United With Him

Introduction

Romans 6:5–11 ESV

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Psalm 19:14 (BCP2019 New Coverdale)

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be always acceptable in your sight,

O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Happy Easter! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleleuia!

It is always a joy to preach to you all, and I’m glad to be back up here after some time away from the pulpit. I am also happy to be bringing the Easter Vigil lesson two years running! I will not be disappointed if this becomes a trend and tradition.

Romans Recap

The epistle reading comes in the middle of the Apostle Paul’s extended logical flow examining what it means to be a member of the new order instituded by Christ, the true and better king, at his resurrection.

For the past five chapters, Paul has broken down division and built up unity by recalling both Jew and Gentile to the knowledge that no one is righteous before God on account of their own actions according to the Law. Examining what it is to be truly righteous before God Paul points again and again to faith. Paul reminds the church at Rome of Abraham, who was counted righteous before God because of his faith. He declares that the promises of God to Abraham were not realized by works of the Law but by faith. He assures the Church of our peace before God through the justification of faith.

What is the faith that Paul says gives us this peace? Summed up, it is faith in the power and goodness of God. It is faith that the one action that could really save us from the oppression of evil and the wrath of God has really happened. To be more explicit, it is faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ Our Savior.

Continuing to recall and emphasize the common situation of all humanity, Paul compares our human forefather Adam who sinned and brought death and despair into the world with our divine brother who was obedient in death and restored life to all humanity, if we only have faith in him. In Romans 5:18, he says “Therefore as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” We are all descended from Adam according to the flesh, and apart from God’s grace we are all under the curse levied against him for his rebellion. In the same way, we who have faith in Christ Jesus are friends, brothers and sisters, joint heirs with the Son of God, and share in the blessing of life that comes as a result of his obedience to death on the cross.

The Act of Faith

So we know that we must have faith in order to be rescued from the oppression of the enemy and death. But how do we “have faith?” Is it simply belief with our minds? Is it through prayer? Is there any act which shows our faith? The God who requires heart, mind, and body to be united in worship of him says yes, all three. We have faith when we confess that the evidence presented to us on the account of trustworthy witnesses is sufficient to gain our obedience. We have faith when we cry out in prayer to banish the vestiges of unbelief and to sing praise to our deliverer. We possess, prove, and gain greater faith by following Our Lord into death by baptism.

This is the underlying point which St Paul is driving at in our reading . “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Baptism for Paul is not merely ceremonial or symbolic. It is our very participation in the crucifixion and death of the Son of God. Again, it is not ceremonial, or an external proof only, but is an act which accomplishes something real - “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

This is why I say that we “possess, prove, and gain greater faith” in baptism: because it is through baptism that we gain the promise of a resurrection like Christ’s. Without being baptized, only the mind and the heart have experienced and proved faith, and of a kind uncomfortably similar to any number of pseudo-spiritual traditions and superstitions which deprive the body of a place in the afterlife. It is only in baptism that we show with the body that we indeed have the faith we confess. It is how we show that we have skin in the game, as it were.

The Slavery of Sin, the Liberation of the Cross

Baptism not only allows us to prove our faith or elevate our faith to the mind, heart, body paradigm of godly worship - it is the very liberation of our selves from the dominion of sin and death.

Because of sin, the Law is burdensome and oppressive. Not because the Law is a burden or is intended for our oppression, but the “body of sin” perceives it to be so, and is incapable of understanding it any other way. The Law which is good and holy - for it came from God - is used in the “body of sin” to oppress the mind and spirit through shame and anxiety.

Have you ever worked under a bad boss? One who made you despair of going into work, but the situation was such that you couldn’t, for whatever reason, leave the job? Or have you ever been bullied? Constantly maligned, insulted, or even physically abused but circumstances kept you in proximity with your tormentor? Not many of us have faced mistreatment from our government, but in our church we have refugees who fled religious persecution in their home country. Apart from God’s grace communicated in baptism, the oppression of sin is like the worst boss, the worst bully, the most tyrannical dictator that we simply cannot escape.

Faced with this situation, is it any wonder that depression, despair, anxiety, vanity, hedonism, narcissism, and nihilism are prevalent in the world? Many would see this as the natural outcome of a hopeless existence. This is what life looks like if the “body of sin” is not “brought to nothing.” As long as the “body of sin” has any shred of life left in it, we have not left the bad boss behind. We have not overcome the bully. We have not escaped oppression. We have not been emancipated.

What is St. Paul’s way out then? Nothing but the cross of Christ, and our participation in it through baptism. “We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Just as Jesus’s death on the cross removed him from the reach of the Roman government and the religious leaders, our baptism removes us from the oppressive reach of sin and its distortions of the Law. The reach of sin, its ability to master us is null and void - “For one who has died has been set free from sin.”

The New Life

This is only half of the story though. Jesus didn’t just accept crucifixion and give up his spirit on the cross to be buried in the tomb, the end, fade to black, roll credits. The very thing we celebrate starting tonight and the next fifty days - the Easter joy of Resurrection - promises even more in baptism. “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Just as Christ died and rose from the dead to a glorified body, we have assurance that our participation in his death by baptism will bring us into his life.

