Preached · August 18, 2024
Series · Romans Reclaimed as the Gospel of Peace
Text · Romans; Romans 6
Good morning, everybody. My name is Anthony. I get to serve as one of the pastors here at The Table, and it's my joy to be here with you.
We are in the middle of a series on the Book of Romans. The Book of Romans is this big, hefty theological tome that St. Paul the Apostle wrote, and we've been exploring over the past couple weeks the ways that it's been misinterpreted or misused over the years, and ways that we can reclaim it as a gospel of peace. We've talked about Romans 12; we've talked about Romans 13 and submitting to government and what that actually means from Paul's perspective. Last week, we talked about Romans chapter 5 and changing the way that we use our imagination when we talk about sin and death and what Jesus is up to in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension. And we're going to continue that work today as we go into Romans chapter 6. The words for the Scripture are going to be on the screen, but we're going to bounce around the chapter, so it might be helpful to have Romans chapter 6 pulled up on your phones or your physical Bibles, if you have them.
Working Two Full-Time Jobs
As you pull up Scripture, let me remind you of a news story that happened here in D.C. recently, in the past year — the story about the D.C. employee who was working two full-time jobs. It was in Washingtonian. There was a D.C. employee working as the deputy D.C. director of buildings full-time and also full-time at Freddie Mac. This person would go into the office Mondays and Fridays and do her D.C. job and then work remote Tuesday through Thursday. But Tuesday through Thursday, she was going into the office at Freddie Mac — pulling six-figure incomes at both jobs — and she let this go on for some time, until D.C. changed their work-from-home rules: oh, you have to come in more often. And she said, oh no. And she got caught. She got fined. She got fired. She was trying to do both at the same time.
To me, this is a decent metaphor for what Paul is talking about in Romans 5 and Romans 6 — what we talked about last week and what we're talking about today. You were employed by this thing called Sin; Jesus defeated the power of Sin; and now you're in the employment of a different power — hopefully God. And what you cannot do is try to be employed by both at the same time. It may sound good for a while, but in the end, it will not work out for you.
Sin with a Capital S
One of the mindset shifts I want us to make when we come up against the topic of sin in the Bible is that oftentimes that word should have a capital S. Sin, in the imaginative world of the Bible, is not just these accidents or mistakes that we do. It's not just the archery metaphor of missing the mark. Sin is a power or a character itself that needs to be dealt with as if it's its own thing.
And Sin is very exclusive. It's kind of like citizenship. Some places do allow you to have dual citizenship, but it's troublesome if you try to have dual citizenship with, say, the U.S. and Russia — powers that are opposed to each other. You can't be both part of the Fraternal Order of Police and a Black Panther at the same time. You can't work two full-time jobs and lie about it.
Last week we explored this idea in Romans 5 that Sin and Death have been defeated. The problem that's being solved is not just "you are a sinner, you make mistakes, what's Jesus going to do about it?" That's not the problem that Romans is trying to solve. Rather, the problem is that Sin is this despotic ruler, an exclusive club. It's like the mafia, and it won't let you go. It's like lots of movies where they pull the person back in — oh, he's got to do one more job; oh, they'll never let me go. That's the idea of Sin. And Jesus is not just trying to make sin-free, mistake-free, perfect people. Rather, Jesus is trying to defeat a cosmic power. And if those powers are, in fact, defeated, then we've got to quit our job with Freddie Mac or quit our job with D.C. government — one of them. We've got to exchange our allegiance out of them to Jesus.
So take a look, Romans 6, verses 1 and 2:
What shall we say then? Shall we continue in Sin, so that grace may increase? Certainly not. We died to Sin; how can we still live in it? — Romans 6:1-2
Shall we continue in Sin — Sin the club, Sin the exclusive, mafia-like power that will not let you go. Now, most of us, if you grew up hearing preaching about sin, you read "continue in sin" and you assume it means continue to sin, continue sinning, continue missing the mark, continue making mistakes. But that's not what he means. He's saying, if you're continuing in Sin — in the club, in the mafia of the cosmic power of Sin, the master, the nation that you have allegiance to — why are you doing that?
Pseudocide
Now, the problem with Sin is that it doesn't let you go very easily. You can't just up and decide to leave the mafia. It's a despotic club, and there's only one way out, and that's death.
Has anybody heard of the idea of pseudocide? There's this interesting correlation — correlation is not causation, but you still see the chart — that when consumer debt goes up, pseudocide goes up. Pseudocide is faking your death. It's a surprisingly common practice to get out of debt, to get out of child payments, even to get out of marriages. Actually, when I finished this sermon and put it away on Thursday, I picked up a different book about pastoral ministry, and the first story was about a pastor who faked his death to get out of the church. Now, don't try this. It doesn't work most of the time. Most folks end up in jail, and they get caught.
