingdom is here in full. From creation all the way to the new creation.
There is really just one story Paul wants to tell.
One story that Paul keeps returning to over and over again. And insists that those who want to follow Jesus must make the central story for themselves as well.
Let’s hear what Paul writes here in chapters 5 and 6:
1 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with our God through Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
6 While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. 7 It isn’t often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. 8 But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. 9 So, now that we have been made righteous by his blood, we can be even more certain that we will be saved from God’s wrath through him. 10 If we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son while we were still enemies, now that we have been reconciled, how much more certain is it that we will be saved by his life? 11 And not only that: we even take pride in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, the one through whom we now have a restored relationship with God.
12 Just as through one human being sin came into the world, and death came through sin, so death has come to everyone, since everyone has sinned. 13 Although sin was in the world, since there was no Law, it wasn’t taken into account until the Law came. 14 But death ruled from Adam until Moses, even over those who didn’t sin in the same way Adam did—Adam was a type of the one who was coming.
15 But the free gift of Christ isn’t like Adam’s failure. If many people died through what one person did wrong, God’s grace is multiplied even more for many people with the gift—of the one person Jesus Christ—that comes through grace. 16 The gift isn’t like the consequences of one person’s sin. The judgment that came from one person’s sin led to punishment, but the free gift that came out of many failures led to the verdict of acquittal. 17 If death ruled because of one person’s failure, those who receive the multiplied grace and the gift of righteousness will even more certainly rule in life through the one person Jesus Christ.
18 So now the righteous requirements necessary for life are met for everyone through the righteous act of one person, just as judgment fell on everyone through the failure of one person. 19 Many people were made righteous through the obedience of one person, just as many people were made sinners through the disobedience of one person. 20 The Law stepped in to amplify the failure, but where sin increased, grace multiplied even more. 21 The result is that grace will rule through God’s righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, just as sin ruled in death.
1 So what are we going to say? Should we continue sinning so grace will multiply? 2 Absolutely not! All of us died to sin. How can we still live in it? 3 Or don’t you know that all who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore, we were buried together with him through baptism into his death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too can walk in newness of life. 5 If we were united together in a death like his, we will also be united together in a resurrection like his.
6 This is what we know: the person that we used to be was crucified with him in order to get rid of the corpse that had been controlled by sin. That way we wouldn’t be slaves to sin anymore, 7 because a person who has died has been freed from sin’s power. 8 But if we died with Christ, we have faith that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ has been raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has power over him. 10 He died to sin once and for all with his death, but he lives for God with his life. 11 In the same way, you also should consider yourselves dead to sin but alive for God in Christ Jesus.
So, zooming in on Romans chapter 5 and the beginning of 6, what do we notice?
There is so much in these chapters, but let’s narrow it down to two things:
Paul tells the story he think matters most.
And then Paul suggests that his audience has already enacted and entered into this story. Paul is suggesting to this very divided group that all of them, Strong and Weak alike - have entered into this story.
So, first the story and then the way that we enact and enter into that story.
The only story that Paul seems to think is worth telling is the one that centers on Jesus. It sweeps all the way from creation to a new creation at the end of chapter 8. But the central focus of this story is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
And the emphasis Paul puts on the story in this telling is that God acted first. And that God’s action not only heals the relationship between humanity and God, but also the way in which people and peoples relate to one another.
Two-part good news… God acted first, healing the relationship between human and the divine. God’s action means that our relationships with one another are also being healed and set right.
Paul tells this story by tracing two lines…
Becky Castle Miller: Paul traces one line from Adam to Death and the line from Jesus to Life (eternal).
Paul attributes advocacy for the Adam-to-Death line to the Judge (Torah Life), while Paul himself advocates for the Jesus-to-Eternal-Life line (Life in the Spirit).
The line of Adam starts with sin, and when Adam sinned, death came in as a consequence and sin spread to all people. Sin was present before Torah, but after
Torah sin became Sin (Sin with the uppercase “s” represents a real, acting Self or agent). People who sin end up in the Body of Sin.