This isn’t just talking about our resurrection and the promise of eternal life. In the here and now, on the other side of baptism we are afforded the opportunity to live in that freedom from sin. If the dead stay dead, they are freed from sin, yes, but they get no benefit from it. Sin no longer has dominion over them, but neither do they have the will to oppose sin and live for something else. We who die to sin and rise with Christ in baptism are able to oppose sin and choose the good.

Note I say “able to” not “always will.” We know firsthand that baptism is not a magic bath that instantly makes us unable to sin. However, by uniting ourselves to Christ in baptism, we gain what our old selves lacked - because of the Fall, everything we did was tainted by sin. Using the bad boss analogy again, sin stole credit for any work we did, so that it was impossible to see anything we did that was not under sin’s purview. By putting the “body of sin” to death in baptism, the bad boss of sin no longer gets to claim de facto credit. In the constant war against the world, the flesh, and the devil, we do sometimes get drawn in and swindled by the bad boss of sin into believing we work for him again, but we have gained the ability to recall that he is wrong, and leave behind the toxic workplace he pettily reigns over.

We can more and more choose to do the good instead of the evil. What’s more, when we choose to do good it is to Christ’s glory! Before baptism, even the good we did was suspect and tainted by the “body of sin.” Now, however, the good we do for Christ is good indeed and free from the stink of sin. The further wonder is that this not just a temporary state of affairs.

Eternal Life

Someone might be misled into thinking that the severing of the bonds of sin was like a spiritual mulligan, a religious do-over. We’ve been given a second chance, so let’s do the best we can to not mess up again! This line of thinking is tragic in its diminished understanding of the gifts of God. This is essentially the theory of salvation that groups like the Latter Day Saints express - as long as we don’t commit the same sins we have been cleansed of in repentance we remain clean, but the person who does stumble in the same manner as they did previously has all the former sins brought back on them.

St. Paul puts this false teaching to the sword and dispatches it efficiently. “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.” This is the life that we are raised into because of following Christ into death in baptism. It is not a life that will eventually fade again, but an eternal life lived to God.

The severing of the bonds of sin is an eternal benefit. It is possible to drape ourselves in those broken chains again because of free will but the bonds are no longer fast. The jail cell door isn’t locked anymore, and the tyrant jailer has lost the key. We can shrug off the chains and walk out freely any time, all we have to do is set our steps back on the path of God. The jailer even turns his face away from us in shame as we leave, knowing his power over us is broken! As we live and grow in Christ our visits to the jail cell will grow less frequent. This is a picture of sanctification - learning that we are indeed free from sin and no longer under its sway, truly living the New Life of Christ that we have gained in baptism.

As a further admonition and exhortation about this truth, Paul concludes this paragraph by saying “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” If we believe that the former things are true regarding our sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then we know that we have nothing holding us back from living our life to God!

Therefore, in the midst of temptation we can say to sin “I have died to you and you no longer have power over me!” Even when we have returned to a besetting sin that has plagued us at times throughout our lives, we can throw it off and say “what I am I doing here? You have no power over me!” We then remember that we live to God and return to his paths, and he walks with us in the person of Christ which we perceive through his indwelling Spirit. What’s more, we realize he was there with us in the cell we had returned to even though we weren’t condemned to be there.

Application and Closing

We live in a place and time where people do not know the true benefits of the sacraments. Brother Max did an excellent job in teaching about the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday. Just as the Eucharist really communicates something of the Presence of Christ to those who receive it, baptism really cleanses us of sin and raises us to the New Life.

This is not merely symbol. It is not just an outward showing. C.S. Lewis was fond of calling Christianity the “True Myth,” the epic narrative written by the great Storyteller that is as true as it is astounding. The different layers at which the sacraments can be seen to be working are evidence of this. Recovery of this view of the sacraments is essential for our brothers and sisters, friends, and family to receive the fullness of Life in Christ.

We have brothers and sisters who have been baptized but agonize over their occasional and intermittent sin because they don’t understand the truth of their baptism. We have friends who walk as if they are Christians but have been taught that the sacraments aren’t essential for the New Life. We have family that sees our adherence to the sacraments as legalistic and Pharisaical.

As Anglican Christians who have received the catholic and apostolic teaching of the sacraments, we have a great opportunity to teach our brothers and sisters a different way to see the process of sanctification, to help them see that the cell door is not just unlocked but broken off its hinges. We can remedy the incomplete teaching that keeps immature God fearers from progressing in a Christian life by calling them to obedience to the commandments of Jesus Christ our Lord. We can teach our family members that the sacraments are gifts and means of grace and favor that we observe not because of legalism but because of our joy in receiving them and participating in them at every opportunity.

May we ever seek to live the New Life, and share with others the blessings and gifts we have received, that they may walk in it with us. Amen.