But there is one story I found. Her name is Grace Oakeshott, and Grace Oakeshott was an active socialist and civil rights activist in England in the early 1900s. She set up a trade school for girls. Decades later, in the modern era, a writer becomes interested in her work and wants to track her down for the historical record and for a book she's writing. So this writer tries to find historical records about Grace Oakeshott and finds out that she died at the age of 35 — her family went to the beach, a pile of clothes was left on the beach, and people presumed she had drowned. Years later, that same journalist and writer comes across someone in New Zealand who offhandedly mentioned being Grace's great-granddaughter. It turns out that Grace had faked her own death to abscond to New Zealand with her lover.
Now, here in Romans, Jesus has the same idea — except he's not faking his own death. He actually goes through with it. So skip up to verse 7. Verse 7 says this:
[…] — Romans 6:7
In the imaginative world that Paul is giving us, there is this cosmic power called Sin that all of us have been forced to swear our allegiance to — this despotic ruler over all of humankind, over all the world — and there's only one way out of this mafia-like club, and that's death. So Jesus hatches an idea: what if I die to Sin? Using this logic — if I die to Sin, I'm set free from Sin — Jesus becomes human, God incarnate, the ultimate human, the human to stand in for all humans, and then dies. And by his death, he is no longer under the power of Sin. He's left the mafia. He's found his one way out. By dying, Jesus is released from the power of Sin, capital S. Sin no longer has a claim on Jesus, because Jesus found the loophole. He didn't fake his death; he actually died.
In the same way, look at verse 9:
We know that the Messiah, Christ Jesus, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has any authority over him. — Romans 6:9
So Jesus pulls this one-two punch. He dies — now Sin no longer has any authority over him — and he's resurrected, so Death no longer has any authority over him. Jesus has performed the ultimate jiu-jitsu move. He allows the entirety of the forces of Sin and Death and evil and oppression to overtake him on the cross, and then he uses all the forces of his own enemy to burst out of the grave in resurrection, defeating Sin and Death in the process. And in doing so, Jesus shows us that ultimately, Sin, Death, evil, and oppression are self-defeating. They can put all of their force against Jesus, against God incarnate, and in the end, they just exhaust themselves, because God will not be defeated.
Melkor Shall Prove But Mine Instrument
Because I'm a middle-aged white dude, I am obligated — it's my duty and my joy — to be a huge Lord of the Rings fan. There's this passage about the creator God figure in the Lord of the Rings world putting together this orchestral song in order to create the cosmos, to create the world. So you've got the creator God and all of his archangels making this beautiful orchestral song, and as the different themes and melodies play, the world takes shape. But then there's this Satan-like figure, Melkor, who begins to play his own discordant melody and theme. And by bringing in this discord, he begins to create the forces of evil. Now, the way that the creator God, Ilúvatar, responds in this song-and-creation story of Middle-earth is not with panic, not even with force. Ilúvatar says this — this is from The Silmarillion, that long book that nobody reads, except me:
You, Melkor, shall see that no theme may be played that has not its uttermost source in me, nor can you alter the music. For he that attempts this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself has not imagined. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion
In other words: Melkor, you can plot, you can try, you can try to play a different theme, but in the end, all you're going to do is end up rejoining my orchestra. You shall prove but mine instrument. This is the recurring theme — that the forces of evil in the world are only self-defeating, and God's genius and joy is only ever able to take what is intended for evil and squeeze up some good from it, as Joseph says in Genesis.
And so the character of Sin, the character of Death, of evil, throws their forces against Jesus on the cross, and it ends up that they shall prove but God's instrument in bringing about something even more wonderful: the redemption of all humanity.
So in the story, Sin is a character, a sadistic cult that all of humanity has been enslaved to. In order to break out, Jesus dies, and then through that death is granted freedom from Sin and Death. And the whole point of this is that we get to participate in that freedom.
Baptism and Imaginative Worlds
So this is Romans 6, verses 3 and 4:
Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into the Messiah, Jesus, were baptized into his death? That means that we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that just as Messiah was raised from the dead through the Father's glory, we too might walk in a new quality of life. — Romans 6:3-4
So we're getting a little mystical here — very mystical and poetic — as we're entering into this different imaginative world. And I'll just remind all of us, before you get all poo-pooey about poetic imaginative worlds, remember that you too, all of us, are also part of imaginative worlds. We just have modern versions of them. Social hierarchies — concepts like social classes and castes and aristocracies — are constructs, imaginative worlds. Corporations don't exist in any sort of scientifically measurable way. They exist on paper, and we just all sort of agree that corporations have power. Degrees don't have inherent value. We just have an imaginative world that agrees that they do have value. Same thing with currency, stock markets, and trade agreements. They're just based on collective belief. Now, I'm not saying that those things don't matter. They're powerful. They shape human behavior. They impact the world in tangible ways, even if they're fundamentally products of human imagination and agreement. What I am saying is that when you read Scripture like this, like Romans 6, you're entering into an older, more ancient, imagined world that also can have real impact on you and your society.