The line of Christ starts with grace, which God spread to all people in the Christ line. People who follow Jesus end up in the Body of Christ.
In essence, Paul is describing two ways and asking his readers to choose the way they want to belong to… and who would choose the way that leads to death? I mean, really. But Paul is trying to point out that this is exactly what the Judge and the Weak who follow the Judge are advocating for. Before you can go the way of Jesus, you must walk the way of the Law… the line that will take you the way of Adam. The way that leads to death.
I can’t imagine that if Phoebe took a poll after this part of the text on who would like to choose the way of Adam or the Body of Sin and who would like to choose the way of Jesus or the Body of Christ, would anyone have chosen Adam? Especially when we think that all of the listeners had already chosen the way of Jesus. But there was a struggle in the way they had gotten to Jesus. The weak are insisting that everyone approach Jesus from the same vantage point them did. Paul is not allowing for that.
So this is the story Paul thinks is most worth telling. The good news, the gospel that, in Jesus, grace reigns and rules and all who enter into the Way of Christ are living in the Spirit… and that the reconciliation found there, not only transforms one’s relationship with God, but also our relationship with others.
In chapter 6, Paul anticipates his audience’s question… does grace mean that we can just keep sinning and not worry about it?
Paul goes on to suggest that his readers have already enacted and entered into this story for themselves… through baptism.
Paul appeals to the way in which the people to whom he’s writing are already entering into and enacting this central story. We have two main ways we do this as the people of God: the Lord’s Supper and Baptism.
Both of what we baptists calls these “ordinances” are “Visual sermons”
My friend and colleague Mandi Hecht, at FBC Saskatoon recently put it this way in one of her sermons:
In other places in Romans we have been invited to imagine sitting around a table – a table that we still celebrate together whenever we observe the Lord’s supper. Here, in Romans 6, Paul points to baptism, which, along with the Lord’s Supper or communion is an ordinance that we observe. Some have compared Communion and Baptism to “visual” or enacted sermons. In baptism, Paul says, we enter the story of Jesus, and we take it as our own. But it matters where we enter the story. One writer says it this way: “We’re not supposed to re-enact that story by sinning and hoping for grace. We are to embody a different moment – the story’s saving moment. The saving story becomes more and more ours as we live out our union with Jesus in his death and resurrection. We enter the story at the point of deliverance.” We follow Jesus downward into that frightening and seemingly all-powerful force. But then, as we enter into this reality with Jesus, we suddenly discover that death does not have the last word. As death did not have the last word in the life and story of Jesus, it does not for us either. Scot McKnight writes that “death is not the final word of baptism: life is.” When we were baptized, we were united with Jesus, the story of Jesus invades our own, and becomes our own, and moves us from where we were – in sin and death, to life. Some of you may recall your own experience with baptism. We use water, and when we go under the water, this symbolizes death; and as we come out of the water, this symbolizes new life.
I’m not assuming that everyone in this room has been baptized, but it’s likely that most of us have been.
Do you remember your baptism? Where did it happen?
(Here? At Riverside Park? In a swimming pool? In another city?)
How old were you? What do you remember about it? What did mean to you then? And what does it mean to you now?
And if you haven’t been baptized but have witnessed the baptism of others, what have you noticed? What stands out to you?
Optional: what does the rest of the NT say about baptism?
38 Peter replied, “Change your hearts and lives. Each of you must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. Then you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
27 All of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
13 We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body, whether Jew or Greek, or slave or free, and we all were given one Spirit to drink.
5 he saved us because of his mercy, not because of righteous things we had done. He did it through the washing of new birth and the renewing by the Holy Spirit,
21 Baptism is like that. It saves you now—not because it removes dirt from your body but because it is the mark of a good conscience toward God. Your salvation comes through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Paul tells the story he think matters most.
And then Paul suggests that his audience has already enacted and entered into this story.
When we enter in the Way of Jesus. When we center our own lives on the story of Jesus and what God is up to.
God’s action not only heals the relationship between humanity and God, but also the way in which people and peoples relate to one another.
And we are invited to enter into that story as a community every time we baptize someone - or every time we remember our own baptism.