Dead to Sin but Alive in Christ
6:1 So do you think we should continue sinning so that God will give us more and more grace? 2 Of course not! Our old sinful life ended. It’s dead. So how can we continue living in sin? 3 Did you forget that all of us became part of Christ Jesus when we were baptized? In our baptism we shared in his death. 4 So when we were baptized, we were buried with Christ and took part in his death. And just as Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father, so we can now live a new life.
5 Christ died, and we have been joined with him by dying too. So we will also be joined with him by rising from death as he did. 6 We know that our old life was put to death on the cross with Christ. This happened so that our sinful selves would have no power over us. Then we would not be slaves to sin. 7 Anyone who has died is made free from sin’s control.
8 If we died with Christ, we know that we will also live with him. 9 Christ was raised from death. And we know that he cannot die again. Death has no power over him now. 10 Yes, when Christ died, he died to defeat the power of sin one time—enough for all time. He now has a new life, and his new life is with God. 11 In the same way, you should see yourselves as being dead to the power of sin and alive for God through Christ Jesus.
12 But don’t let sin control your life here on earth. You must not be ruled by the things your sinful self makes you want to do. 13 Don’t offer the parts of your body to serve sin. Don’t use your bodies to do evil, but offer yourselves to God, as people who have died and now live. Offer the parts of your body to God to be used for doing good. 14 Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law. You now live under God’s grace.
Today Paul answers a question. This is a question which arises more than once in the letter. God's salvation is a free gift. We don't earn it, and we don't deserve it. It is not obtained by working hard. God gives a verdict in his courtroom. It is: not guilty! This verdict is not based on our own actions, it is based on Jesus' death on the cross. This righteousness is credit to us. We do not earn it. We simply believe, and trust God. This is contrary to almost all world religion. Religions offer the hope of reward and the fear of punishment. Your salvation, according to human religious thinking, is earned. This means that religions control our behaviour. We are motivated to go good because we fear the punishment of evil actions and hope for the reward of good actions. The gospel says that this is not true. God gives us what we can never earn. Many people then ask, 'where is our motivation to do good? In fact, they go even further. They say 'God's mercy shows how good he is. So the more mercy he shows, the kinder he is. If we do many evil things, then God will give us more mercy. Which is a good thing. Sometimes opponents of the good news of Jesus accuse us of teaching ideas like this. These ideas are false, and we will now look at our motivation for doing good. But first, here is a question:
Is there a risk that we will go on sinning because we know that we are forgiven? Have you seen this in practice?
The answer to the question is that we have been changed. When we believed in Christ, we did not only receive a free gift. We gained a new life. And when we gained a new life, we lost our old lives. So now we are new people. You might think of what it means to become a citizen of a new country. You might lose your old citizenship. You might change the language you speak. You are no longer bound by old laws. You are under new authority. The gospel says not only that Jesus died for us, and gave us the gift of eternal life. It also says that we died with Jesus, and that we live with him. In other words, our legal identity has changed, and we have a new identity.
Baptism is a way of enacting this identity change. The identity change happens when we trust in Jesus as our saviour. Baptism, though, is a way of acting out our faith and our identity change. We go into the water. The old person enters the place of death. Jesus went into the grave. We come out of the water. Jesus was raised to life. We have a new life, different from the old. So we can, and should, live a life which honours God, and not ourselves. We no longer belong to ourselves and we no longer live for ourselves. We live for Jesus.
Death and sin come together in the Bible. There is a punishment for sin. This punishment is taken away by Jesus. But sin also divides us from God. Now we are reconciled to God. Sin has a power over us. It makes us slaves. We are legally free from this slavery. We should no longer think like slaves. We should not continue in our old way of thinking. We should not believe that we are the same, that we cannot change, and that we are destined to live the same way. Whether you are young or old, your identity is Christ should change your life. The legal and spiritual power of sin has been removed. You should understand this, and live in a new way.
When you believed in Christ, how did your view of yourself change? How did that affect your behaviour?
Look at the words 'consider yourselves.' How do you think about yourself? Being alive to God means that we know and understand what new life means. Being alive with God means that love, joy and peace fill our lives. We embrace new values. We are changed. We see ourselves differently. We have a new power to live a life full of love for God and others. Today there is a power of self. It fills social media. People think it will make them happy, but it does the opposite. It makes people sad. Our new life in Christ has God at the centre. Its purpose is not to make us happy. It is to glorify God, but it changes us, transforms us, and fills us with God's love.
The last theme is slavery. We will be looking at this in the next section. Slavery has different components. One is legal slavery. This is broken by the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. We are no longer under the legal power of sin. But sometimes people who have been freed from slavery might still think like slaves. I have seen examples where former slaves go on serving their old master, working for free, or carrying his name. We are free, we should think life free people. We have the power to live a new life. Go back to the question: Why shouldn't we keep on sinning? It is against our new identity. It is against our new nature. We are better than that. We are alive to God, free with God, we are redeemed.
Prayer topic:
Help us to understand our new identity, and live like Jesus.