Like baptism. Baptism is this way, according to Paul, that we enter into the death that Jesus died. Baptism — as we are lowered into the water and brought back out again — is a way of reenacting and actually entering into the same reality that Jesus lived: death to Sin, a way out of the mafia, the oppressive, cold, despotic ruler of Sin; and resurrection, a way out of Death. Paul says, don't you know that you who were baptized into the Messiah were baptized into his death? Baptism is a powerful — not just symbolic, but sacramental — act. Sacrament, meaning a grace that becomes evident and tangible in the world. Baptism is the act of being buried and raised. By being buried, we too get to escape from the mafia of Sin. We too get to fake our own deaths, leave the mob, and no longer be part of the death cult called Sin.
Verse 5 says:
If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we too shall be raised up in the likeness of his resurrection. — Romans 6:5
Paul is bringing in this idea of a seed being buried in the ground. If we've died to Sin like Jesus has, we also get the benefits of resurrection like Jesus did. In other words, what's true of Jesus is true of us. If you can say it about Jesus, then you can say it about Jesus' people — you and me.
Not Substitution but Participation
In Paul's language, this is the idea of not substitution, but participation. Again, if you grew up in the church, you may have heard a version of the story that says that Jesus died instead of us. But that's not really how Paul frames it in Romans. It's not that Jesus died instead of us; it's that Jesus died ahead of us. Jesus didn't die so that we would avoid death. Jesus died so that we can join in his death and therefore be free from the powers of Sin and Death. And this makes sense of Jesus' call to take up your cross, or Paul's insistence that we died in Christ. It's good news, because it means that Jesus did the tough work of actually dying to Sin, and we get to enjoy the benefits of it. By being baptized into the Messiah, being brought into the family of God, being brought into Jesus' life and his death and his resurrection, we get to participate in all the same things that Jesus participates in.
So Paul continues, verse 6:
This is what we know: our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah, so that the bodily solidarity of Sin might be abolished, and that we would no longer be enslaved to Sin. — Romans 6:6
This is basically Paul's thick, heavy theological language for what we've been explaining. Our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah so that the bodily solidarity of Sin might be abolished — all the things that were holding us in that cultic death mafia of Sin are gone, and we are no longer enslaved to it.
Verse 7:
In the same way, you too must reckon — imagine — yourselves as being dead to Sin and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus. — Romans 6:7
Reckoning Ourselves Dead to Sin
Maybe some of our friends from the South or from the Midwest use language like, "Well, I reckon." And this is what Paul is saying. Some translations say calculate, think of yourselves, imagine yourselves. I reckon that I am dead to Sin and alive to God in Jesus.
Now, this is much easier said than done — to reckon yourselves as dead to Sin, as dead to this cosmic power, and being alive to God. How do you count yourself, imagine yourself, reckon or calculate yourself as being dead to the power of Sin when the power of Sin still seems to be so pervasive?
We're not going to go verse by verse through the rest of the chapter, but Paul's basic answer to this is that the answer is not legalism. Because legalism is always the temptation. Oh, if I'm dead to Sin and alive in Christ, then my one response is to make sure I have a list of dos and do-nots that I have to follow perfectly in order to calculate, reckon, think, imagine myself as dead to Sin and alive to God. The temptation for every religious movement — and Paul knew this — was just do better and try harder. That's how you reckon yourselves. And every time — every time, every single time — do-better, try-harder religion will lead to exhaustion and bitterness and resentment and spiritual abuse.
Romans 7: The Do-Better, Try-Harder Dead End
Paul explains in the next chapter what happens when we try to do legalism as a way of reckoning ourselves as dead to Sin. This is Paul's famous passage in Romans 7, the last half of the chapter — I do the things I do not want to do — and this is Eugene Peterson's Message translation of it. Paul says this about trying to answer these questions legalistically, the do-better-try-harder approach:
Yes, I'm full of myself — after all, I've spent a long time in sin's prison. What I don't understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. — Romans 7 (The Message)
It's the difference between December 31st, New Year's Eve Anthony, and January 2nd, after-New-Year's Anthony.
I can't be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it. It becomes obvious that God's command is necessary, but I need something more. For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help.
Does anybody else have the desire, when you see a really nice car, to just want to steer into it? Is that just me? I obviously need help.
I realize that I don't have what it takes. I can will it, but I can't do it. I decide to do good, but I don't really do it. I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.
I have yet to actually crash into a car on purpose, okay?
It happens so regularly that it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up.
Again — Sin. Not this thing that's wrong inside us. Sin, the despotic ruler over all of humanity. Sin is there to trip me up.
I truly delight in God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn't that the real question?
So that's Paul's dilemma. What's Paul's answer? Go to the next chapter, Romans 8, verse 1:
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. — Romans 8:1
The Most Surprising "Therefore"
It is one of the most surprising therefores in Scripture. You know the old preacher joke — when you see a "therefore" in Scripture, you have to see what the therefore is there for. This is a surprising therefore, because Paul has just explained everything that's broken and wrong with him. I don't do the things I want to do, and I do the things I don't want to do. Therefore, there is no condemnation. It's a shock. It's a surprise. It's a non sequitur. The logic does not line up. Oh, you feel wracked with guilt and self-hatred that you can't do anything right? Therefore, there is no condemnation. Oh, you feel stuck and like you can't do anything? Therefore, there is no condemnation.
Let me put it a couple other ways, with some quotes from some other spiritual leaders and gurus.
Lori Deschene, a Buddhist teacher, says: "We can't hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love."
Henri Nouwen, Catholic theologian and mystic, says: "Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us beloved."
Carl Rogers, one of the founders of person-centered psychotherapy, one of the fathers of modern therapy, says: "The curious paradox is when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change."
Richard Rohr, another Catholic theologian and mystic, says this: "You cannot accomplish or work up to union with God because you've already got it. You cannot ever become worthy or perfect by yourself. You can only reconnect to your infinite Source. The biblical revelation is about awakening, not accomplishing. It's about realization, not performance. You cannot get there. You can only be there."
You can't work for D.C. government and Freddie Mac at the same time. Don't work for the devil and God at the same time — it's up to you who's who in that metaphor. The devil — Sin, Death, evil — has been defeated. They're a bad employer. It's time to quit.
Legalism is a form of self-hatred and rejection. Legalism is being employed to the devil but calling it holiness. It will not work. It's a distraction from the actual work of setting people free from oppression and harm. Paul is consistent in this. Colossians chapter 2, verse 20:
If with Christ you died to the elemental principles of the world — another way of saying you have died to Sin — why do you live as if you still belonged to the world's principles? Why do you submit to regulations — "Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!"? All those regulations refer to things that perish with use. They're simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety and humility and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no actual value in checking self-indulgence. — Colossians 2:20-23
So it's an awakening, it's a realization, and not an accomplishment. The work that Jesus has done — dying to Sin, rising to new life — is work that was done on our behalf, and we wake up to it.
Grace to People, Tough on Systems
Another way of saying this, which we have said many times here at The Table, is: you give grace to people, and you give toughness to systems. That also means grace to yourself. It also means grace to your enemy, because your enemy is also being harmed by systems meant to hurt.
Now, people may think that when you're tough on systems, you're being tough on them. And that makes sense. Thomas Merton put it this way: "When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them — and that is, of course, because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it." It's like when you criticize racism and people say you're not being patriotic. Wait, what are you saying — that racism is patriotic? Is that what you're saying? You really don't want to say that.
So yes, we give grace to people. We give grace to ourselves. We even give grace to our enemy. And we are tough on systems. And if somebody takes that as a rejection of them, that's because they're also so tied up in the system.
The good news is that Jesus arrived and said the kingdom of God has already shown up — in Jesus — and that the kingdom of God lives within you. The way Paul puts it is that we have died to Sin in Christ, we have been raised to new life in Christ — that what's true of Jesus is true of us. That means there's no legalism involved, there's no list of dos and do-nots. It's about waking up to our belovedness, waking up to the belovedness of every person next to us, and living like that's true — living like they actually are beloved.
Summing Up
Now, that was a bunch of stuff, so I'm going to do my best to sum this up. It's actually me summarizing my online friend Craig Uffman, who's an Episcopal priest. We were talking about Paul online together, and he put it like this: "Death is God's solution to defeating the power of Sin, and resurrection is God's solution to defeating the power of Death. Our participation in Jesus' life and resurrection is our means of embracing God's gift of life that transcends time and space. Participation is not merely intellectual assent, but our embodied commitment to following Jesus' way, as guided by the gift of the Spirit, who meets each of us anew every day and every generation."
Closing Prayer
Would you pray with me?
Spirit, Christ, Creator, we thank you that you have accomplished the work. We thank you that your solution for us is not self-hatred and self-rejection, but rather acceptance of the fact that you call us very good, you call us beloved, you call us your very image. God, may we reckon ourselves as dead to Sin and alive to you. May we reckon ourselves as no longer under the hold of Sin and Death, as having escaped their power and their grip. And God, may we reckon ourselves as fully beloved in your kingdom. God, we ask that your Spirit would energize us and anoint us and rejuvenate us each and every day, that we may accept that the work is done, that we may awaken to our belovedness, and that we may be fully at peace with you and your creation. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
